"Wait, so Lieutenant Wallace wants the whole squad to pass the ranger course?" I ask sitting up from my bunk and looking at Neige.
"Y-Yeah... him and Raz were arguing." Her hands quiver as she speaks. "Then-then he said we're all gonna take the ran-ranger course as a team..." Neige looks more nervous than I've ever seen her.
I stand up and slowly walk over to her, "it'll be okay. Boot camp sucked ass as it is, but we can do this okay? I promise." I take the small butterfly hair clips out of my hair, "my dad gave these to me when we were younger, he said it would bring me good luck." I place the hair clips in her hand, "we will make it through this course, and that will only help us, cause we'll be on the front lines kicking the imps' asses way more often than just keeping the frontlines warm." I smile, and watch her face flush red.
"I-I... Thank you, yeah we-we'll be fine." Neige smiles ignoring the blush on her face. I smile then lie back on my bunk, Neige climbs up to the bunk above me.
The night is quiet, everyone seems nervous and tense for tomorrow's training. They said we have a mock skirmish with the ranger corp to prove we have what it takes to join the corp.
"Everyone, let's go! Mock battle happening now." Lieutenant Wallace shouts as we scramble to get our equipment and uniforms, I grab Neige's hand as she grabs her rifle and rush outside. "Alright everyone, this is gonna be tough, but if we work together we can take out the ranger corp. Engineers, you'll build defenses around the bases, and establish the frontline sandbags. Snipers you will move up slowly picking off enemies one at a time. Shocktroops you-"
Raz grabs his machine gun "Oh, shut up! You're not gonna boss me around, Scaredy-Claude!" The nickname has everyone freeze. Nobody's talked to Lieutenant Wallace like this, but before anyone can react Raz rushes off charging the enemies flank.
"Raz don't!" Lieutenant Wallace shouts dashing towards Raz, before Kai stops him.
"Don't, just let him run, show him how you've changed by leading the rest of us." Kai says before walking towards the rest of the snipers.
I shift my glance from the drama to Neige who's shaking and bright red. "You okay?" I ask before glancing down and noticing out hands still intertwined. "Oh! S-Sorry."
Neige trembles but nods, "it's okay, I'm just nervous."
"Hey you'll be okay, you're an excellent shot, just use that training." I smile lifting my rifle and jogging to the rest of the engineers, looking back one last time and shouting, "Good luck!" All I see is Neige smiling to herself before slowly walking over to the rest of the snipers.
I lay sandbags around the base while the rest of the team heads out, last I see the snipers who find vantage points. As I work I hear the gunshots going off in the distance, then louder shots. Tank shots, "they have tanks but they wouldn't let us take the Hafen?" I ask one of the other engineers.
"Well rules are rules unless you're the ones making them." He responds looking up and smirking to himself.
"That made no sense you know?" I pat his back before standing up, "like it sounded wise, but when I really think about it, it just sounds stupid", we laugh."I'm gonna head up closer to the fronts to resupply the troops." He just nods and I start running towards the maze of trenches, passing soldiers who are giving eachother pep talks. This is the first time we've really had a chance to experience combat like conditions. It's hitting some of the younger guys more seriously, they're shaking slumped on the ground. You can hear the crying if you're quiet. I can't imagine how Neige is handling this.
As I rush towards the frontlines, a large group of trenches around a hill, the sound of gunshots growing louder with every step. Stopping to hand some of the snipers extra clips, when I spot Neige crouched in some bushes frozen. I faintly hear her whispering, "I can't do this, what if I mess up? Nobody can save me."
I tap her shoulder and she jumps, nearly falling over. "Hey, hey. It's okay, what's wrong?"
Her face relaxes as she realizes it's just me, "I... I can't do this." Her hands clutch her rifle like it's the only thing keeping her from falling off the earth.
I kneel beside her and look at what she sees, a perfect shot of one of a ranger shocktrooper in a perfect chokepoint laying down heavy fire. "Neige take the shot... that guy has a machine gun, he'll be a problem for the scouts."
Neige nods but doesn't fire, her finger barely resting on the trigger, "bu-but I can't... I don't want to hurt someone. Let alone a federation troop."
"I understand Neige but this is what we signed up for. You have to do this, else they'll take out our soldiers. It's us or them." I shift behind her, wrapping my arms around her and wrapping my fingers around her like an exoskeleton. "breathe." I whisper in her ear, "do you have the shot?" She nods, and I squeeze her finger gently, the rifle going off. I watch the rubber bullet fly across the field nailing the ranger in the head. He yells some cusses and a slur then walks off the field. "You did it!" I pat Neige's back just slightly too hard.
Neige shakes slightly but smiles and stands up, "Y-Yeah we did." Her hands tremble, and her face flushes red.
"Hey you did good. look at those scouts run." I point and we watch as the scouts push the chokepoint the ranger was holding. "I have to go resupply them, keep sniping okay? we've almost taken their last base!" I dash off towards the frontlines again.
I sprint across the field, passing the slumped shoulders of the scouts who were shot marching back from the front towards the hill of our base. When I make it to the scouts at the front, they're all taking a long time between shots, or not even firing their rifles. A perfect sign that I arrived perfectly on time. I dash between soldiers as low as possible, tossing clips to every scout I pass. I run through a small trench, trying to find more soldiers to rearm when I run headfirst into a shocktrooper. I stumble backwards falling on my butt, my vision is blurry when I see the shocktrooper raise his machine gun at me, and right as I realize I'm out of the game the whistle blows, signaling the end of the match. "Ha! Almost got me." I laugh nervously, his eyes squint when we hear a rifle go off. Perfectly on cue his helmet gets dented and he yells. I look back and see Neige laughing, then I catch the glint of something sparkly in her hair. I run over to her "hey! The game's over, ya dork!" I hug her tight, noticing the hair clips I gave her are in her hair now. "We did it! We're rangers now!" The hug lasts a little longer than necessary, neither one of us pulling away.