Gears Of Woar

I honestly don't remember much from Emergence Day. I was too young to take away anything other than lots of running and screaming. You always perceive things differently as a child. One minute you're watching Power Rangers, the next minute the house is on fire. You're sad that the dog's dead, your happy that a Brumack decided the school was the shortest route to its firing position. You're happy to hear that your asshole teacher bought it when a Corpser came up under his car, then a few years later you're sad that you had such a thought. Then you grow out of puberty and remember what an asshole he was. In retrospect, if my parents hadn't been crying and shouting so much I'd have thought the evacuation to Jacinto was the most fun day of my life.

Children are honest, often brutally so. And they have a habit of quickly pointing out to everyone in earshot that something is ridiculous or stupid. We need more children in the military. Mistake #1: I'm in Gamma Squad. My commanding officer thinks it is the epitome of wit to call us "The Fighting Gams." What little respect I had for Lt. Stevenson evaporated when he first said that. Apparently Stevenson isn't the first pseudo-educated idiot to command Gamma. We have a long history of stupidity. Col. Hoffman is under the impression that any plan, no matter how retarded, that has so much as a 1 in a million chance of helping the war effort must be implemented. But Hoffman isn't so dumb that he'd send his best and brightest off to demolish imulsion refineries, thereby denying them to an enemy that doesn't even use it. So while Alpha Squad is out as part of a plan to use some new superweapon to end the war, Gamma Squad is sending four guys to try and build some kind of militia out of the Stranded. Because they already did that a decade ago in order to survive and EVERYONE is aware of the C.O.G.s Stranded recruitment programs. But nonetheless we're getting sent out to insure that something that's already happening is started.

The four of us were dropped off inside the city. There was myself, Lt. Stevenson, John, and Franklin. Stevenson was a confirmed idiot. John just always seemed off, having a dozen different conspiracy theories regarding mind control experiments hidden in microwave dinners. Franklin kept showing us pictures and telling us what he was going to do with his kids when the war was over. But we knew for a fact that the pictures weren't of Franklin's children and he, in fact, had no kids. He was recruited out of prison, he received a full pardon in return for military service. Only a unit's CO was given the details of a gear's incarceration, and when we asked Stevenson about it he just giggled. As for myself, I had signed up for the gears back when I was young and stupid enough to think I was going to single-handedly win the war and save the world.

It was only a few blocks to the Stranded settlement, and for reasons none of us could fathom John felt the need to shift every wrecked car we passed into neutral. We reached the settlement uneventfully and, when challenged by the gate keeper, Stevenson said he needed to let us in because we had urgent COG business. Which really won them over because most of these people felt that the government had abandoned them 14 years earlier. One of the sentries almost started shooting at us before some Stranded came up and threw a metal jug at our feet. He said that if one of us could down the whole thing in one go he'd let us in. The guys all looked at me and I suddenly regretted having drank them all under the table a few months back.

I woke up with a bitching hangover, and then I noticed I was ass naked and lying next to an unconscious Berserker. At that point Franklin and several Stranded came in and started laughing their asses off. I ran outside and, while still naked, started vomiting. It had less to do with the hangover and more to do with what possibly could have happened in the night. As I started to dress myself I asked how they had managed to knock a Berserker unconscious. They didn't really answer except to say that it had taken less Wild Turkey than they had expected. One of them then pointed out bloodstains on the sheets and elaborated on what they meant. I promptly started to vomit again at the thought of having been her first time.

Franklin and John were still laughing at me when sentries started to yell out warnings of Locust incoming. We got up to the walls and saw a mass of them coming down the street, a few Theron Guards leading a battalion of drones and grenadiers. And one Brumack. I couldn't imagine why they needed artillery but there it was. There wasn't much of a plan or strategy, we all just started shooting. It was like a war of attrition, the side with the best accuracy would win. And if everyone couldn't shoot straight then the Locust would win with sheer numbers.

John got weirder than usual as he started firing like a lunatic and shouting at the top of his lungs.
"I have to kill the Locust!"
"John, you are the Locust."
And then John was a Drone.
We were all a little confused by that, but not so confused that I didn't cut him in two with "The Great Communicator," as I had started to call my lancer. I was focussed enough to kill him but I was honestly baffled as to what had happened. Apparently, a Locust grenadier was too, as he had come out of cover to get a better look at the spectacle. I looked at him, he looked at me, and I swear he shrugged in disbelief before a Stranded sniper took his head off.

And then the Berserker woke up. And she was pissed. Through all the gunfire and screaming I didn't think the Berserker would be able to hear well enough to find a target. She then locked her blind eyes on me and charged. I managed to jump out of the way and was barely on my feet before she charged again. She sniffed the air, stared right at me, and came screaming like a banshee. She remembered my scent from the night before and was keyed in on me. I started running deeper into the settlement. If there was any truth to the manuals the military gave us her sense of smell was for finding targets, not tracking them. She wasn't a bloodhound, and if I could get a respectable distance away she wouldn't be able to smell me through the blood and gunsmoke.

I didn't like the idea of being off the firing line and I downright hated the idea of leaving a Berserker wandering around inside the settlement. Having gotten a safe distance away, I came up with an incredibly stupid idea befitting Gamma Squad. I dropped my pants and took off my underwear. I then wrapped it around a rock, took the long way around the Berserker back to the fighting and told Franklin my idea. He laughed at me for what seemed like several minutes before he agreed to help me. Using my boxers we coaxed the Berserker over and Franklin hurled it into the mass of Locust. I don't know if it was an accident or planned, but Franklin managed to land my underwear on the Brumack's head, something he didn't notice and the Berserker was to blind and angry to tell the difference. The fight was short but brutal. The Brumack managed to crush the Berserker under the combined weight of himself and his guns, but several right hooks to his head had left him woozy. He managed to fire an artillery round into a building right next to himself, causing the building to collapse, crushing the Brumack and a few dozen Locust. It also managed to block off the street they were approaching from.

I could hear the Theron Guards hissing orders to fall back. I couldn't tell if it was a retreat or if they were just regrouping, I didn't care, it felt like a win. Minutes later we found out what happened to Stevenson, as narrated by a blood soaked 13 year old. Apparently he was snorting crank off her chest when an explosion from a grenade caused a piece of debris to hit him at just the right angle with just enough force to throw his head down, driving the plastic tube he was using for his narcotic escapades right up into his sinuses. He seemed to have drowned in his own blood.

Franklin and I decided it was time to get out of the clusterfuck. 2 of us were dead, 2 of us were publicly humiliated, and one of us had undergone a physically impossible metamorphosis. We called for Ravens and were told we'd have to wait a few hours. Apparently Delta Squad was out saving the world and they were hogging every available helicopter. They were winning the war. I had deflowered a Berserker. They talk about proudly telling your grandkids about what you did during the war. I think the war just drove me to celibacy.