Going Feet First Ch. 01

"We shouldn't... we shouldn't go further," she whispered, pushing him away.

With a mix of worry and disappointment in his tone, he was quick to ask, "Why not?"

She shook her head and shifted away from him, hugging onto her own body as her eyes fell to the ground. "We have not known each other a day, it is... too soon. We Willhers have rituals, neko traditions that we follow. And there is a presence among us," she whispered as her eyes glanced over to the sleeping Galen. Nervousness became a twitch in her nose, a twitch soon settled as Michael took her hands within his own.

"We are in your world, under your guidance. I will respect your wish," he said, touching his lips to her fingers.

"Thank you," Mila mumbled, her cheeks flushing red under her fur.

With that, Michael gave her a respectful nod and laid back against the pack of a reserve-chute Galen had salvaged. The woman beside him looked nervously aside, tenderly touching the back of her hand to her still tingling lips. She was debating something inside her head, something important as she shifted her gaze back to Michael, staring at him as he got comfortable.

Oh, Necela and sweet Calia, please guide me...

To Michael's surprise, Mila slowly moved in and laid her body up against his own while nestling her head against his neck.

"I thought there were rituals?" he whispered as she got comfortable against him and closed her eyes to sleep.

"There are several rituals before a male can take a female, yes. This is one of them. A night spent in sleep under the eyes of the moon, so our spirits may decide if the match is true."

If the match was true, he repeated in his head. Michael pondered those words a moment, thinking about the weight they carried. If this was a ritual brought up from tradition, then Mila wouldn't be settling for anything casual. If she wanted something, she wanted it for life.

He'd had his share of girls, that series of one-night stands or simple, month-long relationships. As he came closer to the start of his first tour, however, he began facing his reality, and he wanted something more. He had begun to search for someone to write to, for someone to look forward to. But he never seemed to be able to find "the one" who could be his anchor to bring him home. Now it appeared he had just been looking in the wrong place.

"How do our spirits do that, decide the match?" he wondered, mulling over these thoughts and cautiously wrapping an arm around her inviting form.

"The goddess Necela watches all who sleep under her moon," she answered before giving a yawn and adjusting her position. "If a couple's spirit decide the match is true, they receive her in the form of her charm."

"I see..." Michael responded, looking up at the blue rock above him. He had no idea as to the meaning behind what she said, or what it meant. But everything in him yearned for this girl. If she wished for a goddess's blessing before she could fully lo...

All processes stopped in Michael's mind as the word 'love' threw a wrench into his gears. Was it really love? Or just a simple attraction? Or did he really love this... beast of a woman? This neko?

He had been here less than twelve hours, and he was already head-over-heels for the first woman he stumbled upon in this strange world? The sergeant looked down at the soft face pressed against his collar, her warm purrs vibrating against his chest. She wasn't his kind, but that didn't seem to matter to her. It all seemed surreal when he thought about but as he looked back to that moon above, he decided that he would be damned if he didn't take this chance.

Settling in with the warm body against him, he closed his eyes and let the few simple words ring through his mind.

This. Is. Real.

...............................

Black boots marched down a hallway behind the fine-cut suits worn by two official-looking men. These figures stuck out amid the olive drab uniforms of the Army soldiers that walked past them. With their clean faces and stern, determined looks, they drew many curious looks toward them but with mere gazes, the MPs at their backs had any onlookers returning to their tasks at hand.

The two suits neared the end of the long hall and approached two more troops armed with rifles standing guard over a pair of double doors. These men were quick to snap to attention and salute as the black-suited men walked right past them while returning the gesture. Five men occupied that next room, all of them officers who were standing over an operational map of Vietnam. Despite their ranks, however, they all immediately straightened up to address the new arrivals.

"Major Linton?" one of the men said.

The aged soldier stood up a little straighter and pulled down the sides of his dress uniform. He was older than the others in the room, his head covered in salt-and-pepper hair with a single Major leaf on the service cap beside him on the table. The ribbons on his chest were a sight to behold as he crossed his arms and passed a critical gaze over the men who had interrupted his meeting. Both men had short, military-style haircuts and a hard look in their eyes, though their clean suits and pressed ties showed that these men were fresh into the jungle Hell that was Vietnam.

