Phylum

Thunder roars beyond the canopy.

Below, a cargo truck drives its tires firmly into the flattened edge of rain-washed silt. The truck held an open back, loaded up with twenty-seven crates, each bounded by thinly wrapped strings bound along their rickety edges.

The crates themselves were somewhat large, ranging at around three by three meters. A fierce shuffling noise escaped from each of them, answered by only the painted shadows of weaponry painted haphazardly into the wood. The crates smelled sulfuric, with a stench only worsened by the raging rainfall above, creating a sort of rustic scent to it all. They shifted around in the back, crashing around with ‘clacks’ and ‘cracks’ of wood striking into the truck’s steel frame. Loaded with RPGS to semi-automatics, the truck was a loaded arms deal, rolling steadily along its course.

Undisclosed to outside spectators, a crate closest to the truck's cab was housing not a bounty of weapons, but a person enclosed within. Shuffled beneath the darkened cage of wood, a coffin-like atmosphere with a rotten, moldy smell to boot. The person inside went to click on something of a light beneath the darkness, revealing their face to be something of a scruffed-up, Caucasian man in his early twenties. Blowing cold breaths beneath the icy silhouettes, he drew the light. The light? It was a modified walkie-talkie of sorts, coated all in a charcoal black, with a few frequency options dialed up into a pencil-wide and eraser long screen. With a quiet, yet still aggravatingly annoying beep, the 'walkie-talkie' went off;

"Baleen?" The man's voice questioned, with a husky, raspy lower-tenor quality to it and a watered down central U.S. accent.

"Bowhead." Another voice returned, aged in tone and caught with something of a bass quality trilling down the speech. It was fairly neutral in its accent, though an amalgamation of several U.S. accents over time.

"What's the sitch, Sergeant?" He called out.

"You've got around five miles left to go. Let's go over some com' info for this mission; I've been given fully directory over the communications team, so all information we're getting from outside will be available to you. All updates'll be given on the Roundtrip, that radio we gave you. Doubles as a good earpiece too."

A brief pause followed, with the silence of rain beyond the crates hacked away with the howls of lighting's echoes parting in occasionally. The Sergeant went to continue;

"You'll be going in with whatever weapons you can conceal on you. I assume the base near Shaki loaded you up with what I recommended?"

"Yeah. I've got the camouflage suit on, managed to get a silencer pistol, a few rounds, couple of cutter tools."

"Mhm. This is an elimination mission, but you need to keep mobile during this. It's going to be a long trip in the crate, can't stack a machine-gun in with you. Take a gander at the crates, there's probably some light weaponry you can take for the forest."

"Gotcha. Method of infiltration?"

"We'll unload you by crate into the forest from that model truck we set up. You'll need to advance towards one of their local encampments on the border of Urjarlza. The weapons shipment should act as a decoy for your infiltration past the border. Get in however necessary."

A wisp of air dragged by the truck, pressuring against the moving mass of metal as it preserved down into a denser bit of forestry. It continued along the trail, rumbling into the night's darkness as the conversation continued. A series of 'booms' sounded out from under the steel of the vehicle, a bit of friction to the road as its pace ramped up beneath the cover of greenery. The wind ramped up it deafened even the noise inside the crate. The Sergeant continued;

"Two miles. Get anything you need on you."

"Of course. You've got codenames logged, Sergeant?"

The man within the crate lifted his Roundtrip towards the ceiling at that, beginning to undo the internal bits of string holding the box from the inside. It was a monotonous process, tearing away each of the strings, before fiercely pushing away the lid with a great shove. The man started to exit, planting his boots onto the truck's back. He stood at a little over 6ft with lean muscle covering much of his body, an auburn buzzcut, and dulled grey-eyes staring out into the night. With the olive-drab of his camouflage getup sunk by rainfall, he waded forth. The Sergeant went on;

"I'm going by Atilla. You? How about Croton."

"What?" The man questioned back, as he moved feistily towards a nearby crate, decorated with the silhouette of a barreled shotgun plastered on. He drew a slick, pocketed knife out from a sash draw across the belt to his drab. The knifery fell towards the crate's opening, cutting swiftly at the seams, before unbounding the crate. Taking a quick look at the collection, he withdrew a huntsman-type, with a long barrel adjoining the edge.

