Days Gone By: A Memoir of the Gallian Front

[J. Finch]

"...In the end, I think, war is what brings out both the best and the worst in us. It is brutal, and unforgiving, and pushes us past the very boundaries of our hearts, minds and souls, and it's in this that we find the most indelible of truths. We find that we are only who we choose to be."​

-preface, Days Gone By, A Memoir from the Gallian Front​

Chapter One​

"Ngh... fuck!" I grit out, tears streaming from my eyes, hand wrapped tightly over the gushing hole in my side as I leaned against what was left of a brick wall, trying to get my breath back despite the lancing fire that shot up my entire body every time I inhaled. The air was heavy with the taste of dead meat, humidity and gunpowder, and I could feel it choking my lungs even as I gasped it in, but take it I did. Breath was life. Every single one reaffirmed that I wasn't down yet, out yet, so I pushed on.

I could hear the rattle of gunfire in the nearby streets, the rat tat tat of automatics and the screams of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire, the thundering boom of tank shells, the crack of rifle rounds, all of it, all around me. I could feel the ground shake from the tank treads, the rattling of boots on cobblestones, the yelling! Fucking hell, all the yelling. Loud, panicked, desperate, words in three different languages, maybe more, drowned out by the cacophony of war.

I pressed harder on my wound. It was still dripping, still leaking, all the way down my MOLLE vest and into the tan rip resistant nylon of the pants I wore. Some lucky chucklefuck managed to get a round past the trauma plate in my chest, winged me in the side clean enough that it went straight through, leaving me with a ragged, bloody hole. It was leaking pretty bad before, but it's slowing down. I don't know if that's a good thing.

I don't know a lot of things, and here? It was killing me. Pain and fire and blood, mixing together in a way that you can't even begin to imagine. In a hell that only those who know it like an old friend could understand, and now... now I did too. I understood it all too well, and I wish I hadn't. It was ironic in a way. I'd always wondered what I would do, you know? In a place like this, a time like this, where people were trying to hurt me, kill me... I didn't really understand it then. How could I? What this was like. It was an out-of-context issue for me.

Not any more. This was just- It's impossible to describe it. Chaos. Insanity. Violence. God, so much violence. People were getting killed. Men, women, children, I'd seen them all. Cut up, shot up, blown up... man, you think you know. Think you've seen bad. Think, 'Yeah, I could take that. I could do that, if I had to.' but no. It's just...

My head thumped against the wall. It didn't help my headache, and I winced and grit my teeth harder. I could practically hear them grinding against one another but I couldn't stop. Every step sent waves of agony through me almost as cleanly as the bullet hole itself but, begging me to stay, to sit down, to rest. I knew I couldn't. Not now. I just... needed to swallow it. Choke it down. Ignore it. Anything else was death.

I let my free hand tighten around the grip of my rifle. It was the one thing, the only thing, that gave me any measure of comfort since waking up in this fucked up place what felt like years ago, even if it couldn't have been more than a few hours. Big, mean, with a futuristic look to it it did its job as advertised. You might know it, if you've ever played a World War 2 shooter. They called it the father of the assault rifle. A weapon with the range and accuracy of a rifle and the effective killing power of a submachine gun.

The Sturmgewehr Model 1944. A stamped steel monster at thirty-seven inches and weighing in at just under twelve pounds, it offered a selection of fire modes from semi to glorious full-auto, all at the tips of your fingers with an easy to reach thumb switch. Loaded with a thirty round stick mag it would suit all your killing needs. From poor single bastards to whole fucking groups of faceless mooks it made absolutely no difference who the barrel was pointed at. Armor, no armor, under cover or out in the open, it made little difference to the 7.92 Kurz rounds, and with the kind of accuracy you'd expect from a sniper rifle, well, this gun? It did work, son. Like you wouldn't believe. Like you couldn't begin to imagine. I couldn't. I dared not fucking conceive of it. But now I know, and God knows I wish I didn't.

It all went so wrong, so fast, you know? I wasn't prepared for this. Not any of it. The last thing I remembered was getting into my car, and the next thing I know I'm waking up in a field with my goddamn MOLLE vest strapped to my chest and my CCW at my hip. Moments, I had. Moments to wonder what the fuck was going on, and then... then I got shot. Then I killed a man. Then... I shook my head as I pushed myself off the wall with a grunt. I was drifting. Had to keep moving. Had to keep focused. I pulled back the receiver, checked that I had a round chambered and then sent one foot forward. Then another. Over and over again.

You know, it's kinda like those stories you read about. Some rando gets sucked away into a magical isekai adventure full of treasure and fun and an assorted box of pretty harem girls to ooh and aww over. Or they're some lord or prince or king or whatever, or they get blessed with Colonial disease and an encyclopedic knowledge of how to bootstrap a Medieval-era society to the modern age. Or they wake up in a fifty ton robotic Von Neumann murder machine and the power of super space skitzotech.

Except when it's not. Except when the rando gets dropped in the middle of World War fucking Two and all they have to work with is a hand with some fingers on it and a gun full of bullets. Not even a guess as to how he got there. Not a clue as to what to do. No present solution or chance to even plan the first step as not five seconds after consciousness returns everyone and their goddamn uncle is trying to kill them. And those are the lucky ones. Like me. I had an option, at least. Granted that option began and ended at killing people that were in turn trying to kill me.

And let me fucking tell you, they were trying really, really hard. These aren't barely literate fantasy guards with swords and shields, no matter what the armor might tell you. These were well trained, hardened soldiers with a deep, urgent desire to kill everything and everyone that isn't on their side. They were determined, dangerous, accurate and a hell of a lot faster than you might think a man in eighty pounds of rolled steel might be. Clever, too, and nasty. They didn't hold back. They hunted, and fought, and killed without pause or recompense and where they went, hell came with them.

Speak of the devil, and he just might appear. I flattened out against the wall of the alley, the pain in my side earning a sucking hiss as I tried to slim my profile and go as silent as a church mouse. There were footsteps down the alley over. The rattle of armor plates. The clanking of heavy boots. All sounds I'd grown to know very well over the last day or so. The sound of enemies. Of threats. I hugged my rifle to my chest, my gloves creaking against the handle as I waited.

I peeked over and saw them rush by, but I don't know where. I hauled off, moved to the next building. Moved on. The better part of valor, right? I didn't want to fight them, to kill them, and I didn't want them to kill me. I never wanted any of that. Better to avoid them when I can. If I can.

You know, when I first ran into one of them, I thought it was some kind of fucking joke. These guys, they looked like someone straight out of a fucking video game with their bucket helmets and I shit you not, medieval-era armor. Chest, shoulders, even legs, it was... it looked like something straight off a knight, and all he needed was the horse to round it out. Lined plates, thick looking, aggressive and intimidating but also strange. Out of place. I had trouble taking the man seriously.

I laughed a bit when I saw it, didn't really understand what I was looking at, what it meant. I thought it was kinda funny, all things considered. Then the bastard raised his rifle and shot me in the chest.

It wasn't very fucking funny then. Luckily, whatever composite that made up the plate under my MOLLE vest did it's job and despite the fact that I think it bruised a rib, the damn bullet didn't penetrate. It knocked me on my ass, but that didn't matter. I lived. Surprised the hell out of him that I was still kicking, too.

I blinked as I remembered it, the rifle in my hands chopping him up like so much meat, ripping through his armor like it was tissue, sending him slumping to the ground with a shocked look in his eyes. The full plate he was wearing didn't save his ass then. Didn't even slow the bullets down.

I didn't have the time to think about it, though. Three of his friends came bursting out of the woodline a half second later and tried to kill me right there on the ground. Managed to scatter them with a burst from the '44 and roll over a hill before they could really draw a bead on me, but that devolved into a running battle that drew more of the red-armored soldiers down on me. I was lucky that the area around here was all hills and that there were lots of trees in-between us. In open field I would have been a dead man a dozen times over.

It got bloody. Really bloody. Say what you will about the people who designed the StG 44, they knew what they were doing with this gun. It was effective. Very effective. Pinpoint accuracy on semi and auto, and a huge magazine besides, handling it was a dream. It ruined their day. Made a mess of things. People, too, in ugly ways, especially in the chaos. But it did its job, of that there was no doubt. Firing, moving, reloading... all so easy, so smooth, so simple. So easy a child could do it.

Still, I ended up losing one of my few magazines in the heat of it all. It was spent, yes, but I'd been trying to hold onto those, tossing them into my dump pouch. Never knew if or when I'd find a chance to get more. No time to worry about it though. They chased me hard into the town where folks in blue helmets and uniforms took up the fight, where I wound up holding that line for the better part of half an hour, no questions asked. My tee shirt under the MOLLE vest was blue. They wore blue. Since the Imps were shooting at me, that seemed to be enough for them, fortunately. They called themselves Gallians, and the ones in red, Imperials. It was nice to have a name to stick with the uniform, for what that's worth, even if that was all the time for introductions we had, and that was that. The war came snapping at my heels, and with it fire and thunder and blood.

More soldiers showed up on both sides and the fighting got nasty, all of it inch by inch urban warfare. They fought well, though, despite being under armed, understaffed and outgunned, and we held them for a time. We bled them good, made them claw and crawl and suffer for every street, every building, but it wasn't enough. There were just too many, and once the tanks started rolling up, blowing the shit out of the fortifications, we wound up pulling a fighting retreat, got scattered, and then... bam, shot through the gut.

I don't... I just...

It was a bad day.

I checked the mag I had in the gun. Half full. Good. I'd been plinking on semi for the most part. This thing was an automatic, it could eat up a thirty round magazine in seconds, but that didn't seem to help me at all. Yeah, it tore motherfuckers up, but I hadn't seen a single extra round the same size as what I needed for it.

All these rifles used 7.92 Mauser. This thing was loaded with the smaller, more compact Kurz round, the Mauser's baby cousin. Little weaker than the full shebang, but lighter on the whole and the recoil was reduced enough that I could get some truly compact grouping, but that wasn't worth a tin whistle if I didn't have any bullets to shoot. I was running dry and after that all I had was a 1911 with four mags worth of munitions. Fucked wasn't succinct enough a description for my situation, I thought bitterly.

CRACK!

My head shot up, my pupils dilating as blood sloshed around in my ears. My side screamed, but I forced it down, choked on it, as my shaking hands firmed up around my gun. 'Focus. Focus. Come on... focus', I chanted to myself, 'There are people trying to kill you. You need to keep your wits long enough to kill them first.'

I could hear gunfire going back and forth nearby, but I shied away from sticking my head around the edge. In the distance I could hear the roar of a diesel engine and the cracking of cobblestones under treads. There was a tank nearby somewhere and after I saw one of those boxy clunkers tear up a squad of Gallians with a heavy machine gun I wasn't going to poke my head out if I didn't have to. Not until I had eyes on it.

The alley I was crouching in was narrow enough to hide in pretty well. This place was surprisingly clean. No trash that I could see. It was a blessing. The last thing I needed was to have the hole in me get infected. I wanted to bandage it, but I didn't dare loosen the vest. It did well enough keeping me alive that I was too scared to open a gap enough to do more than shove a gauze pad in. The medical kit on my belt was compact, but it had the necessities to fix me up as best I could, including a few syrettes of morphine that I'd already taken a hit of. It helped numb the pain, barely.

I hugged my rifle tight before glancing around. The street was empty, and I didn't hear the tank anywhere. Looked safe enough to cross. There was intermittent gunfire, but it was moving away from me I think.

I hope. I lifted up the '44, ignoring the sharp spike of lancing fire in my side as I slid out of cover. The street itself was lined with abandoned sandbags, and I tried to hug those as much as I could as I slipped across as low to the ground as I could crouch. The pain was... not insignificant, but I was adjusting.

There were Imps in the distance, down the street but facing away from me. They were shooting at someone, but I don't know who. Probably militia. Hopefully not civvies, but I'd seen plenty of that too. Especially the dark haired ones. Those... died ugly. Better not to think about it. Not now. I could have nightmares about that shit later, assuming there was one.

It was then that I heard the rumbling of the tank again, this time getting closer. I ducked down behind one of the sandbag barricades, dropping back instead of pushing forward. Where was it? My head shot around as my heart hammered in my chest. The shaking was back, and I couldn't stop it this time.

That's when I saw it, cresting over a low wall, the already shattered brickwork disintegrating under it's vicious treads, chasing a dozen or so Gallians, cutting them down with it's HMG, the tracers leaving steaming holes in living flesh. The cannon reported, and the crater it left rained gore.

I abandoned all pretense of stealth and ran, sprinting all out across the street hoping beyond hope it didn't see me. The HMG roared, and I heard the screams of dying men as I hit the apex of my stride, dropping into a baseball slide behind the edge of a building opposite where I started. I fell, tumbling onto my chest and I all but dived behind the wall, scrambling away from the gun that was ripping into the militiamen just down the street.

"Ngh!" I grit my teeth so hard they ground as a nail of absolute agony punched through me. Sidled against the wall, sitting as I tried to make myself as small as I could, I seized as I almost bit my tongue off to stop the scream from leaving my lips. My hand shot to my wound, and it came back hot and wet with fresh blood, bright red and leaking down my vest in a fresh torrent.

The tank was coming closer. I heard the boom of it's cannon again, the rattling of it's gun, and more screaming. Tears tracked from my eyes from how hard I was trying not to let the white hot pain I was feeling override my senses, and I forced myself to inch to the edge. I had to see if it was coming, if I had to run, to hide. I glanced back, and I saw it. Fuck me, I saw it. Impossibly huge with two main guns, I watched as it rolled forward on massive treads before coming to a stop. Imperial troops with rifles were running up and down the street, and I could see more Gallian militia in the distance taking up positions behind the rubble, exchanging fire back and forth.

The tank paused, and I almost slipped back, afraid that it had seen me, but no, it started to turn, the two massive cannons on it's front slowly inching away from where I hid to point down into the town square. I let loose a soft breath. It rolled forward a bit, angling away from me. That didn't solve the issue of the Imperial troops that had taken up position on the street closest to me, but they were hiding behind sandbags, shooting at unseen enemies with their backs to me. I was safe.

But I could see that I was alone in that assessment. Across the way, hiding behind a blown out truck were two militia, one with a red scarf over her hair, and a plainclothes with a rifle, maybe a volunteer. They couldn't move with the tank there. They were stuck largely in the open, relying more on the tank's poor peripheral vision for concealment than anything else. Worse, with the Imps flush around it they were standing in front of a firing line that hadn't noticed them more on sheer luck than anything.

It was a bad position, and I could see it in their eyes that they knew it too. I could just imagine it. They run? They head straight into an entrenched wall of guns. They try to fight it out? Tank turns and kills them. Rock and a hard place. Staying probably wasn't an option either, and circling around... the Imperials had already turned this town into a maze of rubble, and going back meant trying to dodge Imp reinforcements coming up from the way I'd just left.

They were stuck, and with that tank ripping up the far end of the square, it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out. The clock was ticking down.

I was in a good position, behind the Imperial positions and their tank and on the opposite side of the road. I was safe, as much as I could be, but they weren't. I took a deep breath. I thought about it, about helping, but in the end I decided against it. What could I do against a tank? Here I was, in a place where I could run and live, even if they wouldn't. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't right, but it was smart. It was the smart thing to do, and besides, you know what they say.

Life is tragic.

I moved to stand, painful as it was, and that was enough. I glanced out, and the girl was looking right at me. She motioned back to the guy behind her, and he turned to look at me too. I stared back, wincing as the hole in my side bit me again, my eyes narrowed, blurred with tears. I don't need this shit. All I had to do was fall back. I was hurt. Nobody would blame me. But... I hesitated.

Isn't that what courage is? To act in the face of danger, of fear, in order to do the right thing? Or was I just being stupid? I was choosing to leave them to die. I was choosing to walk the easy path, to ignore what I thought I should do, what needed to be done, in order to hide. It's easy, I think, to believe that, to tell yourself that you had to look out for number one, that life was hard, and unfair, and wrong. If I left now, I would live, probably, and they would most likely die. I would be responsible for that. I would have to carry that weight.

Even as I realized it, I knew I couldn't shoulder it. I lived an easy life, so much as it could be called. A good life, safe from... from this. I called myself a man, and I told myself I could do this if I had to. Was I a hypocrite? Could I accept that? Could I wake up tomorrow and look myself in the eye, knowing that? Could I live like that? As a man who walked away just so he could keep on going one more day?

No, I knew. If I did, what would I be worth then? I drew in a shaky breath, gritting my teeth from the pain in my side. I was going to do this. I wasn't just going to run away, not now. Not from this. But the pain... was distracting. It lessened me, and I needed to be able to move, to focus, to do what I needed to without adding another factor into an already slapdash plan.

I fished out another syrette before sliding it under my skin and feeling the rush of numbness start to gnaw away at the edges of my wound as I turned back to the two behind the truck and held my hand up. Universal sign for wait. Then I tightened up the strap on my StG, so much so that it was flush against my chest instead of loose, like it had been. I didn't want it rattling around. My hand went around my knife.

There were three positions that the soldiers were in. One on each side of the tank, and one a bit farther back, covered by the rear of the tank itself. The one in the back had a man working a radio, alone, while the other two positions had two and three troops each, firing out across the town square. The idea was simple. Knife the radioman, take his grenades, toss them into the two nests and get around the corner before the tank could turn enough to ruin my shit.

So much could go wrong, I knew it, but I didn't think about it. I could... I could do this, help them, save those two. I owed it to the Gallians to at least try. They helped me when I was on the ropes before and now I couldn't shy away. I was a lot of things, but not a coward. Not now.

I steeled myself and slid out low, hugging the wall and inching around behind the radioman in the back. It was surprisingly easy, considering how much shit was on the ground crunching around under my boots. I got close, closer, my knife was in my hand and then-

The radioman looked right at me. He froze, and his eyes went wide. I dashed forward, just as his mouth opened-

The blade flashed-

His yell died in a gurgle as I rammed the single-edged dagger home clean into his throat, my eyes boring into his as I watched the light fade. He tried to speak, tried to scream, lips flapping open and shut as he weakly gripped at my arm but the knife had cut clean through his neck, and all that escaped were a few bloody bubbles. He slumped, and I ducked down behind the sandbags.

It was fast. So fast. I tried not to look at him as I rifled through his uniform. Finding the grenade pouch wasn't that hard, really. It was on the side of his pack, but it took a few moments, moments that I spent worriedly glancing at the two positions only a few meters away, afraid one of those riflemen would glance back and blow my whole plan to hell.

That didn't happen. They were too caught up in the firefight with the militia across the street to notice me. I got lucky there, but I ran into a snag trying to implement step two. The man I killed only had one grenade.

I growled an unintelligible curse. Things were never easy, were they? I drew the grenade, unscrewing the cap at the bottom and readying myself. There was no going back. There was only action, only purpose. Violence in motion. I threw the grenade, the long-handled explosive flying true, landing square in the middle of a group of Imps. It bounced off the pack of one, and he glanced down at it as I fell behind the barricade.

I heard a scream, and then a blast, and as I rolled to my feet carnage was what greeted me. I'd tossed the grenade into the far nest of soldiers, and between the wall of the building and the tank, the blast had been amplified. One man was just gone, pieces of him littering the ground in great, bloody chunks as another lay there, his insides blown out across the pavement as everything below his waist ended in bits of bone and strips of flesh. His helmet had been blown off, and his face... his eyes stared lidless into the sky.

I looked away.

My hands were already moving as the tank turned away from us, hunting, while I raised the 44 at the three in the opposite nest. My finger flipped the fire selector to 'Full', and I emptied out the mag. The two militia that had been hiding burst out of cover, taking wild potshots while the second nest of enemy soldiers descended into chaos. They tried to jump over their cover to put something between them and my assault rifle. Only two made it. One just slumped as I drew a bead on him, stitching him up with automatic fire and leaving him slumped against the sandbags. The others made it, but were open to the militia opposite us, and with the tank out of position?

Things went wrong for them. Quickly.

As for the two Gallians? Clean getaway. They dashed past the edge of the alley, and I moved to follow them, swapping out the spent mag and locking in my last fresh one as I cleared the fence and the road as a whole. That tank was still probably wondering what the hell just happened, heh.

I pointedly ignored the fact that I'd just blown two men to pieces, knifed another and gunned a fourth down.

The two were waiting for me. Looking at them... Jesus did they look young. Despite the battle grime and the dust and the dirt, they looked like what, late teens, early twenties at best? Fuck. But then, things aren't so different back home, are they? Kids signed up to join the military all the time, and this is their home. Would I be so quick to judge if it was mine? No. Respect where it was due.

"Thank you," The girl started, "for helping us. For a second there I thought we were goners." It went unsaid that she thought I was going to leave them. I could see it in her eyes. I didn't hold that against her though. I was going to, initially.

Still, it helped ease the pain. I gave her a weary grin as I plopped down onto a nearby crate, trying to hide the wince. The other, the man in plainclothes, gave me a nod of gratitude.

"Yeah. We were in a tight spot. That tank came out of nowhere." He smiled brightly. "I'm Welkin, and this is Alicia. She's with the town watch." Then he really looked at me. I mean, really looked. "You're hurt."

It wasn't a question. He turned to the girl, Alicia.

"Alicia, he's hurt." The words brought the girl over, and she pursed her lips. "Do you have any Ragnaid left?"

"No," She said, checking a pocket on her belt and frowning before glancing towards the far end of the alley, "I don't. We do have a militia aid station near the main gate though. What's left of the Watch is massing there to try and hold the line while the rest of the town finishes evacuating. If nothing else we'll have something we can use for him there." She turned to look at me. "Can you move?"

"Kinda have to. I'll manage." I gave her a dour grin. She nodded and turned back to the man.

