Promotions are a crapshoot

I know...it's been awhile...again. Piss off about it, hey?

So remember last time I mentioned passing the close quarters combat retraining and getting promoted afterward. And I mentioned that I was going to post after I got into it. Yeah...didn't work out like that. I've been busier than a ant on speed for the past couple of weeks.

After I got back to the compound, I was sent, under heavy escort by a few Elite Guard Henchman, to the command chamber for She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named(seriously, that is one of her fucking titles and don't get caught using even her SuperVillian name) to get promoted.

Right here is where I should mention that my boss is HOT.

Like...holy shit, 34-22-36 with red-blonde hair and gray eyes. And she was wearing black vinyl with purple trim.

Keeping a straight face and not staring into the 6 fucking inches of cleavage she was rockin while she pinned on new rank onto my uniform was goddamned near impossible. I suppose my eyes did wander because when I glanced back up as she finished the pinning procedure--which so happened to squish her boobs together and make them even more noticeable--she was looking at me with the most evil stare I've ever seen. Which was odd really because she did absolutely nothing with her face or eyes.

Then she smiled at me and turned to walk away. I'm pretty sure the ass-shifting model stride was done on purpose.

I'm not sure which scared me worse: the evil look or the smile.

Don't even want to think about the ass in the black vinyl, mind wanders to places it shouldn't go. So anyway, I was escorted out and taken back to the main elevator. There, we went to a new floor I hadn't ever been too. I was now a Level 3 Henchmen Sergeant, which apparently means I get my own squad and some new weapons. I got kitted out with some new body armor, all black and red and badass lookin. Also got issued a new rifle, which was actually pretty kickass. They gave me a SCAR modular combat rifle. Fun part about this thing is that it comes with a box of parts for switching out and changing how the rifle works. You can change the barrel and breach and make it into a heavy assault rifle or light machine gun. Can also turn it into a shotgun, which is quite frankly fucking sweet.

I got introduced to my new crew, a squad of 5 guys. Three of them are identical; pretty sure they're related. They squabble constantly like brothers do. All same height, size, and coloring. The other guy is huge, like also the size of the guy I fought at the combat course, silly thing is that he has a really quiet voice and is really intelligent. And the last guy is this little tiny scrawny guy with a REALLY bad attitude. The 3 brothers are really militarily minded and very proficient in it when they aren't arguing. The big guy reads a lot and is not that good a shot, but he'll beat the hell out of you in a fist fight without paying attention.

The little guy though? INSANE. I'll explain in a minute.

Over the past couple of weeks, we spent the time training for urban combat situations. Lots of shoothouses, flashbanging or breaching doors, and putting live rounds into wooden cut-outs of superhero-types(that's a lot more fun than it sounds and only slightly ridiculous). Between shoothouses, we were subjected to some rather intense physical training. Pretty sure one of the training instructors used to be a Navy SEAL chap; he certainly uses a lot of their tricks. There was at least a 3 day stretch of being soaking fucking wet, half-naked, and carrying around really heavy things on our shoulders as team-building exercises. Given that one guy is way taller than all of us and one way shorter, that got awkward fast and involved a lot of swearing on the little guy's part.

Anyway, we finished that and got to go back to the shoothouses, except this time the wooden targets were human-sized robots and shot back with non-lethal airfoil rounds. THOSE FUCKING THINGS HURT. The robots also reacted basically like humans do so flashbangs and breaching charges really fucked up their day.

So...onto the bit about little dude being crazy.

We were all set to clear a room, 3 of us on either side of the door. Tiny(the big dude) laid a breaching charge on the door and clicked the button.

BOOM

The door blew inward and smashed a robot with a shower of sparks, We'd developed a method for entering rooms we called the Zipper. One guy from the right folds into the room and prays he doesn't get shot up, followed by a guy from the left and so on like that til we were all in. This go round, Number 1(one of the brothers) folded in first and got tagged in the side by a bot in the left corner of the room. Tiny followed him in, dropped the bot that shot #1(who was on the ground, groaning), and moved toward the left front corner of the room. #2 followed him in, I followed him, and so on, with the little dude(whom I call Barky for reasons that will be made clear in a moment) bringing up the rear. We each fanned out across the room, dropping 4 more bots. But there was a problem.

One of them had a little robot as a hostage, gun to its head.

We cleared and Barky comes in, taking position in the door. At least 3 of us had clear shots on the bot but the principle was that if you went for a headshot here, trigger finger spasms and kills the hostage so none of my guys wanted to take the shot. Barky had turned and was looking at the two robots and I swear he was fucking growling like a dog.

Now here's the thing: we're henchman for a supervillain. Hell do we care about hostages for?

I found the whole concept absolutely preposterous and so I responded as such. I was crouched off to the bot's left side so I shot it through the hip sideways. I should mention I had turned my rifle into a heavy assault rifle so the round punched through this things hip like it was paper. As it crumpled, its arm flew out and loosed a stream of airfoil rounds. Directly across Barky, who had been crouched next to #1. The bot hit the floor and took a shotgun shell to the face from #3 that stilled it. The little robot, freed, deactivated and stood there blankly.

It was about that time we heard a stream of profanity from the front of the room.

It was Barky, doing his best angry mini-doberman impression. He sailed across the room and pounced on the fucked up robot and started stomping at it, growling, barking, and cussing enough that I think the air around him, was actually turning blue. We let him rage for a moment, twisted metal and wires flying across the room, til he worked it out of his system and looked up.

At this point, the rest of us burst out laughing. Even #1 sat up to laugh at him.

Needless to say, this just pissed him off worse and got a volley of curses flung at each of us, imprecations that we all liked to sleep with our mums the least of his colorful diatribe.

So...yeah. That's my squad and that's where the fuck I've been. We trained like that for another few days before being released to rest up and take a week to relax. Apparently, we get to go learn how to drive some kind of new vehicle the Science & Tech division had recently built.

Oh...and Barky flipped out on at least 3 more times. Love that guy, absolutely priceless temper tantrums.

And he really hates being called Barky.