"Yes, I'm Major Linton," the aged man responded, curling his black, bushy mustache.

"I'm Robert Smith. This is my partner, John Smith; no relation. We've come to talk about the plane you lost this morning."

A cross look came over the Major's face. Looking to the other officers he said, "Boys, I need you all to leave the room. Now."

The captains and warrant officer that had been with the Major nodded and headed for the door. Quickly and silently filing past the two agents and giving them suspicious glares. When the last of them had left, Agent Robert Smith turned to the MPs that had been escorting him and his partner and ordered, "Nobody enters until we leave."

The MP gave a prompt, "Yes, sir," and shut the door. When the bolt clicked shut, the two Agents wasted no time in pulling up a seat at the map table.

"You boys are late," Linton grumbled.

"Plane troubles, Major. Please, have a seat and brief us on what you know."

The officer nodded and pulled up a chair for himself opposite the agents. Joining his hands as he leaned in on the table, he cleared his throat and gave the men the moment they needed to ready their notepads. When he received a nod, he started talking. "At oh-six hundred, we launched a surprise attack into a city in south of the border with the elements of the 502^nd parachute infantry that I have under my command. The focus of the mission was to secure several HVI's in the area while pushing the North Vietnamese out of the city entirely. However, just as the planes entered their designated drop zone, pilots reported lightning storms filling the sky."

He gave the men a moment to scribble their notes. When their pens stopped moving, he continued. "This weather was deemed impossible, as cloud cover was minimal with no signs of rain or any sudden changes that could account for them. When Charlie Company's craft was hit with flak fire, it started to go down. However, soldiers claimed that the craft was struck by several bolts of lightning at once that caused the craft to vanish."

"Vanish?" Robert repeated, cocking an eyebrow as he looked up from his notes.

"It's what was written in the eyewitness report. After the plane went down, I sent in the armor support and our reserve force so I could recall as much of C-Company and the key eye-witnesses as possible for their reports on this... event."

"I see..." Robert muttered, adding a few details to his notes before tucking them back into his suit jacket along with his pen. "Major, we need you to confine the primary witnesses to their barracks and order your men to keep this incident under wraps. We also need your forces to secure the area around the craft's last known location so we can send our teams in to investigate."

Linton nodded an affirmative. "Reports say that the NVA are already beginning to pull out. When they go into full retreat, I'll send a few B52s to mop up and an additional force to keep the area on lock down," he said, pointing to the plastic figures on the map representing both the US and Vietnamese units. "But tell me, Agent Smith, are we dealing with Bermuda Triangle shit?"

Agent John looked over to Agent Robert, the two men sharing a look before the former went back to writing as the latter replied.

"It's what we are trying to find out, Major. You keep your men quiet and secure that area. We will handle the rest."

................................

The sun had not yet risen when Michael began to stir. His eyelids peaked open and he instinctively lifted right arm to check his watch, blinking several times over to bring it into focus. According to the glowing hands, it was oh-four hundred, but he figured it closer to seven as the first hints of sunlight broke the horizon. Resting his free arm against his chest, he carefully tightened his left arm up on the warm body beside him. Bringing her closer against his own.

A smile crept on his lips as her leg lifted, crossing over his knee while her hug firmed up around his bicep. With her face still resting in the crook of his neck against the parachute pack he used for a pillow he could get a welcome whiff of her hair just by turning his head. Several curses then passed through Michael's thoughts as he suddenly felt a rising pressure in his bladder.

He began to wiggle his way out of her grasp but his upper-right thigh sparked up in a rich pain as her knee came up and touched his bandaged wounds. It took most of his strength alone to hold in his wails as he glanced down at his red-soaked wraps. They needed to be changed soon. That, and he really needed new pants.

"Something wrong?" Mila whispered, not having quite opened her eyes.

Breathing out in failure of not waking that feminine, feline delight, he answered lowly, "I need to relieve myself."