"Then I'll head back to my house and grab Martha and Isara, and meet you there." He said after a moment of thought. "Plus something that should help with the evacuation."

"Alright. I'll dig in my heels and hold the line, try to stall them till then. Good luck, Welkin. Stay safe."

He nodded to her with a grin and ran off down the alley. I turned to the girl, Alicia, and stood.

"Shall we?" I asked with a hiked eyebrow. Her features smoothed over and she checked her rifle.

"Yeah." I let her take point. She knew the town better than I ever could, and it showed. We didn't run into any more Imps, not for lack of attention though. Probably regrouping somewhere before making another push into the town. Things had gotten ugly, fast. Looking around, there were a lot of dead civilians. Men. Women. Kids. Didn't seem like the Imps were discriminating, and a lot of these people were shot running away. More though were lined up against a wall and executed, Nazi style. It was clear what was going on here, and the Imps? Well, they weren't discriminating.

I turned away, facing Alicia, whose head was locked forward, not looking at the bodies. It wasn't lost on me that these were people she knew, she cared about. I didn't comment. I couldn't. It wasn't my place, but seeing this? I suddenly felt far less sorry about what I did to those men.

Something about that sat unwell with me, but I shook it off. This wasn't the time. I couldn't afford to get lost now, and I knew it, so instead I focused on the girl in front of me, and the hammering of our boots upon the stone.




AN: So here we are again. This is my rewritten (again) attempt at making this story work. For those of you new here, this is the rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite ad nauseum. I started this a decade ago in 2015, and don't let the dates fool you, it's 2025 and we're back at it again. I could make excuses but the truth is that I just lost interest in the genre and the story. I started writing my own works and fall off the face of fanfiction for a while as I explored what my imagination found interesting and I like to think I'm coming back stronger for it.

So what's changed? Well, not much. I still work on a lot of my own stuff, but I kinda wanted to get back into this fic now that I'm feeling inspired again. Out of all the things I've posted I think that this one was the one that would pop into my mind the most. I had such grand plans for it that now in retrospect seemed very silly, but with a little grit and gumption I've redone the plot, redone my notes, and come up with something I think will flow a little better.

As for changes to this chapter, I made a lot of grammar and word choice changes that I'm hoping make this version flow a little better. Some of the scenes were streamlined or rewritten and some of them were removed or added. Overall the first step into this world is largely the same but, hopefully, better.

Crossposted from SB. I have no regrets.

 

[J. Finch]

...I don't apologize for what I've done. I made my choices under the auspice of what I knew at the time, and what I could act upon. I'd once read that war is cruelty, and that trying to reform it is folly. The crueler it is, the faster it's over. I wonder, though, if the man who wrote that meant it to imply that the cruelty of war would dissuade men from fighting, or if he simply meant that through cruelty, there would be no men left to fight."​

-preface, Days Gone By, A Memoir from the Gallian Front​

Chapter Two​

Alicia set the pace, and I followed along best I could. The morphine helped, but the more I moved the more it hurt, not that I let that slow me down. Didn't want to risk getting left behind, and it didn't seem like the girl was quite so willing to be accommodating.

I didn't blame her for that. I think she might have been a touch suspicious of me, honestly. I wasn't shocked by that either. Aside from the tenuous 'enemies of my enemies' that I'd been relying on to keep myself at least entrenched on one side of the field, this girl was town watch, and this? Was a small town. She probably knew everyone here, or at least most of them. I was a stranger, which made me a liability, and that didn't even include the mess of nonstandard gear I was toting around. I looked different, and different was dangerous.

Still, I probably bought myself some credit helping them, and I was hurt. That might have eased tensions a bit, or so I hoped. As it stood I couldn't really afford to make any more enemies, and honestly? There was something good about helping people defend their homes. Silver lining, I guess, in-between all the shooting and killing. It helped ease my conscience some, for what it was worth.

I snorted, catching Alicia's attention. She paused, taking a second to check our surroundings before turning to me.

"You alright?" She whispered, taking my grunt for one of pain, instead of dark humor. I gave her a strained grin.

"Eh, bleeding but still alive. Hurts like a bitch though." And all the activity of the last hour hasn't been helping. Still, she seemed to accept that, even if she winced a bit at my choice of descriptor. Odd, you'd think someone in her position would be used to profanity but then again, it takes all kinds.

"Okay. Just hang in there, we're almost to the aid station. Just another block and another alley." She said before turning back around. She moved slower, by just a bit. It was easier on me, thank whatever merciful God was out there for the help, if only a bit. Still, the streets were abandoned. I could hear gunshots in the distance, but I didn't spot anything worrying on our way.

I didn't miss the tired look Alicia had, though. She seemed to slump a bit every time we heard gunfire, and I could guess why. People were fighting, dying, and it was her friends and neighbors taking the worst of it. I wasn't so detached that I didn't see it, but I didn't say anything. We all got our weights to carry. This one was on her, though it didn't mean I couldn't sympathize. Were it my home? My neighborhood? No. This wasn't the time for that kind of thinking.

"So," I looked at Alicia, who was glancing back at me with a curious glint in her eye, "I've never seen a gun like that before." She said as she looked back around the corner. It was quiet, yeah, but we'd had to stop to avoid a roaming patrol. They seemed to have left, but it didn't hurt to take a second. We were in the home stretch anyway.

"Yeah? Doesn't surprise me." I said, watching our backs with a cautious eye. "It's a Sturmgewehr. Storm Rifle. Good gun. Reliable." I said evasively. Alicia turned back, and motioned me forward. We moved down the road, eyes peeled. It was quiet, but I could hear the sounds of men in the distance. Alicia was leading us towards the noise, though, and she did say the militia were massing at the station.

"Sounds Germanian. You from the Atlantic Federation then?" She asked quietly. I shook my head. I'd never heard of any Federation, but whatever it was, Germany was a part of it. Which was odd, really. I'd pegged myself during one of the world wars. The time period seemed about right for it, all things considered, but... maybe not. Germany was an antagonist in both wars, and now it seemed like they were part of what sounded like a loose affiliation of states with a centralized governance, kinda like the US. That... was weird. Even after WW2 Germany was split for half a century between the democratic west and the communist east, if I recalled right.

Huh.

"No. I'm uh, I'm from across the ocean." I eventually replied, hoping there was an America analogue here, or something, or if not, anything I could use elsewise. If I was where I thought I was, and maybe when I thought I was, I could roll the dice on that at least. Not great, but better than telling her that I was and risking getting caught up in the lie if she mentions literally anything related to this "Federation" that I should know but don't. It wasn't like I could tell her "Oh, it's just over that grassy hill over yonder." No, not at all. Vague would have to do.

She stopped, turned and gave me a sharp, disbelieving look. "A Vinlander? I thought you people were content to sit across the ocean and play war merchant. 'Leave Europan problems to Europa', or so I last heard out of your Congress. What are you doing in Gallia?" Ah, now there we go. I can work with that. Yeah. Also on the plus side it sounded like Vinland was functionally neutral then, if nothing else. Unpopular, maybe, but not directly affiliated either.

Still, Vinland? I'm not quite sure what to make of that. It sounded Nordic, though that wasn't saying much. Germania, Europa, Gallia, and now Vinland. All analogues for countries back home, similar, but indelibly different at the same time. I really needed to get a hold of a world history book, or at least a damn Atlas if nothing else. Hell, at this point I'd settle for a newspaper, even. I'm not in a position to be picky after all.

"Yeah, well, sometimes life takes you in strange directions. Especially when you don't have much choice but to keep moving forward." I said with a halfhearted shrug. "So I guess you could say it's just chance that I happen to be here." It was funny and a little sad just how honest that statement was, at least from one point of view. Call it a cosmic joke, maybe. Something to entertain a higher power, perhaps. Hell, I could have fallen through a rift in time and space like in the goddamn Twilight Zone for all I knew. This... this whole thing was insane, and it was just getting started. I wasn't naive enough to believe otherwise. I wasn't innocent enough for that kind of thinking any more.

Alicia just gave a half chuckle, a grin on her lips. "That's fair, I guess. Not going to say no to the help, anyway, even if you picked a heck of a time to show up. That makes you a volunteer then? Mercenary?" She didn't seem to be judging, really. Just asking. For that, at least, I was grateful. This was the Twilight Zone. I was lost in time, in space, trapped in some weird alternate 1930something where for all I know I could be stuck seeing the first shots of World War Two. The thought of it hit me harder than I was expecting, put into words.

It was all so fast, too. Say what you will, but the last few hours were a whirlwind. I met a man, and he shot me for literally no reason that I could understand. I killed him for it. His friends came, and I killed them too. Then I ran, and killed more men. I came to a village under siege, and tried to help protect it. I killed again, and again, and again. Like a broken record. Over and over, I pulled the trigger. I didn't think about it. Didn't even hesitate. Mechanical, precise, with experienced hands and a kind of focus that scared me once the blood stopped pounding through my veins. But more than that, it's that I didn't feel anything when I did it. I felt no remorse. No care. No concern.

I felt nothing at all. I was numb to it. I think that's what scared me the most about this whole thing.

"Guess you could say that, yeah." I said after a moment with a strained half-grin as we turned the corner and saw bedlam at it's finest. There were maybe a dozen men and women milling about, setting up sandbags and hoisting up a makeshift watch tower. Boxes of bullets were being laid out, and there was some barbed wire being set up, and there was an air of tension, of fear, that was almost palpable in the afternoon air.

Some of them looked up at us, but Alicia waved them off. A few gave her nods or smiles, but most were carefully neutral towards me as she led me to a building with a bright blue cross on the side. It wasn't large, just a few rooms attached to a foyer, but inside were a mess of crates packed with grenades, bullets, assorted other supplies, a few chairs and tables, one of which had an inactive radio of some kind on it, and across a far wall lie a rack of older looking rifles. Alicia herself moved over to a box with a red cross plastered across the top and opened it, pulling out a couple of large, pill shaped devices before walking over and handing one to me.

"Here. Do you know how to use Ragnaid?" She asked, and I shook my head. The hell kind of medical device was this? I glanced down at it curiously. It was a strange looking thing, aside from it's odd shape. The top was domed with a bright, almost glowing glass bubble around what looked like a chunk of rock, while the bottom ended in a dispenser of some kind with a timer knob on it. Honestly? Kinda made me think of one of those weird medical gizmos from the turn of the century.

"No clue. Never seen anything like it." I shrugged, wincing. She nodded, bringing up the one in her hand.

"I'm not surprised. Ragnaid dispensers like this are pretty new. We just got this shipment in a couple of months ago and if you aren't in the army or the militia they're pretty expensive. It's actually rather easy to use, though. This knob," she flipped the device over, showing me the timer, "Is a three second activator. You turn it to the left and hold it over either your head or someone else's. The funnel at the bottom disperses medical ragnite particles in a cone under it, which can close cuts, heal bruises and restore burns, but doesn't help much with broken bones, sickness, infections, or poison." She said as she put hers down. I glanced at mine.

"They're heavier than air but they can be blown away with a good wind so be careful when you use it. Also, if you get shot, make sure you get the bullet out first, because this will heal right over it. And lastly, be careful about using it too much too often. Medical ragnite isn't particularly dangerous unless you use it in large doses. It can make you sick." Okay. Okay wow, so that's... different. I didn't know what ragnite was, but I assumed it was the little rock in the middle of the machine. Sounded pretty miraculous indeed, or so Alicia seemed to believe. But...

"This thing isn't going to give me cancer or something, is it?" I asked with some trepidation. These 'medical ragnite particles' sounded a lot like some kind of radiation and anything with the magical Rad word in it made me a bit leery. The way she phrased it sounded like it sped up cell reproduction somehow, but that had with it it's own list of issues.

Alicia blinked. "I don't... think... so? I'm not sure what you mean by 'cancer'. That some kind of medical thing?"

"Uh, yeah. It's... hm. It's like tumors that form on skin or organs that can shut them down and spread around through your body in the later stages. It can be caused by radiation, which this sounds like." I said flatly. The light bulb seemed to turn on there for her.

"Ah. That- no. It's just medical ragnite. They don't do anything to it. It's just the dispenser that's new. Nothing to worry about." She smiled positively. I went back to staring at the device. Asking about it would have looked odd, given the way she talked about it. Whatever 'medical ragnite' was, it sounded like common knowledge and the last thing I needed was to look either stupid or suspect. Ugh, this still seemed like a really bad idea, but... what choice did I have? In a little while Imperial tanks and troops were going to assault our little bastion here and I didn't want to walk into it with a big, gaping hole in my side if I could help it.

As it was, though, that was a long term problem. Right now I had somewhat more pressing short term concerns, and if I wanted to make it that far, then maybe a bit of recklessness was warranted in this case. Still, I got the odd feeling I might come to regret using these things in the future. If I had a future, that is.

"Well, in that case, bottoms up." I sighed, cranking the dial and holding the Ragnaid over my head. It took a second, but I could actually see a bright, almost sky blue glow slowly pour over my body. It didn't really feel like anything, but I could tell the pain in my side was diminishing, first a little, then a lot, until it was gone completely.

After about fifteen seconds the glow faded, and when I looked at the machine I could see the once blue rock in the middle was clear, like quartz. I set it down and unbuckled the side of the vest harness so I could really get a look at my side. Unsurprisingly, my blue tee was drenched in brownish red, and the underside of my vest was dripping like a fresh cut of beef. The bandages I'd hastily shoved under my shirt were soaked with flecks of barely set scabbing and bright red blood. That was a good sign. Meant that for whatever else that bullet hit, it didn't nick anything lethally important.

Under all that though... I ran my fingers over the completely healed gunshot. There wasn't even a scar aside from the fresh white of newly grown skin, and as much as I pressed down on it, I felt no pain. It was the same case where the bullet had left me, even more so, in this case. It was a bigger injury, but even that was gone. There was more to it than that, though. The soreness in my joints from running around all day was gone. The bruises on my body had vanished. The cuts and scratches I'd collected? Gone too. Even the pounding headache I'd gotten from today had diminished to nearly nothing.

I eyed the little machine on the table with some amazement. It was clear Alicia saw my reaction, because she had this knowing little smirk on her face.

"Told you it was fine. Pretty impressive, right?" She asked somewhat smugly, and I nodded.

"Yeah. Not bad at all. Still worried about the long term, maybe, but in order to worry about it I gotta get there." My tone was a bit dour, and it brought down the mood some. Alicia just chuckled at me, a bit ruefully if I had to guess, like she was tolerating a particularly stubborn old man. After a second though, I wound up grinning too. Shaking her head, she went back to the chest and fished out four or five more of the Ragnaid capsules.

"Here, take these. We've got enough to go around and you might need them. We've also got a lot of ammo, some grenades, some other stuff around here... take what you need. It's too much to take with us so we're trying to divvy out as much as we can." She motioned for me to follow her into the mess of crates, pointing out what was what as we walked past it.

"I'm not sure if you have what the Stig chambers. I haven't seen anything the right size yet today." I said as she paused, looking at me.

"Stig?" She asked.

"Oh! Uh, yeah. Sturmgewehr is a bit of a mouthful, so it's abbreviated as StG. So," I shrugged, "Stig." I shrugged. "Anyway, here," I pulled back the chamber, popping out a round of the 7.92mm Kurz it fired, before handing it to her, "think you got any of those in stock?" It was a long shot, but I held out hope. The fact that they even chambered 7.92mm was enough to get me going, but I started to droop a bit as Alicia's face scrunched up.

"Hm... actually, yeah. I'm just kinda surprised. This is the cartridge they used with a lot of older EW1 bolt action rifles. Low recoil, but the newer Mauser rounds have a lot more punch to them. I'm surprised a Germanian weapons manufacturer went back to this old thing instead of going with something newer. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of these floating around from the end of the war, so they wouldn't be hurting for ammo, but still..." She shrugged, handing me the bullet back before turning around to a stack of crated and reading down the labels.

"Eh, might be because of the size. Not as much power, sure, but the low recoil helps with accuracy and smaller bullets means less weight to haul." I shrugged. "Plus it's an automatic. Less kickback is always a plus."

She nodded at that. "Makes sense in context, I suppose. Ah! Here." She pulled out a crate from one of the lower piles, before opening it up with a flick. "Two thousand rounds of 7.92x33 Kurz. Take all you want, the watch's already upgraded to the Mauser. We don't even have anything that can chamber them any more." I smiled, nodding as I ignored yet another odd "coincidence" as the ammo for my rifle was both plentiful and apparently classified as obsolete. That meant, of course, that nobody cared if I took some for myself. Convenient, right?

"And it's okay if I just... take these?" I asked dubiously, but she just shrugged and smiled.

"There's way more here than we can use, and given all you've done for us today, you've earned the right to some free kit. Call it a payment on what we owe you for services rendered." She said as she patted me on the shoulder. "Anyway, once you're done in here, come find me. The watch commander, Mr. Laakan, will be interested in talking to you, okay?"

"Alright." I nodded, finding myself a seat at the table and pulling myself up. Alicia just gave me a grin and another shoulder pat before heading towards the door, hips swaying the whole way. Quite the sight indeed, now that I wasn't distracted by agonizing pain. I let my grin, and my gaze, linger a second longer than was strictly professional, but Alicia didn't seem to notice, or perhaps ignored it.

I let out a quiet snort as I shook it off, and didn't waste any time in fishing out a handful and an empty mag. I only had seven left, total, and only one was still fresh. I'd lost the other two somewhere and if things were the way I thought they were, I would be in dire straits if I lost more, at least until I could get someone to fabricate them anyway. Alicia had bid me adieu and made her way back out of the building to go coordinate with the rest of the militia. It was pretty apparent that she was serious about taking what I wanted, since she didn't seem bothered in the least to leave me alone here.

Fishing out a handful of Kurz rounds, I started sliding them into the first empty. It was steady, monotonous, as I snapped one round in after the next. My hands were shaking. I ignored it. Just focused on sliding in the next round, one after the other. Just... click, snap, click, snap, click- A bullet fell from my fingers, and cracked on the floor. I blinked, just for a moment, and tried to pick it up. But I couldn't. Blood was sloshing through my ears, as the sounds of gunfire rolled through my ears, my eyes wide, lost, as I gasped for breath. Thundering, rolling, boom boom boom I felt my heart thrumming in my chest as I slammed my fist into the table before me, my other dropping the half-full magazine as it grasped helplessly at my chest.

I could hear screaming in the distance. I could feel tank treads through the floor. The world around me felt like it was burning as my nervous hands slammed around my head, trying to blot it all out. The building was shaking, or was it just me? I couldn't tell any more even as I slumped to the ground on hands and knees, trying desperately to make it all stop. I could hear screaming, crying, begging, no, no please just make it stop I don't want this why why why why-

The world snapped back. The half full magazine was still in one hand, the other still with a round in my fingers. There wasn't any trembling. No shaking. No thrumming. No gunshots. Just quiet. Silence amongst the screaming. Click, snap, click, snap. My fingers moved mechanically as my mind went blank. What was happening, I wondered? What was that? It felt... real. Vivid. Alive. I... I felt it, in my bones. I heard it, the screaming, the begging. The crying.

I reached up to my cheek, but felt no tears. Just grime and gun oil. The metallic tang of brass and gunpowder invaded my nose as I rubbed my filthy, bloody hands along my face, and I looked down at the pressed steel magazines in my hand. The bullet in my fingers. Antiseeds. Plant them and watch something die. Ha. Ha, ha. I couldn't help but laugh at the memory as the rounds stitched up that man's chest. The light in his eyes faded. His friends came over the hill, and I shot them too. I ran to the town. I killed another, and another. Then the stand came, and I picked them off, one and again. Then there was pain, and rage, and I killed that one too. Then the radio man. He died gasping, I saw it as I twisted the knife. His pain, my pain, I bought his friends with it. Stole them like I stole his, with a grenade and a half a mag. I started the job. They finished it. I did such good work.

Ha.

Ha ha.

Ha.

Oh Christ, what was I doing? I don't even know anymore. This was... this was too much. I... I wanted to be done. I had to be done. This was just... I don't know. I wanted to be a soldier when I was a kid. I wish I could be that naive again. This is... it's beyond imagining, yet too real all the same. Killing is so easy, once you start doing it. It's almost hard to stop. The rush of adrenaline. The cold numbness of the rifle. The kick of the recoil. The power of god in every trigger pull.

I wanted to be sick. It's strange, I always read that the first time was the hardest. The first kill, I mean. That it was supposed to haunt you or something but... I honestly couldn't recall anything about it. I remember the breathtaking impact on my chest, yeah. I remember the recoil, even the blood spray. I remembered the thunder. But I didn't remember the man. Not the first one. Not the second, either. Or the third, or fourth, or fifth. I didn't remember the twelfth. Or the twentieth. Just the blood. The screams. The begging. The crying. It all blurred together, and despite the horror of it all, or perhaps because of it, I just... I felt numb. Empty. Drained.

My hands brought up another magazine. My fingers found another bullet. Click, snap. Click, snap. I focused on the noise. On the job at hand. On the here and now. It helped drown out the noise.

With a dedicated effort I managed to get the six empties full up. It wasn't hard, they weren't that big. That aside, I took a second to look over the rest. There were a couple of things I thought useful. I had a canteen already, but I took another anyway. Could never have too much water. A compass, a laminated map, some charcoal pencils and a notebook all went into my chest pouch, and I hooked a pair of binoculars onto my hip webbing. I filled another hip pouch with as many free rounds as I could pack in, and another still with a few more Ragnaid canisters. I didn't have a backpack, and they didn't seem to have one here that I could take, so I was left trying to fit what I could in what I had.

