War Stories

Posted on Fri Sep 11th, 2015 @ 4:16am by Captain Melody Windsor & Master Sergeant Daniel Browden & Staff Sergeant Sandrine White & Staff Sergeant Augustus Deakin & Corporal Michael Witzowski Jr & Corporal Valerie Parks & Lance Corporal Tyler Howard

Mission: First Strike
Location: Manoora Lounge

The noise around the table was intoxicating, old friends and new, brothers in arms, all basking in each others glory. They were war stories, girl stories, drinking stories, all of them celebrating life and all it had given them. That's just what you do the night before you might give up your life for the ideals you believe in. Melody had the floor at the moment, but that would change as soon as her story was over.

"So he's got me pinned, dead to rights, and he's waving this little laser blade back and forth like he's going to slit my neck, and out of nowhere BOOM! Witzowski is there, cold cocking him in the back of the head. Now, I'm good, right? I can get free now, but that's not how this ends. The little jerk falls down and loses his laser blade. Next thing I know, he's screaming and the blade is sinking into his forehead. It flew up into the air, and flipped around just right to land blade first in his forehead," She said, to laughter around the table. "Last I heard he's drooling into a cup after his one of a kind Witzowski lobotomy," She said, laughing herself now.

Sitting at a table just outside the circle of soldiers, but close enough to indicate she's still part of the gathering, Staff Sergeant White looked over at the young, and less young, soldiers laughing and drinking. Taking a sip of her lukewarm beer, she pondered on the effects of such reunions. She'd heard this story a thousand times, or to be more precise, several hundred variations of such a tale. Sometimes they stuck close to the facts, other times they where very far from them. But in every instance, it came down to one thing. I have triumphed over death, and I will do so again. A necessary part in any soldiers preparations.

While she did not cheer or laugh, the staff sergeant raised her pint and drank with them. They needed to believe they were invincible. It made her job easier. They also needed to see her partake in their rituals. That also made her job easier. She, herself, was very comfortable with the idea of her own mortality. She was Australian after all. When you come from a place where everything ugly or cute is built to kill you in some way or another, your outlook on things tends to be slightly different. "Here's to Witzowski!" She raised her pint and struck it with the closest member of the company as she cheered the unknown soldiers 'fait d'arme'. Oh well, guess she did cheer people on.

"That's not at all what happened-" Mike Witzowsky fussed from where he sat at the far side of the table. He was more than happy to drink and tell stories- but they had to be at least mostly accurate. "Mel left out that this whole part 'bout beatin' him senseless before hand for a good twenty minutes. She'd headbutted him so many times the bloke'd gone cross-eyed and had done drooled out a few of his teeth. It wasn't hard to cold cock him none- he was so bent on puttin' a nail in her that a herd of elephants coulda paraded by and he wouldn't have noticed."

Corporal Valerie Parks threw back another shot and wiped any excess of her lips. She was not really a fisticuffs kind of girl, though she's had a few tussles over her career so far. "You do that to a Klingon, and then get back to me. The sons of bitches are down right ruthless. Having fought against them, I can safely say I'm glad they're on our side again."

"If it'd been a Klingon, that story would have had a very different ending," Staff Sergeant Gus Deakin interjected, gesturing with his whiskey glass at Witzowsky. "The cap'n could handle it, but Witzo over there wouldn't have a clue."

"Witzo couldn't handle that Orion dancing girl from last week, either," Melody teased, grinning ear to ear like the Cheshire cat.

"Now, I thought we'd agreed to let that little story die," Daniel interrupted her, with his own wide grin.

Melody laughed as she stood and banged her empty beer mug on the table for a minute until a silence had come over the group, all eyes on her, "'Tomorrow, we die'," She began, to a few confused looks from her newer team members. "That's what my father used to say before all of his deployments. I never understood it until he explained it to me. Tomorrow, we die. We land on a battlefield, and we cease to exist. We are soldiers, we are marines. We fight as one, as an unbeatable force of justice. We die tomorrow to become death to those that threaten the livelihood of our friends and family. In the process of this, we will lose parts of our machine. They'll be chinked away by the fire and fury of our enemies as we burn them away like the cancer they are. No loss is acceptable in the battle field, instead they are inevitable. But dead things feel no pain, so we continue to churn on. A great green monster, devouring all that is in our way. And when we board our vessels to return to our home, we live again. And then we hurt. We mourn. We cry. We grieve. As long and as hard as we need to, for those that we've lost. That pain, the pain of our losses on the field, is what brings us back to life. It's what reminds us that we have souls and hearts that can break. And so, we drink it in, we remember, and we recover. Tomorrow, we die. Tonight. Tonight we live. Tonight, we remember the times that we've lived. We remember those that fell before us, we remember the people who have left us so that we can still be here. Tonight, we smile, we make love, we embrace everything that life has given us, so that tomorrow we can let it go. Tomorrow we can die, so that we can live. Oo-rah, Marines!" She said, shouting the last part and raising her glass into the air.

"Oorah!" Daniel barked, raising his mug as well.

Sandrine raised her mug and yelled with the others. It was sincere. For a moment she caught the Captains eye, nodded slightly, showing her approval. For a moment, she acknowledged her superiors talent and leadership. For a moment. Tonight she lived. Tomorrow she died, and kept the machine running beyond it's expected capacity. "Oorah!"

"Oorah!" Val shouted along with the rest of the crowd, lifting her glass of beer as well. Even though the conversation took a sudden shift, going from tales of past heroics to the realization that many of them may not be coming home tomorrow, it was the sign of a great leader. Melody took a dark topic, but an important one nevertheless, and turned it into a rallying cry.

Deakin raised his glass and bellowed with the rest of them, "Oorah!"

"Oorah!" Tyler called with the rest.

All of them shouted out their approval and laughter and stories resumed. Melody smiled and joined in on it, but Danny leaving the room caught her eye. He'd been acting odd all day, and she wasn't about to let that slide. Not the night before a battle.