Interlude - Mizu the Angry Flame - Part Two

"We're going where?" she asked. She was still feeling a little tired, and who could blame her? It was half past nine-thirty in the morning on a Saturday. She should still be in bed at this hour, not geared up in the back of an APC.

It was her, Mercer the leader of Yellow Squadron, Steve, and three others from Red Squadron. She'd worked with them a couple of times, but for the most part, her job stuck her with her team. Not that it always felt like a team. When shit went a little pear-shaped for her, they were never quick to jump in and help.

"Podunky," Mercer said. He shifted, as if trying to make himself comfortable in his seat. There was no use for it, though. Whoever designed the seats in this thing deserved to be immolated. They were basically just two long wooden planks with paper-thin padding, and they were the lucky ones. There were only six of them in the back, and her knees kept bumping into Clive's next to her. The E-rankers had ten fully-geared troopers in the same space.

"Where the hell is Podunky?" one of the Red Squadron guys asked. It was a fair question, the name sounded made up.

"Small town, about two hours out from Fortress ENE," Mercer said.

"Two hours?!" she said.

"Chill, Aokawa," Mercer said. "It's warm enough in here."

She tempered herself, the temperature around her dropping. It wasn't like the heat would bother her much. But still. Two hours?

"It's a long ways out, I know. But that just means that I have plenty of time to fill you in."

They all groaned at that. Mercer liked his briefings a little too much.

"Fortunately," he continued. "There's not much that I do know, and some of that is classified."

"What can you tell us?" Clive asked.

"It's a developing situation. An allied corporation, Synthcorp, have discovered an active D-rank portal in one of their compounds. They've reportedly been fighting it for a while. The portal breached this morning."

"When?" Clive asked. "If it breached, it must have been active for a while, no?"

"I don't have all the answers," Mercer said. "What I do know is this; two squads of E-ranked soldiers have failed to contain the issue already. Synthcrop needs this dealt with and in a private sort of way. We're to go in, close the portal, help anyone from the corp we can, and we're to close our eyes about anything else we see. No body cams, no cute pics with your augs. I need you to digi-sign these NDAs as well."

She hated this kind of thing. The secrecy, the bullshit. She'd bet a week's pay that there was some skeevy shit going on, and they'd never be allowed to tell anyone about it.

What was the point of being a D-ranker if she was stuck dancing to some corpo fiddle?

She couldn't get to C-rank soon enough, only she was worried that it would only mean that the fiddle player would be switched out for another. She grit her teeth and signed the damned NDA, though.

"We'll be fighting orcs," Mercer said. "Humanoid, some level of tool and weapon use, some base tactics. Consider them stronger and tougher than the average human. We're unlikely to see any magic enemies, and they will go down to modern weaponry, so conserve your magic where you can."

Mizu tuned him out as he went on and on about the monsters they'd be fighting. As long as it could burn, she didn't care. She could take them on.

The ride was, predictably, boring as hell. Podunky was too far away, and her squadmates were chaffing on her nerves.

She hadn't been with them for too long, but in the time she had been... well, recently they'd proven their worth. When she messed up once, they tossed her under the bus. Then there were more fuckups and each one was like a whip smacking her back. She had a lot of anger, sometimes. It fueled her. But now? Now it felt like some of that fire was directed towards her allies.

She kept a lid on it though. No point in exploding at anyone.

So, she crossed her arms and glared holes into the floor for the entire two and a half hours it took for them to arrive. When they did, she was quick to grab her gear and jump out of the back while fixing her helmet in place.

Podunky was... yeah, it was some shithole little nowhere town. Cute little homes and whatever. The American rural dream. Not her kind of thing, and not her problem.

"Ah, you're here," someone said, and she refocused. Mercer was standing taller. Not at attention, exactly, but looking like he was the proud leader of a Storm Chaser squadron. She moved up to be a little closer, though she was above saluting and all that.

The man across from Mercer was a reedy little suit. A corpo sort through and through, she could practically smell it on him.

The man extended a hand, and Mercer shook it. "Mercer, Yellow Squadron leader, Storm Chasers."

"Daryl Dudley, Foxfire Legal, special situations division, attached to Synthcorp," the man said and Mizu almost flinched back. A lawyer? Ew, gross.

