July 8:

Gratch wake me up today. First thing he does, he wake me up. He says “You gotta tell me whatcha wrote.” And I am thinkin' it bein' too early, Runt is still tired. But Gratch is meaning this. He is saying it is important. And Runt thinks about this, and Gratch is right. It be super important to write it all down. So I tell him everrthing about the fight which I have wrote, and it is not enough. But there is so much that has happened. It was five whole days and Runt cannot even remember what happened real well or how it happened. Is a lotta thoughts, lotsa things all jumbled and lost in my head. Like, you just thinking of this one thing, but then another pops in, and you think “No, that wasn't there. Or was it? Which day was that? Was it after this warboy got shot, or before?”

And Gratch agrees. He says this is why it is so important to write it. The longer time goes, even less will be remembered. Gratch is getting all the warboys of Delta together, and I gotta ax 'em things, and we all gotta talk about the fight, and how it happened.

The Drop:

So the other warboys have talked and we all talked a lot. Lotsa not-knowing about how things happened, or which happened when. But everrone says that no matter how it happened, it all started with the Drop. So I will write about the Drop here.

When you finish getting your number as a warboy, the boss-men always make you drill a few times to make sure you is working right, like you didn't come out of the Glass Box all wrong. And one of the drills they make you do is a drop. And the drop in drills is the same but all different. It is the same because everything is working the same. You get in a whoosh bird, you hop in a metal box they call the drop pod. And you strap some webbing to you to make sure you stay up and do not flip flop all over the drop pod before hitting the ground. And some time later, you feel this funny feeling. You cannot see outside, but the way it feels, you is no longer in the whoosh-bird. You is going down, and you is going down fast. And this takes a little bit when you is just in drills. And then you slow down ultra-much, and the webbing stops you from hitting the floor. And then some little fires go off on the webbing. Is like little fire bombs that cut the webbing, like “Foosh!” and suddenly the bits that were holding you to your metal box is gone, but you still got the webbing on you, you can just move with it here and there and everywhere.

So you get your gun up, cuz that's what you been told to do when when it stops moving, and the metal box goes “BANG” and the door flies off. And if there be any Good Guys on the other side of that door, you gotta shoot them super quick. Because there aint no room in the metal box to move. If the good guys catch you in the metal box, you dead for sure. So you shoot your way out of the metal box, and you get out right away. You see where the bullets coming from, and you find cover.

And this drop was the same, but it was all different. It was not a drill. This time we doing it for real. For Runt, it was like the time he was in jail. Like being told “You gonna get gassed, you gonna die.” Aint nothing you can do in that metal box, you gotta just hope you make it to the ground ok. Sometimes, the good guys shoot at the whoosh-bird. Sometimes, they cannot shoot at the whoosh-bird, but they can shoot at your metal boxes. And aint nothing a warboy can do but hope the Fly Guys be good at their flying job.

Our Fly Guy was mega nice, he be all like “You guys gonna make it alright. We gonna be all right.” We get on the whoosh-bird, and every warboy that gets on, he tells us to slap his hand. Calling it “Hi-five”.

Our whoosh-bird be all black, and our Fly Guy says it was made so that machines cannot see it. Like, there are machines that can tell the Good Guys and the Boss-men when a whoosh-bird be coming, but the blackness on ours is special. Said he got “Sponsored” in Bloodsport by a Robot who thought he was all sorts of cool at flying.

We warboys waiting the whole time while we in that Whoosh-bird, and our Fly Guy is telling jokes. Got a radio in all our little metal boxes and is talking to us. Is saying that nobody be shooting us, the blackness on his Whoosh-bird be working 'Zactly the way it should. Telling us the Good Guys is all sorts of dumb, that they will not see us coming. Telling us we gonna kill ten Good Guys each.

And I think this Fly Guy, he knows we be scared. He knows it feel like we be in jail just waiting to get gassed, He is trying to make us feel better, Runt thinks. He might also know a lot of us are gonna die, 'cuz warboys made to die. Made to fight so our boss-men do not have to. And Runt writes about him here so that people know he is cool.

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So then he says “Over the Target. Kill 'em all. Kill 'em for Miss Flowers and for all the little Kozo people getting' stole from. Kill some for me.”

And you feel the drop in the way that you feel it. And this time is not like drills. In drills it don't feel long at all. Now it feel like spending a whole day in that little box, hopin' hopin' hopin' that nobody see it coming, hopin nobody point at the sky with rock-its to shoot down your box. Hopin' if they do that it won't be you, but you know you shouldn't be hoping this 'cuz if it aint you then that means it prolly gonna be another warboy. And Runt, he didn't know what to say, and suddenly Ethos is on the Radio, saying the warboy Promise. And soon everbody on the radio saying the words with him. Telling us what we are and what we do. Telling us “We all gonna die some day. And that day might be here. Might be today. But it is alright. Iz what we do. We are being warboys.” Is all said in the warboy promise.