"You've got a knack for taking anything from the environment, just like a croton bug.. a cockroach. Don't forget about the whole training session in Manaus... I heard you ate leafcutter ants!"

Withdrawing the shotgun into his grasp, he popped a load down into the chamber, securing it fast as a couple dozen of rounds were strapped up along the torso of his drab. Returning his eyes down towards the running road, it seemed like a muddied stream of water, rushing by without any solid form. His boots fell back into the boards beneath, carrying along as he approached the vehicle's back.

"Gotcha. Croton'll work. Rolls off the tongue better than Man Without Memory."

"Glad you like it. When you're ready, Croton, launch off. Godspeed."

And so, the shotgun-wielding Croton took his first steps into the wild. It was an area beyond any resemblance to humanity, coated down in a dense forest populated by only the shadows of towering treetops and the blissful shocks of light cast by the storm's lightning above. The truck continued to fish across the road, scattering away mountainous plumes of desiccated dust in its wake. With a brief sniff into his nose, he launched out from the deck, diving down into a swift pencil-roll against a bit of bushy shrub-life in the forest. Scattering the last hums of the truck, he ventured alone into the night.

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Marching ahead into the forestry, the air grew tight with stains carbon floating down into the chilled zephyrs. Croton slung the shotgun tightly to his waist, clicking a hand firmly across the barrel with a bit of preparation. A few clicks of the firearm rung out into the dense atmosphere of the darkened forest, clouded by sounds of howling canines and the itching squeaks of rodents.

The launch from the truck left only a lightened bit of bruising along the inner-portion of his drabbed garb. It stung with the same pain as a paper-cut, an annoyance more than anything and a stinging reminder of the consequences to his rashness. Yet, regardless of the injury, he continued to sink into the maddened woods. Bits of twigs poked at his legs, being scattered amongst other bits of bushery primed with revolting thorns. They were blackberry bushes to an extent, native. An untouched remnant by the supposed terrorists occupying nearby Urjarlza.

The thunderous rings of lightning ran their course above the canopy, shrieking with their terrible hiss and hum into the night. As Croton marched forth below the stinging cries of electricity burning apart the chilled atmosphere, his silhouette would pour down behind himself. It enlarged, dancing with each flash of the fiery bolts across the skies. Then came the rainfall, melting the silhouette into a warbly snake of sorts, worming around behind the man has he descended towards something that caught his eye.

It was no object, no more than a crater fell into the earth resting beneath his feet. Split open and with the area of a meter by a meter, it was a great circle residing in the bounds of the soil. The circular ditch, yet, itched with something of blackened dirt resting across its surface. It was ashy to a degree, flickering away in the torrent of rainfall muddying the ditch into a brownish soup of sorts. A few bits of ash collided against Croton's garb, smoldering it momentarily with the still warmed soot, before washing away from the terrible rain still above.

Keeping his eyes fixated to the crater itself, Croton took hold of his Roundtrip. He plugged up the receiver once more, before retyping into a code of sorts. It was a simple transceiver signal, no more than the 'walkie-talkie' design that it was meant to be, yet with a much more garbled radio sent out. A long, much more dreading hum followed the radio's garble, yet humbled by the immense crashes of precipitation which coated both the man and his communication;

"Atilla, come in." Croton spoke dryly, uneased by the presence of the crater.

"Mhm, yes? Have you found anything?" The voice replied back, in the same bass-quality.

"A large hole. Seems like it was on fire... wouldn't've been lightning."

"Check the contents. If there are any samples that can be tested for radiation.. we could have ourselves some sort of weapon. Or chemicals."

"Mhm." Croton began to crouch at that point, taking a brief swat of his peckish eyes across the abyssal environment. The forest itself was coated in the drapes of greenery, only illuminated by the occasional yet persistent thunder roaring from above. He made way towards the pit at that, tightening the pieces of his gloving up around the hand. His other hand was extended outwards, feeling into the night, though someone searching for a light-switch. Scooping up bits of the debris, he pressed down onto something of the ashy remnants. They were oily to a degree, not of crude oil, but of the processed kind.

