News from the Front

[Richter]

After three days the shelling had stopped.

Furtive glances with my periscope showed no movement.  Not from the foxholes of my comrades, not from the front – shrouded as it was by billowing fog or smoke of whatever it was. Still and dead like a foggy day on the ocean.

I grew bolder, the dreamlike quiet surreal after the hours of bone jarring explosions and cracking gunfire.  I scrambled out of the foxhole, and fashioned crude a Dobbshead out of the debris, setting it up next to my pit.  Then I unbuttoned the tunic of my uniform, opened my standard-issue lawn chair, and sat down right there in the open.  I even brought out my canteen and calmly sipped.

Slack was almost oddly easy to find.  Must've been my state of mind; the lack of sleep and trauma making it far too easy for me to accept quiet and respite.  I even dozed, that sort of skipping-stone napping you do when you've been keyed up too long, and are starting to let down your guard.  I don't know how long I was there, the fog obliterated the disk of the sun into a pale wan diffusion, and it seemed like far too much work to reach for the dust cover on my timepiece.

I was still debating this expenditure of effort when I heard the movement – from the WRONG direction.  (How can I explain why I knew it was the WRONG direction?  It was the direction that had been spitting HE and mid-caliber ammo at my position for a small eternity.  You get a sense for this, if you're savvy).    It was four Pink Boys, cubicle grunts with uniforms and rifles slapped on the hustled out into the fog, tentative and uncertain.  Replacements, expendables.  They didn't hustle like trained troops in a hostile area, or even stride the cocky walk of fighting men taking it easy.  Their faces HAD once been locked in the permabliss ™ smiles of their kind, but were beginning to sag with concern and stress.  I almost felt BAD for them.  You need more than just drugs, meaningless trophies, and prepackaged experiences to get you though BS like this.

They looked at me and their weapons all fumbled up to ready.  Pneumatics, likely with nothing worse than tranqs or pink soma darts.  Great "Bob" some bureaucrat didn't even think they deserved a real gun in no man's land!  Keeping my cool I sat in my lawn chair and regarded them calmly.  Then donning a cocksure smile I raised my canteen in a sort of salute to them.

"At ease gentlemen."

Their smiles went back up a tick towards their trademark bland grins, somehow reassured by someone who was ACTUALLY relaxed, and their pneumos  lowered.

I shot them.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Shit yeah.   

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Kick-ASS, Richter. O.O

[Suu]

And this is why Richter has been chosen as my successor for the Principality while I go into exile for a bit.

[Richter]

It was a long, conflicted walk back to HQ.

I was sort of numb – I'm not ashamed of that – though it felt good to put some distance and some of the impenetrable fog between myself and the spot where I had put down that squad of barely-trained, just-about-unarmed pinks.  Like by breaking line of site I could get out of the moral quandry.  No more cocksure smile for me, har har!  It was left behind, still on the Dobbshead I'd set up.  We always used Dobbs as a logo, and a psyops thing.  Seemed fitting more now, the genuine elation of "Bob" leering back against the fake chemical glee of pink forces.   

First thing I got back at HQ was a loud request about why I had left my position.  I let the sentry know that with the unknown disposition of the rest of my squad and the "adjusted" tactical situation of a few dozen more foxholes being blown around us, I was making sure I was still assigned to the right one.  The capability for wit and sass proved I hadn't gotten pink'ed myself.  Hell, I almost cracked a smile again getting to mouth back at the sentry playing the jerk to screen out pink infiltrators.  He waved me through into the rear lines.

How do you describe a position fortified by the 3rd Yeti Sons (Wendy's Wendigos)?  Controlled chaos.  Everyone is either doing something, or at their slack (which often means asleep).  We always keep a few crates or ammo cans around labeled "Frop", and filled with whatever matter comes to hand (the pinks, without fail, will try to consume or analyze it).  Tools, weapons, books, food, it's all just out there.  A few big Dobbsheads grinning away too.  Reminds us why we do what we do, as well as unnerve the pinks.

Our fearsome leader (the titular and titular Wendy), was at command central, which meant the kitchen.  Seems she felt like playing Connie that day, so her dress actually matched the Beaver Cleaver-ville vibe.  Well, if Mrs. Cleaver was openly packing a .45 under each arm and chomping a cigar.  As she whipped a freshly made blueberry pie out the oven (not getting a SPEC of ash on it, mind you.) she was informing me what a risk-taking jerk, gloriously devious bastard, and lucky SOB I was.  I got an extra large slice, so I'm guessing I did OK by her estimation.

Got the skinny on the rest of my squad too.  Some were likely wasted, but between the fog and the chaos it was impossible to figure out WHO.  The rest had been spotted by aerial recon balloons striking out towards the lines.  The Pink shelling hadn't been strictly for killing.  Something odd and rectangular.  Hoary green stone.   

The fuckers had dug something up.  Something old and hard and WEIRD.  My buddies had a head start at it too.

Wendy doesn't ORDER much. (like our group does the whole "order" thing well)  She has the knack for having people in the right place right time just doing there thing.  She swept up the recon pics while I wolfed my pie and passed me a large coffee.  That coffee was the only thing worth pausing for at the time.  I was out the door a few moments later.  Time to head back.       

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Richter, you and I have to do something special on July 28th of this year.

Something grotesque.

[Richter]

Oh?  Anniversary of the eviction of the "Bonus Army"?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Richter, that was lovely.

[Eater of Clowns]

Every time I start reading something of Richter's, I feel like I need to go get a cup of coffee so I can focus. It has mass.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Oh?  Anniversary of the eviction of the "Bonus Army"?

100th Anniversary of the start of World War I

[Richter]

Yes.  That makes me want to spout something that will wither people.  Even doing the world conflict thing twice and regressing to colonial tribe struggles we still haven't learned, and likely WONT.