[h3]SOUTH OF AQUAEGARD, WESTLAND,[/h3]

	Branka Vasun was a name that had become infamous in Westland. The young woman—young girl, really, just barely an adult—was responsible for almost as many headaches in the regime's leadership as she was missing heads among its footsoldiers. Her face was plastered all over town, wanted posters pasted over top of the plentiful Kingsmen recruitment posters by Crimson Grey's men, offering lethal warning to any civilians that might be sheltering her and a hefty reward to anyone with good eyes who might spot her and inform their local guard unit. The image of Branka's frown had ultimately only helped the Kingsmen's efforts in Westland; as calming and reassuring as King Amrend III's smiling mug was on the original Kingsmen posters, in these times, strength is respected more so than right. And strength was something Branka, and her growing legend, possessed in abundance.

	Squeezing the trigger from atop the hillside, Branka listened and watched as her shot rang out across the hills, finding its mark after about two seconds of travel time. This target was a soldier of Wilhelmsland, standing guard at that province's northern border, very near to Aquaegard. As soon as PEACEFOR's invasion of Rothland began, the Wilhelmslanders could be relied upon to move into Westland, and Aquaegard was the obvious first target. They'd be marching awfully cautiously through these hills once it started happening, though. The fools probably took Branka's presence here for the past few weeks, practising her range shots, for the activities of a whole crew of government snipers. If Crimson Grey knew just how much death Miss Vasun was actually responsible for, the bounty on her head would be a hell of a lot more than a year's supply of food. Maybe the crotchety old fuck would invite whoever tipped his men off to one of his wife's fancy parties. Branka sure would've loved to attend one of those. All of those important people all huddled together in one place, practically begging to be killed all at once. Alas, the Greys didn't give invitations to enemy combatants, no matter how many of a mutual enemy's men they deheaded. With that disappointment in mind, Branka disassembled her rifle and packed up her long range equipment into its case, preparing to gingerly descend the hill and head back to her cabin, a few kilometres to the north-west. Maybe she'd take a pot shot at a cop in Aquaegard after she'd dropped off her ghillie suit in her quarters. Who knew? The day was young, and there was always another republican in need of a bulletectomy.

[h3]AN ABANDONED STEEL MILL, SOMEWHERE ON THE BORDER BETWEEN UNTERBURG AND AVALONIA[/h3]

	General Gale Brown first down angrily, making the table shake and sending a cup of coffee falling down to the floor on Ferren Quartz's shoes. The General sneered, taking a quick glance at the product of his anger, and then stormed into his quarters and slammed the door behind him, apparently determined to only destroy his own things with the remainder of his violent rage. Ferren just sighed; the Laurentians had given the Kingsmen plenty of shoes, so he didn't care much about those, but he had [i]really[/i] needed that coffee. Hell, with how these past few days had been going, he needed some Aiona product; the coffee was just the next best thing.

	Lieutenant-General Anastasia Sas grumbled under her breath as she sat at the table next to Ferren, unimpressed by her commanding officer's childishness. The government's air raids in Unterburg had been a thorn in both of their sides, but you didn't see her storming off to her bedroom like an angst-ridden pre-teen. She remained, calm, cool, collected: and, of course, cruel. The attacks had been too precise and too close to accurate for there to be any question that there was a spy somewhere in the organization, and specifically in the Avalonian Crown Militia. It couldn't be in the Royal Guard; Sas had vetted them all personally, and the raids hadn't hit the Royal Guard Compound yet. The Crown militias weren't even supposed to know the location of any Kingsmen sites, but Avalonia was sort of the exception. The closeness with which the Royal Guard and the Crown militia in that province operated necessitated a strong degree of inter-communication. One of the long time Avalonia Crown militiamen must have blabbed about the location of the HQ to some new blood, and that new blood turned out to be a spy. The response was clear, but naturally took some time. It needed to be ensured that the spy didn't run off and tell Crimson Grey the location of the Royal Guard compound as soon as he was told to report there for his training, so each of the five likeliest spy candidates had to be picked up a in a secondary location, and sent to the compound individually. This was more time intensive than Sas would've liked, but it seemed luck was on her side. Ferren had only just bent down to clean the caffeine off of his boots when Sas heard hollering towards the entrance of the compound. She looked out over the balcony next to the officer's table, where the supervisor had resided before the mill was shut down, and saw about big group of sixteen men walk in through the emergency exit, five of them in some level of bondage and wearing blindfolds. The sight was nearly enough to make her smile—nearly.

