I was woken up by a vicious kick to my leg, causin' me to instantly reach for my machete in the backpack I was huggin'.
Only the dead sleep in a Gate without having one eye and one hand on your weapon.
My eyes widened to see what the threat might look like, as I hastily drew out my weapon.
But instead, I saw a person in front of me, who jerked back as I swung out my machete.
She didn't seem all surprised or frightened by my paranoia, just reacted promptly to my action.
"Get the hell up, there's a debriefing," she said nonchalantly.
"…And wake your friend up," she casually left, after that last statement.
I shook Daigo awake, who also reached for his weapon as he too expected a threat.
I relayed what the Guard told me to him, then we gathered ourselves and followed the crowd of Mercenary-Guards heading toward the front of the cramped camp.
Everyone gathered in front of an LTAT combat vehicle, and on top of it stood a massive figure: the guy our 'Team Leader' reported to when we entered this Gate – his boss.
I guess he wanted to give a speech or somethin'.
"Good day, Guards… I know a lot of you want to know what comes next for us in here, and that's what I want to tell you personally," he said in a booming voice, once everyone was quiet.
"Yesterday was the fifth and final stand against the Aggressors known as Zipper-spines in this Gate.
Our scouts and other reliable sources have confirmed this fact, but there is still a colony of an entirely different invader that needs to be vanquished.
As all of you know from your various briefings, they are called Flea-gloats."
He paused, then continued.
"Now, there are some difficulties in estimating their remaining population, even after 3 operations that lasted hours in the last two weeks.
So be prepared for a real bloody fight when we go up against them!"
He paused again, as 'his' men – the Viper Guards – roared in agreement.
He then rubbed his coarse chin with his hand before continuing.
"This Gate must be conquered and closed, no matter what.
Though we have sent word for strong reinforcements for that objective to be more realistic, time races against us as Flea-gloats reproduce very fast.
We might be alive when reinforcements arrive, or we might all be dead, but we must make sure their numbers plummet instead of increasing!" he yelled fiercely.
"As Vipers – this is what you bloody signed up for, don't you fucking forget that!
And for the visitors amongst us, the so-called 'Mercenary-Guards' – you don't get a paycheck until the mission is over, so sit tight.
We'll be glued together for a while," he said coldly, giving a mischievous smirk as his eyes moved through everyone in the crowd.
"We leave in 5!" was his final piece, jumping off the vehicle, causing it to jerk from the sudden loss of weight.
The crowd immediately scattered; everyone started gearing up.
As promised, after 5 minutes we began to move.
Trucks carried ammo and heavy guns while all the Guards trekked – everyone.
We walked for about 2 hours, until there was a command from the front row to halt.
As we all stood there, another command was given out, and the Viper Guards began to move, setting up machine guns and other things.
Our 'Team Leader' made his way to us - his squad at the rear.
After a very long march, he turned and said to us, "This is the theatre.
Let's move ahead of the rest to our position."
The place where the entire battalion came to a stop had large, glowing stones all over its 50-foot roof.
The path, which had widened when we first ventured deeper, now began to divide into smaller and narrower paths.
Many interlocked with each other, forming crisscrossing tunnels, but the Vipers didn't seem confused about the direction.
They got to have one of 'em echo-location devices or somethin'.
The wired lightbulbs weren't installed in this area; instead, there were several floodlights attached to individual poles, separated by a solid 5 meters or somethin'.
The poles' height was about 15 meters, makin' the light cover almost everywhere… almost.
"You see those glowing round things on the roof?" the Team Leader asked, pointing up, prompting everyone to look up too.
"Those are Flea-gloat eggs.
The mature ones can sense when intruders get this close to their eggs and will show up in numbers any second now… So, get ready," he warned, makin' most people reach for their weapons.
But one guy instead raised a question to the Team Leader.
"If those cunts are as bad as you guys say, why scrap with 'em in tunnels?
How will those at the rear be able to assist us if it's this freakin' tight?
How the fuck do you expect 'us' to hold off hundreds of 'em?"