"So, what's the situation so far?" Mercher asked. "Are you in charge?"

"Unfortunately," Daryl said. "The manager in charge has been found... wanting. And also, dead."

"The orcs?" Mercer asked.

"The... monsters have been found capable of using human weapons, so it's not impossible that an orc snuck into his office on the second floor and shot him several times in the chest," the lawyer said. "But my legal senses tell me that it's somewhat implausible. In any case, yes, I'm currently the ranking Synthcorp officer."

"Fantastic," Mercer muttered. "I'll let you know right now that we're not here to solve HR issues for you."

"Understandable. Currently, the situation is somewhat precarious. These fine locals were warned, somehow, about the situation and have come out to assist."

Mizu looked past time, and yeah, there were some fire trucks, fire volunteers, and a bunch of cop cars. People were milling around. Not civilians, exactly, but not far from it.

There were also a lot of dead orcs. No one had bothered to move them, so they were just left out to rot. The smell wasn't exactly pleasant, but it was muffled by the thick odour of gunpowder in the air.

"And the situation in the compound?" Mercer asked.

"Somewhat less delicate, and moreso. We're not allowing any civilians to enter. Your team is to gain access to building five, find the portal, and close it. If you deem it possible to merely cull it..."

"If it's breached, then no," Mercer said. "That'd be against several laws, and regulations."

"Understandable," the lawyer said. "Your discretion is assured?"

"We're good at our jobs," Mercer said. "Anything else to be aware of?"

"Ah, yes, one thing. The local resistance was led by someone. A young D-ranker. Possibly a local? She went in to take care of things on her own before my team and I arrived. She assisted in killing many of the orcs here, it seems."

"And she went in solo?" Mercer asked.

The lawyer nodded.

Ballsy, that. Mizu wasn't any sorta genius, but she could do some math. There were a lot of orcs here. Two dozen or so by this entrance, more just within. The breach was big, so this wasn't some barely-D-ranked portal that went haywire.

That woman was dead.

Mercer gathered the team up, including the ten E-rankers who looked like they needed a good stretch after being stuck in their APC for so long. Weapons were checked, and Mizu checked her new handgun. It was nothing like her old revolver, just a dinky .45 that barely made her arm tingle when she fired it.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She had the standard-issue assault rifle as well, and a combat knife on her hip, in case things got messy, but with so many of them, she doubted it would come to that. Anything that got close would get toasted.

Mercer took the lead, moving them into the compound with the E-ranker team split into two five-man squads to take the rear right and left while the D-rankers took the centre-front.

They started encountering dead orcs almost as soon as they started to move in. One here, two there, most of them with blown out heads.

There were a few dead people as well, but fortunately it didn't look like there were that many.

She felt a small pit form in her stomach, then it filled with flames. Synthcorp was going to cover all of this up, weren't they?

People stuck their heads out of nearby buildings, then when Mercer told them to evacuate out of the compound, they did so, running by. Though he did stop one man, in a security vest and armed with a shotgun. "Did you kill these?" Mercer asked.

"Huh? No, it was that woman, with the mask," the man said before running on.

A woman with a mask? Mizu felt a shift in her gut, but dismissed it. Nah, it couldn't be.

She was still pissed at that one bitch who stole her revolver, humiliated her, and stole that little E-rank portal. She needed that portal most of all. Advancement was getting tough. Worse, her 'behaviour' had forced her into remedial training for a week, which meant missing another portal run with the team.

That pissed her off most of all. C-rank was the goal. Reaching it would be breaking the shackles. Not all of them, but some, dammit.

She refocused, scanning her gun left and right, but nothing jumped out at them.

They made it to one of the buildings, deeper into the compound. A dead orc was keeping the door jammed open.

"Lights are still on inside," Mercer said. "Single file."

She was the third in, so she had a few moments once they were past the antechamber, to inspect the place. It looked a whole lot like some sort of butcher place to her, which was weird. Wasn't Synthcorp's whole thing plants?

"Fuckers," she muttered.

"What was that, Mizu?" Cliver asked.

"Nothing," she replied.

