Assault (Red vs Blue)

17: The Newbies

17: The Newbies

Many Years Ago: The Mother of Invention (Primary freelancer facility/aircraft)

The last few days had been slightly rough, to say the least. Since the training accident, York had been confined to the med bay — something that was driving Carolina insane. Trying to run training sessions without her second in command was really throwing her for a loop. Being off her game wasn't something she was used to; flying solo had always been more her thing. But ever since she'd started getting along with York better, she'd started relying on him more. He'd become the person she went to for pretty much everything — both on and off the field. Not having him around had caused Carolina to make several errors during the most recent session. They'd been stupid mistakes; one's Carolina hadn't made in a long time. It was almost as if her head hadn't been in it at all.

And her distracted behavior was leading to mounting frustrations between all the members of the team. Since Carolina wasn't paying attention, the others had started making errors as well. It was causing South and Wyoming to get even more confrontational with everyone than normal; at one point, they were even ready to start fighting with each other. Luckily, North and Florida had stepped in to stop that one. Wash had been on standby, but Carolina could tell he was relieved when he wasn't needed.

Currently, South was bickering with CT and Wash over something that Carolina couldn't recall. She'd stopped paying attention after the argument ended their training session ten minutes early. And it wasn't showing any signs of stopping as they entered the locker room, either. Carolina had a feeling she'd be really good at blocking out any unnecessary noise by the time things eventually got back to normal.

"All I'm saying is that all those mistakes could've been prevented if some people hadn't been acting like jackasses," South said loudly, her voice unfortunately ruining Carolina's attempt at continuing to ignore the conversation. "But that's just my opinion."

"Would you fucking knock it off already?" CT snapped as she took her helmet off. "It's not like we were in the middle of an actual mission. It was just a stupid training session. Get over it."

"Yeah, it was just a training mission now. But what about when we go out in the field for our next mission? What if we have a colassal screw up then? Half us would be dead!" South fired back.

"If we keep performing like this, we won't be sent back into the field. So we wouldn't have to worry about it," Wash muttered as he started removing pieces of his armor and shoving them into his locker.

South whirled on him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

North groaned on the other side of the room. "Let it go, South. Let's not start that argument."

"No, I wanna know what he means," South said, her tone extremely hostile. "You wanna run that by me again, Washington? What the hell did you mean?"

"Don't play stupid — you know exactly what I meant. If we keep this bullshit up, there's no way in hell the Director will send us back into the field. Not until we get our shit together," Wash spat at her.

At that point, Carolina paused halfway through taking the pieces of her armor off and glared at her teammates. "All three of you need to knock it off. Now. You sound like a bunch of fucking kids going at it like that. You wanna know how to get ourselves back in order? Start by shutting your mouths for more than five seconds."

CT looked at her. "Oh, so now you decide to speak up? Where was your sense of authority when this whole thing started in the training room?"

"I'll tell you what her problem is — she's lost without her boyfriend around," South said shortly. When Carolina gave her another sharp glare, the other freelancer just crossed her arms. "You can't tell me I'm wrong. Your head's been somewhere else ever since York got hurt. So you can't be bitching at us when you're just as much at fault."