When I woke up here, I didn't have a chance to really go through my pockets to any great degree. Aside from the three ammo carriers, and the rather obviously marked first aid kit, I hadn't had a chance to go exploring. As it turned out, I had more than I'd thought. One pocket held a small cleaning kit, little more than some rags, brushes and gun oil but you didn't need more than that. Another had a small pack of replacement screws and springs for, I assumed, the StG and my handgun, along with an instruction booklet on the aforementioned rifle, which, while probably useful, was for later. That seemed about it, aside from what I'd taken and I had a number empty pouches, besides, but that real estate had its own worth. Couple big, a couple small, to which went more ammo, more Ragnaid, and in one of the big ones, a couple of those stick grenades. They went in awkwardly, and I couldn't fit in more than two, but still. Free grenades.

Which, speaking of free... I walked over to a first aid kit on the wall. It was mostly empty, but there were a few things left in there I could use. Bandage rolls, mostly, but there was some medical tape, some antiseptic cream, a few gauze pads, and other odds and ends. All useful, and with a bit of work easy to fit into my somewhat empty first aid bag. No morphine syrettes, but given the prevalence of this Ragnaid stuff it was less of a concern for me. For now. Not to sound like an addict but my hoarding instincts were screaming at me to top myself off while I had the chance.

I wound up grabbing a few more grenades after shifting things around a bit. I had the space, and they weren't heavy, just oddly shaped. They fit in nicely in the empty ammo pouch on my chest, regardless, and in the pockets on my thighs. Between this and that, I had put on some weight, but not a lot. Altogether it was only around eight grenades, maybe a hundred loose rounds and ten of those miracle capsules, with assorted others. Honestly, it was the Ragnaid that weighed the most, but hey, an extra ten, fifteen pounds of those didn't pull me down enough to matter. I wasn't in super great shape, but I could haul the extra bit for a good while, especially after that glowing blue pick-me-up. Concerns or not, there wasn't any point in worrying about living a long life if you couldn't manage in the short term.

It wasn't long before I began to hear a commotion. My head shot up out of one of the boxes I'd been digging through, to the window where I could see men starting to move with purpose. There was shouting outside and it looked like things were really moving. I walked out into bedlam. Everywhere soldiers were checking weapons, loading stripper clips, pocketing Ragnaid and grenades while shuffling around sandbags and barricades.

There was a lot of talk going on, and it wasn't hard to pick up bits and pieces.

"...scouts said the Imps were moving tanks in..."

"...said he saw some heavy weapons coming in from the north. Cannons..."

"...troops are massing at the town center, by the windmill..."

"...heard tell of anti-tank lancers and mortars..."

"...used poison gas at Ghirlandio..."

"...some kinda Valkyrur war witch..."

"...had a huge tank that rolled over the walls..."

"...coming here 'cuz of General Gunther's mansion..."

"...said they're dragging townsfolk into the streets and shooting them..."

The rumors were sounding worse and worse. I took a quick look around, grabbing a few more grenades after a moment and shoving them into any pocket space I could find before leaving. A quick glance around told me that they were still getting ready, but it wasn't hard to find Alicia. She was standing at a crate with a paper map spread out over it, along with another girl with long blonde hair, and an older man with a full beard.

"...Preparations are coming along nicely, but we don't know how long until the Imperials get here, and we must protect the townsfolk long enough for them to finish evacuating... Yes?" The older man said, turning to me. "Do you need something, son?"

"Ah! Mr. Laakan, this is the man I was telling you about. The Vinlander mercenary." Alicia piped in from the side. Laakan nodded at that. He was large, more than six feet tall, and broad, like a man who worked hard for a living. He was tanned, wizened, with a full head of graying hair and a thick beard that wrapped around his head. He didn't wear the town watch helmet, but it was clear he was the one calling the shots.

"Right. Well, it's good to have you fighting on the right side, son. Alicia was just telling me about what you'd done for her and her friend, and I wanted to thank you on behalf of the Town Watch. Alicia here is one of our best. Losing her would have hurt us something terrible." He grinned, offering me his hand. I glanced at it, and a moment later took it in my own.

"No thanks needed. I couldn't have just left them there. Wouldn't have sat right with me if I did." I said with an immodest shrug. "It's been a... bad... day. It's nice to salvage something out of it anyway." I sighed, before shaking off the dark thoughts that had tried to creep up on me.

"I understand that pain, son. It's been a tough day for everyone. We knew the Imps were coming, but this... this quick? Nobody saw this coming. We'd barely begun fortifying when the first tanks rolled up the road and it's been nothing but downhill from there." He said, motioning us over to a map propped up across a squat crate. Just a glance at it told me everything I needed to know, only confirming what I'd been experiencing all day. The locals were fighting gallantly, yes, but they were being pushed back, hard. From the look of it this was the last real bastion of support for the beleaguered militia and how long that would stand was measured in tens of minutes, perhaps an hour at best. It painted a grim picture in any case.

"So what's the plan here, then?" I said, glancing around. Militia were moving back and forth, and to be honest I felt like a bit of a third wheel. I didn't have much to contribute aside from a gun, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to commit that. Things were getting a little above me here, I thought as if I hadn't been drowning in the tides all day. I'd had enough of war for the day, honestly, even if the fighting wasn't nearly done yet.

"Not sure if you're gonna stay, huh?" He asked, not seeming to judge. Just an honest question. I gave a shrug and nodded, much to Alicia's dismay, it seemed. The old man sighed in some resignation. Didn't stop the girl from coming up and giving me a hard punch in the shoulder, before fixing me with a glare.

"Hey, what? You can't seriously be considering leaving now of all times!? We need you here now more than ever!" She snapped out, hard tone in her voice. Honestly, I could understand her outrage. This was the endgame, and I was wavering. I didn't blame her for her frustration at that, but...

"Are you honestly surprised? I've been in the shit all day, and spent a fair bit of it with a gaping hole in my side. Despite that I helped you and your friend because I couldn't just... live with myself if I left you to die, not when I could do something but this? You know what's coming. You fought the same fight I did." I snapped, shrugging her off. She crossed her arms, giving me a harsh glare, one I met pound for pound.

"That doesn't make it okay for you to just... to just quit! Not now! Not when we need every man, every hand, every gun! These are innocent people counting on us and just because things got a little bit hard, you think you get to walk away!?" The young woman snarled at me. "You said you helped Welkin and I because you thought you could, because you couldn't just abandon us. How is this different? How!?" I gave out a harsh growl, looking away. We both knew that it was, and it wasn't. I just... didn't have it in me to admit it. Instead I just, I just dropped it, and turned back to Laakan.

"It's nothing personal, old man. Just don't feel like getting killed today is all." I said finally, ignoring the look of disappointed disgust Alicia shot me. "Truth be told, I don't know what you're thinking here. I've seen those tanks in action, and a few militiamen with old rifles aren't going to cut it. They're going to massacre you and no offense, but I don't want to be a part of any desperate last stands this early in the game." I turned back to Alicia. "Sorry."

"Believe me, son, I know it's grim, but we have to try. They might not mean much to you, but these folks, they're friends, family... and the Empire is going to kill them to the last, make no mistake. Our scouts reported intercepting some transmissions, and apparently their General Gregor wants to turn this place into an example. They won't stop until every man, woman and child are dead." He said with a tired sigh. "Right now three squads of heavy infantry are preparing to attack from the north, followed by a block of tanks. We have an opportunity to slow them down, at least a little. We have to take it."

"Even if it kills you, huh?" I shook my head. This wasn't my problem. It's not my war, and this man, Laakan, seemed to get it. He was tired, old, weary and under all that? Scared. These guys weren't even soldiers, really. Just people trying their hardest to keep their families safe. If nothing else I could understand that. When you got right down to it, I was scared too. He understood that, I think.

"Even if it kills us." He nodded, before turning to Alicia. "Melchiott!" He snapped, and she hopped to attention.

"Yes, Mr. Laakan?"

"Take Evans and get everyone ready for the Imp attack. Tell them to get as many crates of bullets and grenades behind the barricades as they can. I don't want anyone running short. Also, see about getting the rest of the Ragnaid distributed. Tell them to stuff their pockets if they have to. I don't want to leave anything we can take behind." He said, and for a moment it looked like Alicia was going to say something more, but no, she just shot me a hard look and shook her head before running off. He turned to me. "Son, what's your name?"

I blinked. "Uh, Finch. Jerry Finch." I said, tilting my head. "Why do you wanna know?"

"Because I want to know the name of the man I'm going to beg a favor from. Do you have a minute?" I nodded. "Look, I know you don't have much reason to put your life on the line for us, and honestly, if what Melchiott told me is true, you've already done a fair bit. You shed blood on Gallia, for Gallia, damn the circumstances, and I respect that." He said, giving me a long, tired look. "I know you don't have much stake in these people, my people, but to us, you're already a hero. You saved the life of one of my captains and the son of a good man besides. You put your life on the line, bleeding and exhausted, to save my people, and that's more than we could have ever hoped for or asked. At the end of the day nobody could have asked for more, but we need to. We need your help for this. You've got a better gun and a better grasp of what's out there than most of my watchmen, and with your help... maybe we can save these people. Will you hear me out?"

I stared at him with hard, narrowed eyes. When I woke up, the Imps made me their enemy by attacking me without provocation. The Gallians helped me, yeah, and I took a bullet for them in return. I owed a debt, before, but I paid that back helping Welkin and Alicia. I didn't owe these people any more. I wasn't a soldier. I was just... just some guy in a bad situation. I could walk away now, run and evacuate with the rest of the civvies and I doubt anyone would bat an eye. This wasn't a game, a movie... I could die here. I probably would, if I stayed. That seemed reason enough to just go and not look back.

Say what you will, even at my most fatalistic I didn't want to die. Nobody does, really, but this was their fight. Just being honest about it. Laakan got it. It's one thing to volunteer for a fight. It was another to volunteer for a suicide mission. I certainly did, and while these people might have had my back, there are limits to what I'm willing to throw myself into.

I'd faced a question of courage, before. To fight or run. I chose to fight. That was the road I took, for better or worse, but this? This was different. This was fighting for a cause, a purpose, a greater reason than just saving a few lives. I could leave now, disappear into the influx of refugees that this war was doubtlessly generating, and that would be it. I would be free to do as I wished from then on. That wasn't cowardice, just good sense.

Was that the point? Why was I here? I had nothing but myself, as far as I knew. No family, no home, no purpose, but the clothes on my back. No commitments. No ties. Nothing binding me but me. Here, I was an island, a loner standing at the crossroads.

This was the precipice. The commitment. If I stood now to be counted upon, that was it. My place was set, my commitment made. There would be no more going back, no more room for doubting. If I chose to stay, to fight, to try and make a difference against the oncoming tide, I would forever be linked to the fate of this place, this town, and it's people.

I thought back to all I'd seen. All the killing, the violence, the brutality. I thought about the men I gunned down, and the men I'd seen die, and what's more, I remembered the execution lines. The rows of women and children and old people lined up and shot. They were butchering innocents in the street. Lining them up like the fucking gestapo and murdering them just for living here. It didn't matter who they were, they killed them just because, and that was something I couldn't just... just hide from.

Wrong or right, smart or stupid, that was a kind of evil I couldn't abide, even if God damned me for doing so. Even if it meant pulling the trigger again. Even if it meant more gunshot wounds and screaming and shaking hands. I inhaled deeply, letting the calm of the battlefield soak into me, before I looked at him, at Laakan, with a distant stare and a steely resolve filling me up. He saw it, and seemed to stand a bit taller. I took a deep breath, girded my loins and asked, "What do you need?"

His eyes lit up. It wasn't what he was expecting, I could tell. Twice now I'd almost walked away. Twice now I didn't. I gave him a grim smile, which he returned with a nod before leading me over to the map.

"There's only one way into the southern district, and that's through this main road here. We were worried that the Imps would run tanks through first, so we didn't position anyone to take advantage of the crossfire, but in this case, it seems fortune smiles upon us. This house," He fingered the map, pointing out a house tucked away at the far end of the street, "Gives a great overlook on both the main and side street leading up to the gate. I want you and a few of our better shooters to head over there and hit the Imps once they reach here," He pointed to a position on the map where a triangle had been drawn, "Where we partially collapsed this building to create a choke point. The side street is too narrow for a tank to get through, so this is their only way in. We'll catch them in a crossfire and take them out. Then you need to get out of there before the tanks roll in."

"Seems simple enough. How long would we have before the tanks roll in, though?" I asked with some trepidation. He patted me on the shoulder and gave me a solid smile.

"See the tower? The house you'll be positioned in has a clear view of it. When we see the tanks coming on down, the watchman up there will wave a flare. That's the signal to clear out. Go down the side street while we cover you. It shouldn't be too bad if we get enough of them." I looked at him, then back to the map. It... should... work. Seemed simple enough, but... no. It was too late to back out now. The plan seemed good. I nodded.

"Alright. Let's do it."

"Good. Wordsworth! Singer! Get over here!" He shouted, and two of the militia ran over. The first, a young man, maybe twenty, twenty one, had brown hair and fair features somewhat hidden by a bandanna over his head. The other, a young redhead with a smirk, came up behind him with a hop. They were... well, I wouldn't say kids. I was pushing thirty five, so maybe I was a bit colored on younger folks, but still, that girl couldn't have been out of high school.

"Finch, this is Noce Wordsworth, one of my captains, and Juliette Singer. Noce, Juliette, this is Jerry Finch." I nodded to them, shaking their hands. "We're going to try and catch those Imp bastards in a crossfire. Finch volunteered to help make it a reality. You know the house, Noce, from when we talked about it earlier. Lead him there, cover him, and help him kill some Imps. With a little luck you'll catch them totally off guard. Any issues?" He asked. Noce shrugged, seemingly ambivalent, and the girl, Juliette, shook her head. "Good. You all know the plan, so-"

"Commander! Commander!" Laakan was cut off, and we all looked up at the man on the tower. "Commander, Imps are massing down the road! Looks like they're getting ready to push!"

"Alright. That's your cue. Get going, and good luck." He said, dismissing us. I glanced at both Noce and Juliette, before taking off at a good pace down the side street. Both matched me pretty easily, and the short run only took a minute to make. I could already hear the first shots as we made it through the door to the two floor home and made our way upstairs through a staircase in the rear.

I sidled up against the wall opposite the road, looking down at the street below. Holy shit... that was a lot of soldiers. Counting up... five six seven... about ten with rifles, another five or six with those automatics... damn. Noce moved up beside another window facing out to the side street we'd just run up, and Juliette parked herself opposite him. I saw a group break off down that street as soon as they hit the intersection, but there wasn't any sign of armor on the way, thank the gods for small mercies.

"Eyes on fifteen, here, give or take. Lots of guns down there." I said, cocking my gun and flicking the switch to semi-automatic. I had seven good magazines, plus a fair few grenades to draw upon. I had the feeling that I would need all of it. Looking at the walls, I felt some worry. They didn't look very bulletproof, so we needed to make the first strike count.

"I have five... no six, coming down the road. I think I can..." Pondered Juliette as she lifted her rifle, checking the breach with a pull and a glance before shouldering it.

"No, wait till they've got their backs to us. We'll catch them in the crossfire." Noce shut her down. She looked unhappy with that, but nodded. I gave him a glance in askance, and he motioned to the still massing Imps down the road. We needed to be patient, despite the already intensifying battle down below.

"Do you think we should try grenades first? Soften them up?" Juliette said in an aside. I looked out, ran some quick numbers. Hmm. It wasn't a far walk from the door to this building to the collapse in the road, so if we were careful maybe...

"It's a thought. The herd is thinning out..." I said as the militia really started to open up. The Imps shot back, moving up in groups of three slowly under the hail of semi-automatic fire. "Yeah. Grenades out. Lets surprise 'em." Noce said as I pulled one of the mashers loose. The crossfire was thinning down as the militia went to reload, and the Imps seemed to be readying a charge. Now was the perfect time to ruin their day.

We slid open the windows as much as we could. Down below the Imperials had huddled up under some of the steeper embankments, and they'd about made it to the debris barrier regardless. We pulled and tossed.

"Grenade!" Screamed one man, but it wasn't enough to make a difference. The rippling blasts sent metal fragments all over the Imp firing line, shredding several and sending more to the ground. Men were screaming in agony, rolling on the ground, bleeding everywhere. One man had no legs, another, a gaping hole in his chest, and more still were pulped like ground meat. There was so much blood, so many injured, so many dead, mutilated, torn up and ripped apart. I swallowed hard, killing my feelings and snarled.

"Open up!" I heard Noce shout, and lined up my first shot on one of the machine gunners that had avoided the worst of the damage. Metal plating or not, it wasn't thick enough to stop the jacketed Kurz rounds I put into his chest, sending him down before zeroing on a new target.

The cracks of Noce's and Juliette's rifles punctuated the chaos, but I didn't stop to look at what was going on there. They seemed to have the side street covered well enough between the two of them. I had other problems.

In the interim I'd managed to tag another two soldiers, but the rest had started peppering the window I was using as cover. The grenades had broken the first line, but there were more men moving up and they weren't nearly so forthcoming. I dived, hitting the ground as the wall was torn apart under a hail of fire, sending glass and mortar all around me as I kissed the floor and covered my head with my hands. I could hear men yelling from outside.

"They're in that house! Second floor, street-side!"

"Move in... pin them..."

"Militia in the house behind...!"

Noce moved to cover me, but I heard him cry out as a stray round punched through the wall and into his leg, sending him down into Juliette's arms as she ran to catch him. I head stomping downstairs, moving towards the staircase behind us, but my shout was drowned out under the sound of gunfire as it tore up more of the wall. I rolled hard to the side, out of the line of fire and reached for my rifle, but it was too late.

The door slammed open, and a man with one of those automatics just opened up on the two militiamen. Juliette didn't even get a chance to scream as the weapon pulped her head and chest, tearing a chunk clear out of her cheek before boring a hole through her skull and ripped into Noce, who tried to dive to the side but didn't quite make it as bullets tore into his stomach.

I flipped over onto my back, rifle up as the Imp soldier saw me and tried to reorient, but I didn't give that motherfucker a chance as my StG spit out five rounds in rapid succession, catching him in the chest and sending him slamming back into the wall at the back of the staircase. I heard a shout, and flicked my rifle to full auto, opening up on the wall, tracing it down through the floor along the staircase. I heard a scream, and the sound of a man tumbling down the steps as I got to my feet, pulling another grenade and tossing it side-handed through the door.

There was another scream that was punctuated by a dull, cracking thump, as I picked myself up, staggering over to the two militia that had come with me on this god awful venture. I didn't need to be a doctor to tell that Juliette was gone. Her head was barely there. Noce was a different story. Gasping and gurgling, his guts were all over the place. The soldier had nearly torn him in half, and the amount of blood all over the floor around him. He looked at me, tried to move, tried to say something, but it all just came out as blood. He spasmed once, twice, and then slumped.

"F-fuck!" I grit, grabbing my rifle tight in shaking hands, adrenaline thundering through my veins as I got to my feet. This was a total clusterfuck. I glanced out over the street through the newly perforated wall and saw that most of the Imperial troops on the ground were dead or dying. The grenades had done a fair bit of damage, killing or maiming more than half of the soldiers down there, but the other half had put up a hell of a fight. Some had gone after us, while the rest tore their attention between the entrenched militia ahead and our flimsy position behind.

Still, mission accomplished, right? Right. The word tasted like ashes in my mouth. Most of the Imps down there were down or out, and it should be safe enough to move. All I needed was the signal. I looked out over to the tower down the road. There wasn't a guardsman up there. What?

A rock fell down into my gut as the ground began to shake, and I ran to the windows facing the main inroad. What greeted me was the tilted barrel of a tank. My eyes went wide, and I dived back as hard as I could as the cacophonous boom rattled my skull and sent my vision spiraling. The blast was deafening, and all I could hear was a sharp ringing as I pulled myself up unsteadily. My rifle was on the ground some meters away, undamaged, it seemed, but that didn't help me as another man in crimson clothing charged through the staircase.

I drew my handgun and rolled back hard, pulling the trigger over and over. One, two, three, four, five, I pulled, my dancing vision sending my rounds everywhere. My head was spinning, and I couldn't focus. I heard footsteps. One, two, three... and then a thump as a body landed near my feet. My vision cleared after a moment, and what I saw stunned me.

A dead Imp soldier was lying on the ground, helmet rolling away. There were five holes in the wall, four ringing a fifth in chunky splatter, and when I looked at the helmet, I could see a divot in one side of it, and the back totally blown out. He was hit twice, and from the look of it, one went right into the visor. The man was stone dead.

I stood, staggering a bit as I holstered my handgun and retrieved my rifle. At a glance it looked fine, so I wrapped the strap back around my shoulder. The wall the tank had shot was just gone, leaving a gaping wound in the side of the house that still smoldered with the remnants of the explosive shell. Nothing remained, though I was lucky the blast itself left me unharmed aside from the ringing in my ears. I moved to the hole. The tank that had shot the house had moved up.

The one behind it... well...

"Fuck." I swore as I found myself staring at the face of the commander from the next tank over. We stared at each other for a second in blatant disbelief before I jumped to my rifle and took aim. The man had already ducked down into the tank, sealing the hatch before I could draw a bead on him and the turret was already turning towards me.

I glanced back. The stairs were too far away, and the cannon would collapse the fucking building before I even got halfway down anyway. There was only one way out of here. I knew it. I had to do it, if I wanted to live.

I ran full tilt at the hole in the wall and jumped! I was flying through the air as the cannon fired, and I could feel the pressure wave from the shell as it blasted past me, missing me by so slim a margin I could feel the backwash.

