“Nii-san!” (Hideyoshi) A longing and saddened voice filled my head as the blurry vision around me started to come clear.

I found myself back in the camp, with the huge crowd of kids surrounding me and a tearful Hideyoshi punching shuffling me hard by the chest.

“I’m up! I’m up! Geez! Would it kill anyone to let me sleep some more?” (Rynosuke)

“Oiya Oiya, don’t be so cold-hearted, the boy cared for you, you know?” (Julia)

“She’s right you know?” (Rina)

Another familiar voice entered the scene, I looked to the left to see Rina, intensely focusing on patching up my arm. It was quite strange, as the beast bit it off along with the EBR spear. However, I brushed it off as Rina managed to use the medical equipment and made me a new arm I guessed.

“So I figured that you all managed to take down the creature?” (Rynosuke)

“Da! But the beast was extremely injured, presumably from fighting you? I mean, boya you managed to hold it back thirty more minutes for your partner to come back with the civilian.” (Julia)

“Really? I thought I did horribly with losing an arm and barely done any slices and chops onto its body…” (Rynosuke)

“You’re really strong Nii-chan!” (Hideyoshi)

“What do you mean? I lost against the beast no?” (Rynosuke)

“Well you did and you gave me quite a pain in the ass problem to take care of, but you did manage to make it easy for these untrained idiots to take them out.” (Rina)

Rina taunted the cadets, in which many retaliated.

“I didn’t see you helping!”

“Yeah!”

“True, but I was the one that patched up those burnt wounds and slide cuts because you idiots didn’t hold the gun properly, wasn’t I?” (Rina)

She responded holding up and warding her scalpel to intimidate the lot.

“Enough! Let’s eat, I’m hungry!” (Julia)

…

I was quite disappointed today till I looked in the contents of the paper bag Hideyoshi said I had with me when they found me. I looked inside to find quite a lot of things ranging from foods and drinks to knives and blunts, furthermore a cleaning kit for guns and at the bottom was a key. The foods stuff were used to make food and the weapons were issued to the cadets in case of low ammunition, however for the key, I couldn’t see any use for it at the time so I decided to store it in my vest.

Thanks to this, though we didn’t manage to get any game, the root vegetables stored on my vest was later mixed with a few cans of corned beef from my paper bag I took from the APC, tomato sauce packets and crackers to make a stew.

Though it wasn’t that good, it was still palatable enough for me to finish one bowl of it.

Since Rina was focusing on patching up the wounded and the newly acquired civilian, she was absent during lunch. So after finishing my portion, I decided to bring her some food as well, complimenting her on the amount of work and effort she had been doing for the last 3 hours.

I put everything in an insulated Tupperware and brought it to the medic tent. Thanks to the tip by Kuucifer from before, we managed to get quite a lot of medical equipment, cooking utensils and so on. This explained how we managed to stay well fed and store food on our journey before getting to D9.

“Rina! Take a rest and eat!” (Rynosuke) I said, peeking through the covers of the tent.

And to my surprise, the girl I brought back had woke up on her sick bed.

“Ah…You’re here now. Come here Ryno, I need your help.” (Rina) she said, signing me to her seat while the patient held tightly on her hand, silently glaring at me.

She was a young girl with blonde hair, a slender build and ruby eyes.

“Alright…” (Rynosuke) I put down the container on the table and sat adjacently to the bed.

“She doesn’t understand Japanese or English…and seeing how you could understand and interrogate that man from earlier, may be you can help me with this girl.” (Rina) Rina asked me.

“What do ya need me for?” (Rynosuke)

“The wounds she had seemed to not from the beast we took down…Judging by the cuts and the bruises she received, she must have been tortured. Pretty much, similar to Julia-san…” (Rina)

“Rileland…” (Rynosuke)

The situation now got more interesting, as this girl could lead us to their nearest camp and from that, we could easily avoid ambushes and sudden encounters.

“Ryno, the girl is still shaken from the incident…so do your best…” (Rina)

Rina then let go of the girl’s hand, ensured her to me and then left the tent.

“Right…” (Rynosuke) I said as I turned the chair backwards to make a stand for my notebook. Looking at the poor girl, I saw that she was still shaking, so I tried to console her.

“You’re fine, you’re fine. I’m not gonna hurt ya.” (Rynosuke) I said.

“You…you understand me?”

“Yeah…I pick up languages pretty quick, so yeah.” (Rynosuke)

After hearing me say so, she immediately grabbed my hand off my note book and pleaded.

“Pleases Sire! Please help us!” She said, gripping tightly onto my hands.

