“Oh, quit your moanin’.” Pete replied with a bit more force, “Seriously, so your base is gonna take a little while longer to come together, so what? Life’s full of little disappointments, and we’re defined by the way we handle them.”
“How very poetic.” I mocked, “Look, I get that you’re trying to cheer me up, but you just don’t get it.”
“Really? I don’t get it?” Pete asked defensively, “Of all the people on this base I think I get it most of all! Shit, we’re being attacked by the guy who took my group from me.”
“Well, he didn’t take it, did he? Just sort of… claimed it? I don’t know, point is that he wasn’t directly responsible for what happened to you, was he?”
Pete sighed at that, “I don’t know,” he replied somewhat sadly, “I thought I did, but in light of recent events… I don’t know, I doubt he had anything direct to do with it, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he started the whispers that led to that little mutiny.”
“Little mutiny…” I chuckled, “Sometimes I’m worried about getting hit with a ‘little mutiny’.”
“Why?” Paul asked, having apparently decided to sneak up on Pete and I mid-conversation, “We love you, Zo, you’re a good leader, and you’re doin’ the best job you can.”
I was little uncomfortable with Paul saying ‘we love you’ given our history, but I forced myself through the awkwardness of it all and shrugged, “I guess I’m just worried that I’m not doing as good of a job as I think I am, you know?”
“And that’s what makes you a great leader,” Pete said confidently, “you question yourself, you struggle with decisions. That leaves next to no room for us to do the same. If there’s an issue with anything you say or order us to do, we’re confident that you’ve already thought it through a million-and-one times.”
“Heh, glad to hear you have so much faith in me.”
“You instil that,” Paul interjected before Pete could open his mouth again, “you give us faith in your ability.”
“How?” I asked with an angry sort of laugh, “It’s been ages, and I can’t even get something as simple as the bunker off the ground.”
“That’s because you’re doing it right,” Paul said, “you’ve got the plans in place, you’ve got the workers, you’ve done everything you need to do before going in. That means that when the thing does finally get built, it’ll be built to last.”
“Exactly,” Pete added, “you’re-”
“Dinos incoming!” Chad shouted from the centre of the compound, “We’ve got dinos coming for the back wall!”
Chapter Two
“What’re you talking about?” I called down to the frantic Chad as I looked around the forest and the compound, wondering exactly what vantage he had that I didn’t.
“Raptors!” Chad yelled back in response, “A few of the Freemen decided to head out the back for berries or some shit, ended up getting tailed!”
I pulled up my community screen to try and get an idea of what he was talking about and then saw it, three Freemen reporting they were in danger along with a really basic description of what was definitely a raptor with a crudely marked ‘9’ next to their report.
“Shit…” I muttered before getting rid of the menu and running for the stairs, “Paul, you’re with me. Pete, you stay up here, make sure nothing fucks with that wall back there.”
“See, this is what I’m talkin’ about,” Pete chuckled as he moseyed over to the back corner of the roof and took aim at the hole the bronties had made, “you’re the kinda boss who’s the first one in and the last one out.”
“You can boost my self-esteem some more when I get back with the Freemen.” I replied, trying my best to hide my little smile as Paul and I disappeared into the building and started slamming our way down the stairs, “You reckon you’ll be alright with handling a bit of a fight, Paul?”
“I sure hope so,” Paul said light-heartedly, “I mean, I am a little out of practice. You sure that you wouldn’t rather take Chad? He’s the one who runs all the community stuff.”
“And he’s in the dog house for not running it properly,” I said slightly more coldly than I’d intended, “he’s a great dude, but he should’ve told us he was having trouble keeping track of them all, especially now that they’re apparently reporting to us.”
“You didn’t know were reporting?”
“Paul, now would be a very bad time to tell me that you knew about the reporting and didn’t tell me.”
Paul didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then finally let out a somewhat ashamed “Well, I spend a lot of time with them…”
I was right about to stop in the lobby and chastise him when, seemingly out of nowhere, Brendo came over to me, “Hey, Zo. Finished cataloguing Pete’s stuff. I can’t believ-”
“Good, great, you’re with me.” I interjected as I led him and Paul out of the building.
“I…” Brendo trailed off before letting out an amused huff as we hoofed our way toward the still unpatched hole in the back wall, ignoring the fact that Chad was running around and seemed to be accounting for the rest of the Freemen, “Alright, guess I’m a part of my first rescue team. You sure you don’t want me to stay here and cover Chad?”
“He’ll be fine, what we need to do is go out, get the Freemen, and get them back here before the raptors figure out where we are.”
“I’m sure they probably already know,” Brendo chuckled as we hopped over the rubble and pushed into the forest as fast as we could, “we’re not exactly small.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think they know about the massive hole in our defences yet,” I said as coolly as I could, “trust me, we’re not ready for a bunch of those smart bastards to come running through. I reckon if you and Freddie hadn’t gotten rid of that first batch they’d still be there.”
