Red vs Blue: The Mahora Gulch Chronicles

Part 1/Chapter 1: Why Are We Here?

All credits to the original script go to Rooster Teeth Productions, and all characters are credit Ken Akamatsu. I own nothing but how I arranged the words on the document.

Mahora Gulch. A small, boxed canyon floating on a ring-shaped planet in the middle of space. Two rivaling military organizations, creatively named Red Army and Blue Army, had plenty of outposts in several remote locations spanning throughout a galaxy or two. Human rivalries; nothing big, just one of the normal little civil skirmishes throughout history. The Sharks and the Jets, the Capulets and the Montagues. Except this was real, and there were a plenty more explosives this time around.

Two small bases were stationed by both armies inside Mahora Gulch; the designs exactly the same, as if one army had stolen the designs for the other, somehow got hold of the same materials, and made an exact duplicate, but cleverly flipped the designs and added a touch of their own color. Red base was located on the west side of the canyon, leaving the Blue base on the East, caves and hills located within the rocks off to the sides, but otherwise interesting things were few and far between.

And boy, did both teams know it.

Mahora Gulch's outposts for both sides were a little odd in that instead of males, both bases were populated entirely by female soldiers. The male-to-female ratio in both armies were three to one, so it almost seems like a higher-up intervened to allow all-female squads on both sides, likely with the hopes of something lesbian-esque to happen along the way. Sadly, both sides seemed to dysfunctional for that.

It was another fairly normal day in the canyon of unchanging hot temperature for the Red Team. Their commander was to arrive shortly later in the day, leaving Private First Class Ayaka Yukihiro and Private Asuna Kagurazaka to stand guard on top of the base. The only sound was the wind and their breathing, while birds from unknown origin chirped. Nobody could ever find those damn birds.

Ayaka took this opportunity to strike up a conversation with the only person there, even if half the time the two couldn't stand one another.

"Hey."

Asuna glanced up at Ayaka, as if she had just woken up from a nap. "Yeah?"

"Do you ever wonder why we're here?"

Asuna turned her gaze back to the sky, as if in deep thought. "It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it?" She turned her head back to Ayaka. "Why are we here?" This time, her body changed positions so her entire self was facing her comrade. "I mean, are we a product of...I don't know, some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a God, watching everything? With a plan for us and all that." Asuna stared out into the canyon once more. "I don't know, Ayaka, but it keeps me up at night."

A long, uneasy silence settled in.

"What?" Ayaka quirked a brow.

"Huh?" Asuna snapped her head back.

"I meant, why are we out here, in this canyon?" Ayaka folded her arms, watching Asuna turn away, flustered by the misunderstanding. "What were all those things about God?"

"Th-they were nothing," Asuna quickly retorted.

Ayaka began to turn her head away, but then it returned to its previous spot. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"...you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

Despite the fact Asuna still hadn't turned her back away from Ayaka yet, Ayaka continued on. "But really. Why are we out here? As far as I can tell, it's a box canyon, in the middle of nowhere, no way in, no way out."

Asuna only let out a soft noise in response.

"The only reason we have a Red base over here, is because they have a Blue base over there. And the only reason they have a Blue base over there, is because we have a Red base over here."

Asuna finally made eye contact with her partner. "Duh. We're fighting eachother."

"But think about this--if we were to pull out right now, and the Blues took our base, they'd have two bases in the middle of a box canyon." Ayaka rolled her eyes. "Whoop-de-doo."

"Why are we fighting them anyway? I mean, when I signed up I wanted to get the chance to fight demons or something interesting, but then Nagi Springfield comes out of nowhere and boom! Little fuckers are gone, and now I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere fighting a bunch of Blue guys."

That was the last bit of conversation Private Chisame Hasegawa of the Blue Army bothered to pay attention to through the scope of her rarely used sniper rifle. She didn't even know if the damn thing shot successfully or not; all she did was use the telescope function on it.

Private First Class Haruna Saotome attempted to peek into the scope, adjusted her glasses. "What're they doing down there?"

Chisame glanced up, furrowing her brow and the return of Haruna's voice. "...what?"

"I asked you, what're they doing now?" Haruna attempted to get a hold of the sniper rifle, before Chisame quickly jerked the bulky weaponry away.

"God dammit!!" Chisame cursed, "I'm getting so sick of answering that question!" Her eyes darted away from her partner, because she felt if she had another look at her she would get a nice punch in the jaw.

Haruna's hands quickly moved to her hips. "Hey, you have the fucking rifle, I can't see shit. Don't bitch at me because I'm not going to just sit up here and finger myself all day."

Chisame growled quietly to herself, before slowly returning her eyes to Haruna. "Okay. Look. They're just standing there. And talking. Okay? That's all they're doing. That's all they ever do, is just stand there. And talk. That's what they were doing last week. That's what they were doing five minutes ago. So five minutes from now, when you ask me, 'what are they doing', my answer's gonna be, 'they're still just talking, and they're still just standing there!!'" Chisame quickly and angrily turned herself back to her weapon.

A moment of silence passed, before Haruna asked, "What're they talking about?"

Chisame felt the rifle crack slightly under her grip. "You know what? I fucking hate you."

Unaware of the conversation above, Asuna and Ayaka continued yammering away in a conversation that didn't end in sudden bickering.

"Talk about a waste of resources," Asuna sighed. "We should be out there finding new, intelligent life forms or something. Then everybody can go fight them."

"No shit," Ayaka said, in one of those rare moments where she became relaxed enough to swear, "That's why we should be in charge."

Their commander's sharp voice suddenly rang into their ears.