“We’ll do our best, now may I have your name? And what’s seems to be the problem?” (Rynosuke)

“My name is Karen Welcroft…We were attacked by bandits…*Sniff*…they tortured us…*Sniff*…” (Karen) Karen stuttered in her tears as she retold the events.

“How did you escape?” (Rynosuke) I continued as I wrote down on my notes.

“At night when they were starting to pick out the girls to use, I managed to get away.” (Karen)

“Then you remember the way back to your village no?” (Rynosuke)

“I do…*Sniff*…I do…” (Karen)

We continued with a few more questions. Though most of them were about the crimes of what this band of bandits had done to her village and not about flanking routes of any advantages, I had found more hatred towards that empire and their crimes of supporting looting militias and brigands. However, seeing that she was a little too tired, I then decided to end the interview.

“Alright. Well that’s enough for today. Please rest. I’ll make arrangements we’ll move in out as soon as we’re ready.” (Rynosuke)

I said, bowing her good bye and with the information I had gathered, I consulted Julia-san.

…

“Julia-san!” (Rynosuke) I called out to her as she was finishing up with the gun safety lessons for the greenhorns.

“Ah, dorogoy, what’s up?”(Julia)

“We need to talk” (Rynosuke)

I then proposed the plan to liberate the village from the bandit occupation. Though our ammunitions and weapons were low and our numbers of fighters were little, I did managed to convince her to come over and liberate the village with the help of the dead pan heroine of course. Rina vouched for me and my decision to liberate the village.

“Julia-san, we should help the poor girl. After all, we were attacked by the same people, so shouldn’t we help them out?” (Rynosuke) I said.

“I understand what you’re saying boya, but doesn’t it feel suspicious to you?” (Julia-san)

“Julia-san, what’s so suspicious? Its human lives we’re talking about. The girl we found was barely alive, she was bruised and cut by them, and if Ryno hadn’t intercept the beast at its path it might have killed her.” (Rina) She stood up and said.

“Settle down Rina. We need to think this through first.” (Julia)

“She’s right Rina-san, we don’t know anything about this girl. I vote we should send a small unit to recon and report what they see. I’ll even volunteer if it comes to it.” (Rynosuke)

“Boya are you alright in the head? I’m not gonna let you go on a mission with all those wounds. You’ve done enough dorogoy.”(Julia) She signed.

“What if I bring someone with me? I mean I feel fine, I can carry a 4 kg M16 and two extra magazines with a side arm and two extra mags and can still run.” (Rynosuke)

“No…I won’t allow it.” (Julia)

“Right. Then a fight then?” (Rynosuke)

“Va?” (Julia)

“Back in the commandoes, I had to fight with those like me to get enough food to get through the day. So?” (Rynosuke) I said, standing up to stretch.

“You can’t be serious. There is no way I’m gonna fight one of my students.” (Julia)

“Well fortunately I’m not your student, so are you going to fight me or no? Because I’ll be damned if I neglect a cry of someone in need!” (Rynosuke) With a strong slam on the table I then made my point.

“Once again…I can’t fight one of my students!” (Julia)

“How so? I thought combat cadets have to start practice hand to hand combat with their teachers daily, so why can’t you fight me?” (Rynosuke)

“Ah it’s because…” (Rina)

As RIna was about to say something, she was then interrupted by Captain Julia who jumped across the table to interrupt the girl.

“Oi! He doesn’t need to know about it! Ahahaha…” (Julia) she brushed it off with a pretentious laugh.

Despite the effort of Julia trying to stop her from continuing, that effort was proven futile as Rina stood up, walked over to my seat and continued.

“NO!” (Julia) Julia yelled out loud as she tried to cling onto the lab coat of Rina, but it didn’t slow the girl down one bit as she leaned over my ears and told me the whole story.

Though at first, I managed to keep a poker face and a sly smirk, I soon lost my composure and busted out laughing while Julia bent over the table, muttering with her hair drooping over her head.

“Hahaha! What?! Holy shit! Ahaha!” (Rynosuke)

“This is overreacting at its best, dank and stupid, but I’ll savor it.” C (Rina) Rina said, leaning against the wall, observing the comedy scene in front of her.

“Your all-powerful captain was beaten by that kid Nam Seung?! You’re kidding right?!” (Rynosuke) I continued laughing until I coughed out blood.

…

After an hour or two after our discussion and me mockingly laughed continuously at the captain, Julia slammed the table and accepted to spar with me, close quarter combat only. We both took the baton and got into the cross road main area of the village. Suddenly, we were then surrounded by her groupies.