Retracting his hand back up from the surface, his eyes ran down towards the fingertips. The fingers were jetted with the tar-like substance running down and sweeping into the sodded pile of slosh which formed into the pit's surface. After a few more moments of contemplation, he reached down further. Both hands came towards the mud, sinking away as they scooped up a metal sheet. Plastically in texture though hardened like a steel, it seemed to be painted over before being buried. He called back into his Roundtrip;

"Thinking it's a mine, maybe? Blew itself up probably after some animal."

"Check around. Shrapnel could be scattered." Atilla replied, his voice barking back stalwart without hestitation.

Croton lifted himself from the slog at that, keeping the wrenched bit of metal festered into his hand. It was serrated with jagged edges, jigsaw-like in quality and a thin, pine-green zigzag in paint. He skimmed his eyes over the forested area, before taking to move forwards. With the shotgun rested in his righthand and the plate in his left, he ventured towards not sight, but a scent. It was the scent of charcoal, a grill overdone. Yet it was not a grill he would be taking in.

It was something much larger in comparison, lurking with its own boiling hue of orange and red sparkling into the winds. The scent was now shown the first of sights beyond the curtains of vegetation which pulled at the mystified environment. It was little over a mile, American wise, in terms of distance from the lesser crater Croton spotted. He re-called Atilla, clasping the Roundtrip steadily in the grasp of his hand, as his boots stalked forth;

"Crash site. Has to be."

"What?" Atilla spoke, with something of a flabbergasted tone enlightening.

"I'm pursuing the site. This could be Celeyvan's work. If it is-"

Cutting off Croton in the moment, Atilla resumed, his speech menaced with something of caution; "We cannot send back up. If there are any of those soldiers.. their 'dinergates' as they call them... eliminate them or get the Hell out of there."

"Operative." Croton replied, before clicking the Roundtrip back to his own hip.

He continued stalking forwards below the rainfall, clearing into something of a larger track through the center of some woods. It was a slightly-tipped slope of sorts, bent downwards into a clearing where the colourful luminescence emerged from. His shotgun was the only equipment he held now, churned forwards in an arc directed around his body. Paranoidly, he shifted the firing around himself, before bringing the rest of his body towards the line of woods outlying the run.

After taking a safety check to see for anything of potential forces encroaching behind the condensed forestry, he slugged towards the light. More and more of those same craters found themselves rocked down the 'natural' passageway, displaying the oily mixtures and discarded sheets of metal lying about. Eventually, after a few more intensive tracks, Croton from the wreckage of a helicopter.

It held a green zigzag crawling up its exterior.

Taking a gander back at the plate residing within his own hand, he decided to discard it, tucking it down into a fern growing out from the mottled soil. There was a lack of any sound beyond the downpour and thunder above. Only a burrow of flames found itself crawling from the helicopter's downed engines, leaking into a terrible cloud which smothered the moonlight above. Melted metal hung from the ceiling of the vessel, dripping down, though it was put through an incinerator. The main rotor blades were completely missing, fragmented into the scrapes left behind in a mess of wreckage and horrible crag softened into the ground.

Beyond the visual mauling of the vehicle, a corpse would be found. It was fairly burnt up, with the skeletal remnants of a dried humanoid lurking itself. Most of their body was already consumed by the flame, leaving behind only tattered pilot's clothing, a smeared helmet, and pale flesh. Yet, the corpse's position was peculiar. It was outside the vehicle, clasping what seemed to be a semi-automatic rifle by its side. Bits of ammo scattered itself, splashed and fumbled into the brine below.

With a few seconds to pass, Croton slung his shotgun upwards, carrying towards the corpse even closer. His boots cracked down into the strewn ammo lying across. The forest's trees nearby were fairly undamaged, however. They lacked anything of holes from piercing nor external damage by assault. The assault in question was coming above.

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Croton turned, only to witness a gargantuan, batty figure soaring from the horizon.