"Men!!" the tall blonde woman, Sergeant Evangeline A.K. McDowell, shouted at her subordinates, "Front and center, on the double!!"

"Fuck me," Asuna murmured.

"Yes sir!" came Ayaka's response. The two privates used the conveniently placed ramp to slide onto the canyon sand.

"Hurry up, men; this ain't no ice cream social!" Evangeline spat.

"What's a--"

"Stop the pillow talk, you two." Evangeline tilted her head back slightly, in an annoyed fashion, eyebrow quirked. "Anyone want to take a guess, as to why I gathered you out here, today?"

"Uh..." Ayaka and Asuna took a quick glance at eachother, before Asuna responded, "Um, is it because the war's over and you're sending us home?"

A spark of annoyance flared up in the sergeant's eyes before she smiled. "That's exactly it, private. War's over. We won. Turns out you're the big hero, and we're gonna hold a parade in your honor. I get to drive the float, and Yukihiro here..." Her face suddenly turned violent, as she screamed, "IS IN CHARGE OF CONFETTI!!"

Asuna's eyes widened, not by the emotion, but the volume. Sarge, as they normally called Evangeline, often was prone to violent outbursts like that. Ayaka was convinced it was old age, but Evangeline looked no more than 25. "I'm no stranger to sarcasm, sir."

"Private, shut your mouth or else I'll have Yukihiro slit your throat while you're asleep," Evangeline threatened.

"I'd do it, too," Ayaka smiled, gently putting her hand to her chest before shooting a mischievous smile at Asuna.

"I know you would, Yukihiro. Good man." It was a peculiar thing about Evangeline, switching their genders for no real reason, probably to compensate for the fact normal disgruntled sergeants called their recruits "ladies", which wouldn't really work in this particular situation.

"Couple things today, men." Evangeline turned to face away from her soldiers. "Command has seen fit to increase our ranks her at Blood Gulch Outpost Number 1."

Asuna moaned. "Crap. We're getting a rookie."

"That's right dead man." Evangeline smirked. "Our new recruit will be here within the week. Hopefully an actual man this time... Chachamaru. Bring up the vehicle."

The robot, manufactured by Evangeline herself, pulled up a jeep with a gun turret attached to the back end (with enough room to stand to operate the weapon) over the hilltop. Ayaka and Asuna quickly had a shotgun battle, with Ayaka's vocal reflexes winning in the end.

"May I introduce our new light reconnaissance vehicle. Four inch armor plating, an extra one-inch magic barrier...maaag buffer suspension...a mounted machine gunner position with barrier-piercing bullets, and seating for three!" Evangeline patted the hood of the vehicle. "Ladies, this is the M12-LRV!" With pride, the sergeant quickly examined the armor plating. "...I like to call it the Warthog."

Ayaka raised her hand slowly. "Uh, why Warthog, sir?"

"Because M12-LRV is too hard to say in conversation."

"No, but...why Warthog?" Asuna began, unconvinced by the answer. "I mean...it doesn't really look like a pig."

Evangeline glared at her least favorite private. "Say that again."

"I think it looks more like a..." Asuna quickly examined the car. "A puma."

Evangeline stopped, thought momentarily, then bit at her lip. "What in Sam Hill is a puma?"

Ayaka pretended to mull over this for a second, although she knew damn well what a puma was. "You mean, like the shoe company?"

Asuna groaned. "No, like a puma. It's a big cat, you know, like a lion."

Evangeline's glare became harder. "You're making that up, aren't you."

"Hey!! It's a real animal!!" Asuna shouted.

The sergeant quickly glanced at Ayaka. "Yukihiro, I want you to poison Kagurazaka's next meal." The request was replied with a 'yes sir' from Ayaka.

"See these two tow hooks?" Evangeline crouched to emphasize her point. "They look like tusks. And what kind of animal...has tusks?"

"A walrus."

"Didn't I just tell you to stop makin' up animals?!" Evangeline barked.

As they had been for the past five or so minutes, Chisame and Haruna were still positioned on their small cliff hideout.

"Hey," Haruna pointed at the vehicle below, "What's that?"

"Ah...looks like some sort of car or something. We should probably report it back to command, or something."

"Why the hell do they get a car?"

"Haruna, we're getting a tank next drop."

"Yeah but...dudes aren't into chicks with tanks."

Chisame, even though she had calmed down, quickly felt her anger swell up once again. "Oh, you know what; you could bitch about anything, couldn't you. We're gonna get a tank, and you're worried about guys. What guys are we gonna get out here?!"

Haruna shrugged in response.

"And secondly, we can't pick up guys in a damn car that looks like that either!!"

"...hey, what kind of car is it?"

"I don't know, I've never seen a car that looks like that before. It looks like a big cat of some kind."

"What, like a puma?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"So!" Evangeline slammed her fist against the hood of the vehicle. "Unless anybody else has any more mythical creatures to suggest as a name for the new vehicle, we're gonna stick with 'the Warthog'." She took a step closer to Asuna. "Is that okay, Kagurazaka?"

"It's fine," the red-head private responded dispassionately.

"Are you sure? How about Bigfoot?"

"That's okay."

"Unicorn?"

"It's fine."

"Sasquatch?"

"Leprechaun?" Ayaka chimed in.

"Ayaka, don't help her..." Asuna grumbled.

"Phoenix!" Evangeline suddenly shouted.

"For god's sake..." Asuna had to hold herself back from attaching palm to face in disgust.

"Hey, Yukihiro. What's the name of that Mexican lizard that eats all the goats?"

"That's the Chupacabra."

"Hey Kagurazaka. Chupathingie, how about that? I like it. It's got a nice ring to it."

-end chapter 1