I kinda chuckled inside as the guy just started puttin' pieces together, but it wasn't like I had any idea what was goin' on in the head of the guy in charge of this small army.
"Look behind you," the Team Leader just said.
A couple of us looked behind us to see what the Team Leader was talkin' about, but I didn't.
I waited to see if the Team Leader wanted to put lead in the guy's head for being too smart for his own good, then probably threaten us to obey if we didn't want to be diced up.
It has happened to me before.
After seein' he wasn't makin' any move like that for a few seconds, I turned to see what the others saw.
We could see Viper Guards and two LAV-25 light-armored vehicles followin' us from behind, leavin' the rest of the battalion behind them.
Though they kept their distance, it was a different tactic than they'd used previously, which wasn't what I imagined since there was no update on any strategy.
Everyone soon returned their gaze to the Team Leader in front of 'em.
"Your job isn't to fucking think, just do what you're told to do," the Team Leader said coldly to the guy that spoke up, giving him a death stare.
The guy in question did not flinch or argue; he just acted like no one was speaking to him.
The odd thing was, it was at that moment I decided to count what was left of our 'group'.
We were 60 yesterday, now we are 27.
It made me start thinkin', like I normally did anytime I noticed a serious reduction in the group I was in.
I tend to do this every time I fight in Gates; it's not like somethin' I want to do.
I just do it.
The soakin' thought of how it could have been me, or how it could be me one of these days, drenched my entire mind.
I instantly got filled with dread, fear, and doubt – an intoxicating darkness I barely had the power to overcome.
Then the ground began to shake a little, and loud, disgruntled snapping noises echoed from the darkness at the far end of the tunnels.
Even if I and some of the others had never faced a Flea-gloat, we instinctively knew they were what was makin' that unnatural sound and vibration we were hearin' and could feel on our skin.
Makin' the lot of us prepare accordingly by takin' our stance.
My heart was still drownin' in the darkness of my reality, but my mind tensed up to steel me for the approachin' horde, makin' the dread in my heart subside a little.
A massive horde of Flea-gloats came into the light of the floodlights like a wild flood.
These things were nastier than the description we were given, even from this far distance.
They hopped, coverin' a crazy distance with maddening speed.
The heavy machinery unit behind us started to shoot at 'em the moment they came into the light, which rattled all of us in front.
"Stay calm!
Their aim is to kill as many as possible before they reach our own range for close combat… Just stay put so you won't be mistakenly shot at!" the Team Leader yelled to be heard over the thunderous sound of heavy machinery being fired.
Many were ripped apart, but many Flea-gloats managed to avoid the rain of bullets and projectile explosives, still hopping towards us without fear.
Even those with slight or severe injuries pushed forward.
But we didn't fall short in our response.
Immediately they were within our reach, we sliced, stabbed, and dodged them, but some of us that couldn't react quickly to our first contact were almost immediately mauled and ripped apart.
I didn't really see the Team Leader in action that much yesterday after his super entrance, but today he seemed to have the intention of being the foremost Guard and holding his position.
He swung his greatsword to the left, cutting deep into the body of one of the Flea-gloats that slashed at him, then quickly tilted his head to the right, dodging a Flea-gloat that bared its row of spear-head fangs at his head.
Two more Flea-gloats rushed to maul his right leg, which was positioned in front of his left.
The Team Leader threw a cartwheel over the Aggressors, landing behind 'em and furiously spun his sword, smacking 'em with its flat side, which sounded like the shot of a combat shotgun.
The two flew across the field, crashing hard into their kin.
Another Flea-gloat jumped and landed right on his face, savagely trying to bite through his helmet.
The Team Leader moved like a madman, trying to rip the thing off his face, crashing into other people and smacking away any Flea-gloat that tried to flank him.
He finally ripped it off and smacked it to the hard ground with one hand, dealing good damage to it as tiny fragments of its shell scattered into the air.
He then raised his sword high up into the air, the blue-lit runes on it shimmering brighter and brighter, and he swung the sword down with devilish speed at the Flea-gloat he had slammed to the vine-covered ground.
