Adrian was one of the first to leave, given his aversion to crowds of long muzzles and bushy tails. It wasn’t long into his business that one of said long-muzzled, bushy-tailed squad mates found him. He exchanged greetings with Aidan, shook his hand—and discretely wiped it off on the inside of his pocket—and listened. Adrian stood silent, propped up against the wall as the gears in his head turned. “I’m gonna think on it for a little,” he slowly said. Not that he was stumped by the relatively simple questions he had been asked. There was simply one thing on his mind that commanded his attention to the point of distraction. “I’ll find you,” he said to Aidan as he started back to his bunk.
In his small room, Adrian stood with an equally small book in his hands, flipping over the pages as he read over the tiny scribbles he had penned into them over the years. One of the last entries read, ’Unidentified, Sex unknown, Unidentified GEAR, COD – 40MM + shrapnel to the face @ 1467yd.’ He pulled a thin, metal pen out of the binding, scratched a dark line beneath the entry and wrote down the date of his mission. Prepared for any new entries, he stowed the pen away in its binding home and stuck the book in his shoulder pocket. Guess I should go find Aidan soon.
===
“Hey, battle buddy,” Adrian said as he slipped into a seat across the table from him. “About the mines, I’m not really sure what we’re dealing with. My worry is that it might be somehow, something other than the standard, wasteland strip-mine. If it’s a hole in the wall, I’m not sure what we’ll do. It’s not what we’re expecting.” He crossed one leg over the other and leaned against the table. “Even if it is an open air deal, it’ll probably be a pretty steep drop in some flat ground, so I doubt we’ll see any of the lookouts before they see us. If that happens well—“ he shrugged, “Mission accomplished, I guess. If we can make it to the rim, I don’t want you going ahead of me. My GEAR’s kitted out for mid to long range combat, so if there’s anything in there, you probably won’t have to get your hands dirty.” It was a sound strategy to Adrian: do all the work, use help when required. Even if this transformed the objective into a one-man job, it would be more than a little foolish to discredit the buddy system after all of his encounters with its benefits. Especially in cases where only the most direct forms of communication were feasible. “Besides, with only LIDAR and charades, I don’t want to get too overzealous. If we can’t see each other clearly, we can’t talk to each other. If we end up having to spread out, I’ll take point. Your use extends beyond shooting guns at people.”