Paul chuckled at that before quickly explaining himself after I’d shot him an unimpressed look, “I just started thinking how flea-like they are. They can jump, when they’re in a place they’re a bitch to get out, and they feed off of our blood… and meat… and basically anything else they can get their claws into.”
“That tangent aside,” I said, pretending that I wasn’t picturing raptor-sized fleas, “can we focus on the task at hand? We don’t know how far away from the raptors the Freemen got before sending their message, and we don’t know how far off track they went when they panicked.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that…” Brendo muttered as he slowly came to a stop and used his gun to point to something over to our left, “You see what I see?”
It took me a few moments, and also some shuffling so I had Brendo’s line of sight through the trees, but I eventually spotted what he was referring to.
“Found the Freemen…” I whispered as I scanned the area around the five Freemen who, for some unknown reason, had come to stand like a bunch of manikins in front of a rock., “now, where are the raptors?”
Chapter Three
“What’re they doing?” Paul asked as we cautiously started moving toward the frozen Freemen.
“We can find that out after we grab them.” I replied before breathing a sigh of relief when I saw that Brendo was doing his part in scanning the forest, “I need you to focus, alright? I’d really rather not run into the raptors. We aren’t out here to fight, we’re here to get these guys back so we can get ready for the real fight.”
“I know that,” Paul said, clearly not ‘knowing that’ as he walked along without bothering to check his sectors, “I’m just curious.”
“You know what they say about curiosity,” Brendo breathed between checking our six and three o’clock, “fucked the shit out of that cat.”
I have to admit I barely managed to stifle the laugh from that, and I’m pretty sure I only managed it because we’d reached the Freemen, “C’mon,” I said as I tapped one on the shoulder, “we’re taking you home.”
“You know they can’t hear you, right?” Brendo asked amusedly.
&n
bsp; “It’s fun to talk to them,” Paul replied before I could, leaving me to tap the rest of the Freemen and order them to follow us, “makes them seem a bit more human, you know?”
“Still, seems slightly dangerous given how exposed we are.” Brendo said without stopping his vigilant searching.
“We aren’t that exposed,” Paul said confidently, “we’re, what, a few hundred meters from the base?”
“Yeah, but how quick do you reckon you could run that?” Brendo asked ominously.
“Dunno, ten, fifteen seconds, how come?”
“No reason,” Brendo replied coolly as he slung his rifle over his shoulder and indicated for me to do the same, “I just feel like they might be able to do it a bit quicker.”
I followed where Brendo had gestured with his head and saw that there were at least six raptors about fifty feet from us, staring through the trees like we’d done something to offend them.
“Run?” Paul asked after swallowing a brick-sized lump.
“Run.” I replied before starting a sprint towards the rear of the compound, only to see that the hole we’d come through had been boarded up, “Get around the front!”
The guys didn’t need to be told twice, and before long we were all smashing our way through the forest, the Freemen either struggling to keep up or going significantly faster than us which, unsurprisingly, made it incredibly difficult to maintain pace.
“Fuckin’ escort missions.” Brendo laughed right before one of the raptors let out its signature call, “Is there a door around the front?”
“Bloody better be.” I replied with a smile that confused even me.
I didn’t know why I was having so much fun with the running, but figured that it might’ve had something to do with the fact that what we were doing was simple.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy running beside that seemingly endless wall, and it was definitely terrifying, but it was still simple.
There was nothing political about raptors, there were no grey areas, it was either we were going to die or we weren’t.
There was something liberating about that.
The happy feeling I felt wasn’t to be permanent though, no, instead I was slapped in the face with reality as we got around the front of the compound and discovered that, to my great dismay, there wasn’t a door.
“Shit.” Paul cursed after sneaking a look around the compound, “They’re almost here, what do we do?”
I went to respond but stopped when a little message popped up.
GeriatricSuperHero (Community): I need everyone but Zoey to hide around the other side of the compound. Zoey, run up the road and don’t stop until I tell you to.
It took me a seconds to realise why Pete would want me to do that, and when I did I couldn’t help but wonder if he really was all that focused on keeping me alive.
I wasn’t about to argue with him though, and started running as fast as I could up the road, doing my best not to think about the fact that I was being chased by raptors.
Again.
Chapter Four
Based on the fact that nobody had screamed, I assumed that I had successfully drawn the attention of the raptors, regardless of if I actually wanted to or not.
I refused to look back, knowing that it would undoubtedly slow me down and let me slip back into the waiting maws of my pursuers.
“Fuckin’ raptors…” I muttered as my feet pushed harder and harder against the gravel, propelling me forward faster and faster.
For a moment there I was actually wondering if what I was doing was the entirety of Pete’s plan, get me and the raptors away and hope that I figured it out a way back.
Actually, I wasn’t all that sure if that last part had crossed Pete’s mind at all, but then I heard the crack of his sniper being fired followed swiftly by a raptor screeching in pain.
