Author Note: Hey guys! so last night I had about 5...6 fairly short dreams, so rather than write them individually I am going to try and write them all together as 1 story, Hopefully it still makes sense.
P.S. We have officially reached 10 collections! I am honestly surprised that this book reached 10 before my legit novels. Well Hope you like this new dream! Enjoy!
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Running through the dense forest I couldn't help but question my choice in joining this branch of the military.
We were currently running at full speed, as close as we could with our gear, through the middle of a dense forest, having to weave our way through, avoiding the swampy areas, jumping over fallen trees, some times even crawling underneath large expanses of trees covered in the black gleam of ash, having been knocked down by explosives at some point.
I suppose I have to give credit to our squad leader for making us all wrap our weapons in water proof covers, we doubted him and complained that if we ran into any enemy's we would be dead meat, that was back when it was dry, now it was cloudy, the air was chilly, and everything was wet.
The only bright side being that it had yet to rain.
Coming through the trees, the area opened up and what greeted us made us want to bang our head against tree until we killed over.
"Alright, from here we will split up into groups of two, I'll be team Alpha, Anderson, you will be with Hendred as team Beta, and Yolen, you will be with Themson as Gamma, Yoshino, you will be with me" Our commander, Jackson, sorted us into the planned teams.
Each team had its own task, and did not know the task of any other team, that way if any team got compromised, the goal could still be pulled off, even without getting all ends done.
We split off into our teams, resting for a few minuets before we split up to try and traipsed our way across the field of hell in front of us.
"Right, everyone, move out!" Jackson called after five minuets of rest.
Only having five minuets of rest may seem like to little to some people, how ever, in our unit, we use a trick, where we count the seconds that pass by, on our watches, to make it seem much longer then it actually is.
Getting up, I turned and looked in the direction we were to head in, looking at the reason we all almost wanted a quick death.
In front of me, stretched out was sticky, thin white wire, looking like a spiders nest, the wire was spread about the entire forest from this point on, rather than individual wires, they where grouped by the tens, making it look even more like some sort of spider set up a nest throughout the entire forest, we had no information as to what these wires where connected to, though at the very least, hitting even one was guaranteed to give us away, if not explode us into a pasty mess.
"Yoshino, we'll be fine, just gotta be careful, we were given all the time we need to complete this mission" Jackson, smirked at me, we both knew that, although we had "All the time you need" we had to finish in less then a week.
The amount of resources that went into this project was to high, at this point, there was no way we could afford to make any mistakes, and we had to finish in time, while technically the missions of the others was not totally necessary, our mission had to go off without a hitch.
Walking forwards, Jackson followed my lead, as, although I hated working my way through traps and wires like this, I was one of the best at it. I carefully lead us southwest, to our left, the others heading south, and southeast respectively, luckily there seemed to mostly be wires at ankle level, if they had cobwebbed the entire area, we would have had to rely on cross through the tree tops using grapple guns.
It seemed like our luck ended there, as within an hour the wires became more complex, spanning in the mush larger sized groups, in nearly every direction, to the point that it almost looked as if the forest was full of white pathways, he could barely step over them at this point, having to hop over, and with all our gear, that was not fun at all.
Soon enough we broke out for lunch, stopping in one of the few "large" open areas, looking around, I couldn't see where we had come from, we had made good progress. We where currently in a diamond shaped clearing, surrounded by the white wire, them being about two feet wide. they went from tree to tree in every direction.
Some going from one tree to another a few meters away from it, while others seemed to span hundreds of yards, twisting around the forest floor, almost completely covering it in white.
For our meal we had Tier 4 MRE's which was basically just a specialized "Meal Bar" and a cup of freeze dried smoothie powder mixed in a flask with water, it may be a bit boring but, unlike Tier 1 MRE"s it tastes fairly good, keeps you full as long as any decent meal, and its very light and small, you can easily have 1 months worth of food supply in one backpack for 10 men, so its very useful.
After eating, which only took 10 minuets, we went back to working our way through the maze of white wire, it took hours just to walk a mile or two, not only were the wires getting worse, but the terrain was changing from the flat forest to muddy hills.
Though one of the hardest obstacle was when we came to a river, about 4 meters in width.
After a quick discussion we decided to set up a grapple, which was basically just a small rifle that fired 4 inch long metal rod from both ends, attached to a wire.
We fired to about at 6ft up a large tree on the other side, then we fired the other side at a equally large tree on our side, before holding the gun piece, and zip-lining to the other side. Once we were both on the other side I used a handle on the gun piece to windup the wire back into it.
After that things went fairly well and we soon started nearing our target location, and as abrupt as the white wires started, they came to an end.