And suddenly we getting pushed to the ground but our webbing be holding us up. And you hear a “Fwoosh!” And a “BANG!” as that big metal door comes off. And Runt sees a big ol' blue Chicken. Only it be upright. It be holding a gun. Because it is not a chicken, it is a Tengu. It is facing away from Runt. And Runt, he does what he drilled for. Each pull of the trigger, little wimpy gun goes “PAP-AP-AP.” So Runt keeps pulling on that trigger. “PAP-AP-AP, PAP-AP-AP, PAP-AP-AP!!!” And a Tengu falls down in the sand, because it is sandy here.

BONUS CONTENT:

After Action report of Xian Tan, Corporal of the Glorious Armed Forces of the BRNT:

We were told that there would be no landing attempt. We were told that the skies were clear by the naval aircraft carriers stationed around IHJ. I am not dodging responsibility, I am stating facts. High command assured us that it was not in the fiscal interest of Megacorp to conduct a landing. At 18:09 our fire base heard there was insurrectionist activity from remnants of the IHJ defense forces. We were told to pack only gear light enough to be carried in unaided flight. Light ballistic vests, no hard inserts, semiautomatic scout rifles, three days rations, ninety rounds of ammunition. We were told this was extremely time sensitive. Expecting to face Hitotsumi-Kozo, which are capable of biological active camouflage, we also bring enhanced optics. We reach the coastal village of Dantau, and we are informed that it is not IHJ defense forces. These are, in fact, pygmy trolls grown from Megacorp. They attacked one of the coastal missile launchers in mid construction. We are to find the coastal launcher and see if it has been destroyed. If not, we are to guard it until reinforcements arrive. If it has been destroyed, we must find the Pigmy Trolls and destroy them. Several coordinates were suggested to start searching if we needed them. All of the sites provided would have made excellent landing points for amphibious craft. Before we left, commanding officer of the base demanded we hand over batteries for our enhanced optics. We protested. It was dark, and getting darker. Our vision is among the best of the best during the day, but it is considered a joke at night. Enhanced Optics were considered a combat necessity. He agreed, but also pointed out that we were facing trolls. Trolls have no natural active camouflage. Hitotsume-Kozo do. His forces occupied a Hitotsume-kozo village, at night. If they would strike, it would be now as the trolls made their move. We reluctantly agreed to hand over batteries for our optics.

We were told to be careful. But there was no completely erasing the feeling of confidence. Hitotsumi-kozo were devious, ingenious. Devils when it came to ambushes and sabotage. These trolls, we had been told, were not even capable of reading or writing. They were often marched face first into machinegun fire until defenders simply ran out of bullets and were overrun. These were stupid animals barely capable of firing a rifle, much less complex strategy or planning. Compared to facing the elusive one-eyed bandits, this would be a routine combat exercise with live ammo and targets that occasionally shot back to make things interesting.

We arrived at the coastal missile battery at 19:50. It was destroyed. We found several empty drop pods and the engineers sent from Dantau village. All dead, of course. Several of the corpses were mutilated and beheaded. One of them had been nailed to a tree, with his eyes gouged out and placed in his hands. One of the pieces of plywood the engineers had been using had been smeared with blood. It was writing, but not many of us could understand because it was written in Egrish. Our translator told us it said “We come from hell, we here to play.” Immediately this struck up a debate. Several of us felt like we must have had our intel wrong. Trolls cannot read or write, so they could not have written this. That was the argument from one side. The other argument was that clearly some of them could, because while the Hitotsume-kozo were nasty at performing ambushes, they always left the dead alone.

Off on his own, Bokan directed us to a light. Something small, and blue. It looked like a flashlight with a blue tactical covering. A small light you could use to read maps, but not give your position away. It was on the ground, or close to the ground, near the treeline. He moved closer to investigate, and made to pick it up.

We should have brought the enhanced optics. It wasn't a tactical flashlight. It was a pilot light. A butane pilot light. From a flamethrower. Bokan was lit up, literally. Everything went to shit. We lost half our guys in two minutes. They set off a flare and we could see, then.

There must have been thirty of them, dug in along the trees, with a human in powered armor near the back. A lot of them had taken feathers from our dead soldiers, and used them to make head dresses. A lot of them had the heads of our deceased on poles mounted to their backs.

We flew. There was no point in fighting, they had us like fish in a barrel. I flew until we saw the lights of Dantau village.