A Useless Sacrifice
Rodney enters the room of the barracks. He looks around the room watching as the crew are relaxing, calling their families, and indulging in their leisurely activities or working out. He walks across the long hall and sees 2 beds empty. The beds where Archie and the new recruit sleep. He turns his head and looks back.
"hey, where'd these two go?" Rodney asks.
"dunno but apparently they are out on some mission" Harold says, munching on his chips.
"mission? What the hell?" Rodney asks in confusion.
"ask the captain he sent them" Yousaf chips in.
"oh! well…..that's weird" Rodney says.
He walks to the doorstep of the captain's room and knocks.
"come in!" Captain Will says.
Rodney opens the door and tosses bag of peanuts at him.
"what's the occasion?" Captain asks.
"nuthin' just wanted you to have some" Rodney replies.
"So where'd Archie and Zane go?" Rodney asks.
"Oh I sent them for extermination of a category 3 out south. Its been spotted in some abandoned town" Captain Will informs.
"how long since they left?" Rodney asks.
"About 3 hours now, I should get a call for mission success on the line" Captain Will says.
Captain Will's personal phone rings in his pocket. He gets confused. He removes his phone and looks at the screen and is even more confused.
"what's up?" Rodney asks to Captain Will's hesitation.
"Archie's calling" Captain Will says.
Rodney raises an eyebrow. Captain Will picks up the call and hears the loud rumbling on the call.
"Archie I can hear you go ahead" He says in a tensed tone.
"WHAT?!" he says immediately after the sentence he said before.
His eyes widen. He sweats profusely and has an extreme look of concern as if some one close to him had died. Rodney straightens up from his relaxed posture as he watches the Captain become even more tensed.
"OK WE'RE COMING" he yells to the phone before hanging up and looks at Rodney.
"tell the guys to get ready we are rolling out. SHIT!" Captain Will says as he quickly removes his suit.
Rodney asks no questions and runs out of the room. He gets to the doorway of the hall and yells.
"GET YOU'RE ASSES MOVIN' WE ARE ROLLIN OUT NOW!"
As soon as he says it, the hall comes alive, with all the men scrambling and donning their suits and within 20 minutes the entire crew run out of the barracks armed and head to their vehicle with Captain Will in the lead. All of them show up to the guard to get their assigned vehicle.
"Give me the damn keys right now I got two of my crew fighting against a category 5" Captain Will says.
"Sir I ca-" the guard tries to speak
"YOU WANNA DO THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW? GIVE ME THE DAMN KEYS OR I BEAT YOU TO PULP" Captain Will yells in a fit of rage.
The guard give them the keys and the crew storm out and fill into their vehicle. The tires screech and they nearly hit a person as they speed away towards Zane and Archie.
"what the hell's goin' on?" Rodney asks Will.
Captain Will is a bit hesitant to say and pauses but eventually speaks about the two of them being sent on a training mission that went wrong.
"what the hell did you just do?" Rodney says to Will as he is utterly shocked at the reality of sending just 2 junior exterminators to fight what was an unreported Azazel that was possibly a category 5.
##
The 40th group arrive to the site of the Azazel.
"oh….my god" Yousaf says as he looks at what looked like a town was burning with thick black smoke flowing into the air.
The crew run toward the site. Within 10 minutes they reach the gates of the blazing town. Archie and Zane are nowhere to be found. The crew look around when suddenly the giant scorpion emerges from the ground behind them.
"ENGAGE" Captain Will yells.
Pierre, Rodney, Captain Will and Robert fight against the giant Scorpion. Pierre leaps in to air and smashes his giant sledgehammer directly onto the giant scorpion's head. The scorpion's head burrows into the ground at the weight of the hit. Captain Will then charges with a giant longsword and slices the giant, flaming claw of the scorpion in half as it tries to reach Captain Will.
As the four are engaging the scorpion - Ben, Greg, Harold, Yousaf run towards the burning town to find Archie and Zane. Yousaf puts on what looks like a night-vision goggle on his face and uses it to find both the exterminators using built-in locators in exterminator suites to pin-point their exact location.
"I found them, they are at the last row house" Yousaf says.
The four of them run towards them.