"Arm up, Yoshino" Jackson quietly told me.
I quickly unwrapped my rifle, equipped everything I needed. The sky was clearing up, we where still under heavy clouds, but, soon enough it would be getting bright and hot.
Following Jackson's lead, we trenched across the forest flats, the trees becoming sparser as we went on, the ground became grittier, still wet, but not swampy, nor muddy, like a wet powder.
Jackson came to a stop as we neared hundreds of long beds, looking to be garden beds, though out in the middle of nowhere, there was no way that was the case.
"Yoshino, look here." Jackson said, squatting down and digging into the soil "Its a Rainbow Sprite Cricket"
At the spot he dug, a pink/golden/blue cricket jumped out, heading in my direction, picking it up I looked at it, while it looked like a cricket besides the coloring, it was about the size of a large marshmallow, letting it go I turn to Jackson.
"And? What does that mean?"
"What it means, Yoshino, is that these beds are not for growing plants, but beetles, those rainbow crickets, are not only rare, but they always attract a beetle called, the Viper Swivel, they are also rare, not as rare, but they still sell for a lot"
And shore enough the spot Jackson was digging at, soon uncovered lots of small beetles, maybe a quarter inch in size, that all tried to dig away.
These beetles where used for a single scale that could be processed into a highly illegal substance, Focron Powder, one of the most explosive compounds to date, in other words, someone had an illegal explosive powder farm out in a very dense forest.
"Fuck Us" I couldn't help but voice my opinion.
"Indeed" Jackson replied, not looking nearly as fearful as myself "All these white wires are most likely set up to explode some Focron Bombs, if we so much as touch any one of them, the entire forest will be blown to hell"
What Jackson doesn't know, is something that I came across when researching this mission, while Focron is well known, at least to the military, a very hidden feature of it, is that if it is mixed with carbon and Pluto Powder AKA plutonium powder, than its explosive force increases by well over 100x.
And our mission, which takes us to about a half mile from here, to what do you know? A fucking coal mine, not only that, but team Gamma is going to a plutonium processing plant.
There is no way this ends well.
Continuing on our way towards our destination, we made much faster progress, not having to dodge and jump around the wires, that and the trees clearing out and we where soon in front of a large brick wall, going up around 2,000ft in the air, the wall ran in a semicircle from one cliff of the mountain it was built against, to the other.
Its total coverage came to a large 250km², just a few years back, this behemoth of a city/mine would be unimaginable, and yet, as of now its considered one of the smaller city's, the largest city currently is, Shàng Yǒnghéng, meaning, Superior Eternal, its wall being well over 6,000ft high, covering a distance of 40,000km², and having a population of well over 2 billion, it certainly deserves its name.
Rather than climbing up the wall we circled around, camping against the wall it self. It took us around two full days before we managed to reach the top of the wall, where it met with the mountain cliff.
Peering over it, we got our first glimpse of the city.
The city was stuffed full of buildings, all coming to around 3 quarters the height of the wall. With almost no empty room, this city could be considered to be at its full capacity, though as it was mine, a lot of the builds are probably storage or simply empty.
While most buildings where made with graying stone, in the center sat a large dark metal palace, spanning almost 20km², that, was our target location.
My current objective was to go to the palace and get the Queen there to approve several documents, well, that was my cover story anyway, I was really just the distraction, while I was acting as the distraction, Jackson was to head else where, I was unable to find what he was supposed to do, however, if my guess is correct, it wont mean well for anyone.
Nonetheless, orders are orders, I.e. with or without me it will happen so may as well stay in the loop as long as I can.
After gearing up, and getting our ID's straight, we split up, Jackson heading towards the actual mine, confirming my theory, and me head to the palace.
Leaping over the wall I fell with my rope, swinging down, before letting go and rolling across the roof of the building below. Standing up and dusting myself off I looked around, almost nothing was in sight, just a mix of stone and metal roofs separated by the alleyways below, though still connected at the corners for stability.
Glancing down into the alleyway, I could not make out any single person from this high up, while to me it looked like I could almost be on a very large flat stone courtyard, the truth of the matter was that I was standing nearly 2,000 ft in the air, looking down into the alleys would probably kill anyone with a fear of heights.
Jumping across the gap, I start running towards the tall spires sticking out in the middle of the city, having to jump across the alleyways, was quite exhilarating, though I soon came to stop once I reached a much larger gap, nearly 10ft, I would have to go around.
Looking down I noticed that it was one of the highways that went through the city, it was full of hovering vehicles moving about at fast speeds through over five layers of road, all at different heights.
This city was packed to the brim with people, all for different purposes, miners to mine, cooks to feed the miners, tailors to replace the miners outfits, mechanics and engineers to keep the equipment running at full output, and of course, prostitutes to fulfill the miners other needs, along with other workers for other purposes.