	Ferren followed behind Sas closely, one other member of the Royal Guard that had been seated at the officer's table following behind him in turn as they descended the mill's stairs down to the factory level. By the time the three of them reached the group of new arrivals, the five bound men had already been brought down to her knees, facing the passageway Ferren and Sas walked out of. Sas wasted absolutely no time at all. Staring in utter contempt at those assembled, all of whom bore expressions as if they were completely terrified and had no idea what was going on, she muttered, "Are these them?".

	"Yup", one of the newly arrived Royal Guardsmen responded simply. He was in civilian wear, and had no (openly carried) weapons. "Five most likely candidates. All of them had either been to the HQ at least once or had been spending a lot of time chatting with someone who did. That one of the left there, far le-".

	Before the soldier could finish his sentence, Sas pulled out her revolver and emptied a round into the left-most captive's skull. Ferren balked, and opened his mouth agape when Sas followed suit by sticking a knife into the gut of the next prisoner, heading right. The stabbed man screamed in agony, his intestines starting to pour out of his wound, and his dead compatriot's blood already pooling to wet his knees. The man on the far right stood up and tried to run, which pulled Ferren out of his shock. He drew his own handgun and fired at the fleeing man's arm, hitting him and sending him falling to the floor, screaming in pain. The guards standing behind the prisoners grabbed a tight hold of the remaining two, expecting Sas to want to kill them. She paused, though, merely wiping one side of her bloody knife off on either of their cheeks. "The one who ran", she began, setting her weapons away again. "It was him. Dress his wound and take him to the interrogation room, I'll deal with him myself, later. Bury the dead, and tell their families they were blown apart in the air raids. As for these two..." Sas planted a kiss on the bloodied cheeks of the two surviving Crown militiamen. "You picked them up under the guise of recruiting them into the Royal Guard, correct? Well, congratulations fellas. You're in. Training begins today. You won't be seeing your families for awhile. Don't worry, we'll send someone to give them the good news. And if you try to leave this compound, your deaths will be so unpleasant that you will find yourselves praying to the Lord above that you'd been the one whose intestines I removed. That'll be all, gentlemen".

	With that, Sas calmly walked back towards the stairs, heading up to her quarters. Ferren chuckled a little, for a moment, then stopped when he realized he was laughing about two people being murdered. Turning to the two bound Avalonians, he removed their blind-folds and spoke. "I, uhh. I guess it's nice to meet you two. That was Sas. She's your new boss. Don't fuck up". The two men stared into Ferren's eyes in disbelief, breathing and sweating heavily, overcome with a combination of joy at being alive and terror at the prospect of what being alive might mean for them now. Ferren recognized the look. It made him laugh again, and this time he didn't stop himself. He leaned down, stole the nice, clean boots off of the man writhing in pain that he'd just shot, and then gave one last nod to his new brothers in arms before heading upstairs. "Name's Ferren Quartz, by the way. You two best help your new partners clean up the dead. Don't want this place reeking tomorrow". With a salute, made awkward by the pair of boots in his hands, Ferren loudly called out "God save the King!" and then turned away to walk over to the barracks at the other end of the mill. Hopefully there was some coffee left.

[hider=Summary]
A royal sniper in Westland by name of Branka Vasun is causing havoc for Wilhelmsland, picking off their soldiers at the border.

General Gale Brown has evacuated Unterburg for the Royal Guard compound at the border of Avalonia and Rothland. Lieutenant-General Anastasia Sas executes two militiamen and promotes two others. Ferren Quartz watches with amusement.[/hider]