“Dorogoy would you get off my case if I win?” (Julia)

“Fight me first then we’ll see.” (Rynosuke) I said, twirling around my baton.

“Fine then…” (Julia) She said, throwing her baton to the side and continued.

“In true Spetsnaz fashion and more or less the Crimson Beret in the Crisom Beret training, I’ll take you down in three minutes. Comrades please synchronize your watches to count down to three minutes.” (Julia)

Responding to Julia’s request with an inhumanly synchronization of turn on their watches, as if they were her puppets, being twirled around by this stoic puppeteer. Anyhow, though I was distracted by their behavior, I still kept my smug and arrogant smirk.

Well at this point, I was a douche. I was still arrogant, smug and especially ignorant. I didn’t know what came over me and made me acted like that, that day. Though my image of her being a strong and capable leader was shattered after I heard Rina’s story. Julia couldn’t bring herself to hurt nor fight the Korean group as they had experienced quite a large trauma in their home battlefield. So when Nam Seung revolted at her methods and assaulted her, the only thing this woman did was parry moves and dodge his attacks. However, with one misstep of her parry, the brat managed to knock her off her balance and made her fell face first on the ground. Quite pathetic at that point actually, as if it was me, I would have punched the kid into a pulp and make him do my “Pleasure duties” for the C.Os.

She started out lunging at me with her arms opened up, trying to grab me by the waist. I dodged left, grabbing the shoulder of her right arm and pushed her down to the ground face down while the kids around us cheered for their teacher.

“Julia-sensei! Fight on!”

Or

“You can beat him!”

And with a few over-enthusiastic boys and girls shouting slurs at me.

“You faggot! Why don’t you pick a fight with man?!”

Or even more insulting and ungrateful, some even said.

“Hell! We’d have stood with a better chance if we were to walk out with Nam Seung we wouldn’t have to take care of your reckless ass!”

That sentence sorta pissed me off a tad bit which I redirected to beat the living hell out of Julia.

Gripping tighter on the baton, I went for the offensive, landing several strikes on her head, torso and leg.

“Put up a fight! Damnit! Here I thought I was about to fight the famous fighting styles of the Red beret Spetsnaz…” (Rynosuke) I said while sadistically beating her to a pulp.

Though we were both wearing full gear comprised of harnesses and shock vests, the pain from a 4kg baton would still be felt to our bones.

“Shut it!” (Julia) She came back to her feet, turning around and yelled at them.

After getting back into a defensive posture, she continued.

“This is between me and him…Cheer for us but don’t scowl us Understood?!!” (Julia) She ordered them.

“Ma’am yes ma’am!” OF which they responded in unison, this still creeps me out till now.

However, it’d gotten better as I had understood that it had been one of her powers being an apostle an all. I’ll go through the extent of her power “leader’s calling”. More on that later on, but basically now we were in a standstill with the same things that Rina told me, but this time she took more hits than parried them.

“Come on! Fight!” (Rynosuke) I shouted at her in frustration and rushed in to land my next hit.

This was a grave mistake on my side, as she took my openness of swing the baton to grab my hand and pummeled me on to the ground.

“Now for the AK!” (Julia) She said,

“Huh?!” (Rynosuke)

She then grabbed my wrist and with a hard turn, she broke open my grasp of the baton and pushed it down to my neck while keeping her knee on the lower joint of my left arm.

“O-Ow! Don’t think you’ve beaten me yet!” (Rynosuke)

Though I had say this to her and had been trying my best to get up from her grip.

“Dude you’re done just give in.”

“Yeah just accept defeat...”

The spectators said,

I was pretty pathetic at this point, crying and kicking my legs up and down, persistently telling her that she hadn’t won yet since she hadn’t managed to break my nose or break my teeth.

“No! I’m never gonna surrender ya hear me?! I’m gonna fucking live!” (Rynosuke)

Julia then pushed down harder to the joint, pressuring the spot to lead me to give up. However, those who had been working alongside or had been following my orders for the last 5 years would know that I’d rather be crippled before I admit surrender.

So as she pressured my joints deeper, I turned to the other side, completely dislocating the joint and pushed her onto the ground, using the reaming strength I had left as well as my body weight to force her down on her face.

“he…he…I win…” (Rynosuke)

At this point, I was pushing myself way too much, seeing that I didn’t sleep, carried quite a large amount of people on my back today and just ate, so the amount of adrenaline left in my body had mostly depleted. This in turns led to me fainting after 5 seconds of riding on top of Julia….

Pathetic.