This caused a deafening, quaking boom, with a large cloud of blue dust, debris of vines and unrecognizable mushed-up Flea-gloat parts, a spider-web-shaped crater, and a chilling wave of blue-tainted shockwave – creating far greater devastation than the one he'd delivered to the Zipper-spines yesterday.
Before the dust even settled, he leaped into the air like a freaking cannon towards the river of Flea-gloats in front.
Reaching his peak speed, making him temporarily stationary in mid-air, he gave a roaring battle cry and raised his greatsword above his head, the runes glowing even brighter than before, then descended with great, earth-shattering force onto the horde of Flea-gloats on the ground.
An insane cloud of dust and debris scattered very high into the air as the ground literally rocked like a landslide.
His blue shockwave threw a large number of Flea-gloats into the wind.
I was even swayin' to the side; the only reason I still stood was because I'd somewhat prepared to body it.
This greatly aided the lot of us, as lots of the bugs were either fuckin' tumbled all over the place or struggled to take two steps, findin' it hard to get back on their feet.
I slashed through as many as I could before they got back on their feet and started to hop around like crazed prostitutes.
Soon, they were back on their toes, or whatever they had, just as I had expected.
With their sheer numbers and viciousness, they would have torn through us on the front line a fuckin' long time ago, but we (luckily) had assistance from the Viper's armored vehicle mounted with heavy-duty arcane guns at our rear, and they too were assisted by the rest of the army further behind us.
I didn't see it as a reassuring or clever tactic, but it was somehow workin' against the fuckin' bugs.
Until it didn't…
Moments later, the arcane machine guns and launchers couldn't keep up with the spread of advancing Aggressors.
They had long since gone past us, with those of us in the front lines fightin' very desperately and madly to stay on our toes.
It was so fuckin' chaotic, with bombs dropping everywhere, a beastly rain of bullets tearing through anything in its path, and those fucking Flea-gloats hopping around like crazy as they desperately tried to evade machine gun rounds and explosives.
It felt like I was in a literal storm of dust, fire, and blood, dampening my vision and hearing – especially my hearing.
I tried desperately to separate myself from the horde of Flea-gloats since the Viper Guards at the rear didn't give a shit about us and bombed everywhere.
Runnin' in zig-zags, tryin' to avoid a direct hit, I couldn't help but think, 'Why did I not fuckin' leave earlier?
Am I fuckin' goin' to die here?!'
Shockwaves from different kinds of explosives threw me around again and again, even tossin' me away from a spot high-velocity rounds hit milliseconds later.
All I did was run around scared shitless, hopin' I wouldn't die here.
Images of my mother, Daigo, brothers, sister – both bad and worse – flooded my head in the midst of this mayhem.
I am not fucking thinking straight … I need to fucking concentrate!!
I ran toward what I could make out to be a heap of vines attached to the wall, like some kind of cluster of boulders.
My aim was to climb it to hopefully avoid the bombing and gunfire.
Also, to defend myself from Flea-gloats that might hop in my direction when I climbed to the top.
Defendin' myself even if I made it out with only one fuckin' limb.
As I ran, still stumblin' over, a missile landed a bit close to me.
Though the actual blast was taken by the Flea-gloats on my left side, the freakin' shockwave pushed me fiercely, sendin' me flyin' to my right like a fuckin' tin can.
I felt my body hitting and passing through the wall of vines on my right.
Normally, the vines of Gates can be so tightly held together I could die from impact, but this wall of vines felt very loose; it was almost like passing through many untangled thick ropes.
My luck ran out when I felt my right shoulder hit somethin' very solid and hard, then heard a cracking sound from the shoulder, before falling down.
The ground seemed to have disappeared because I had time to try to understand what was happening while I was falling to my death.
After a few seconds, I fell hard face-down to the ground.
My sense of time broke when I smacked against that solid rock or somethin'.
What felt like falling for a split second also felt like I was falling for days, but that sense quickly returned as I felt my body colliding with a very hard surface beneath me.