As this was a coal mine, there were not that many guards at all, from what I could see, there was probably no more then a thousand or so.
At least over here
*Bang!*
Suddenly I hear a gun shot from the direction of the palace, I race over as fast as I can to see whats happening.
Coming up to the palace, the entire area opens up, there is a large road way that surrounds the palace, before it drops off into a giant ravine, on the other side of which, is the large palace, with the only entrance being a metal bridge that can at most fit two people walking side by side.
Looking through my scope, I could see two sides fighting, on the side of what I would assume are the palace guards based on the uniform and high quality gear, they had a bit under fifty soldiers, most lining the highway, with several using small flying vehicles.
The opposing side had at least 10x the men, being around five hundred. Though unlike the guards, they wore almost no armor, and had low quality if not homemade weapons, they were winning through sheer numbers.
As I am supposed to get in contact with the Queen I suppose I'll have to help them stop this little revolt.
I use one of the top secret killing methods that I spent years training my skill in, before perfecting to to perfection.
Killing everything from one side to the other
*Thoo!*
I shoot at the person furthest left, his head finding a hole in it, he kills over immediately.
*Thoo!*
*Thoo!*
I keep shooting them one by one, as my rifle is silenced using a Tier 4 suppressor, plus how high I was above them, and no one down below heard my shots as I killed them off.
Within a short few minuets most of the rebels were killed without even knowing how, the rest seeing the situation retreated as the guards used the opening to counter attack. Once the battle had ended I slung my rifle over my shoulder before jumping down, free falling nearly twelve hundred feet before activating my hover boots to slow my fall just enough that I could land without any injuries.
As I landed several guards pointed their guns at me, while someone who looked like the commander walked up to me.
"I take it we have you to thank for....helping us out" He looked at me with a slight scowl on his face
Rather than answering him, I directly pullout my ID, handing it to him. His scowl quickly turned into a grimace as he reads it. The ID is for a Special ops commander, quite a bit lower than my actual ID though when you are part of a squad that is not supposed to exist, you don't really ever show your real ID.
Assigning some one to escort me, he headed back to dealing with the aftermath of the fight.
Following the guard who was to lead me, he took me toward the bridge, upon reaching it he turned and look at me me.
"Do be careful, if you fall, we will have no way of saving you"
Looking down, to my surprise the "moat" was just a large empty space, looking down into it, I could not see the bottom at all, it just fazed out like when you look at the horizon.
"What on earth is that?" I couldn't help but ask, my curiosity getting the best of me
Turning back to face the gate, he responded as he started walking "That, my friend, is a question without an answer"
"Huh"
I doubt it, with how long this city has been here they have had more then than ample time to research it, and there is noway someone has something like this at their door step and is not looking into it.
Maybe the Queen will tell me?
After a quick stop waiting for the gate to open we walked in, and the pathway continued on, traveling over what was essentially the void right below our feet.
Soon enough the pathway went down into the actual palace.
The floor was made of a thick layer of hardened silver steel, the walls being more gray or black color, walking through the large corridor, if it could even be called that with the size of it, we soon reached the door to the throne room, where the guard opened the door to let me inside.
Walk into the throne room was a bit of a serial experience, calling the room massive would be an understatement. The room was about the size of two football stadiums connected on the short side. the ceiling went of well over 100ft up. It had massive pillars throughout the room. It took me nearly an entire minuet just to walk from the door, to the throne.
Sitting on the throne was, well not what I expected, The Queen was dressed in a light blue gown, and had a silver crown on her head, that was not the surprising part though, rather her appearance, she had silvery blue eyes, light blond hair, with a slight wave to it, and breasts on the smaller side, she looked to be no older then 16 years old and yet, the aura she put off was not that of a naive princess who just ascended the throne, but of a ageless monster, poised and ready to strike.
With a quick half bow I nodded my head at her "Your Majesty, I am Commander Yoru, sent here by my King Henderson, to discuss changes to our current treaties"
I am sure if there had been other officials they would have gasped at my presumptuousness, I however, could not careless, I am here as a distraction, not to be jerked around by all this pompousness.
"Alright, we will continue this meeting in my office" She spoke in a commanding tone, before standing up and walking down from her throne, heading towards a side door.
This must have not been something normal as while there may not be officials, the guards, did act surprised at this.
Following her queue, I followed her out the side door and into a small office, the Queen sat in a seat behind the desk, and nodded at the chair in front of it.
Taking a seat I looked up, meeting her eyes.
"Now then, Commander Yoru, or should I call you, SR Yoshino, what are you really here for?"