The building behind me exploded into a ball of fire as the tank round hit, the force of the blast so hot I could feel my back crisp and the building gave a shuddering, shrieking groan as the second tank shell hit bodily inside, shredding wood and plaster alike as the windows blew out in a frightening display as all the while I flew.

The tank was coming up fast! Too fast! I was tumbling ass over teakettle, and landed on the turret of the vehicle hard enough to drive the air from my lungs as I hit with bone-jarring force. I almost puked from the impact as I wrapped around the hard metal of the tank's armor, feeling my ribs creak from the effort.

I stumbled, rolled really, as I clambered around the body of the tank, bullets pinging perilously close as Imperial riflemen tried to force me off my moving, makeshift enemy cover. I hung wildly from the barrel of the main gun, keeping myself as far from the automatic next to the turret as I could while I brought my rifle around to bare. A flick of my finger put it on automatic, and I swung it right, under the barrel where an Imp gunner was trying to draw a bead.

The StG roared, and a burst of four rounds tore through his chest and neck before I pulled it out and pointed it to my left, one handing the precarious weapon as I pointed it at a man with what looked like engineering tools to my left and pulled again, stitching him up as he tried to get his gun on me. Another man came up behind him, right into my field of fire and I emptied what little was left of my magazine into him too as the hatch to the lower compartment opened right under my foot, almost forcing me off as a man with a pistol tried to shoot me.

I braced, kicking him clean in the face and sending him flopping down as I put all my weight on the hatch, crushing his chest between it and the hull of the tank. He screamed as his chest caved with a sickening crack and spit up blood as I swung the hatch open again and slammed it down for good measure before dragging the dead man out of his seat and pulling a grenade. I yanked the priming string and dropped it in, before slamming shut the door.

The turret hatch opened above me as a man with an officer's cap tried to climb out, but it was too little too late. Fire belched out from the view port below me as the man above cried out and then flopped like a boned fish against the turret and slid back in with dead, glazed eyes.

The tank in front of me stopped, and I could see the turret turning at me far too quickly. I moved to get off, to try and get out of the line of fire but the gun was already almost on me. I winced. I didn't have any illusions about what would happen next.

Then the turret stopped, and started turning back. I stared incredulously at it. Why?

Then the side of the forward tank exploded. I ducked from the heat of the blast and the shrapnel, flinching as a wave of pressure washed over me. The tank that had been turning towards me was torn open, the side exposed, ripped wide like an overripe melon. The turret still moved, but a second roar from what sounded like an artillery cannon blasted through the turret altogether, ending it. Around the corner rolled what looked like a fucking Panzer in Gallian blue just a moment later, burning hard rubber as it tackled the dead Imp tank in front of it out of the way with a sharp crunch, and around me I heard shouts and cries of shock.

That snapped me back. I ejected the dead mag out of my gun and shoved it into my dump pouch before pulling another out of my chest rig and locking it in. The gun cocked with a satisfying snap, and I rolled around the side of the immobilized second tank. Behind it were several soldiers, all backing away as I drew on them and opened up full bore.

Behind me a deafening roar erupted as the chuffing of a heavy machinegun let loose over my shoulder, pouring down the other side of the street. The Imperial soldiers yelled, panicked, running for any cover they could find and clearing out as fast as their legs would take them. The line was broken. We won.

Across my lips a savage grin grew. We won. High on adrenaline, I stood, I roared! We won!

"Hah! Fuck YOU!" I pointed down the empty street, devoid of retreating Imperials now that the fighting was done. I sucked in fresh air, tainted with the flavor of smoke and gunpowder though it was. I'd never had anything so delicious. Never in all my life.

"Hey!" I turned, and blinked. It was that guy from before, in the brown coat. He was standing there, waving at me with a big grin. I laughed. I couldn't help it. Holy shit, I made it thanks to that guy. I waved back, smiling as I walked over.

"Hey yourself, kid. See you've been busy since we last met." I chuckled, leaning against the still humming blue tank.

"Yeah, well. You know how it is." He said modestly and I gave him a look. You know the one, with the perfectly raised "who do you think you're kidding" eyebrow? That one. "Uhm, hey, you look like you've had a bit of a rough go of it. You alright?"

I took a look at myself. Covered in dust, carbon, bits of the house, bits of people... fuck. I was a mess, but... I was still alive. As the adrenaline started to crash, and it flooded out, I couldn't stop myself from laughing, from chuckling, from gagging as it all rolled over me. I ran a dirty hand over my face. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do a lot of things. I was shaking, I could tell, and I took a deep breath, my limbs feeling like jello.

But mostly? Mostly I just wanted to sit down. Goddamn, but did I want to sit down. Welkin climbed out of the tank, sliding down the side and I felt a hand drop onto my shoulder. I glanced at him.

"Need a ride?" He asked with a half grin. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath before nodding. He climbed back up onto the forward plate and offered me a hand up. I took it, and hauled myself up as he got back into the command throne. I didn't follow, instead moving behind the turret and dropping down onto the hard, flat backplate before leaning against it, shutting my eyes as the tank gave a rumble and started to turn back.

I listened to the sound of stone under the treads, tasted the smoke, felt the cool metal and rested. I just... rested. Just sat there and left my eyes closed. The day was done. I was done. It was done. Today was done, but tomorrow would come again, and inside, a bit of me ached for that, but that was a problem for then. For now? I breathed deep the air of victory. From it I drew no comfort. As it should have been. As it should have been.






AN: I hope you enjoy the second fully revised chapter of Days Gone By! God knows I've gone back and forth on this one every so often, tweaking things and making changes. I absolutely fell into the hole of chasing perfect here, but I'm still mostly happy with all the edits.

 

[J. Finch]

"...war has a way of sapping your faith, draining your will and breaking your spirit. It takes from you your hopes and convictions, challenges your ideals and beliefs, and wears away at you like an ocean upon a cliff. How does one man alone face such an unrelenting force? Simply, we don't."​

-Ch. 1: Red Skies, Days Gone By, A Memoir From the Gallian Front

​

Chapter Three​

Leaving Bruhl was one of the hardest things many of the militia had to do. I understood it, I guess. Losing a home to someone who wanted it just to have it. I just... blood was spilled for Bruhl. Mine, and others as well. It was a bitter pill for everyone, though many tried not to show it, but you could tell, if you looked. The tightening of eyes, the hardening of lips, the feeling of haste and tension. The signs of a people who'd lost their lives, both literally and figuratively.

These were people's homes, their livelihoods, their friends and families, all gone because of a petty asshole who wanted a piece of dirt. I didn't pretend to grasp it. I really didn't. I just... was it really worth this? All the death, all the violence, all the damage? I couldn't say. I didn't want to. It felt like it would have cheapened the sacrifices made today, trying to justify it all. Whatever the reason, it was. I'd been there, in the thick of it. I knew.

I could still hear the cracking of gunfire in the distance, though it was much removed. Other militia units from around the town were sprinkling in, people who'd been cut off during the initial push but were finally able to move now that the main Imperial advance had been thinned out. We'd had an influx to bolster the already beleaguered watchmen, including a few much needed anti-tank teams that had been frustratingly absent earlier.

Still, we'd bought ourselves at least a little time. From what I'd heard, the few remaining Imps were mostly outliers that hadn't pulled back at this point while the main body of the advance recovered to the northeast. At least that's what the scouts told us, but it looked like they were already being reinforced. Navigating the town would take time, though, enough for the last of the evacuation to finish out. Still, steps were being taken to slow down anyone who decided to follow us. Improvised mines, mostly, but that would be enough to garner some measure of attention on their own and hopefully jam up the Imps long enough for us to put some distance between us.

In the meantime I was busying myself with helping load the trucks, hauling up boxes and bags and in some cases people onto a set of flatbed cargo haulers that were rapidly running out of space. Most of the locals were gone already, but there was still enough of a trickle coming in that we were hesitant to leave any sooner than we had to, though that was almost purely subjective to what the scouts were telling us. We would need to get moving sooner rather than later.

That last second victory had been heartening for a lot of people, though. They took the last stand of the militia and turned it into something grand. More than a few people had walked up, greeted, even thanked me for my part. There were... whispers, rumors even, going on about it. I'd heard some things, here and there, hinted at the edges of conversation, aborted statements when I got close, about what people thought about it. More than a few hardliners wanted to see if we could stay behind and cause more trouble, but the people in charge were less apt to throw lives away for just another black eye.

I was glad for that, at least. For us, for now, the fighting was done. Cold comfort, I knew, but it was enough to make a difference. I sighed, hauling another crate up. The simple action was somewhat comforting, really. Something I could do without really needing to focus while being productive at the same time. It helped keep my mind off things, let me focus on something easy, simple.

I moved to grab another, and noticed a few of the militia had wandered over. They'd been out and about, helping where they could. One nodded to me as they walked by, and the other started talking to him in a hushed tone. I pretended to ignore it while listening in as I lifted another crate up.

"...him?" I heard the first one say. The one who'd nodded to me whispered back a yes. "Big guy, huh? I'd heard..." The man trailed off. I stopped listening after that. I'd already 'heard' what he was about to say. The rumors had been drifting around since the line regrouped and the evacuation started finishing out. More than a few watchmen and even a few of the remaining townsfolk had asked me about it.

'Did you really jump on a tank?' or 'I'd heard you killed a dozen of those Imp bastards.' or 'Good work breaking up that advance!' or a dozen variations thereof. I'd gotten more than a few pats on the back, kind words, congratulations, adulations and every other form of thanks from the beleaguered defenders, and what's more, a dozen and a half questions asking all the same thing.

'What happened?'

I didn't extrapolate. I couldn't. Even as I think about it now with a calm head, I can hardly imagine it. I was... I was lucky. I was stupid and wild and got away with it because of sheer chance. I was impulsive and it paid off, and if I had had time to think I know I would have called myself insane and hung my hat up then. Still, they cheered me on. Called me hero and champion and a dozen other things, and they roared and called my name.

They didn't ask why Noce and Juliette weren't with me. I didn't say, either.

I didn't tell them that I had been running on adrenaline and autopilot, not thinking, not planning, just reacting. It wouldn't have mattered, I don't think. Most of it had already been blown out of all proportion. The image they saw when they spoke to me was of a man with no limits to his raw courage and bravado. They said I rode a tank like a horse. That I could tear steel hatches open with my bare hands. That I could gun men down by the dozens. That I was brave, and forthright, and unflinching.

I'd never been more terrified in my life.

But I didn't say that. Not to them. Not then. Of the thirty men that had stayed to hold the gate, only a paltry dozen survived. Most of them were hurt, bleeding, some badly, some worse, and they... they needed a win. They needed to be more than just survivors right then, and I knew it. So I cheered, and I roared, and I hooted and hollered and cried victory. I was their hero, then. So I played the part, and choked down my terror and my pain and my exhaustion and just... lied.

I let out a shuddering breath.

"Hey." I turned and saw Alicia walking up to me, her face as grimy as mine, no doubt, with a hard look in her eyes that hadn't been there before. "There you are. I've been looking around for you, Mr. Finch." She gave me a strained smile, a feeling I could relate. I returned the gesture with a wave.

"Alicia. Good to see you made it through." I said with as much warmth as I could muster. It was hard trying to hide the exhaustion in my voice, and I doubt I managed it, but she didn't comment. We were all tired, doubly so since most of the militia were working on finishing out the evacuation. "And please, at this point it's Jerry. I'm no mister." I chuckled, a bit ruefully at that.

She gave me a smile and a nod. "Alright. Jerry. I can do that. Glad to see you made it through, too. I'd heard some of the rumors but..." I gave her a look, and she shrugged, "It's not important. Like I said, I've been looking around for you."

"Fair enough. So what can I do you for, kid?" I asked, cocking my head and glancing down at her. Not for the first time I noticed how tall I was compared to the girl. At almost six foot four, I really did tower over most of these people, and while I wasn't built, I did clock in at around 230 pounds, much of it muscle. Compared to Alicia, and indeed most of the people here, I was kinda gigantic. It was an idle thought, but I made sure to seem less... loomy regardless.

She glanced around, before motioning for me to follow her. "I don't know if you've heard, but the Imps have regrouped and are moving back into the town. The mines and collapses are slowing them down a bit but... we're down to minutes here. Most of the evacuation is already underway, though, but there's a concern about-" I half-listened, noticing more and more militia were showing up around us.

More than a few also stopped and wound up staring at us as we passed, and I started to hear some muttering as I followed Alicia.

"...that him? Heard he..." One started, I don't know who, but it was behind me.

"...said they saw a dozen dead Imps down there..." I'd heard another, this one to the left.

"...said they saw him jump on a tank..." A third.

"...heard it was two..." His friend, and I heard the awe, the incredulity. I didn't blame him. I mean, there were two tanks but-

"...said he was all over the place, popping up like a ghost..." I... hadn't heard that one. I mean, I covered a fair bit of ground-

"...no, no, it was more like twenty..." I winced a bit at that. I didn't have to guess what he was talking about. God, how many did I...?

"...cut a man's head off with that big knife of his..." I felt myself pale at that one. I didn't- it wasn't-

"...killed 'em without even blinking..."

"...chased the Imp front like a demon..."

"...walked right up behind an Imp line and cut them down..."

"...didn't stop once, even with his guts torn open..."

"...like some kind of machine, just kept on shooting..."

I slowed down, glancing around. The muttering drifted to a halt as I met the eyes of the men and women around me, keeping my face as blank as I could, if only to stop myself from breaking down. This... Jesus, they made me sound like... like... I glanced at Alicia, and she just shook her head, slightly, subtly, and started walking again. I gave one more look around before moving on to what looked like an ad-hoc staging area.

"...By the Valkyrur, could cut a man down with that stare alone..."

I waited a moment, making sure there weren't any of the watchmen around before turning back to Alicia. She'd stopped as we moved beyond the eyes of the militiamen and women and I shot her a hard stare.

"What was that all about?" I asked as the silence dragged, and she gave me a hiked look.

"What do you think, Jerry? Stories about what you did are spreading like wildfire." She said after a moment. "What you did during the offensive... it's not a secret, and the stories are getting crazier with each retelling. They say you feel no pain, no fear. That you were hunting the Imps, stalking them like some kind of predator. Killing them and then vanishing into the smoke and dust, only to pop out somewhere else and kill more." She stopped, fixing me with a look, though what it was I couldn't tell. Her eyes were as cloudy as the smoke-drenched sky. "Already some of the townspeople are calling you the Lion of Bruhl, you know? And from the sound of the stories, it's not an undeserved title."

"What the hell for? The way they were talking about it-" I started, but she gave me a dry laugh.

"Makes it sound like you're unstoppable? Terrifying? Fearless? Does it really surprise you? Jerry, we sent some troops to collect Noce and Juliette, and the men came back with stories about how it's a slaughterhouse down there. Dozens of dead Imp soldiers, several scrapped tanks, bullet holes and casings everywhere... And that was before militia outliers had started to filter in, some of whom swear up and down they saw you rip open one of those tanks and murder the crew with your bare hands. And that's the least of what they're saying."

"Alicia, I'm telling you right now that's not how it happened. I-" I said, but she cut me off at the knees.

"You think that matters? Already the rumors are spreading. You jumped on a tank, Jerry. We saw you do it. There were bodies everywhere, most of them bearing wounds from an automatic weapon, like yours. There are grenade craters everywhere, and more than a few people saw you carrying enough of those for a squad and a half."

I stopped, eyes narrowed, and I wanted more than anything to tell her that was bullshit. To tell her that's not how it happened, that what it was, all of it, was from a mix of panic and desperation. I wanted to deny it, all of it. That it was just me trying to keep my own hide intact and nothing more. Tell her that it was because of me that Noce and Juliette were gunned down, that it was because I got pinned that Noce was out of position, that he'd tried to help me and it got him and Juliette shot dead and I did nothing to help them.

Tell her that I wasn't some big hero. That I was just... lucky. Lucky and terrified, and that was all.

But I didn't. I could see it in her eyes, she wouldn't believe me. Maybe she couldn't. She thought I was being modest, maybe, or respectful or whatever. The truth mattered less than the fiction, I knew it. I could see it in her eyes, much as I hated it, and I was just... too damn tired to fight that battle. I had enough of that for one day, thank you.

I massaged my eyes, and when I looked back at her I could tell Alicia had made her point. I just gave a tired sigh and shook my head, more out of frustration than anything, but Alicia almost seemed to preen a bit at winning that argument. And as much as I hated to say it, there was probably no stopping the rumors and the stories by now anyway. Still, one question remained.

"Was there a point to all that, then?" I eventually ground out sorely. "Is there something you want?" I didn't meet her eyes, instead looking off over her shoulder. In the distance I could see people stop and stare in my direction. I couldn't hear the whispers, the muttering, but I knew what they were saying.

They called me a hero. The man who spent the entire fight running piss scared from one end of this godforsaken town to the other. They made it sound like it was some great act of heroism, some brilliant strategy, but it wasn't. Half the day I didn't even know where I was, and the other half I was wandering in circles. Dumb luck wound me up behind the Imp front and superior firepower bought me little more than moments to breathe as I fled from one spot to another. This was comedy at it's finest.

But... but I was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of running, tired of bleeding. This... this was all wrong, all spiraling out of control already and there wasn't anything I could do about it. There was no point in fighting a river. It just flowed around you. No point in fighting the wind. You couldn't touch it. No point in fighting the earth, because you would break long before it did, and there was no fighting this. You can't fight beliefs or ideals. You can only fail to live up to them.

I knew that from personal experience.

"Look, I know you aren't happy with this, but it is what it is. I don't know how much you know about the aftermath of that last push, but we're... not doing so well. Most of our captains were here holding the line, and several of them didn't make it. Mr. Laakan didn't survive it either, and we lost almost half the militia we had there. Without your intervention they would have smashed their way through us as soon as those tanks got into position." She said without a hint of unease. Her voice was terse, her face neutral, distant, almost, and her gaze wasn't on me, not really.

Truth be told, I don't think either of us were doing all that well. I shut my eyes and dropped a hand on her shoulder, taking a deep breath and letting my agitation drain out. I wasn't the only one who'd had a rough time handling things. I shouldn't act like it. This wasn't the time, and we both knew it. I was angry, frustrated even, but the rage wasn't going to help me here. It wasn't going to help either of us.

"Alicia, what do you need?" I asked, my tone less sharp. I wasn't mad at her. I shouldn't take it out on her. She didn't deserve that, at the least. Not after today.

I could feel her untense a bit. "I wanted to know if you would be willing to take command of a fireteam." She said, finally, and it brought me up short. I shook my head and barked a laugh. It wasn't a happy sound.

"That didn't work out so well last time, kid. Laakan put me with Noce and Juliette, and neither of them walked away from that, and so your solution is to ask me to do it again, to lead them? It'll only get them killed." I said with a flat look. She didn't look like she agreed, but Noce and Juliette might. I didn't think I had to say it.

"Noce and Juliette knew the risks when they joined the Watch. You can't beat yourself up for that."

"Can't I? Alicia, I was so helpless to stop them from dying that I might as well have been the one that pulled the trigger. Not even considering that, I don't have the training, the experience, and hell, most of these people don't even know me. I'm the 'Lion of Bruhl' to them, nothing more than a title, if that. I'm not going to put people at risk." I said, more tired than angry, my arms crossing as I glanced away from her, out across the plaza. My eyes travelled from one soldier to the next, from old men with old rifles to young men with bright eyes and dirty faces. Women, too, many of whom had proven to be just as fierce and just as courageous as their fellows. All of them deserve the title of hero. Not like me.

I started as I felt a hand wrap around one of my own. I glanced back at the brunette, the girl, no woman who looked at me with hard eyes. Determined eyes. A good look for her, to be sure. I opened my mouth to say something, but she just shook her head. "That's bullshit and you know it, Mr. Finch. They were at risk the second the Imps came into town and they knew it. Fighting with you, helping you, they made a difference, slowing down the advance. They died, but they knew what the chances for surviving that were, and they still volunteered. They trusted you to make a difference, and you did." She said, giving me a half smile. "People are looking up to you Jerry. My people. Bruhl's people. You're their Lion. They believe in you, trust you, and you need to trust yourself. I think Noce and Juliette would approve."

"And if the fighting picks up, what then? I'm not trained for this, you know? I've never led anyone in anything in my life. I wouldn't even know where to start." I sighed, finally. "I'm not even a soldier, kid. I'm just a guy with a gun. What makes you think I can do this?"

"Because you chose to stay and fight." That brought me up short. Did that really make that much of a difference? I didn't believe it, but she thought so. "Besides, you won't be alone. Welkin and I, and the other captains too, we're there to back each other up. We'd back you up, too. Don't think you'd be the only captain that's playing it by ear." She said as I stared up into the sky. We both knew where this was going. I was too far in to walk away now, but I didn't like this. I really didn't. There was something in my gut that was telling me that this was a bad idea, and I agreed. I was just going to get more people killed.

But Alicia wasn't going to let this go, was she? I still didn't budge. "Alicia, no. I already got two people killed because I had no idea what I was doing. Giving me more people to get killed is a stupid fucking idea and deep down you know it."

"No, Jerry, it's not. Noce and Juliette might be gone, but they knew what they were walking into. You can't be afraid of this. Not now. We need you. You're a hero-"

"Stop fucking calling me that!" I all but growled at her, but she just stared right back at me despite the fact that I was towering over her. She narrowed her eyes, and in them I could see such fire, such raw strength. I bit my tongue.

"Damn it, Finch, you are. Remember when we first met? You could have walked away. You almost did, and we both know it, but you didn't, did you? Why? Why didn't you back down then? Hm? And again at the gate, you could have walked away then, too, free and clear, but you didn't. You have doubts, I know. You're scared. Hell, we're all scared Jerry. But you didn't back down then. You could have, but you didn't, so what changed now? You have courage in you, I've seen it. You have conviction, and will, and drive. You can do it, you know it, but you have to try." She said, jamming a finger into my chest.