It’s funny, I could almost hear the sound of the bolt of his rifle shifting, the empty casing hitting the concrete beneath him, and the sweet, sweet sound of a fresh round slipping into the chamber before he fired off another perfect shot.
Well, I assume it was perfect. Again, I wasn’t really confident in my ability to both run straight and look behind me at the same time.
“Slide, clink, pop…” I whispered in near-exact timing as another shot rang out.
I did that for a while until I noticed a bend in the road and started to panic that I was going to go outside of Pete’s field of view.
Thing was that I didn’t have any options.
If I slowed down I was as good as dead, and if I just kept going forward I was going to end up running into the woods which would have the same result visibility-wise.
Rationalising that I was probably going to be safer on the road, I rounded the bend.
Surprise, surprise, I almost instantly regretted it, and not because of the raptors.
No, turns out Freddie and company had gone ahead and set up a roadblock a few hundred meters from the bend.
I was convinced that that was the end of the road for me, pun gloriously intended, but was instead left to look on in stunned amazement as the few soldiers manning the blockade were looking in the other direction.
Obviously, this confused me, until I realised that they weren’t trying to stop us from getting out, that’s what they wanted after all.
What they were doing was making it so that no one interrupted whatever it was that Freddie had planned.
Some part of me wanted to go and scope it out, get some idea of what their operational goals and plans were, but a fresh message from Pete turned me away from that.
Literally.
GeriatricSuperHero (Community): Raptors are gone. Where’d you go?
Zoey (Community): I;ll xplain when I get bak.
I was slightly disappointed in my piss-poor message, especially because Pete’s grammar and punctuation was so damned perfect, but I quickly forgave myself and accepted that it was because I was stressed out from having just basically Scooby Doo’d away from the roadblock, scrambly legs, sound effects, and all.
What do you mean ‘Scooby Doo’ isn’t a verb?
No, you’re a proper noun!
Chapter Five
“So…” Pete trailed off after smashing through the wood and letting me in through the back of the base, “they were just waiting there?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, man.” I replied, reflecting his confusion, “Like I said, I think it’s just so that no one messes around with whatever Freddie has planned. Speakin’ of, do you have any idea what that might be?”
Pete shook his head, then indicated for me to follow him to the main building where the rest of the guys, minus Chad, were waiting, along with the Js who looked quite menacing as they guarded the elevator with their steggies and guns.
“I reckon Brendo might though.” Pete said after a few seconds of staring at the Js.
“Brendo might what now?” Brendo asked concernedly, “I swear, I had nothin’ to do with those Freemen wandering off.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I replied calmly, soothing Brendo’s stressed expression as I did so, “we’re just wondering if you’d know why Freddie would be setting up blockades up the road.”
“Oh…” Brendo breathed in relief before turning serious, “Oh! That’s not good.”
“How do you mean?” Paul asked curiously.
“It means that he’s gettin’ more people in.” Brendo clarified, “He’ll divert most people, or shoot ‘em on sight, but I’d say that he’s calling in the numerous favours we’ve been owed over the past… however long, and when I say ‘numerous’ I mean ‘metric fuckton’.”
“Really?” I chuckled, “You guys don’t seem the type that people end up owing favours.”
“Keep in mind that, before all this shit, we were actually pretty cool dudes,” Brendo said defensively, “we played our music, picked on the big kids, then went all over Thren. This Freddie, this new Freddie, seems a bit more agro though, and, for whatever reason, has
decided that y’all will be his first conquest.”
That’s when I finally figured out where Freddie’s snap must’ve come from, “The power vacuum…”
I earned quite a few confused looks from that, mostly because I gave no context, was looking at the ground, and continued to move my lips after muttering the almost alien phrase.
“I think what set off Freddie was the realisation that he and his could be the new Metois,” I clarified, “which is why he doesn’t want anyone interacting with us. He doesn’t want us to get any more allies or, possibly worse for him, someone else to come in and take this out from under us.”
“That’s why he’s calling in those favours,” Brendo added, “he doesn’t just want to destroy yo-us, he wants to create his own little empire.”
“And he couldn’t just do that with his guys?” Paul chuckled, “I mean, they could just breeze through here and take out us as fast as possible.”
“He knows we’ll take out a bunch of his men in the fight though,” Pete interjected, “which will leave him in the same position as us, only he’ll be slightly better armed.”
“That won’t balance out the destruction,” Brendo said matter-of-factly, “if he came in hard and fast, both him and us would end up knocking down more walls than we’ve put up, leaving him completely exposed to another assault.”
That’s when I had a thought, “Is there any chance his allies would turn on him?”
“Not without some pretty major prompting,” Brendo replied, “none of them will want to end up getting blacklisted on the forums as untrustworthy.”
“So we alter the narrative,” Miles said, finally deciding to add his piece to the conversation, “we used to do it all the time when I was still with the Metois. We make it clear that Freddie plans to just wipe us off the map, and that the others he pulled to his destructive assault just wanted to do what was right when they turned on him.”
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