Resurrection (Red vs Blue)

5: Teams, Training, And Something Else Entirely

"Freckles," Tucker heard Wash say. "Shake!"

The mantis took a giant step forward, its foot crashing down onto the ground. Everything shook; rocks and other debris coming loose from around the mouth of the cave. At that moment Tucker finally realized what Wash was doing. He was cutting them off; sealing the opening of the tunnel like Felix wanted.

"Wait, no! What are you doing?!" Tucker yelled.

Before he could even get the whole sentence out, everything went black. . . .

Tucker had that scene playing through his head constantly for the past three weeks. That whole fight had been a bunch of bullshit. Wash was gone, Sarge was gone, Donut and Lopez were gone, and bunch of soldiers had been killed pointlessly all because of them. It was enough to make him let Caboose team kill him like he did to Church. And speaking of Church, that was another thing that'd been getting to him. When he took off with Carolina, it'd fucked everything up. A.I. or not, it was still a fucking dick move.

Put it all together, and it made for some really messed up times. Tucker couldn't focus on anything because of it. That point was made during the mission he'd just gotten back from. Felix had taken Tucker and his team on a data retrieval mission, on which most of his team was killed by the assholes holding the other people he knew captive. They'd gotten the data, but at a huge cost that he was going to get bitched at for.

Which was exactly why Tucker was standing in Kimball's office, waiting for the others to show up. They'd gotten to play capture the flag while he was out getting shot at. Fucking lucky bastards. At least their day had gone better than his. Well, he assumed it did. Then again, they'd never been able to successfully play capture the flag before, so Tucker wasn't getting his hopes too high. They couldn't even get each others' flags in Blood Gulch, and that's when it was just the small group of them. Heaven help anyone unfortunate enough to be involved in the game that went on earlier.

The sound of footsteps behind him snapped Tucker out of his thoughts. Turning around, he saw Grif, Simmons, and Caboose coming down the ramp into Kimball's office. Considering Kimball had had to call them three times, they'd probably been fucking around in the training area. Lucky them. At least they hadn't gotten any of their squads killed today.

"Tucker!" Caboose exclaimed as they walked in. "You're back! I'm so glad!"

"If you try to hug me, I will fucking murder you," Tucker told him sharply.

"Oh, that's okay. I know you're more into groping, Tucker. C'mon. Let's grope," he said. It made Tucker really, really want to punch him in the face.

"When the hell did you get back?" Grif asked.

"Not too long ago," Tucker answered. "It wasn't great."

"What happened out there?" Simmons questioned.

"Oh, I can tell you what happened." Felix walked into the room then, stopping in front of them and crossing his arms. The new mercenary, Shana, was shadowing him silently. "Captain Tucker decided that disobeying orders was a good idea, and acted alone to get a hard drive loaded with enemy secrets. It was a decision that cost him the lives of two of his men." He paused then, letting all that sink in. Tucker mentally noted it as him being a prick. "And, to be entirely honest, it was a pretty damn good trade; if I do say so myself."

Felix lost Tucker at that point. "Uh, what? I'm not following, man. I thought you were pissed at me?"

Felix laughed humorlessly. "Oh, trust me, I am. Don't get me wrong, I very much still want to beat you until your senseless skull is paste. But you took a risk, and it just so happened that it paid off. Can't argue with that."