"You screwed up. Learn from it. You're a symbol now, Jerry. These people, they don't know you. They don't know who you are or who you were and neither do I, and you know what? We don't care. It's what you did that matters to us. You saved my life and Welkin's when you could have run. You stood up and took on a suicidal mission to stop the Imp advance, and you did it! You fought like a Valkyrur out there and we all saw it and now? Now you're a hero, whether you like it or not, and I hate to ask, we hate to ask, but we need you to stand up and be that person again."

I slumped against the side of a building and just stared at the girl, at this little slip of a thing that barely came up to my chest, who just ripped me a new asshole. I just... goddamn. It was almost comical to think about. She just... stared at me with all the conviction and belief in the world and gave me a swift, unforgiving kick in the balls for sitting here and moping. I had no words for that. I just couldn't help it. I let out an honest laugh at how absurd it all was, and couldn't stop when she jerked at the sound.

I just laughed harder, and for a few moments things were... less troubled. I felt better. More... well, me, I guess. More human. Less stuck on the details, and maybe a little more in tune with the big picture.

"Hah, alright, fine." I said finally, still chuckling as Alicia blinked. I don't think she was expecting that, but even then, it was cathartic. "This is going to end in blood and tears, I just know it, but fine." Still grinning, I let out a tired sigh. "But I'm blaming you when things go tits up. Just want you to know that."

Alicia just smiled and nodded. I hauled myself up off the wall, breathing deep and letting out the exhaustion, the pain, the doubt and clearing my head in the process. So now I was a hero huh? I just shook my head at the absurdity as Alicia started walking towards Welkin and his tank. I just followed along.

"Good! Alright, good. Let me go grab the other captains and introduce you, and then we'll get you up to speed. Right now the Imps are still regrouping, but the scouts are telling us they're massing at..." I half-listened to her as she led me to the small command post where Welkin and the other captains were planning, all the while ignoring the dark thoughts that lingered in the back of my head.

The day was almost over, but our work wasn't done, and I couldn't help but wonder just how many more days like today lie ahead of me. My war, our war, was just beginning, and the chill in my gut told me only one thing. It was far from over.



AN: I've never been particularly happy with this Chapter, mostly because of it's adjoining nature linking it to the next. It's needed, but even after a bunch of edits I never really got it to flow quite as well as I wanted it to. Ultimately though it turned into a perfect being the enemy of good situation so eh. This one saw the least amount of change, despite the time spend on it, so that's a slightly damning bit of praise I guess.

 

[J. Finch]

...it's easy to look back at it now, and pretend that we were anything but a bunch of desperate, exhausted, bloodied men and women covered in the dirt and grime of the battlefield. Later on, they would call us heroes. Sing our songs, tell of how we turned a last stand into a stunning victory, and even stymied the Imperial front, if only for a day. But I remember their faces. All of them. Standing among them, what I saw wasn't elation, or joy, or relief. No, all I saw in the eyes of Welkin and the others was a cold sense of realization, tainted with the sickness of a gutting loss. Bruhl was where they played as children, where their families grew up, and where their parents were buried. It was all these things and more. Leaving it behind was, for them, the darkest moment of the war. They'd won the battle, but they'd lost their home.​

-Ch. 1: Red Skies, Days Gone By, A Memoir From the Gallian Front​

Chapter 4​

It didn't take long for everything to start moving once Alicia brought me to Welkin. He was already planning the retreat, and the last of the refugees had been long since gone by that point. The plan was simple enough, though nobody was particularly pleased with it. Least of all Welkin, I think, but there weren't many options left for us in the end. Despite what it might have seemed, they were desperately underprepared for something like this, and it showed once the pressure started to apply. The cracks were obvious in everybody, and the militia, as stalwart as they'd been, were barely holding together once the adrenaline wore off.

"I'm not any happier than you are, Roland, but I just don't see another option. The last of the trucks left with the refugees and we don't have time to try and scavenge more. The Imperials are already pressing back into the city with their recon forces and the main body won't be far behind after that." I heard Welkin sigh as he and three others were hunched over a map spread over an old crate as we wandered over. It didn't take long for our presence to be noticed, and we, more Alicia than I, were greeted with a round of waves and hellos.

"So I see you managed to convince him, Alicia." One of the men, older, with a greying beard, said as he looked in her direction, eliciting a smile and a nod from the girl.

"Yes. It took some convincing but he's on board. Jerry," She turned to me, "These are Captains Morgan, Pierce, and Sloan. Captains? This is Jerry Finch, the-"

"The Lion himself!" One of the men, younger, with a neatly trimmed mustache and twinkling green eyes said with a start, immediately coming over to grab my hand and shaking it vigorously. "I saw your work from the Last Line, lad! Fantastic! Simply fantastic! I'm Steven Sloan, and so very excited to be working beside you."

"Yes, yes, we've all heard the stories, Sloan. Still, nice to put a face to the tale, as it were. I'm Roland Pierce, and this is Victor Morgan." The bearded man said, offering his hand as well, which I took once I managed to pry mine from Steven. Victor came last, with a grin and a pat on the shoulder no less, as I shook his hand. "We're all glad to hear that you took Alicia up on our offer. Morale is low enough as it is and this might just be the thing we need to get some fire back into the troops."

"So I hear." I said, "But I have to warn you, I don't really have a lot of experience to offer here. Just putting that out there."

"It shouldn't be an issue. At least not enough of one to make me worry." Welkin chimed in, "But I know how you feel. This morning I was just a college student coming to visit his sister, and now here I am running the show. It's a bit daunting." He said with a laugh.

"Aye, I wouldn't worry terribly much about it either, lad. Though I'm sorry to say that the appointment is as political as it is tactical, in this case. Like I said before, the troops aren't in great shape right now. We're abandoning Bruhl and as much sense as that makes strategically, it's still our home." Sloan said to my right, giving me a genuinely rueful look. "Right now they need a hero, and after what you did during the Assault, well, you've become that hero. We're hoping you can inspire them enough to make it through this next bit."

"So I gathered. What's the plan then? How are we going to handle this?" I asked as Alicia slipped around me and stood next to Welkin at the table. The others followed, and so did I, to find myself looking at a crude map of Gallia.

"Essentially, we're going to push to Dillburg, about eighty kilometers to the west of here. At a forced march, it should take us roughly two days to make the trip, give or take, but it's going to be a hard push from here to there." Welkin said with a sigh, marking out the route with a pencil. "The road is relatively flat but we can't discount the possibility of ambush on the way, and we won't have time to stop to sleep. At least, not for the next day. We need to put space between us and the Imps at any cost. Right now they're reeling, but I've been hearing reports of tank divisions and heavy infantry formations up and down the Naggiar line. They're pushing hard and fast and the Home Guard regiments are barely holding." He stopped, giving each of us a complicated look. "If we take too long we're running the risk of getting cut off and encircled, and all of this would be for nothing."

"I'm beginning to see the issue then. This is gonna be rough on the militia, especially after today. Hell, this is gonna be rough on us. Are you sure you aren't pushing too hard? I mean, I see the urgency but speed doesn't do us any good if half the troops die of exhaustion along the way." I stated, more than asked, trying my best to memorize the road Welkin had marked out.

Morgan snorted at that. "Trust me, we've taken that into account, but we don't have much choice. Invasion evacuation protocol says that civilian refugees are to head to Asrein, here." He pointed at a town to the south of Dillburg. "The road splits ten kilos from Dilburg and skims the mountains here. It's safer, comparatively, but longer by half. Our job is twofold. We need to get to Dillburg to grab the military train to Vasel, so we can meet up with the other watch and militia units and head to Randgriz for reorganization and assignment. We also need to keep the Imps from taking that hard left and going after the refugees while the Home Guard regiments fight to stem the push up north."

"Which brings us to the next issue." Welkin pointed out, grabbing our attention, "The bad news is that we don't have transport outside of the Edelweiss here and despite what we've scavenged she's low on shells and ragnoline. If we do get into a fight what we'll be able to do would be... very limited." He looked each of us straight in the eye with a grim look on his face and finished with, "We're already on the clock here. We're low on fuel, food and morale and we have a hard couple of days ahead of us. Still, you all know your jobs. Get your men together, explain the situation and make sure they're ready to go in fifteen. We've already spent too much time here."

There was a chorus of "Yes Sir!" and some salutes, and the three other Watch leaders dispersed. As they left, Welkin then turned to me and Alicia, who had remained quiet in the interim, and, as I looked at her, I noticed she had a notepad in her hand, jotting things down. Smart of her. I made a note to do the same once I got a second.

"Alright, with that squared away, lets deal with what I need you to do. To start with, I am sorry that we're leaning on you like this, Jerry. I can't imagine you're thrilled by the whole dog and pony show but needs must." Welkin sighed, and I nodded.

"I know, and I'm not," I heard Alicia give a snort, and I swore she rolled her eyes at me, "But I get it. Alicia made that abundantly clear to me. I just need to know what to do. I'm guessing you have a plan for this?" At that, the de-facto Commander nodded, scratching at the back of his head.

"I do. I realize that you don't have a lot in the way of familiarity with how Gallian Watch units operate, but I'm hoping that it won't matter much in the long run. Any combat we see will be a fighting retreat, and if nothing else you've proven to have a talent for that. As it is, though, I'm going to assign you someone who should have some background in unit command as your second." Welkin then turned to Alicia, "Captain, could you find Juno for me? She should be with Fireteam Four, if memory serves."

"You got it Commander. Give me a second to hunt her up." The girl in the red scarf nodded, before sprinting away. I blinked. She was very, very fast when she wanted to be.

"Juno is an old friend of mine from school. Very smart, and very well trained. Were the situation different, she would be the one we went to, no offense." I just shrugged and motioned for him to continue. "Unfortunately, it isn't. That said, she'll handle the more technical stuff on your behalf. All you need to do is follow orders and send them down the line. Alicia is going to operate as my Senior Captain for the time being, which means I give orders to her, she gives orders to you, and you give them to Juno. She'll make sure they get done."

"Not a problem." I nodded, before giving a tired sigh. "What a goddamn day, eh?" I gave him a glance and a smirk. He massaged his eyes and nodded.

"It has been. This isn't how I saw my afternoon going, if I'm being totally honest. Not a total loss, though, since I finally got to see the Edelweiss in action." He looked over at the tank, and my gaze followed to see a petite, black haired girl working on something on the side. "And I managed to get my sister out in time, too."

"Yeah? That her?" I nodded over yonder at the dark-haired teen puttering around the tank in question. She was a lithe thing, small even compared to the relatively short Alicia and despite the shawl covering her figure, skinny as a rail. She was working with another couple of mechanics, arms deep in the heavy weapons platform and looking more like she belonged there than anywhere else. Welkin bobbed his head at me, following my gaze.

"That's her. She got the Edelweiss up and running as soon as she heard the first shots. She was just waiting for me when things went sideways. I'll have to introduce you two sometime. She's a real sweetheart." He said, and I gave a chuckle.

"I'd appreciate it. I owe her a thank you for saving my bacon at the last second there." I said as I spotted Alicia making her way back, a tall blonde with a shoulder-length no-nonsense haircut and pencil glasses following in her wake. Classically pretty, with high cheekbones and fine features, I guessed that this was Juno, and she looked the way Welkin made her sound. Stern, distant, but when she walked up I noticed her eyes drift to my compatriot and her eyes lit up.

"Welkin! Alicia said you were looking for me?" The girl, Juno, asked as soon as she got close. Welkin nodded, and turned to me.

"Jerry, this is Juno Coren. Juno, this is Jerry Finch, the Lion." He said, introducing us. I held out my hand, to which Juno quickly shook with the kind of perfunctory confidence you'd expect from a military woman. "He's going to be acting Captain of Fireteam Five until we get to the Dillburg evacuation point. Unfortunately he isn't very well acquainted with our standard OP, which is why I asked you here. I'd like you to act as his Sergeant."

"I don't have a problem with it Welkin, but it's a little... unusual, don't you think?" She said, putting a finger to her chin in a classical 'thinking pose'. "I'm guessing it's a morale thing, isn't it?"

Welkin gave a laugh. "See, I told you she was sharp." He said to me, before turning back. "But yeah. I figured it might help with morale to have our Watch being led by a genuine hero. The Lion here has something of a reputation already. I'm sure you've heard the stories."

"A few, yes. If nothing else it'll be heartening to see him marching right alongside the rest of them. He's not exactly what I would call a subtle figure." She shrugged with a grin as she looked at me. I admit, the stern gaze made me stand a little taller. "Very well then. Captain Finch, as it is, I look forward to working with you, Sir." She snapped a salute, which I responded, sloppily, in kind, though she blessedly didn't say anything about it.

"And I you, Sergeant Coren." I gave a salute to Welkin as well, and a wave to Alicia, who smiled and waved back in kind. "Commander, Senior Captain, I guess this is where we part ways then. For now."

"For now, Captain. For now. And remember, keep your chin up. The hard part's over. All that's left is a walk in the woods." Welkin chuckled, giving me a salute back, followed by a pat on the shoulder. "We're moving out in ten minutes. Grab any last minute supplies and get acquainted with your Fireteam. There's no looking back once we're on the hop."

"We'll be ready, Commander." I said, as he turned away, followed by Alicia. I turned to Juno, who I noticed was giving Welkin something of a willowy stare. I chuckled, nudging her on the shoulder, sending her into a start. Despite recovering quickly, I couldn't help but give her a grin as I motioned for her to lead on. "Shall we?"

"A-ah, yes Sir." She said, a light dusting of red on her cheeks. As we walked, she told me about them, about my new squad. All of them were militia, or more precisely reserve militia. Folks who were trained enough to know how to shoot and take orders, and had the fervor of patriots, but lacked the conditioning of the regulars. Good people, but from the sound of it this was going to be hell on them.

It didn't take long to get to the troops I'd been assigned, almost all of them middle aged and wizened, but their faces were hard. Like me, they'd seen a full day of fighting, of watching their homes and families put to the torch, and it showed. None of them so much as smiled as we approached, but they did give me a nod of respect as we went past. Five men and two women, who in another life were craftsmen and homemakers, now soldiers, all of them looking tired and worn. We did what we could to get them ready in what time we had. Spare canteens and rations were dolled out, magazines were loaded, grenades were stocked, but in the end it was barely enough. At least, between Juno and I, we hoped.

The sun was low by the time the last of our boots crunched over the dirt road out of Bruhl, the red sky framed by lines of smoke and ruined buildings. The image seared itself into my mind, the massive windmill at the center of the town slowly spinning in the twilight, it's broken fans little more than tattered canvas and burned, bone-like frames. Like something out of a nightmare, one more for the pile to be sure, but this one had a name. A face. A memory.

In the distance I could hear the occasional exchange of fire, the sound of an explosion, the roar of an engine and more, even after we crested the hill and Bruhl proper gave way to burned fields and churned grass. The Stig was heavy in my arms. Eight pounds of rolled steel and death, and over the course of the day I'd learned it's curves with a kind of sick intimacy, the strength of it's wrath, the roar of it's power. I'd seen death up close, breathed the last breaths of dying men, heard their screams, took their lives.

I kept my face schooled, though. Kept my thoughts from showing. We were, all of us, grim at the prospect of the march. Eighty kilometers, or just a pinch under fifty miles was doable in two days. We would march through the night, until dawn, and still more till noon. Welkin was right in that many struggled. More than once we passed collapsed bodies in blue, taken by exhaustion. Some of them tried to help the others, but it was too much. We piled them onto the Edelwiess like cordwood but of the seven fireteams, we lost one in ten.

Still they marched on. Each step was gasping and brutal as we clocked the first thirty miles by midday. It was only then that Welkin called to a halt, and I wouldn't be surprised if more than half of our number hit the ground to catch what little sleep they could. Those of us that were still awake, half-rations were doled out. We had enough to feed everyone, barely, but it would be the last meal we would get before pushing on the Dillburg.

My feet ached, my back was sore and my legs shaky by the time I was able to stop. I wasn't much of a Captain, but my job was to inspire. That meant hiding my exhaustion, best as I could. Keeping the discomfort inside, and doing what I could to help keep the rest going. It meant supporting those that fell, arm over shoulder, keeping them apace. It meant hauling their gear if they couldn't carry it, to lighten their load. It meant talking to them, keeping them distracted from the pain in their feet and the long road ahead, and more.

Juno was a godsend, a veritable encyclopedia of regulations and ideas that kept the grumbling directed at her and not the mission. She played her job as the hardass Sergeant to my inspiring Captain to a T, and it showed. The griping kept them from burning up without letting them burn out, and somehow between the two of us we'd gotten them to the halfway point intact.

I sighed as I found a felled tree to sit on, a dry, thick oak that looked like it had been split by a cannon shell some time ago, but made for a good chair nonetheless. My own joints were aching, but oddly enough my bad knee wasn't digging at me. Small mercies, I guess, but I'll take it. I had some time to relax a bit, anyway. Welkin gave us three hours. Not a lot of time, but enough to eat and maybe get a nap. Generous, considering the fact that Imperial troops could be closing in from Bruhl as we spoke, but hopefully the pickets would be enough to get us some kind of warning if that was the case.

Either way, there wasn't much I could do now, so instead I busied myself with cleaning my weapon while I waited my turn at the mealpot. I read somewhere that a good officer always made sure his men ate first, and they had the same fare, so I held off while they grabbed what they could at half-rats.

The woods were peaceful, and despite the bloody day yesterday, the sun was shining, and they skies were blue. I could hear the chirping of birds and the chittering of small animals in the distance, my seat far enough away from the low chatter that I could enjoy a bit of nature. It was… it was nice, being able to forget the violence, just for a second. I felt my eyes droop shut. Just a moment.

Just one.

My hand shot to my rifle when I felt the shaking on my shoulder. My mind shot from nothing to panicked awakeness in an instant, but all that met me was a small meep. I heard some boots on the ground, but before I could really do anything, my eyes focussed in. Standing a bit back was a familiar, dark haired girl in a shawl, carrying two open ration cans with camp spoons in them, a look of surprise on her face.

"Wha-" I began, still a bit addled, only for her to give me a kindly smile and giggle.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you!" She said, holding out one of the small tins. "I just noticed you over here and figured you might want something to eat before we head back out." She had a nice smile, and warm eyes, but her hands, I noticed when I took the can from her, were the hands of someone who worked for a living. Tough calluses and a bit of oil under her nails attested to that, but it gave her a kind of rustic charm that teased a smile back from me as I thanked her for the food.

"I appreciate it. You're Welkin's sister, aren't you? Uhm…" The name escaped me for a moment, but she came to the rescue. Again.

"Isara. Isara Gunther. Pleased to meet you Mister Lion." She said with a bright, almost poppy tone, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. I chuckled at that, and motioned for her to join me on the log. She took me up on it, plopping down with her own warm tin of… some kind of meat goo and crackers, now that I looked at it.

"Jerry Finch. Or Mister Lion, if you want. I could live with that." I said with a grin and a shake of my head. "Glad to finally meet the pilot of that metal beast over there. You really saved my bacon at the end. Thanks for that." I said, before tucking into my lunch. It was better than it looked, but hunger was always the best spice, right?

"You're very welcome, Mister Lion, though Welkin was the gunner. It was a team effort." She shrugged, almost carelessly. I just nodded, shoveling another spoon of what I assume was some kind of potted meat in gravy. It was hot, and the fact that I hadn't eaten in days, actually, was enough to improve my mood by leaps.

"Team effort all the same, thanks." The food disappeared quickly, but it was filling. Rich was a good word for it, and the company was pretty decent too. "So how are you holding up?" I asked as I set my can aside, watching as everyone slowly started to rouse.

"Not terribly. Not to complain, given how rough it's been on you all." She said, humble as pie, but I gave her a nudge.

"But…?"

"It's just… it's a little messy in there right now. And sticky. And stinky. I don't know if you heard but we… kind of had a birth in the tank. It wasn't the cleanest thing, and, uhm, I'm not exactly a midwife." She mumbled out. "We tried to wash it out but we didn't really have time to be thorough. It's not terrible!" She blurted out. "Well, not comparatively."

"Hah. I heard about that, actually. Right there in the tank, in the middle of a firefight?" I asked, and she nodded, "And there weren't any issues?" She shook her head. "Damn."

"Mmm, damn indeed." She chuckled, and for some reason the word sounded wrong coming from the girl. It was adorable, but also kind of made me want to tell her not to repeat that in front of her brother.

"Still, you have my sympathies. Tough the march may be, at least the air is fresh out here." I said with a wistful sigh. The break was about over, and despite the protests in my legs, I forced myself up. Isara stood as well, and for a moment it dawned on me just how small she was, comparatively. She barely hit my chest at full height, and that was with clunky combat boots giving her an extra inch or two.

"Mmm. I kind of envy Welkin. He gets to sit out the hatch." She groused, good naturedly, her pouting tone enough to get a chuckle out of me. "And none of that, Mister Lion. It really does smell terrible there."

I admit I honestly couldn't help myself then, and before I knew it I'd plopped my hand down on her head. "Well, we all appreciate your sacrifice, Isara. You're doing a good job, and we're all counting on you to do your best." I said, a wry grin on my lips as she shooed my hand away after a moment, her cheeks dusted red.

"I… I will!" She said with a hurried earnestness that I couldn't help adore, scrappy lil cinnamon roll she was, with her hand all balled up in a fist and a twinkle in her eye. "I won't let you down, Mister Lion!" She said, scampering off not a moment later. I watched her for a moment as she passed Welkin. He seemed to say something to the girl that got him a whack to the shoulder for his trouble, and it reminded me of my brother just a bit. It was easy to forget just how young so many of the people here are, and how closely knit.