She sighed as her claws poked out slightly from her fingers, none-the-less, her tired eyes opened and she began to sit up. "Alright, let's get you up."

Untangling herself from him and scooching away, she then sat up and rose to her feet. Grabbing onto Michael's hand she gave him a firm pull and hauled him up onto his good leg. With a few trips and close calls, the two managed to stumble over to the nearest bush. Mila respectfully turning away as Michael undid his fly.

"So how does this, 'Necela' give her blessing?" he asked.

Mila couldn't help her embarrassed look as she had to listen to his fluids hitting the leaves. "She will let us know. Necela alwa-" she suddenly went quiet.

Quickly finishing up, Michael shook himself out and sealed the cave of his one-eyed snake. Noticing her new silence, he looked to her asking, "What's the matter, Mil-"

He stopped mid-sentence; total awe struck him as a butterfly as big as his hand came fluttering through the trees. Its wings were glowing a bright, luminescent green that quite effectively lit the area around it for several feet as it fluttered through the air toward them. The neko instinctively held out her hand and it immediately went to land in her open palm.

"Hold out your hand," Mila whispered.

Michael blinked and looked to her, "Huh?"

"Hold out your hand, keep it next to mine."

Without missing another beat, he did as he was told. He held his open palm up beside hers and the butterfly crawled from her hand into his. Its feelers touched his skin, probing the rough calluses carefully before it wandered over to his wrist. There the bug sat for a moment and adjusted its foot positions as its wings moved in tune with his pulse.

And then, with an unexpected beat of those glowing, bioluminescent spans, it flew up and landed on his nose. From this close up, Michael could see that not only did the butterfly's wings glow, but its body and head as well. For such a small insect, it sure made the soldier feel tiny as its compound eyes stared deep into his own. He blinked, and the butterfly gave a single beat of its wings in response. A sparkling powder was cast across his face before the bug leapt from his nose and quickly fluttered off back into the woods.

"What was that all about? Was that some-"

He couldn't finish his sentence before Mila took hold of his collar and pulled him in so his lips met with hers. She held him there for a good minute, letting each other savor their shared taste before she finally reeled back. A soft smile now gracing her face.

"That was a Nightwatcher, a charm of Necela. The goddess has given us her blessing."

.......................................

Shell craters surrounded Galen on all sides as artillery batteries fired off in the distance. Huge columns of dirt and smoke exploded all around him as a thousand screaming men came over a hill. Gun fire erupted as a red Communist star flag was raised over the coming wave.

A bullet whizzed over his head, then another, and another. Then a wave of fire erupted from the army to send wall of lead in his direction. He hit the deck as the incoming fire grazed his back and tore up the ground around him. Scared out of his mind, he searched for any sort of weapon around him. A rifle, a stick, a rock! But there was nothing. Nothing except his bare hands.

When he looked up again, seeing a new terror leaping in over the Vietnamese. A mass of howling Ra'zorlich warriors came charging out from the NVA lines with their claws out and glowing red with rage. Without warning, a river of blood poured down the hill, washing over the men like a tidal wave. He ducked before it came upon his position. It flooded into his foxhole and washed over his body before the corpses of six neko soldiers rose up from the crimson flow.

Even more of the red life gushed from the bullet holes that riddled their feline bodies, so much so that he had to scramble out of his hole lest he drown. It took Galen a second to register that their skin, exposed but the missing fur around their wounds, was paled from death. And upon seeing him, their feline faces twisted with rage and they pounced onto him. He barely managed to roll out of the way in time.

He scrambled to his feet and looked around. That army had been charging him had been washed away in that literal red wave, leaving him alone with these Ra'zorlich foes before him. The bullets holes in their bodies had stopped bleeding, like they had run out of blood to lose, but yet they came at him again.

He turned and ran. But his legs could only move so fast. They proved faster as they dropped to all fours and ran towards him.

Galen could only scream as the undead felines closed the distance and came down upon him, their claws sinking into his flesh...

"Gahh!" he yelled as he sat up, face slick with sweat as he found himself suddenly short of breath. The cool air of the forest soaked through his now damp fatigues. It would have brought him to a shiver were it not for the small fire that crackled in the pit in front of him. He quickly checked to ensure he was in one piece before looking to his hands for any sign of the crimson gore that he'd nearly drowned in.

