Totally Buggin' (Buggy the Clown Live Action Fic)

In the Heat of Battle

The next morning, the five of us of us plus Yonis got up before the sun had risen and took the skiff to shore. After dropping us off on the beach, Yonis turned the skiff back towards the Cat's Crown with a somber salute goodbye.
We spent the entire day trudging through the jungle and hiking the mountain where the Marine base laid. It was exhausting; even without the Ghost Virus sapping my energy, my body was not used to this type of physical labor. We took many breaks, and it wasn't until late afternoon that we got eyes on the base, nestled at the crest of a C-shaped cove.
From our vantage point on the mountain, hidden in the trees, we could see two sides of the gray stone building, its rectangular mass at odds with the lush jungle paradise surrounding it. The back of the building disappeared into the mountain, and a deck on the front jutted out over the water. Marine guards were stationed on this platform, and on the roof and on the beach—the whole vicinity was crawling with them like ants on a slice of cake.
"I count at least forty," said Douglas, handing me the spyglass. "There's no telling how many are inside."
I watched through the scope as one man stretched, clearly bored. Another behind him picked his nose. "Let's get closer," I said.
Further down the mountain, we came to a concrete cylinder on the ground with a metal grate over its opening. Underneath the metal grating, it was dark and hollow. "A well?" Trixie asked.
"Could be," said Niko. "One with piping to channel rain water back to the base. Or an underground chimney, though there's no smoke right now."
"Either way it'd lead to the building," remarked Douglas. "If it's wide enough we could us it to get inside, but that's a dangerous little game of roulette. We don't want to make it all the way to the bottom just to find ourselves stuck inside or caught above a roaring fire."
I chewed my lip, then looked at Buggy. "Do you have any of your chop-chop ability left?" I asked.
"A little," he confirmed. "What did you have in mind?"
A few minutes later, Buggy's eyeball was floating down through the grate, eyelid and all. It disappeared into the darkness below.
"That's fucking freaky," said Niko with a look of disgust.
"Ouch," said Buggy, wincing as his eye bounced off of something out of sight. He'd pulled his bandana down to cover the gaping hole on the left side of his face and his right eye blinked, unfocused. "Okay, it gets really steep, really fast." He covered his remaining eye with his palm for better clarity. "Okay... I think I see light," he said after a minute. "There's a room... Yep, it's a furnace room," he confirmed, lowering his hand, "but no fire. It's empty."
"We just have to make it down there before anyone decides to come in and light a fire," Douglas remarked. "'Burned-alive' is not how I want to go out."
"I'll go first," I decided, "and when I get down there, Buggy can give you three the thumb's up."
With some effort we removed the metal cover from the hole and Douglas helped to lower me down into it. I had to crouch as I walked in the direction of the Marine base, but almost immediately the tunnel sloped downwards. I ended up sliding on my butt, using the heel of my boot to slow myself on the decline. More than once my tailbone bumped on the floor painfully, but I made it to the bottom in one piece, landing gracefully on my feet in an ashy fire pit. I stepped down onto the floor and saw Buggy's eyeball floating in the corner of the room, his blue iris watching me. It blinked.
The others followed my lead and slid down the tunnel while I guarded the door. Buggy took up the rear and popped his eyeball back in his head. "That was disorienting," he remarked.
Cautiously, we cracked the door, and were lucky to find the corridor empty beyond it. "If it's the same as it was on the warship, they'll make their rounds about every fifteen minutes," said Buggy, "so we'll have to move fast." We all pulled out our weapons and followed him down the hall. We easily found a stairwell and made our way down it, but ran into our first adversaries on the very next landing. Buggy ran through the first guard with his knife without a second thought and Trixie pierced the back of the next with her sword as he tried to run away. With no time to hide the bodies, we stepped over them and moved on hurriedly.
We found the floor we were looking for and ran down the corridor. As Douglas and I took down the next three soldiers, the alarm sounded above us. "They've found the bodies—we don't have much time!" Douglas said, exasperated.
Buggy stopped us in front of a locked door labeled 'Archive'. "Here's where it'll be," he said. "There should be a section just for treasure maps inside."
Niko slid on his knees in front of the door and began picking the lock as fast as he could. More Marines came towards us from either end of the hallway, and the remaining four of us fought them back, covering Niko's back as they came at us in small waves.
"Any day now, Niko," stressed Trixie, breathing hard as she swung her sword across the chest of another soldier.
"Almost there," he replied through gritted teeth.
Despite the predicament, I felt energized, almost enjoying myself; this was the kind of physical labor I was used to. The adrenaline of battle was pumping through me as I swung my sword expertly. I stabbed through a man's belly and twisted, then pulled the blade out with a squelch, letting him fall to the ground. I looked over at Buggy, who was evading another Marine's jabs. He grabbed the man's arm and twisted it behind him, then swiftly pulled his own blade across the man's neck, spewing blood across the hall. He threw the body down and made eye contact with me, breathing hard. "I've still got plenty of fight in me, sweetheart," he threw my own words back at me with a grin, wiping his knife clean on his pants. I suppressed a smile of my own, impressed and, okay, a little turned on.
The lock clicked and Niko sprung up from the ground, throwing the door open and ushering us inside. Our whole team darted in, and Niko pulled the door closed behind us before a new wave of enemies could arrive.