"Sir?" Juno's voice pulled me out of my thoughts, and I turned to greet her.

"Sergeant." I greeted with a nod, giving the woman a good once over. Like me, she wasn't in any fit state, but the food and rest did her some good. Did us all some good, if I were being honest, but despite the grime and sweat, her eyes were sharp. "What have you got for me?"

"The squad's getting ready now, and I took the liberty of passing out what little was left of our ration allotment. I figured we won't need what's left once we get under way. Darius's ankle is still tender, but a dose of Ragnaid helped get him back on his feet. Melissa and Yvette are struggling, but that's not surprising. All in all, I'd give us sixty, maybe seventy percent field effectiveness right now." She rattled off, and I hummed at that.

"See about getting them an extra dose of Ragnaid. It might put us in a bit of a pinch if we have an encounter but if I had to choose between having meds and losing troops to fatigue or the opposite, I'd rather they be on their feet to shoot back." I said, checking my own dwindling supplies, almost more from handing out extras than me using them myself at this point. "That said, make sure they each keep back at least one for emergencies. No excuses. I saw more than a few popping them to stave off exhaustion but too much will bring issues all it's own."

"Yes Sir!" She snapped a salute, and I returned it the best I could. "Will that be all Captain?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Just keep on the squad, and don't let anyone lag behind. We don't know how far back the Imps are, or how long those who stayed behind managed to keep them tied up." I said, the exhaustion nipping at my heels barely managed by the short nap and the meal with Isara. "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."

"Sir." Juno said, turning on her heel with the dismissal. I sighed, and shrugged the familiar weight of my rifle over my shoulder, pulling the hammer back to see the gleaming chambered brass inside. Locked and loaded, I closed my eyes and took a breath, forcing down the sapping exhaustion that seemed to press down on me as I put one foot in front of the other.

The sun was high in the sky as the exhausted militia from Bruhl trudged their way up the last few miles of road, the Edelwiess rumbling ahead as Welkin say aloft the commander-s perch, a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck as he surveilled the woods around them, the dry, hard packed dirt of the country road into Dillburg fortunately dry despite the cloying humidity in the air, the hinted whispers of rain hanging over us as the clouds thickened, and despite the shining sun we could all feel the subtle change in the wind.

There was a stolid, smokey taste to the soft northern front, the cool air almost choking at times with the thick flavor of ash and fire. It wasn't a good sign, coming from in front of us, but we all knew that the army was fighting to the north, holding a collapsing line so the last few regiments of militia could get to Dillburg, us included. It would be a futile effort if we didn't get to our rally point in the next few hours, which was a tight deadline for a fresh faced group of young men and women. These were not them, the truth as harsh as it was absolute, given the number of older folks being almost dragged along by their comrades, weapons and scant armor hanging loose on their aged bodies. Others simply slowed to a crawl, barely able to keep on their feet, much less march in formation.

It was heartbreaking to watch, exhausted as I was, I did my best to help those who couldn't keep going. More than a few of the older folks just… couldn't make that last push, even with the rest we'd taken, they were at their limits. Which, speaking of, I found myself jogging back to a blue lump in the road, another one taken beyond their ability, and not the only one who'd fallen off to the side from their legs giving out. He was, again, one of the older troopers, a man with probably three decades on me, if not more. Even before I reached him, I could see he was barely holding on.

"Come on, up you get!" I gritted through my clenched jaw as the older man groaned, his legs limp as I threw his arm over my shoulders and all but dragged him to the tank, another body to stack like cordwood on the sloped armor of the Edelwiess. He wasn't the first, or the fifth, of the fifteenth, and he wasn't the last either. We hadn't lost anyone yet to exhaustion, somehow, but the forced march was taking its toll.

"Put him up with the others, Finch." Welkin said as he caught sight of me, rapping his hand on the tank's lip before calling down, "Isara! Full stop! We need to load another!"

I could hear the "You got it Welks!" from inside as the massive machine came to a halt, and the man himself hopped out to help me drag the boneless elder up onto the chassis, where a few other barely conscious militia grabbed hold of him. We'd long since filled out the body itself, and had taken to loading anyone we could fit onto the outer frame. It would have looked ridiculous if things weren't so desperate.

Of the hundred or so we'd set out with, only a third were moving with any kind of haste. The rest were straggling, bodies breaking under the relentless weight of exhaustion. The march was bleeding us dry, and the ragged column crawled toward the last bend before Dillburg.

Welkin's calm command post sat atop the Edelweiss, his binoculars pressed against his eyes as he scanned the dense tree line ahead. Despite the steady voice he kept for the militia, I could see the subtle tightening of his jaw, the slight flicker of unease in his gaze.

Alicia stood nearby, her brows furrowed as she watched the horizon. "This spot," she murmured, voice low and tense, "if the Imps wanted to hit us, this is where they'd strike."

Isara shifted her weight nervously beside her, biting her lip. "It feels wrong. Too quiet."

Welkin lowered the binoculars and exhaled sharply. "I don't like it either. The last stretch is ripe for an ambush—dense woods on both sides, perfect kill zone." His eyes met Alicia's, then Isara's, and finally landed on me.

"Jerry," he said, voice firm but edged with reluctance, "I need you to scout ahead. Just half a mile. See what we're walking into."

My stomach clenched, and for a heartbeat, I considered pushing back. Why me? I wondered. I'm no scout. But looking out over the militia, the truth was clear. Most of them were wiped out—spent bodies shuffling forward only because there was no other choice. It wasn't that no one would go with me. They physically couldn't.

Faces pale, legs trembling, weapons dragging uselessly by their sides—I saw no one in any condition to move fast or fight smart.

If I don't do this, who will? I thought, biting down the dread curling in my gut.

I looked back at the Edelweiss, where Welkin's expression was set with grim determination. I knew he wouldn't ask unless it was necessary. He was competent and cautious, never one to throw lives away without cause.

Welkin's eyes locked onto mine, his expression hard but weighed down with regret. "Jerry," he said, voice low but steady, "I don't want to send you out alone. Hell, I wish there was another choice. But you've shown you can handle yourself when it counts. It's dangerous ahead—if we wait, we risk losing everything. I need you to scout ahead. Can I count on you?"

I met his gaze, feeling the heavy weight behind his words. It wasn't just an order—it was a burden he wished he didn't have to pass on. I nodded once, firmly. "You can."

Alicia's eyes flicked to mine, a silent wish of luck passing between us. Isara bit her lip again, but she gave me a small, encouraging nod.

Welkin placed a hand on my shoulder, firm and reassuring. "Be careful. We'll be ready if you need support."

I squared my shoulders and turned toward the shadowed tree line, the weight of every exhausted soldier behind me pressing down—but also pushing me forward. Reaching down, I gripped my rifle and with a practiced flick, cocked the bolt. The satisfying click echoed faintly in my ears, steady and real—a small comfort in the tense silence.

I reached for my canteen, tipping the last few drops to wet my lips. The cold water was barely enough to wash away the dust in my throat, but it was enough. Enough to remind me that I was still alive, still capable.

I slipped the canteen back into my pack, took a steady breath, and stepped into the underbrush. The thick trees swallowed me up, the faint rustle of leaves my only companion now. Every muscle tensed, senses sharpened, and mind ready for whatever was waiting ahead.

I slipped off the road and into the brush, the weight of the MOLL-E carrier settling heavy on my chest, the familiar bulk of magazines and grenades shifting slightly with each step. The blue shirt beneath clung damp and grimy, my cargo pants crusted with mud; nothing fancy, nothing polished. Just me, moving forward.

I wasn't some super soldier. Hell, I didn't even think of myself as a soldier at all. This was just a scouting run, one I didn't want but knew had to be done. My steps were slow, deliberate… more caution than confidence. Instinct took over, a quiet hum in the back of my skull whispering where to place my feet, how to move through the brush without sounding like a goddamn ox. I wasn't graceful. But I was careful.

Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was just my survival instinct turned up to eleven. Either way, I stayed in the shadows, slipping between trees like something feral and unseen. I didn't pretend to be better than the rest. I just knew that right now, out here in this hush of green and dread, I had to be better than nothing.

The woods were wrong. Too still. Too quiet. No birdsong, no skittering in the leaves, just the kind of silence that presses down on your lungs and makes you feel like breathing's a mistake.
Then came the signs.

A snapped branch. Fresh tire ruts gouged into the earth. Drag marks. Twigs bent back and broken in ways nature didn't do on her own. These weren't old. These weren't innocent. They were fresh, new enough that the soil still smelled of torn roots and gasoline. I slowed further, crouching low, ears straining.

Then I saw them.

Dark shapes moving between the trees. Men in red armor and helmets, shifting through the woods with quieter than I ever imagined someone in heavy armor could be. Not rushing, but not relaxed either. Focused. Intent. They weren't just hiding. They were working.

Two squads. At least a dozen. Unfolding quietly like a pocket knife. Machine gun nests went up like they'd rehearsed it, sandbags dragged into place. Someone spooling wire; probably charges laid out along the road. Others hoisted tubes onto their shoulders, antitank lances peeking from under camo netting.

It was an ambush. The worst kind… cold, careful, and surgical. And Welkin… he was parked right in the center of it.

My breath caught. I pressed myself deeper into the brush, heart pounding like a trapped animal. No time. No time to run back. If I turned and bolted, I'd be halfway there before bullets started flying and by then it'd be too late. They'd be cut to pieces.

I closed my eyes. Just for a second.

You don't have time to be scared, I told myself. But I was. I was terrified.

My fingers hovered near the stick grenades on my vest, the knife strapped to my shoulder, the pistol at my hip; none of it would be enough. Not against this. Not head-on. I needed something more. Something louder. Bigger.

Then I saw them.

Two Imperial half-tracks. Parked just outside the treeline, tucked behind foliage, their engines off but crew nearby. Both had mounted heavy machine guns in armored turrets, the barrels resting idle. Not aimed yet, not active. But they would be. Soon.

A stupid, insane thought slipped into my head before I could push it out:
If I could get into one of those... I'd stand a chance.

It sounded impossible. But so did living through the last few days.

I shifted my weight, checked my weapon, eyes locked on the half-tracks like they were the only way out of a burning room. The enemy was distracted. Focused on their setup. No one was watching the flanks. Yet.

This wasn't about bravery. This was about time. About doing something before it was too late.
I swallowed dryly, hand brushing the Ragnaid capsules in my pouch. My lips were cracked, my mouth dry. I pulled the canteen from my hip and tilted it, only to taste air. Not a drop left to ease my parched throat. It didn't matter. All I had, all I could do, was my best. For whatever little that meant.

I tightened the strap of the StG,, my hands trembling ever so slightly as I crouched, and slowly, silently moved toward the edge of the brush. The knife slid out smoothly as the plan formed in my mind's eye, and with patient steps I moved in the brush towards my targets.

Toward the half-tracks.

Toward the fight.

I counted the steps. Not out loud. Not even consciously. It was instinct, or fear. That low hum behind the ribs, somewhere between nausea and clarity. Every inch forward felt like a challenge. Every breath a question.

The sun hung low but strong, casting everything in amber and gold. The light lanced through the canopy in shafts, mottling the underbrush with shifting patches of brightness and shadow. It should've felt warm, alive. Instead, it made the woods feel like a trap, each golden ray a spotlight.

These weren't green troops, not the ones I could hear ahead. No idle chatter. No lit cigarettes. Just low voices in clipped tones and the quiet sounds of precision. Sandbags being dropped into place. Tripwires stretched taut. Someone muttered in Imperial with the steady rhythm of a checklist.

I crept through the underbrush. It wasn't silence that warned me; it was the wrong kind of quiet. Trained quiet. Predatory. I could feel the trap tightening around Welkin like a noose.
The first half-track was nestled under a wide oak, dappled in shifting leaves. The sun caught on its metal hull, glinting just enough to betray its outline. The gun mount tracked the road, motionless but primed. The second vehicle mirrored it forty meters down, covering a different angle.

A sentry stood by the back of the nearest half-track. His eyes swept left and right with lazy precision, his rifle gripped firm. His stance said this wasn't his first ambush.

I crept closer, counting breaths. Then I moved.

The knife slid across his throat before he even registered me. His eyes flared wide, not in pain, but surprise, as if the world had betrayed him. His blood steamed in the summer heat. I caught his weight and eased him into the brush, quiet as the wind.

One.

The second was crouched at the rear hatch, pulling lances out of a crate. I heard him whisper something to a comrade deeper in the trees. Focused. Careful. Helmet tight. Gloves gripping each warhead like a porcelain vase.

I slid behind him and struck, the knife angled up under the arm and into the lungs. He stiffened, one hand gripping the crate, then sagged. I kept my arm tight across his chest until he stopped moving.

Two.

This isn't skill. This is necessity. This is luck.

But the edge of luck is narrow, and I'm always a step from bleeding off it.

The third was farther out, a spotter, crouched with binoculars aimed at the road. His back to me. Watching Welkin. Waiting for the right moment to unleash hell.

I crept behind him, the late sun warm on my neck, the light casting both our shadows long against the trees. The knife slid into the base of his skull before he even flinched. He crumpled like he'd just fallen asleep.

Three.

They'll miss him soon.

I slid toward the half-track. My fingers found the hatch handle. Still unlocked. My luck hadn't run out. Yet.

Inside was cramped and hot, the air stale and reeking of oil. I moved quietly, easing up into the turret. My fingers wrapped around the grips of the mounted HMG. The steel felt cool despite the sun above, a snake waiting to strike.

Then a jolt.

The driver shifted. I held still.

A muttered curse. The man turned halfway to check behind; just as I swung the turret toward him.

He looked up, confusion giving way to horror.

I pulled the trigger.

The interior lit up with smoke and red mist. He ceased to be a person in less than a second. Gore splashed the windshield and dashboard. I blinked through it and rotated the gun outward.
Shouts broke the calm. Not panic, not yet, but confusion. One barked an order. Another hissed for silence. They moved with discipline, ducking, flanking, sweeping the treeline.
But they didn't know where I was.

Too late.

I opened fire.

The turret thundered, spitting fire and death. The late sun backlit the tracers, streaks of amber and gold ripping the ambush apart. Men dove behind logs, some firing blindly, others screaming orders in Imperial.

One ran for the second half-track. I cut him down mid-stride. Another turned to fire a rocket, but I caught him before he could line up the shot. The HMG shredded sandbags and flesh alike, the recoil hammering through my arms as I laid into the clearing.

The forest lit up, not with shadows, but with smoke, brass, and blood.

By the time the barrel began to glow, only silence remained.


000


The first thunderclap of gunfire cracked across the hills like lightning.

Welkin's head snapped up. A second burst followed, then another, long, sustained, heavy. Not rifles. Not even light machine guns.

That was a mounted weapon. Big. Loud. Final.

"Shit," he hissed, already moving. He knew what that meant. Jerry had engaged… or more likely, had been forced to.

"Alicia! You, Juno, Cael, Moroz, with me!" His voice was sharp, clipped. No time to explain. No time for feelings.

Alicia was already running, weapon in hand, eyes locked on the distant tree line. The three militia members stumbled forward behind her, jittery with adrenaline, still more fear than training, but moving all the same.

"Jerry's in trouble!" she shouted without needing to.

Welkin's voice followed close behind. "Support him however you can! Go!"

Then he turned, jaw tight, eyes scanning the forest like he could see through the trees. "Isara," he said quietly, then louder: "Start the Edelweiss. Now."

She didn't argue. She knew the sound of his voice when it was at war with itself.

As the engine roared to life, Welkin climbed onto the tank's side, gripping the steel hatch with white knuckles.

You sent him in there alone. Alone.

He clenched his jaw.

You knew the odds. You knew what you were asking.

The tank rolled forward, trees blurring past in a wash of green and gold, the late summer sun casting long shadows. Every jolt of the terrain made his stomach tighten. He gripped the hatch harder, the metal biting into his palm, but he didn't let go.

I gave an order, he told himself. There was no choice. No time. He was the only one who could do it.

But none of that made it right.

He forced the mask on; the commander's face, the man who always had a plan. But underneath, the guilt smoldered.

He trusted you. You told him he could do it. And now…


000


Alicia tore into the woods like a shell fired from a barrel, but every step deeper slowed her; not from exhaustion, but from dread.

It started subtly. A dark stain on a tree. A bloodied glove clinging to a bush. Then she saw the first body, and the full weight of what happened here began to take shape.

The soldier's face was gone… just gone. A crater punched through his helmet and skull, the edges of the wound still smoking. Nearby, another lay sprawled over the remains of a sandbag nest, his limbs twisted unnaturally, chest cavity torn open in a shower of gore and bone.

Alicia pressed on, but her steps grew slower, more cautious. Her breath rasped in her chest. Her hands trembled.

There was… order to the carnage. Not chaos. Not panic. A calculated slaughter. Bodies positioned where they'd been gunned down mid-action. Shell casings sprinkled like breadcrumbs. Shredded bark where bullets had passed clean through wood and man alike.
It was... almost beautiful. Like a grotesque sculpture of war. A canvas painted in arterial red.
And that terrified her.

Because she knew who had done this.

He's not a killer, she told herself. He's just trying to help. He didn't want this. I pushed him into it…

Her own voice came back to her like a ghost, whispering from hours ago.

"You could be a symbol, Jerry. Someone who matters."

Is this what a symbol looks like?

The trail of blood and ruin led her on, past torn bodies, dismembered limbs, helmets knocked clean off heads by the force of impacts. One man had died mid-crawl, reaching for a rifle he never got to fire. Another had fallen against a tree, slumped like a broken doll, entrails pooling beneath him.

Then came the first half-track.

The vehicle was still, partially obscured by brush. One of its doors hung open, a bloody handprint streaking down the side.

And above it, motionless, was Jerry.

He sat slouched in the open turret, one arm resting against the hot barrel of the mounted HMG, the other hanging limply over his knee. Blood soaked his chest, dark against the already-filthy blue t-shirt under his MOLL-E plate carrier. His arms were red to the elbows. Gore stained his face, matted his hair, dripped from his jaw in slow, sticky strands.

He looked at her.

Slowly. Mechanically. Like turning his head took every ounce of willpower.

His eyes were glass. Cold. Dead.

No panic. No shaking. No begging.

Just silence.

Alicia felt her legs weaken beneath her. She almost dropped her weapon.

This wasn't shock. It wasn't even trauma. It was emptiness. The kind that settled in deep. The kind that didn't let go.

And it scared her more than anything she'd seen on this battlefield.

Behind her, the others crashed through the brush. Juno skidded to a stop, staring.

"By the Valkyrur…" she murmured.

Cael didn't even make it two steps before he dropped to his knees, vomiting.

Moroz turned away, covering his mouth, eyes wide and unblinking.

The Edelweiss finally broke through the treeline, its treads parting the brush like waves. The tank growled as it pushed into the clearing, the smell of burning oil and hot metal mixing with blood and gunpowder.

Welkin stood tall on the turret, scanning the scene, and stopped cold when his eyes found Jerry.

He didn't speak. Didn't move.

And for just a second, the commander's mask slipped. Grief bled through.

But there was no time for tears. No time for guilt.

There were only bodies, and a man sitting among them, still and silent, as if the weight of it all hadn't crushed him… only hollowed him out.


000


They called it cleanup, but the word felt hollow in the face of what was left behind.

The battlefield was still. The woods remained mute. No birds sang, and the light breeze carried only the smell of cordite, blood, and churned earth. The late afternoon sun painted the carnage in a soft, golden glow. A cruel contrast to the brutality it illuminated. Long shadows stretched across twisted bodies and shattered weapons. Some of the soldiers had been torn apart by heavy rounds, others were slumped like broken dolls over sandbags or branches, blood soaking into the soil.

Alicia helped Jerry down from the turret.

He didn't resist. Didn't protest. He moved the way something does after it's been uncoiled, not broken, but emptied. His feet hit the ground with a dull thud, his boots crunching in the gravel and shell casings. His clothes were stained to the seams, soaked through with blood and blackened gore. The blue t-shirt beneath his MOLL-E carrier clung to his body, crusted stiff. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat and took his arm gently.

"Let's sit you down," she said, voice soft, almost lost to the wind.

He didn't look at her. Just nodded. She led him to the Edelweiss, sat him against its cool chassis, the painted steel smeared where he touched it. She dropped her rifle and rummaged in her belt pouch for her canteen, shaking it. A few sloshes left. Just enough. She unscrewed the cap and pulled a cloth from her hip pouch, dampening it and kneeling beside him.

"This might sting a little," she whispered, though she doubted he'd notice.

She tried to clean his face first. The blood thick in his hairline, drying in streaks that ran down his jaw. His eyes were distant, barely blinking, focused on something far beyond her.

"You saved everyone, Jerry," she said quietly, wringing the cloth and wiping the side of his neck. "We'd be dead without you. I'd be dead."

Still, he said nothing.

"I… I shouldn't have said those things before," she continued. "About you needing to be something. A hero. That wasn't fair."

She scrubbed gently at a smear on his chin. Her voice cracked. "This... this is what that looks like, isn't it?"

No answer.

"Valkyrur help me," she breathed. "I didn't know."

Behind them, Isara rounded the Edelweiss with a rag in one hand and a wrench in the other. She stopped in her tracks the moment she saw Jerry, her breath catching audibly.

Her mouth opened slightly, like she meant to say something. Then she closed it.

She moved slowly forward and, without a word, leaned down and wrapped her arms around Jerry. A quick, trembling hug. Not too tight. Just enough to let him know she was there. Her hands trembled against his bloodied back, and she stepped away as fast as she'd come, wiping at her face with her sleeve as she turned back toward the tank.