To his relief, all he found was dried sap and dirt. The foxhole he had been in was gone, replaced by the soft field of grass that surrounded his downed plane. No undead came to kill him, no Vietnamese were shooting at him, he was safe and sound.

"Nightmare?" Michael asked.

Galen turned to his sergeant to find him sitting on the other side of the fire. Kneeling at his side was Mila who was using another one of the field-dressing kits to change out his bandage. Humming a tune as she did so even as Michael grimaced and took sharp breaths in pain.

"Yeah... I did," the private panted as he wiped the sweat off his face. "Like the ones I had before we shipped out. Only different this time."

"What is a 'nightmare'?" Mila asked, pulling on the knot to finish Michael's dressing and making him groan and curse under his breath.

"A bad dream, one that's pretty damn terrifyin,'" Galen answered, pulling off his helmet to scratch his head.

"Oh," Mila said questioningly while coming to her feet. "What brought this nightmare?"

Taking a sharp inhale as he shifted about, Michael took Mila's hand and used her help to pull himself up. When he was upright, he threw an arm over her shoulders and began to explain, "A couple nightmares are normal after you get your first taste of combat, especially after you have a brush with death. So actually I'd be more worried if he didn't get them, considering the wreck and the fight with the Razor licks."

"I guess so," Galen muttered, turning to toward the fire. Having those close calls was scary enough but that wasn't what bothered him exactly. The nekos in his dreams, he recognized them. They were the men whose lives he ended yesterday. Men he took from this world that were just defending their homeland.

One thing he couldn't deny was that they were out to kill him. And they were doing so without giving him a fair chance to correct his mistake of crossing their border. Now they were gone and he was here with the other survivor from his crash. It was them or him and right now he was content with it being them. Because as the end of the day, it was just as the padre said, they were soldiers who made the choice to fight. In the case of the Ra'zorlichs, they just picked the wrong one.

Giving a sigh, Galen thought back to what he imagined what his first kill would be. He had pictured an epic firefight against red commies threatening the freedom of South Vietnam and all of south-east Asia. Standing shoulder to shoulder with his brothers-in-arms against the AK-47 wielding NVA. Not sword-swinging cats in a forest who didn't have a clue what they were up against.

"Hey, Galen?"

Blinking with wide eyes as he was pulled from his chain of thoughts, Galen turned to find Michael and Mila over by the plane. Mentally berating himself for sinking so deep into thought, he asked, "Yes, sergeant?"

Looking into the Hercules and staring at the warning signs carved onto various surfaces around him, Michael asked "Where did you hide the claymore on the supplies?"

"Against the wall, under the pile of scrap beside the weapons crates," the private answered, grabbing his rifle and climbing to his feet. "We should disarm that now, considerin' there's no Charlies around to scavenge the supplies."

"No shit. What do we got for weapons?"

Approaching the sergeant and their female, neko companion, Galen frowned and thought back to everything he had rounded up. After a short delay he verbally recounted each weapon as it came to mind. "A couple pistols, one rifle, two if we count yours, a sniper rifle, an M60 an' a shotgun." Seeing a satisfied look on the sergeant's face, he quickly added, "There's also plenty o' spare parts if you wanna try an' cobble together an M16. There's also a couple of bayonets, but no grenades."

Hearing this, Michael nodded before he asked, "Are any of those weapons from the boys?"

With a solemn nod, Galen answered, "Yeah, the rifle and pistols. The M16s, the M60 and the shotgun came out of the weapons locker, the sniper belonged to Isles. I didn't think he'd need it anymore, and I didn't want the NVA to get their grimy hands on it."

Michael gave him a nod of approval before moving with Mila to climb up into the plane. The amount of strength contained in her body astonished Galen as she easily boosted the sergeant up into the side door that was six feet off the ground. And then as if that wasn't enough, she crouched down and leaped up after him with ease. The two went into the plane and roughly a minute or two later, Mila came back out hauling the crate that contained the weapons.