Post by Name on Jan 23, 2013 17:45:53 GMT -5
Prologue - Jaimie's Point of View
I pulled my long blond hair together, stuck it in a ponytail, put it under my armor, and picked up my gun. "Almost ready?" A voice sounded behind me, and I knew it was my best friend and the second-in-command in our group, Autumn. Codename: Leaf.
"Yeah, Autumn." I answered as I loaded my gun, preparing it for the world outside. I took a deep breath, marched over to the entrance of the underground base, turned around, and said, "Let's go." With that, the others going on the mission lined up in a row behind me, so I could see all their faces.
Cody. Codename: Brute. He was the oldest, being fifteen years old, and definitely the strongest. His muscles were very clear, and the most common reaction to looking at him for the first time was a shudder of fear. He wasn't the type of guy you'd want to mess with, that was for sure. He didn't even use a gun for hell's sake! Just his fists, and those freaking spiked things that he wore on his knuckles. I was glad he was on my side, because if he wasn't, my gun would've been out of ammo in the first few seconds I saw him, and maybe even that wouldn't have killed him. Cody had short, messy dark brown hair that most of us swore was black. He was a pretty tall guy, to add to his muscular body. Cody had gray eyes, which many people took to gawking at.
Logan. Codename: Beefy. He was only a year younger than Brute, and almost as strong, almost as buff. However, despite not being the biggest, Logan ate the most, and that's why it was decided that his codename was going to be Beefy. See? Even in those times we had some fun with others' names! Logan had short, ruffled brown hair. Logan was tall, but Cody had a few inches on him, so he had more growing both in height and muscle if he wanted to match Cody. This guy had brown eyes, and they obviously didn't stick out much from his hair color.
Next up going on that mission was the only set of multiples in the group, and they were triplets: Penny, Lacey, and Hikari, age thirteen. They were Japanese, you see, which explained why Hikari was named, well, Hikari. Their codenames were Trih, Nih, and Ty, respectively. Put those three together, and you get the word 'trinity'. You know, three? They're triplets? We thought it was clever, so deal with it.
Penny and Lacey were exactly the same height and were thin girls, while their youngest sister was several inches shorter than them, and even thinner than they were, which made most of us think that she might be a bit underweight, but she never said anything about it, and she ate about as much as the rest of us (barring Cody, Logan, and another guy, who wasn't on that mission, so best not to mention him yet). Penny and Lacey both had waist-long hair, like mine was, though they were brunettes. Hikari, on the other hand, had blond hair. Really, it was more like Hikari and I were sisters! Her and her sisters' brown eyes, though, were different from my green ones.
After looking over the five others going on that mission, I nodded. We all checked our weapons over one last time. I turned, pushed open the heavy metal door, and out we went.
The moment you walked outside was the moment you became unsafe. That's how it was. If there was one thing drilled into all of our heads as we grew up, no matter exactly what environment we grew up in, then that was it. Don't step outside without armor, or at least something heavier duty than normal freaking clothes. Also, don't step outside without a gun, unless of course, you're Brute or Beefy. They're excused from that, because they're so huge. One thing that just our group had going was the codename thing. The second we left the base, we were to be referred to by our codename, nothing else. This was to make sure that we wouldn't be caught.
Screams ripped through the air, sand blew furiously. Of course the mission just had to be executed during a sandstorm. There really wasn't anything that could be done about that, though, and we had to trek on. There was an important case, you see, and we had to get our hands on it. That's why we were in the desert to begin with. Otherwise, we would be hanging out at our jungle base, where there was a lot less fighting going on.
I heard a gunshot nearby and knew that I would have to step back into reality. With that, I charged forward, heading for a small dune in the distance, my eyes locked in it. All of the people standing then suddenly falling to their deaths didn't surprise me. I'd seen it all too many times before, and the more I saw it, the less of a distraction, and sickening sight, it became. I was as used to it as I was the sand, and I'd only been in the desert for a week. I heard a grunt from behind me and knew one of the other kids had been shot. I couldn't stop, though, because then more of us would be shot, and we all knew that, so we trudged on. I doubted it to be Hikari, though, or I'd have heard the screeches of her sisters. Those three were close, and even if Hikari was left out at times, which I couldn't help but feel was her own fault often enough, they definitely wouldn't have stood by if she got shot, and they would swear up and down to get revenge. Signaling to the dune, I kept running, running, running. I slipped a bit in the sand, but it wasn't easy to run on that terrain, especially when my heart was beating like hell because I was terrified of getting shot. Sometimes I couldn't help but feel we weren't very smart teenagers, even though we were actually all exceptionally intelligent, some more than others, of course, and I could easily have said that we were very, very far from the average.