The Swan's Song.

Chapter 12

Happy late Valentine's Day, guys! Everyone's favorite General is at the bottom of the story, so make sure to get a good look at her after reading this chapter! Let's get it!

XXX

"Slow it down. Lock in." Thought Brixley.

She had finished breaking the news to Callie about pairing Swan with Sako Squad, and the concerns of the shark had been noted.

Callie had spoken just as she was leaving about all of this being too fast and too soon.

Brixley had merely wanted to get an idea of how Callie would react, and it was just as she suspected.

The shark did not want anything to do with the human.

Brixley expected this, and that is why shy had a contingency plan in place which would prove to Sako, and the base at large, that Swan is worthy to be on base and perform operations.

It was the simplest of missions, literally going in to a location, grabbing actual papers, and then simply coming back.

A simple mission which would prove that he could follow orders. It was boring enough that he may actually just follow them to a 'T' to simply get it over with.

But that wasn't her most current of issues.

The first was that she was meeting resistance from Callie, but it was understandable resistance.

The second was that she was reviewing a recent release of information regarding human combat tactics for the past five years.

Brixley did not like what she was finding in the report.

Fighting to the death was common, as was using every gun and tool anyone could get their hands on.

The brief, which was roughly sixty pages of material, covered everything from militia groups, remnant army battalions, and individual fighters who had taken up arms against the anthro soldiers.

Everything and anything was covered.

Weaponry. Methods. Schemes. Interviews of survivors from both sides if possible.

The key thing that Brixley found which greatly concerned her was that she saw Swan in a lot of the things she was reading.

Human fighters had begun to adopt a sort of willing negligence when it came to their value towards their own lives, commonly standing out in the open of a combat zone to take shots or perform other actions.

Human fighters often made decisions in combat not aligned with logical or conventional manners. "Suicidal actions" in combat such as charging a machine gun nest that has an alley locked down or trying to stick a tank with a bundle of grenades had become increasingly common.

Desperation wasn't a word to describe this sort of mindset to the General.

"Acceptance. They thought there was no way out. They were hopeless." The worried voice in her head only thought of Swan, seeing as how he did the same sort of thing when he literally walked down into an enemy camp just to steal some guns.

"Boost some shit, as Izzy described so clearly." Thought Brixley. But was Swan accepting of the fact that he thought he was gonna die at any point or was he just carefree.

Was he an adrenaline junkie? Was he trying to impress them? Was he simply just retaliating against her much like a rebellious teen?

Was it something more disturbing and morbid? Something infernal?

Brixley sighed and leaned back in her chair, her mood dampening even more as she read the report.

"Reckless abandon. Fighting for survival. Fighting to the death." She thought.