Behind the quiet gestures, the rest of the militia worked. Or tried to.

They moved through the aftermath in loose groups, their voices barely more than whispers. Every one of them glanced toward Jerry at some point, even if only for a moment.

"...he did it all himself…" someone muttered.

"...slit their throats like it was nothing…"

"...walked into the middle of it and just— turned that thing loose on them..."

"...he's not even blinking…"

"...he's not even human…"

"...The Lion of Bruhl…"

"...he didn't feel a thing…"

There was reverence in their voices… but also unease. Worship, wrapped in fear.

They had expected courage. Not… this.

Welkin stood a little apart from it all, walking the edge of the kill zone like a man taking account of his own failures. His gloved hand traced along the scorched frame of the second half-track. Blood smeared in places. Bullet casings everywhere.

He stopped near a body; an Imperial soldier whose ribcage had been partially opened by a .50 cal burst. Welkin crouched, examining the jagged exit wound in silence. Then, slowly, he stood and looked toward the Edelweiss.

Toward Jerry.

He looked so small sitting there.

You did this, Welkin thought. You put the burden in his hands.

He could feel the mask of command slipping back into place, but not before something cracked underneath. The guilt was a quiet scream in his chest. He'd made the call. Sent Jerry forward. Put the weight of an army on the back of a single man because there were no other options.

But knowing it had been the right call didn't make it feel any less like a betrayal.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then turned back to the tank, barking orders to keep the others moving.

Later, the militia gathered around the captured half-tracks. Someone brought up the idea of drawing straws. Too many didn't want to ride in the blood-slicked one. Not after what had happened in it.

They circled up behind the Edelweiss. Whispered, shuffled. No one said Jerry's name, but they all looked toward him, just once.

He didn't hear them.

Or they thought he didn't.

But he knew.

He knew they were scared now, and not of the Imperials.

It was one thing to be a hero who pulled off the impossible.

It was another to do it so well that no one could look at you the same way again.

So Jerry sat there, quiet and still, watching the long shadows stretch across the ground, the blood on his hands drying into his palms. The cloth Alicia had used was still clutched in her hand. Her eyes kept darting toward him, lips parted like she wanted to say something more, but she didn't.

No one did.

And in the silence that followed, the myth of the Lion grew.

Not from stories told.

But from the things no one dared say out loud.


000


The railyard was a controlled chaos of bodies, steel, and sweat. The conscripted heartbeat of a nation bracing for war. Militia units from across Gallia poured in like tributaries to a rising tide. Young men barely out of boyhood stood alongside old hunters and hardened dockhands; women in field gear carried rifles with shaking hands and steeled eyes. No uniformity in look, but a shared, grim determination bound them all. The trains screamed and hissed under the weight of tanks, supply crates, and troops, each one headed east, toward Randgriz, and the Academy.

The survivors from Bruhl arrived quietly. Not triumphant, but intact.

Many were dehydrated, faces pale from exhaustion, some stumbling straight into the arms of the waiting medics. A few were ushered onto medical cars or hurried toward the overwhelmed hospital barracks. For others, the destination was still unclear. But for five among them- Welkin, Isara, Alicia, Juno, and Jerry? The fighting was done, for now. This battle had ended.
In a passenger car set aside for officers, the group sat in silence. Not because there was nothing to say, but because words could do so little.

Welkin rested in the corner, his face half-shadowed by the dull golden lamplight. He looked at Jerry, freshly scrubbed but still marked by what had happened. The blood was gone, but the silence remained. Welkin wanted to say something… an apology, maybe, but the words didn't come. Not yet. This wasn't the moment. Instead, he sat with Isara beside him, quietly chatting with Alicia and Juno, their voices low, almost conspiratorial, like laughter was still allowed if it was soft enough.

Jerry sat opposite, his eyes out the window, watching the last rays of light slip away behind the hills. His posture was relaxed in a way that suggested exhaustion more than ease. He didn't speak. Just listened to the dull clatter of the platform outside, and the distant bark of officers trying to wrangle the next trainload of war-bound souls.

He wasn't thinking of glory, or medals, or recognition. He was thinking about the man crouched by the half-track who never saw the knife coming. About the second one, who bled out gasping and clawing at armor that didn't matter. About the third, the driver, who had time to scream before being obliterated in a mist of red. He remembered the heat of the turret, the cold of the metal beneath his hands. The way the weapon bucked like an animal as it spat death.

The things he should have felt; rage, guilt, triumph… were just... distant. There was only that lingering emptiness. The realization that this wasn't the climax of a story, it was the start of one.

And that those stories lied about what being a hero felt like.

He missed his bed. His apartment. The faint glow of city lights through drawn blinds. He missed the quiet, forgettable mundanity of it all, and how, back then, he'd never even realized how sacred it was to not know what it meant to kill someone.

The train let out a low groan and hissed against the rails, wheels turning slowly, then with increasing rhythm. The station lights slid away into the warm summer night, swallowed by the darkness of the Gallian countryside. The future awaited. The war rolled forward.

And in that dim booth, five soldiers sat. Changed. Bound together not by victory, but survival.

The legend of the Lion had begun.

But for Jerry, sitting in that train car, watching the world pass by, he began to wonder if it was worth it. If all the blood and pain and killing, of the hot burn of lead and the cold calculus of the blade, and all the suffering yet to come, was worth who he was. Was worth sacrificing again and again on the altar now named The Lion of Bruhl.

He had no answers, as the train sped on, careless of the concerns of simple men such as he.

So it was.

So it would be.




AN: This is special for all of you on QQ! This fic was originally incepted in 2015. It's been a decade in the making getting to this one so that's what the following note is about. Writing is hard, go figure right?

AN: Soooo... kept you waiting, huh? I could make a lot of excuses, work, medical issues, so on and so forth, but honestly a lot of it came down to just kind of moving on from fanfiction for a while. I've really struggled with this fic, having rewritten it as a whole over the last several years and having made no less than fifty full rewrites of this fourth chapter before largely giving up on it. For those of you wondering if this is a glorious comeback? It is, a little. Life has kind of moved on and I've moved with it, but I'm finding myself longing to get back into this particular story for a while. I love Valkyria Chronicles as a whole and just the setting and world have often slipped into my thoughts as a place to examine my characters in. Some things, like the themes, the gritty setting, and the passion I've had for the people in it are the same. The plot, I think, is going to go in a different direction though, from what was originally envisioned. I hope you all enjoy the last leg of this particular journey though. It only took us a decade to get here, and yes, I realize that this is, for lack of better term, all accomplished in literally the first five minutes of the game. God help us all.

Anyway I hope you enjoy this one. I wanted to give you something more than a filler chapter like Chapter 3 was, so here you are. I hope you enjoy it more than I did writing it. Because this one literally fought me for years.

Oh, as a side note, Chapters 1-3 got some pretty hefty rewrites as well if you need to catch back up. Not surprising after all these years. Anyway, have fun!

 

[J. Finch]

…the days following the escape from Dillburg were spent in quiet contemplation. We'd all suffered to get to this point, each and every one of us. Sacrificed. Bled. Wept. But the war didn't care about any of that. Every man or woman who came aboard those trains carried stories of an Imperial blitz that tore across the reaches of northern Gallia. Word of atrocities both big and small, of mass executions for the lucky ones. Slavery and depredation for the rest. The Empire wasn't shy about how they intended to persecute this war, so long as there wasn't a man, woman or child willing to stand against them at the end of it.​

-Ch. 1: Red Skies, Days Gone By, A Memoir From the Gallian Front​

Chapter Five​

I'd started counting the cracks in the ceiling above my cot. Twenty-three. Not counting the ones near the air duct… those weren't really cracks, just shoddy Gallian plasterwork trying to pass for military standard. The barracks were quiet at this hour, the kind of silence that feels like it's waiting to pounce. A few bunks down, someone coughed in their sleep. Probably Nils again. Poor bastard caught trench lung back in '24 and it never really let him go. That, or he was allergic to everything, including discipline.

Me? I had my own room. They said it was an honor.

It didn't feel like one.

The space was barely bigger than a janitor's closet. The walls were the color of wet cigarette ash, the mattress too thin, the blanket scratchy like sandpaper against skin. But it had a door, and that meant solitude. Privacy. Isolation. It meant silence… and it meant staring at the ceiling until the thoughts in my head got too loud to ignore.

I hadn't seen Welkin, Alicia, or Isara since the day we arrived in Dillburg. We were split up like livestock in a sorting pen, some to artillery, some to recon, the rest to the meat grinder. The Gallian Army called it intake. I called it being filed away like a piece of gear. My assignment came with salutes and whispers, wide-eyed stares from people who didn't know me but knew the title.

The Lion of Bruhl.

What a goddamn joke.

I wasn't a lion. I was just a guy with a rifle, a bad haircut, and just enough training not to get myself killed. But stories spread like oil on water. The ambush. The half-tracks. The blood. They turned it into legend before I even had a chance to wash my hands clean.

Not that the blood ever really came off.

The only thing that kept me from clawing at the walls was the daily rhythm of getting screamed at. Senior Drill Instructor Calvaro Rodriguez; a tower of a man with a voice like broken gravel and an eyepatch that looked like it belonged on a flagpole. Blue-white-blue stripes, thin red trim. The colors of Gallia, stitched right into his face.

He was missing his left eye, and when he looked at you with the right one, it felt like he saw everything you tried to hide. Every doubt. Every ugly memory.

He called me "Private Lion." Not "Mercenary". Not "Recruit." Just that. Every time. I think it was his way of humbling me. If it was, I didn't mind. Felt better than the hushed awe everyone else whispered when they thought I couldn't hear.

Rodriguez had us running drills daily, rain or shine. Mostly shine. Spring here was brutal. By noon, the dirt turned to dust, clinging to your sweat, getting in your teeth. Every drill felt like a fever dream. Rifle training. Bayonet. Urban combat simulations in the skeletons of buildings they kept around for realism. I didn't hate it. It gave me something to do. Something to keep the silence at bay.

What bothered me more were the people around me.

Too young. Too old. I saw a kid with braces in the next squad over, barely seventeen by the look of him. Saw a woman whose hands shook when she loaded her rifle, age or fear, maybe both. War was chewing through Gallia faster than anyone expected. They weren't picky about who they fed to it.

And then there were the Darcsen.

Most folks pretended not to see the way they were treated. Pale skin. Lavender eyes. Black hair that shimmered like oil under the sun. You'd think they were carved from moonlight. The Empire didn't see people when they looked at them. They saw pests. Vermin. Every train brought more horror stories: whole Darcsen villages erased, children forced into labor, entire communities shoved into ghettos and left to rot.

We'd heard rumors on the train from Dillburg. Whispers of massacres. Men crucified on barn doors. Women taken. Kids vanished. The word culling came up more than once and no one wanted to ask what that really meant.

It left a sour taste in my mouth. The kind that lingered, clinging to the back of your throat like smoke.

I kept my head down in camp. Not because I had something to hide; more because I didn't know where I fit. I wasn't a conscript. I wasn't a native. I wasn't even sure if I was technically real in this world. Just some guy who got dumped here by the universe and shoved into a war he barely understood.

But I moved well. Shot straight. Followed orders.

That was enough, apparently.

Rodriguez barked at me like he barked at everyone else, but I noticed he never corrected me much. Just watched. Like he was waiting to see if I'd crack. Maybe he'd seen too many like me. Men who came back from the front too quiet, too still, too good at what they did. Or maybe he just knew.

That the silence was louder than the gunfire.

Nights were the worst. No drills. No shouting. Just me, the walls, and the ghosts.

I tried not to think about the ambush. About the machine gun's heat. The way it kicked like a living thing. The blood that sprayed across my face. How I'd sat there afterward, not shaking, not crying… just… sitting.

That was what scared me the most.

That it didn't scare me anymore.

I stared at the ceiling a lot. Thought about Noce and Juliette more than I wanted to. Two kids with dirt in their smiles and hope in their eyes. And now? Gone. Torn apart by Imperial steel. Reduced to memory. I'd watched the light go out of people's eyes. More than once. I'd pulled the trigger. Felt the knife slip in. Heard the gurgling as life leaked out of men who never saw me coming.

They called it heroism.

I called it surviving.

Sometimes, I wondered if there was even a difference.

The door creaked as I leaned back on the cot, boots still laced. I didn't undress much these days. Didn't feel right. The moment you got comfortable was the moment you weren't ready. And I couldn't afford that.

A train horn howled in the distance, low and long, echoing across the yard. Another convoy heading east. Toward the front. Randgriz, maybe. Maybe further. Rodriguez had hinted we'd be deployed soon. That we were too valuable to sit idle much longer.

Part of me wanted to go. Not for glory. Not for payback. Just… to do something. Something that made the quiet go away.

My hand drifted to the chain around my neck. I tugged it free from under the collar. Dog tags. Standard Gallian issue, freshly stamped, still too clean.


Name: Finch, Jericho.
Blood Type: O-.
Serial: 857-3224-G.

Issued to a man who hadn't existed two weeks ago.

Two weeks. That's all it had been since I stumbled through the fire and smoke of Bruhl. Since I clawed my way out of another world and into this one. The old me… the one with a name back home, with a job, a phone, a couch and a library of dog-eared paperbacks? He didn't exist here. Only Jericho Finch did. The Lion of Bruhl. A ghost in a borrowed uniform.

I stared at the tags like they were supposed to prove I was real.

They didn't.

A knock came at the door. Sharp. Precise.

"Private Lion," barked the familiar voice of Rodriguez.

I sat up and opened the door. There he was- coat draped like a curtain over his frame, that same unimpressed stare locked onto me like a hunter's gaze. His thin mustache and flared mutton chops somehow made him look even more severe.

He didn't speak at first. Just looked at me with that one good eye, heavy as a hammer. Then, finally:

"Someone up the line thinks you're important."

"Do they now," I muttered, more to myself than to him.

Rodriguez ignored it.

He didn't smile- Rodriguez never smiled. "Runner came with orders. You're to report to Captain Eleanor Varrot. Immediately."

That name cut through the fog. Everyone knew it. Veteran of the First Europa War. Captain with more steel than most generals. Ran her units tight but fair. Some said she kept a library in her quarters, full of everything from tawdry fiction to military charters. Others swore she once tore strips off an armchair general for tying up medical supplies at a border outpost. She had a reputation. The kind that came with the unspoken rule: Don't fuck with her. Because if she didn't finish the job, the people under her would.

A rare compliment, I was learning, among command.

I nodded. "Understood."

Rodriguez didn't move. Just gave a slow nod, then turned, coat flapping like the tail of a tired beast. But then, something odd happened. He paused. Turned slightly. Met my eyes.

"Watch yourself out there, Private Lion. People like you... sometimes it's not the enemy they gotta worry about."

That was all he said before he vanished down the corridor.

As I shut the door, I looked at the tags again.

Jericho Finch.

Someone thought that name mattered now.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

The walk through camp didn't take long. There was nothing in my way. I was already dressed, already awake, already resigned. The kind of clarity that only comes after too little sleep and too much reality. Boots met dirt with practiced rhythm, steady as a metronome. No chatter, no noise in my head, just the dull thud of each step and the low hum of a camp gearing up for another day of war.

The training yards were alive. Constant motion, constant noise. Recruits barked and ran, lines of fifty or more, working drills like they were being molded out of wet clay, shaped by screaming sergeants and wooden rifles. Veterans intermingled here and there, their movements more efficient, less desperate. Still sharpening iron on iron. A few glanced at me as I passed, but most were too deep in the moment. Either they didn't recognize me, or they didn't care.

Rodriguez had it right. This war wasn't slowing down. Gallia was bleeding people out faster than it could train new ones. Fresh recruits were fed into the grinder, hoping they'd last long enough to be considered experienced. Most didn't. That was the quiet truth buried beneath the sound of cadence and shouted orders.

Past the yards stood the officer quarter; well-maintained, white-plastered apartments with painted blue shutters and fresh gravel paths. The buildings sat smug under the rising sun, framed by white canvas mess tents and military flags fluttering on poles. These weren't bunkhouses; they were homes, temporary or not. They had working lights, hot water, glass windows. The smell of fresh bread and brewed coffee drifted faintly from somewhere in the back, a luxury the frontlines never saw.

Here was the domain of the elite. Gallian officers, noble-born tacticians, and the few units too important or too green to be thrown into the fire just yet. I didn't belong here. But that's where I was headed.

Off to the left, the tank yards caught my eye. Rows upon rows of compact Gallian armor. Treaded, single-barrel beasts gleaming under maintenance crews. Each one polished like a parade trophy. Armor smooth as glass, their white-and-blue coats unmarred by mud or soot. Every one bore the silver unicorn insignia. A myth painted over steel, as if it made them noble instead of efficient killers. I paused near one and caught my own warped reflection in the plating. A blank, ghostly figure beneath Gallia's painted ideals.

Headquarters loomed just ahead. The building didn't look like the others; more a fortress than a barracks. Not in size or shape, but in function. Paper walls filled with authority. Orders were given here. People were sent to die from behind these doors. I stepped inside and was met with low murmurs, booted footsteps echoing across tile, and the rustle of papers exchanged by stone-faced officers and overworked clerks. The rhythm of organized war.

Captain Varrot's office wasn't far. The door was already open, which meant I wasn't early. Or this wasn't just for me.

Inside, the room felt stiffer than usual. Alicia stood to the side of the desk, posture crisp, hands clasped behind her back. Her uniform looked freshly pressed, the brass on her collar catching the morning light. But her eyes met mine briefly, and something softened. A flicker… not guilt, not sympathy. Just recognition. Like we'd both seen the same monster last night.

Welkin stood beside her. Same disheveled hair, same calm exterior. His cap tucked under one arm. There was fatigue behind his eyes, but also something else- intent. Regret, maybe. Or purpose. The kind of thing that lives in the corners of a man who's made a call and knows he'll have to live with it.

The third figure was unfamiliar. Lean build, sharp profile, brown hair swept back in an effortless cut. His uniform was tailored, crisp in a way that said he wasn't fresh out of boot. The way he stood, relaxed but attentive, told me he didn't need to impress anyone in the room. Confidence without ego. The academic kind.

Welkin gestured toward him. "Faldio Landzaat," he said. "We studied together in our University days. I went into biology, he went into archaeology."

I raised an eyebrow. "Guess someone has to dig up the bones after we're done making them."

Faldio let out a dry laugh. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." His tone was light, but his eyes flicked to me with curiosity- not judgment, just a quiet kind of appraisal.

And then there was Captain Varrot.

She stood behind her desk like it was a battlement, arms folded behind her back. Her posture was effortless, but deliberate. Still as a statue carved from ice.

"Jericho Finch," she said. Her tone was precise. "Irregular. Volunteer. Non-native."

I came to parade rest automatically. "Ma'am."

"You've been requested," she continued. "At the recommendation of Lieutenant Gunther, you are to be officially attached to Squad Seven. Effective immediately."

I glanced at Alicia. Her posture didn't change, but her gaze did, a faint shift, from firm to... unsure. Her voice followed.

"It's not a trick, Jerry," she said softly. "It's just... you've already been fighting beside us. This just makes it real."

I looked at her longer than I meant to. She wasn't trying to sell me anything. There was no recruitment pitch in her voice, just a quiet truth she was still trying to believe in herself.

Varrot continued. "You are also being conferred the rank of Sergeant. Equivalent in standing to Sergeant Melchiott."

That caught me. "That... seems generous."

"It wasn't my decision," she said coolly. "The order came from Command. The same Command that approved your continued presence in our military despite your... unorthodox background."

Her eyes met mine, not with contempt, but inquiry. She was still trying to figure me out. Weighing risk against reward.

"There's more," she added, picking up a folder from her desk. "You are being granted limited authority to form a fireteam. Four soldiers. Chosen from a pool of available applicants. You'll train them. Lead them. Deploy them under Squad Seven's umbrella."

I didn't say anything. I just stared.

Welkin stepped in again, tone earnest but firm. "Because you've already done it, Jerry. Bruhl wasn't just surviving. You saved lives. Mine. Alicia's. Civilians. You didn't freeze when the tank rolled in. You didn't panic when that machine gun opened up. You moved, you acted, you chose."

I swallowed hard. My hands were clenched behind my back and I hadn't even noticed.

"I didn't do it for you," I muttered.

"I know," Welkin said. "That's what makes it count. You did it because someone had to. That's what leaders do. Even when no one's looking."

I shook my head. "I'm not a leader. I'm just good at staying alive."

"No," Alicia said, and her voice was clearer now, less hesitant. "You're good at pulling others with you. That's the difference."

I glanced at her. She offered a faint smile- nothing overplayed. Just the kind of smile you give someone who doesn't know how visible they've become.

"You're stronger than you think," Welkin added. "You stood up again and again when most would've stayed down. That doesn't make you perfect, it makes you present. I need people like that."

"And you're letting this happen?" I asked Varrot, dragging my eyes away from them both.

She didn't blink. "I am. Because you've been excelling in every facet of your training. Marksmanship. Decision-making. Tactical improvisation. Even Rodriguez wrote a positive report. And he's never written one in his life."

My brow furrowed. "That... can't be right. I've barely kept my head down. I-"

"Numbers don't lie," she interrupted. "And neither do the outcomes. You're not unnoticed, Finch. You're outperforming nearly every soldier in your weight class and often under stress conditions that would break most people."

That made my stomach twist. Being good at this… at war… didn't feel like an accomplishment. It felt like a stain.

Before I could bury that thought, Welkin cut in again. "Juno Coren wants to help. She's volunteered to support the fireteam. She trusts you. You earned that."

Alicia nodded. "She saw what you did in Bruhl. She thinks you're someone worth following."

