The Swan's Song.

Chapter 7

We going long for a 10000+ word chapter now. Thanks, and enjoy!

XXX

By the time it reached 3pm in the day, they were over halfway to their objective. Phantom called for the group to halt and they took a break to both hydrate and down a little bit of food.

Izzy, once more, sat and watched as Swan dug into an MRE.

"This is like... the third fucking time I've seen this guy eat. What the hell?" She thought. Swan was eating a flat piece of the stable bread with nothing else.

Just the bread.

"You know, I had a buddy once who crashed a car off a bridge and broke both his legs."

The human spoke with such a casual manner that it made Izzy quite confused. He had been so focused on the mission no more than ten or fifteen minutes ago, and now he was talking to Phantom about something she had only recently begun to listen to.

"A car's windshield looks pretty durable, right? Not the case according to him. Son of a gun flew right through that sucker." Said Swan. Phantom nodded as if he had just been bestowed with knowledge of the universe and Swan took a bite from his bread piece.

"Huh. I had always wondered about the average car window. But this reminds me of some things I had overheard about two years ago when I first joined the military:" Phantom took a sip from a hydration pouch and leaned in.

Izzy felt completely disregarded as Phantom and Swan talked like old friends. She watched, completely dumbfounded, as the two sat and ate. It was entirely surprising to her, seeing as how Phantom was giving off some particularly fruity vibes to the apparently racist Christian human with a bone to pick regarding all mammal folk.

"I had heard speculation that Nevada had quite the strange battle regrading its takeover. I hope it's not a sensitive subject, but anyways, there is a lot of talk about strange phenomena like radiation hotspots all over the state at random." Said Phantom.

"Strange lights, noises, and other things are the norm there. The APG declared it clear but it's all a shit-show apparently. Patrols sometimes lose a soldier or go missing entirely on a rare occasion." Explained the fox.

Swan nodded, chewing on the bread. Izzy watched as he squinted for a slight moment before his eyes returned to normal.

"Sounds like a dream vacation." Said Swan, sarcastically. Phantom gave a dry chuckle and Izzy was left wondering how the hell a connection from car crashes with broken legs to irradiated Nevada even happened.

"I haven't even opened my food yet. What the fuck?" She thought. Swan bit another piece of his bread, rolling his head to the side.

"What funny to me is why General Brixley has some sort of hard on for me. I don't get it." Said Swan. Izzy shook her head lightly. She just didn't see how Swan could jump from Irradiated Nevada to Brixley.

Izzy wasn't sure she understood males anymore. She looked to Phantom to see that he wore a little bit of a grim look before his features softened.

"It's... not something I think you'd understand quite yet. But, if you stick around for a little longer, maybe she can tell you. It's not my part to say, sadly." Phantom shrugged, eating from his own MRE.

Izzy looked at the fox, wondering just what the infiltrator managed to learn about the somewhat secretive General. Izzy knew that Brixley had her reasons for privacy and felt a pang of jealousy that her own General had kept seemingly so many of her close friends in the dark about many aspects of her life.