They reach the house and go by the backyard to find Archie, back facing, sitting down in front of something. He looked behind to see his comrades with a heavily scarred face.
"you took too long" he says just as he falls down, unconscious revealing what was in front of him.
The four of them freeze. Their eyes fill with disbelief.
Zane's body lay there, burned and with a hole about 5cm in diameter in his chest that has blackened everything around it. His suit and his entire body had melted and burned with cauterized wounds and burns so deep it revealed his bones and all that was left was his face that was scarred heavily.
Harold walked towards his body and went down on his knees, inspecting his pierced chest. He sighs a heavy, quivering breath.
"Ben, Greg pick up Archie and head towards the truck. Yousaf help me with Zane" Harold says in a shaky voice.
They lift the bodies and head towards the truck taking a round route to avoid the fight. They reach the truck and put the bodies on the floor of the truck where Harold immediately starts treating Archie.
"Yousaf, try stopping the decomposition on Zane's body and Ben, Greg go and help out the others to kill that thing" Harold says.
Without a single word, the command is heeded.
Back on the battlefield against the scorpion, the senior exterminators dish out devastating attacks on the Azazel. Captain Will slices off the regenerating claws and legs of the scorpion, making his Talum red hot while Pierre smashed the exoskeleton, trying to crack the scorpion from above and Rodney slid below, penetrating the undersides with his daggers thanks to his small stature and fast speed.
Ben and Greg arrive at the scene to help. The brothers fight in combination with Ben's Talum being a shield that can change shape thanks to his powers and Greg having a large shoulder-mounted artillery like gun that shot heavy plasma like bullets created by Greg's power that can inflict heavy damages. The scorpion is relentless against the strikes, and Captain Will would have been taken out by the giant stinger had Greg's shots not struck the scorpion, disorienting it. It then opened its tail and sprayed hot lava out of it.
"EVERYBODY GET BEHIND ME!" Ben yells
The lot get behind him as his shield saves them from the hot lava that could melt through their suits.
"what's the status on Archie and Zane" Captain Will asks.
"Archie is injured heavily but Harold is gonna fix him up and…." Greg pauses.
"And?" Rodney asks.
"Zane is down" Greg says.
"...What do you mean he is down?" Captain Will asks.
"I mean he has suffered an injury on his chest, he's got a hole in his chest" Greg says.
The men go silent and Captain Will has a look of shock on him.
"Greg, Rodney cover me" Captain Will says.
"Wha-?" Before Rodney can say anything, Captain Will charges out of the shield, sprinting at full speed towards the scorpion with no regard for himself. His sword glows in a bright white light, with fumes flowing out of it.
The crew are slow to cover him as he closes distance to the Azazel. The scorpion notices this and lashes out its claws to capture the Captain, but he is fast.
He leaps over the massive claws, drops behind them and dashes at the speed of sound, swings his sword and goes through the entire length of the scorpion.
Ben lowers his shield to see the scorpion standing still and its red glow flaming out and its body turning black as the red glow subsides.
Then a red bruise appears in the middle and the Azazel's body splits through the middle with its either parts falling on the opposite sides, revealing its blacked out core in the middle. Captain Will stood at the end, bruised, burned but still standing strong. He had single handedly exterminated a category 5 himself, a true measure of a USAEC Captain.
He turns around at his approaching crew, and with a face of guilt he says.
"Call the cleaners, tell 'em to clean this up and inform the casualty board too...for Zane"
"Yes sir, I've already called them up" Rodney says.
The crew approach the truck. They look inside the bay where they see Archie doing better and bandaged from head to toe and Zane in a shroud, covering his entire body except his face.
Archie and Captain Will look at each other in the eyes with expressionless faces.
"you knew didn't you?" Archie asks.
"forgive me, I had no choice...I was forced" Captain Will says.
"I've got nothing to forgive you for, he's the one you should ask" Archie says, pointing at Zane.
"he died all alone...in vain" Archie kept on saying "and you had part in it because you didn't even try saying no" Archie says before turning himself away from Captain Will.
Captain Will did not utter a word and kept his head down, walking and sitting into the cab of the truck as he drowns his face in his hands in guilt.
The sirens of the clean-up crews get louder and louder, drowning an already silent sobbing.