That made me scoff quietly. "They're going to regret that."

"No," Alicia said, voice quieter now. "You might. But they won't."

There was a beat of silence. Long enough for the air to feel heavy.

I exhaled, slow. My voice came out flat. "And if I say no?"

Varrot didn't flinch. "Then you remain as-is. Attached to Squad Seven. No leadership. No fireteam. You'll fight where we tell you, when we tell you. But this?" she tapped the folder, "This gives you a chance to leave something behind. Not just blood and bodies."

"Leave a mark," I said, more to myself than to her.

"Yes," Varrot replied. "One of your choosing."

I looked at Alicia. She didn't push. Just nodded, steady, warm in a way that didn't require words.

Then Welkin, who met my eyes without blinking. No command in them. Just trust.

And that made it worse somehow.

I let out the breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

"Fine," I said at last. "I'll put together a team. But if this falls apart... I'm not dragging anyone down with me."

"You won't," Welkin said.

Varrot nodded. "Selections due in three days. You'll have access to the personnel files shortly. Dismissed, Sergeant."

I turned to leave. My boots felt heavier than when I walked in.

Welkin's voice caught me just before the door. "Thank you, Jerry. I mean it."

I didn't turn around. Just kept walking.

Not sure when I stopped being invisible.

And not sure if that was a good thing.


000


The command center was dead quiet by the time I finally settled in with the files.

That particular brand of military stillness- more pressure than peace- had crept in like smoke through the walls. Outside, somewhere beyond the stone and steel, I could hear the distant grind of tank engines being tuned by tired mechanics. The late-night rituals of maintenance crews keeping their steel beasts combat-ready for tomorrow's drills. The war machine never truly slept. Neither did we.

Inside, the air smelled like what it always did: dust, sweat, oil. The perfume of duty, regret, and barely suppressed exhaustion. A breeze drifted in through a half-cracked window, too weak to do anything but rustle the corners of a teetering pile of manila folders in front of me.

Juno Coren sat across the table, posture like a blade, unmoved by the hour. Her uniform looked like it had been assembled with a ruler and an iron. I don't think a wrinkle dared exist in her vicinity. In front of her, files were arranged in precise rows, each folder marked and annotated with color-coded grease pencil like some sort of tactical mosaic. Blue for strengths. Red for psychological flags. Yellow probably meant "likely to stab someone over the last biscuit." Whatever her code, it worked. You could tell just by glancing.

Me? I was surrounded by chaos. My stack leaned like a condemned building.

"You're not actually expected to memorize them all," Juno said, tapping a folder with the eraser of her pencil. Her voice was calm, almost indulgent. "Just pick the ones who won't get you killed."

"That's the hard part," I muttered, flipping a page with a tired thumb. "I don't even know what I'm looking for."

She didn't bother looking up. "Then start with what you do know. You've been in combat. You know what it feels like when everything starts falling apart. So who do you want at your side when it does?"

That one hit harder than I wanted to admit.

I glanced at her, half grateful, half annoyed. Fully exhausted. Then leaned back in my chair. The damn thing creaked like it wanted to file a transfer.

Names. Stats. Training notes. Discipline records. It all started to blur together. A lot of these kids looked great on paper. Too great. Polished like recruitment posters. Others read like complete disasters. But I knew better. Sometimes the ones who looked the worst were the ones still standing when the smoke cleared. Paper didn't bleed. It sure as hell didn't tell you who'd hold the line.

Then I hit a name. Wendy Cheslock.

Her photo caught me first. Wiry frame. Maybe twenty. Crooked grin and eyes that didn't quite belong to someone posing for a formal portrait. Like she was in on some joke the rest of the world hadn't caught up to yet. The kind of face that said: "Bet I'll surprise you."

"Shock Trooper," I muttered, flipping through the pages. "Specializes in high-intensity breaching..."

"Pyromaniac," Juno added, her tone light but edged. "Marked as such in three separate evaluations."

"I see that," I said flatly, thumbing a particular paragraph. "'Demonstrates a concerning fascination with explosives, fire-based weaponry, and... recreational demolition.' That's an actual phrase."

"She once blew out three windows on a bet," Juno added, twirling her pencil. "Still managed to win her exercise."

I kept reading. Her training reports were... a lot. Near-suicidal charges, outnumbered engagements, fire-related 'incidents' that made my eyelid twitch. She was chaos wrapped in a uniform, and all her instructors condemned her for it. She still won more often than she lost, and most of those losses… it was amazing nobody was dead, much less injured. I could almost respect it.

"She's dangerous," Juno said, watching me over the rim of her mug.

"She's effective," I shot back. "People like that don't follow orders. But they might follow someone who earns it."

I didn't say the rest aloud, because I didn't need to. I knew her type. Knew what it meant to be that type. You didn't follow rank. You followed conviction. You followed the person who didn't run.
I set Wendy's file aside. Not chosen. Not rejected. Just... considered.

Next one came faster: Marina Wulfstan.

Clean record. Top sniper marks. Minimal notes. No mess, no drama. The kind of file that read like a math problem solved by a sniper scope. Her photo showed a pale, narrow face framed by a curtain of hair and eyes cold enough to chill water. She looked more like a research assistant than someone who could end a life from 800 meters away.

Juno tapped a line in her file. "She requested solo quarters."

"Smart," I said. "People like her need quiet. Distance. That's a good sniper."

"Or she's just antisocial," Juno offered. "Either way, she won't be a problem."

I gave her a look. "You'd make a good officer."

"I've been told that," she said, tone dry as the desert. "Usually right before they ask me to handle someone else's disaster."

That got a laugh out of me- raw, short, but honest. First one I'd managed all night. Maybe all week.

So there we were: Juno. Wendy the wildcard. Marina the ghost. The triangle was forming; chaos, precision, and control. But it needed one more point. Something meaner. Something harder. The sharp edge.

I flipped through more files. Nothing. Names swam uselessly. I exhaled, dragging my hands down my face like I could scrape off the fatigue. I couldn't.


Juno sipped her coffee, then grimaced. "Cold."

"You're not going to find the perfect squad in those," she said. "Just broken pieces that fit well enough to hold together. The rest? That's your job."

I didn't get a chance to answer.

The door creaked behind us.

"Thought I'd find you here."

I looked up. Welkin stood in the doorway, carrying a battered metal tray with three mugs of steaming coffee balanced like offerings to the gods of burnout. He looked as tired as I felt, but the smile on his face was real. The kind of calm you didn't fake. The kind that came after you stopped pretending the weight wasn't there.

"Hope no one's allergic to barely-regulated caffeine," he said, setting the tray down.

"Smells like salvation," I muttered, accepting one.

He handed a mug to Juno. She nodded with something resembling gratitude, as he pulled up a seat next to me.

"Came to check on my wayward Sergeant," he said, settling in. "Or maybe I just needed an excuse for a break."

"Good timing," I said, gesturing to the chaos around me. "We're hunting for miracles."

Welkin looked over the table. All those lives, reduced to paper. He nodded.

"I remember my first time doing this. I hated it."

"I'm getting there," I said.

"My father used to say," Welkin began, cupping the mug in both hands like it anchored him, "'Don't pick soldiers. Pick stories.'"

I gave a tired chuckle. "That sounds like something you'd say."

"Maybe. He was always more about thinking than barking. Believed a unit wasn't built from stats or muscle. It was built from the ones who kept showing up, even when everything told them not to. The ones who stood when the dust settled."

Juno leaned in slightly, eyebrow raised. "What would he have said about our Lion here?"

Welkin studied me. That look he gave me felt like an X-ray.

"That he's stronger than he thinks," he said. "And that it scares him more than getting shot."

I groaned. "Great. Insecure and emotionally unstable."

Welkin smiled, but the weight behind it lingered. He reached across the table and plucked a folder from the stack like it had been waiting for him.

Jane Turner.

"Here's your fourth," he said quietly.

I opened it. Barely two sentences in and my eyebrow was doing its thing again.

"Disciplinary record exceeds normal thresholds. Subject has engaged in unauthorized violence, provoked altercations, and has it on record of attacking Imperial prisoners on more than one occasion. Psychological evaluation suggests extreme aggression bordering on sadism and potential sociopathic tendencies."

I looked up at him. "You're giving me a lunatic."

"I'm giving you someone who already lives in the deep end," Welkin said. "Someone who's been in the dark and came back meaner. Someone who won't blink when it goes bad."

Juno frowned, pencil stilled. "She's more volatile than Cheslock."

"Exactly," Welkin said. "You've got precision. You've got chaos. You've got discipline. What you don't have is someone willing to do the awful thing and not flinch."

I looked at him, skeptical. "You think I need cruelty?"

"No," he said. "I think you need someone who's willing to do the things you've had to do. Because you can't be everywhere. And when the orders stop mattering, and everything breaks down, someone has to keep moving forward. Someone has to be willing."

We sat in silence for a long moment.

"She's dangerous," Juno repeated.

"So is war," Welkin replied. "Jane's not here to be liked. She's here to kill Imperials."

I looked down at the photo. Strong jaw, sharp eyes, and the kind of expression that said the camera was lucky she didn't punch it. There wasn't an ounce of mercy in that face.

"She'll fight for you," Welkin said. "If you earn it. Not for the flag. Not for the uniform. Just you. And that's enough."

I closed the file slowly. Felt the decision settle into my bones.

"That's four."

Juno nodded crisply, already stacking the selected files into a squared-off bundle. "Should I start the requisition paperwork?"

I took a sip of my coffee. Still hot. Bitter enough to sting.

I nodded. "Do it."

Welkin leaned back, arms crossed. "Congratulations, Sergeant. You've got your monsters."

I didn't say anything.

I looked down at the folders, at the chaos, the fire, the silence, and the steel I'd just named as mine.

They weren't model soldiers. They weren't heroes.

They were broken.

Just like me.


000


The training field stretched before us like an old wound; dry, cracked earth crumbling under moonlight, the skeletal remains of old dummies leaning like hanged men in the dark. The sun was gone. Only the cold silver of night remained, leaking down over rusted poles and trampled weeds. Wind rolled through the empty yard like a breath that didn't belong here.

I stood with Juno in the shadow of the munitions shed, just outside their line of sight. She stood like an officer at parade rest. Still, sharp, coiled. Her eyes followed the women with precision, her mouth tight with calculation.

"They've been here twenty minutes," she murmured. "Are you sure these are the ones you want?"

I didn't answer immediately. Not because I wasn't sure. But because I was watching.

Three women. All dangerous. All discarded. The kind of soldiers command tried to forget.

Wendy Cheslock paced like a match waiting to catch flame. Her stance was erratic, loose-limbed and taut all at once. Arms akimbo, hands twitching toward invisible detonators. She grinned like someone who knew a secret, one with a fuse. Her eyes bounced around the yard, fixating on trees, barrels, shadows- like she expected something to explode. Maybe because she wanted it to.

Next to her, Jane Turner stood planted like a grudge. Tall, broad, still. All muscle and menace under a scuffed coat. Her arms were crossed like a barricade. She didn't look at anything; she dared it to look at her first. Her boot ground slowly into the dirt, almost absentminded, like she was trying to kill time and the ground beneath it both.

Marina Wulfstan stayed apart from them, perfectly upright, posture textbook, but there was nothing proud in it. Her arms folded tightly, jaw clenched, expression frozen in a professional mask that looked more like survival than pride. She didn't glance at them, didn't speak. She stood like someone who never stopped expecting the next bullet. And maybe hoped it came soon.

Wendy broke the silence first, her voice pitched too high for the night.

"You think we're in trouble again?"

Jane's grunt was all gravel. "Obviously. You probably blew something up again."

"I didn't blow anything up," Wendy shot back with mock innocence. "I just tested the fuel-to-pitch ratio near the barracks."

"That's arson."

"That's science."

Jane's glare tightened. "And I don't even remember what I did. That's how you know we're screwed."

"Maybe that one officer? The one with the teeth?"

Jane blinked once, then smirked faintly. "That wasn't a hit. That was a demonstration."

"Of assault?"

"It was educational."

I felt Juno bristled beside me, but a motion from me quieted her. Instead I motioned for her to follow, deliberately falling into my best prowling gait, for once leaning into the moniker of 'Lion'.

Their banter snapped to silence as we stepped into view. Boots on dirt. Sharp, deliberate. Juno moved like a blade, her uniform immaculate, her spine straight, her face carved from stone. I followed beside her, slower but heavier, letting the steps drag just enough. Letting the sound build weight.

Shoulders loose, eyes forward, jaw locked tight. I moved like something that hadn't stopped bleeding yet, like the war had followed me home and I hadn't told it no. The theater of it grated on my nerves but it was necessary. And I'd had more than a crash course in 'necessary' over the last few weeks.

Juno snapped her voice into the air like a whip. "Squad, attention!"

Marina obeyed immediately, snapping to form like she'd been slapped. It was reflex, training, rote and organized. The best of the three by far.

Wendy jerked her arms in close, standing stiffly, but she wasn't really at attention. She was fidgeting even while trying not to, still smiling that crazed half smile. My eyes bored into her and her grin began to falter as she realized this wasn't the usual disciplinary drill.
Jane just stared at me, looking at me down her nose, an impressive feat given how I was taller than her and outmassed her by half a man at least. Her posture was all challenge, mixed with just a touch of uncertainty. I was no Rodriguez, and no doubt she was expecting him.
Juno opened her mouth to bark again, but I cut in with a raised hand.

"Let it go."

She looked at me, swallowed the command, then nodded. She understood the show. This wasn't about order. Not yet.

I stalked forward, slow and steady. Each step as deliberate as the last. I let them hear it. Let them feel it. Gave them time to wonder.

Jane met my eyes first. Unflinching. Defiant.

"What the hell is this?" she snapped. "Who are you?"

Brave words, spoken from her chest, and I could see Wendy was also watching with a vested interest, but… Marina just seemed to freeze. She watched me from the corner of her eye, and as mine caught hers, her head snapped forward, as if hoping I hadn't noticed her.


I didn't answer. I didn't have to. It was Marina who finally got it. I could almost see the moment it all clicked, and she tensed, ever so slightly, her fingers grasping for a rifle that wasn't there. She watched me like someone watches a hungry, feral wolf. One that wasn't quite right in the head, that had lost something… vital, something natural, and had crossed into the realm of the unknown. Something she expected to burst into violence without pause, warning or mercy, coiled up like a spring and staring at you with eyes not full of hunger, but instead, the eyes of something that enjoyed the act of killing.


She was tense, like she wanted to run from me, and in that split second decision she broke the silence, her words quiet, measured.

"…You're him."

Wendy turned to look at the dark-haired woman. "Him?"

I watched, just letting her talk. Letting her imagination run wild.

"The Lion of Bruhl."

The air shifted.

Jane looked gobsmacked. Wendy stiffened, her grin vanishing.

"Word has it that he jumped onto an Imperial tank, took a bullet to the chest, and didn't even flinch. Ripped open the hatch, dragged the crew out one by one, and threw the commander into the treads while it was still moving." Jane said, her tone stained with approval, and maybe even a bit of awe. "When the dust settled, he rode the burning wreck into the next skirmish like a cavalry charge- All while screaming and covered in soot."

I couldn't help but hike an eyebrow. I hadn't heard that version before, and it sounded as insane as anything else.

Wendy scoffed, but not confidently. "That's a myth. Like the guy who eats tank shells."

Jane pouted at the girl, her tone low, defensive. "He didn't eat it. He caught it."

Wendy laughed again, nervously. "Like that's any better."

But Marina's voice dropped lower, reverent, unnerved.

"They say he found an Imp ambush. That he cut them apart and bathed in their blood. That when they finally caught up to him, he was drenched red with it. That the Imperials pulled back not because of orders, but because he was still there. In the dark. In the woods. Waiting. Watching."

I had to hide a wince at that one. The ambush had been a slapdash shitshow from the word go, and people were making me out to be some kind of slasher killer one second and a vampire the next. Juno shot me a secretly sympathetic look, already knowing my feelings on it, but that didn't matter in the here and now.

I let them talk amongst each other for a few moments more. Chewing on what I wanted to say, without ruining the effect. Finally, I gave a hum that sounded like grinding engine gears, a trick I had picked up years ago for quieting a conversation.

"Don't believe everything you hear."

Marina met my eyes. "But some of it's true."

I didn't look away.

"Maybe."


Something passed between them. A silent conversation that lasted only a moment, all of which was written on their faces at the end. A thought, a creeping worry really, and a question. 'Why was The Lion here now?' They all had it, and I saw it in their eyes; the shift. Not awe. Not admiration. Something simpler.

Fear.

Uncertainty.

Caution
.
"You think this is punishment," I said, voice low.

Jane curled her lip, her shoulders squaring up again, but this time, less certain. "Isn't it?"

I smiled, almost amused. But there was nothing kind in it.

"No. I don't have time to play disciplinarian and with you three," My eyes landed on Jane like the barrel of an artillery piece, "you especially, there's little enough point. No, you're here because no one else wants you. That's the truth of it."


I turned to Wendy. "You're unstable. Reckless. You think fire is funny and shrapnel is an art form. You've got more knowledge of improvised demolition than most instructors, but no leash. No control. You don't know how to stop."


Wendy curled in on herself a bit, the ghost of a smile she'd perpetually carried finally vanishing. Her body shifted, her fingers stopped twitching, and she fell silent.


My eyes landed on Marina. "You're a better shot than anyone on this base with a rifle. But you vanish. You isolate yourself. You kill from a thousand meters, cut off and cut out, then disappear and don't speak to your squad for days. You're not a team player. You're not meant for formation fighting. You're a precision weapon with no trigger discipline. A ghost."

Marina didn't flinch, but the faintest line creased her brow.

Finally, I looked at Jane, who met my eyes with a defiant glare, as if she were daring me to test her. "And you. You're angry. Always. You fight with your fists, your mouth, and whatever else you can grab hold of. You hate authority. Hate orders. Hate anything that smells like control. But you win. You rip through obstacles like they insulted your mother and keep going like the world hasn't already fallen apart behind you."

Jane bared her teeth. "So what, we're all broken toys?"

I stepped back and swept my gaze over them all again.

"No. You're all useful."

That made them flinch. Just slightly.

"You're not the cookie cutter soldiers they want. You're not safe. You're not stable. You're not a textbook anything. You're exactly what every commander hopes gets transferred somewhere else. But past all that, what you are… is effective."

Now they were really listening.

"Wendy, you know how to destroy nearly anything. You can make bombs out of trash and trigger traps with a paperclip and a prayer. You know how to level a barracks, or blow the treads off a tank, or turn a man into bloody chunks, and laugh while you do it."

Her smile returned, ever so slightly. Not wild this time, though. It was quietly prideful, like someone had finally seen her for what she was.

"Marina, you can shoot the wings off a fly from three hundred yards. You track better than half the scouts in this army. You don't miss anything, ever. You don't flinch. You don't hesitate. You're a natural born hunter with the teeth to prove it."

She nodded once. That was all.

"Jane…"

I stepped in closer to her.

"You're the monster they try to build in boot camp and never manage to keep. You break rules, bones, and anything stupid enough to stand in front of you. You'll kill with a brick, a bottle, your hands. You're what happens when someone forgets that war isn't about honor, it's about who walks away."

Jane didn't say anything. But her stance shifted. Less resistance. More intent.

"You're not here because you screwed up. You're here because I chose you. Because I've seen what happens out there. Seen what real war looks like. And I've seen what it takes to win."

I let the wind roll through. Gave the pause its weight.

"This isn't about doing your duty. This isn't about lines on maps or medals. It's about doing what has to be done. The ugly shit. The quiet jobs. The ones no one talks about. It's about killing the enemy where they sleep. Blowing their supply lines off the roads. Making them so afraid of the dark, they forget how to fight in the day."

My eyes met Marina's, holding her gaze just long enough to see the thoughts ticking through her head. "You'll shoot from the shadows, cut their command chain, and vanish without a trace."

I then turned to Wendy, whose nervous twitching had stilled into something like attention, "You'll turn their fuel into firestorms. You'll rig charges under their trucks, their beds, their latrines if you have to."

And finally, to Jane, who met my eyes with a challenging glare, back arched and eyes narrowed. "You'll go in loud. You'll crush them when they're weakest. You'll hurt them."

I exhaled slowly.

"And through it all, you'll be something more than just outcasts and weirdos and dangerous footnotes. You'll make a difference. Not in speeches. Not in medals. In results."

The wind was drier now. The words hanging in the air like a hangman's noose.

"You want out?" I asked. "Say it now. No shame. No judgment. But if you stay, understand that you're not soldiers anymore. Not in the traditional sense."

A beat.

Then Wendy tilted her head. "Honestly? Sounds like a blast."

Jane exhaled, cracked her knuckles. "You want killers? Fine. Just don't expect me to kiss your ass."

Marina's voice, low. Steady. "If it ends this faster… I'm in."

I nodded.

"Then training starts at zero-five hundred. No drills. No marches. No formality. Just pain, precision, and preparation."

I turned to Juno. "They're yours when I'm not around. Make sure they don't torch the armory."

She gave me a sidelong glance. "I'll try. No promises."

I took one last look at the three.

"You're not soldiers. Not anymore. When we're done here, you'll be something else. Something more."

I gave each of them a hard look.

"You'll be Commandos."



AN: Well well, what have we here. Honestly, I got nothing. I'm feeling inspired and I kinda wanted to just dive right back into it, plus... I was kinda jazzed about this next arc. Is it the recruitment arc? Yes, yes it is. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy. In the end I did decide to stay in universe for the people in his team, and the choices weren't just because they were all flavors of hot girl. Though I admit... doesn't hurt. Huehuehuehue