The portal was in a room at the rear. A suspiciously built one, with barricades, and an armoury right before it. Mercer sighed, and Mizu kind of sympathized. This was gonna need more than a simple NDA. The corp had been farming this portal for a while.

A recurring portal that breached? It could happen.

"Yellow Squadron is going in first," Mercer said. "Steve, Clive, in the lead, then the rest of us. E-rankers, follow in after. I want five of you to remain here, guard the portal."

That was a pretty normal distribution. The truth was that sixteen people in one portal could get a little crowded. Dropping that down to eleven helped, at least a little.

The other D-rankers cast some buffs all around, and Mizu bounced on the spot, limbering herself for the fight to come.

Soon enough, she was walking through the portal.

The space on the other side was a poorly-lit room. She scanned it, gun to her shoulder, magic on a hair trigger. There were some human bodies to one side, placed carefully in a neat row, and there were dead orcs.

"Clear," Clive said.

The rest of the Storm Chasers came in, and they mostly positioned themselves to face the one exit out of the room.

"By the numbers," Mercer said. "Catch."

They all received an update on their HUDs, a map of the portal in a lot more detail than what anyone would have if this was a normal portal.

Recurring portals often followed similar patterns. They were never identical.

"Dammit, Mercer," she said. "I don't like this."

"Suck it up," he shot back. "We're going ahead and right. It's the fastest path to the boss room. We're not here for a full-clear."

She grumbled, but went with it.

They walked out into the first corridor from the entrance area, and within found an orc. He was on the ground, neck slit. Interestingly, the lights ahead were out, so all they could see of it was the body half-hidden by the dark.

"Lights," Mercer said. Newest update provided by novel~fire~net

They all took a moment to turn on the flashlights on their guns, and some flicked on belt lights as well.

"Someone took out the torches," Clive said. He gestured to a torch on the wall, of the hanger for it, the torch itself was on the ground, doused in the dirt.

"Could have happened mid-fight," Mercer said.

They moved on. At the first intersection, they found three more orcs. One sliced across the neck, the other two stabbed in the back.

"What the fuck," Steve muttered.

Mizu panned her light around. Something about this was wrong. The dark banished by her light felt a little too dark. Where were the enemy? This was a breach, wasn't it?

"They all died to melee wounds," Clive noted. "Sword and knife cuts."

"How do you know?" Mercer asked.

"Angle of the cuts. Someone shorter than the orcs took out that one's neck, the stab wounds at all aimed at the kidneys," Clive said. He flashed his light against the wall. There was an arterial spray there, low, maybe at Mizu's hip height. "Look at that. Blood splatter, but from pretty low. If that's from the neck, then the orcs had to be kneeling. Could be a cut to the thigh."

"Let's keep moving," Mercer said. He sounded calm. Mizu glanced over, noted how his grip was tighter on his rifle.

Yeah, she was kind of spooked too.

The next room was long and narrow, with an exit right across from where they entered. The room stretched out to the right. There was a forge at the end of the room, the coals still glowing yellow-orange, and next to it was an orc with its head shoved into the fire. There were more of them. Three orcs, left on the ground, dead.

"What the hell," Mizu muttered.

The next corridor was no better. Two orcs with slit throats, then there was a small room at the end of the passage where another was slumped against the wall, dead.

"Christ," Clive said.

In the adjoining corridor were four more orcs. These, at least, looked like they'd put up a fight. They had weapons out, snarls locked on their dead features, and their wounds weren't as clean and precise.

Still, that just made her realize that every orc up to this point had been killed while unaware that they were being hunted.

The next room, at the end of that passage, was lit. There was a door, but it had been left ajar.

Mercer moved up, carefully pushing the door open with an elbow.

Within was a resting space. There were a few chairs around a fireplace on one wall, some chairs, and to one side a table with a few jugs on it. Garlands of garlic hung from the ceiling and it looked like the back end of the room was a small kitchen of sorts.

A woman was sitting on one of the larger seats. Her legs were crossed, one over the other, the back of her boots resting on a heap made from two dead orcs. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were folded on her stomach.

Next to her was a sword, still in its sheath, but learning up against the arm of her chair, and on her lap was a revolver.

She knew that woman.

"Deadline!" Mizu snapped.

***