Sky King II: Reborn

Chapter IX

Night fell and the rebels found themselves dug out in yet another trench between the trees, having moved away from the bunker. The chances of soldiers retaliating there were very high, but all they would find upon reaching it would be the bodies of their comrades and a major loss in weaponry. The rebels grabbed any of the same ammunition they could find, two rocket launchers from inside of the bunker, a Hellot mounted machine gun that was still getting figured out, and anti tank mines for when they reached the heart of the city.

Kuu sat next to Oliver again in the trench, both sharing bits of their meal with one another. It felt like being on a picnic with a sibling, something she had never had the experience of before. Her mom would occasionally take her out to a nearby park for one on one picnics when she was little, so it wasn't that the feeling was entirely foreign, just different.

Narai walked over to their position, taking a seat next to Kuu with yet another bag of jerky in his hands, popping the pieces into his mouth under his bandanna.

"You two are going to be with me again when we reach the city outskirts," he said after swallowing a bigger chunk, "we have a couple of trucks ready to smuggle us inside,"

"What district are we entering from?" Oliver asked, sneakily taking a pinch of rice from Kuu's small bowl. Her eyes were fixated on Narai, providing the perfect distraction for his theft.

"Industrial," the black haired man responded, Oliver almost choking on the bits of rice, making a horrendous sound in his throat to clear it.

"That's the heaviest guarded area of the city outside of the Prince's estate, why there?"

"Why would they expect us to enter from there?" Narai answered Oliver's question with his own. Kuu kind of understood what he was getting at but Oliver sighed.

"They wouldn't but this is still a bad idea," he looked through his glasses at Kuu for some assistance, the young woman only shrugging back.

"They have a lot of soldiers standing around, but there's only two checkpoints. One from the outside and one between districts, each with only three or four operating," the black haired man finished what was left in the bag of jerky, Kuu still unable to catch a glimpse of his face beneath the bandanna, "just grunts fresh off of the boats. They keep the veterans and trained guards in the inner city and at the estate with better weapons,"

"Been there recently? You know a lot," Oliver said with suspicion in his voice, the questioning of the man's allegiance making him chuckle.

"Should worry more about the one's shooting at you, not with you," Narai reached into his right pocket and tossed something to the man in glasses, "Oliver, right? You've done well so far, don't disappoint me just because my information scares you,"

Narai patted Kuujiro's shoulder as a farewell and headed back over to where Harold and Shayla were down the left side of the trench. She looked to what Oliver had in his hands, the man unfolding a map of the city with a massive amount of markings on it, ranging from checkpoint locations, guard routes, supply depot locations, communication posts, the estate location, and routine tank transfer roads.

"Holy shit," the bookstore owner studied the paper intensely, regretting his misjudgement of the Group C leader, still wondering how he came across this much info though. They had insiders within the city, both Kuu and Oliver knew that, maybe it was possible they had insiders within the Hellot Military as well. That or Narai had spent an unreasonable amount of time studying all of this in the city before venturing out with their group from the abandoned airfield.

"Was that from the bunker?" Kuu asked, finishing off the small bowl of rice as the rebel shrugged his shoulders.

"That's a question for him, but this is an official city map from three years ago. Can't imagine Karris has changed that much in that amount of time so it should be accurate. As for the markings, I've seen patrols take these routes myself from my store, so these are more than likely accurate too," he inspected more of the map, taking in everything he possibly could before Narai came back, "all of this is written in our language too. Either Narai marked all of this or this was from the inside,"