Journal of the 106th #4

>It's been said that the 106th got the best of the war.
>We also got the worst.
>In the Forever Fall Forest, the Opps dug their heels into the muck of that red hellhole and dared the Atlas Military to come in after them.
>So we did.
>Only to be met with the month after month of flesh-eating diseases, shrieking nocturnal predators, and other sights that haunt me to this day.
>Cut off and for all we knew abandoned by our superiors, our only hope was Arin Sangria, our Hunter commander.
>Without her iron will, none of us would have come out of that mess with our sanity, or our lives.
>When her death came, I hope it was quick.
>She earned that much.
>The trees prevented us from getting dropped in too close to the Color Nazi's fortifications, and we were forced to land about a mile from their base, rather than assault it directly.
>When we existed the drop ships, the first thing we noticed was the silence.
>This was our unit's first major interaction with the Oppressonists, but something felt.. Off.
>We scanned the trees as we made a makeshift command post.
>It was only a matter of time before our commander noticed something was up.
>"Ursas to the south!"
>We grabbed our guns and turned from our base-building duties only to be met with the largest group of Ursa I'd ever seen.
>We opened fire, but their thick armor was shrugging our bullets off.
>If it weren't for Sangria, we never would have made it past the first hour.
>She brandished her sword, her Aura making it glow red.
>Moving from Grimm to Grimm, she made quick work of them, our bullets finishing the rest.
>We regrouped quickly and counted our losses.
>We lost 20% of our fighting force and we hadn't even encountered the enemy yet.
>Sangria wasn't deterred though.
>She quickly rallied our remaining forces, and we set out towards the Opps' fortress.
>We had marched hardly an hour when we started notice that the leaves of the trees weren't their usual shade of red.
>When the wind blew, that was when it started.
>The leaves tore off the branches and flew around.
>No one knew what was going on, until people started screaming.
>The leaves were sticking to our armor and burning through them.
>Nobody knew how or why, but we could tell be the screams that you did not want to touch any.
>People tore off armor, smarter people used a spare sock or something to get it off.
>The screaming didn't subside for minutes, those that couldn't or didn't remove the leaves fast enough had them burn into their bodies.
>At that point, none of us would even try to get them out.
>A few people died from their wounds, even more were left unfit for combat.
>The worst, was that the screams alerted the enemy forces, and our element of surprise was entire lost.
>Before we could even get ourselves together again, they were on us.
>Bullets flew through the forest as our forces engaged each other.
>Sangria charged ahead, taking out much of their advanced force.
>We knew they wouldn't leave their fortress, this was simply a scouting party sent to test our numbers.
>We quickly pressed them back until the retreated to their base.
>After the fighting stopped, we regrouped again.
>All we had left was about a half of our starting forces.
>How we were gonna pull this off, we had no idea.
>But we pressed on.
>We assumed they'd expect us to continue straight to their base from our current location, so we flanked around through the forest, hoping to catch them from the side.
>The only problem was the nature of the fortress.
>It was basically a castle built into a cliff side.
>Our plan was to drop in on them from the hill, but the climb wouldn't be easy.
>It was going to be dark in a few hours too, and we didn't know how many more Ursa were lurking around.
>After an hour or so, we managed to reach the top of the hill with relative ease to the rest of the day so far.
>That was until someone took a wrong step and lost their entire leg.
>All hell started breaking loose.
>Enemy forces stormed from the bottom of the hill, mines went off on the top, bullets soared everywhere.
>Once the dust cleared, we were able to return fire, backing up slowly toward the edge of the cliff.
>Ropes were quickly secured around the few trees that survived the mines, and one by one, we dropped down to their base while the rest gave us covering fire.
>We stormed their base from the top.
>Gunfire echoed through the halls as we advanced.
>We lost track of Sangria for a while, but we soon found her when we reached the main hallway.
>The large room was lined with enemy soldiers, their guns pointed at the middle of the room, but no one was shooting.
>They were too busy watching.
>Sangria was fighting an enemy Hunter, and when we poured into the room, we quickly opened fire on the Color Nazis.
>The room erupted into a shower of bullets, but some how, the two Hunters fought without noticing us.
>Their swords clashed again and again until Sangria used her Aura to make her sword glow red as she did against the Ursa earlier.
>With a single slash, she cut through the other Hunter's weapon.
>He stood in disbelief for a moment before blood sprayed from his chest.
>He fell over, nearly cut in half.
>We went to work mopping up the last of their soldiers.
>Overall, we had lost nearly 80% of our fighting force.
>All for a lousy base in what was basically a box canyon.
>When the 106th was finally rotated out of Forever Fall, Arin Sangria made a point of seeing us off personally, calling us the bravest soldiers she had ever seen.
>It's a good thing we were wearing helmets, because none of us could bear to look her in the eye.

A dramatic reading:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0gEAYdLW7Ie