Task Details:

“Lieutenant Rover, there are pirates headed towards the town from the docks!” alerted a marine out of breath as he opened the door to the marine base and entered the lobby. Axel was in the middle of the room discussing some tactics with some marine recruits that would help them in battle, but he immediately stopped the discussion and turned around when he heard his name come out of the mouth of an ally, facing this distressed man.

“How many are there, and how far have they gotten?” Axel asked with a curious expression. He stayed calm since this hasn’t been the first time he had to deal with an invasion. It was pretty much routine at this point.

“They just entered the port town and are spreading out their ranks! I counted 16 before they separated, about 8 continuing in a straight line headed towards the town square and 4 each went to the east and west around!” the marine reported. This marine base was just a block or two away from the town square, so if they all headed out right now, they could most likely stop the threat before any real damage was done. The base’s numbers were thin however, so Axel needed to be strategic about this.

“Ok then. 4 of you will come with me to attack the head-on threat while the remaining four split up into groups of 2 and try to hold off the enemies on the east and west. Let’s go now!” Axel shouted the order. Ever marine in the base was in the lobby at the moment, so it didn’t take much time for them to leave. They just had to run to their rooms really quickly and grab their weapons. Axel always carried his weapons on him, so he waited patiently outside of the base for his men to come outside. It was a very cloudy day, meaning that it could possibly rain soon, or maybe even a storm would appear. It didn’t matter to the young man however, since a marine was able to fight in any kind of weather.

Once all 9 of the marines were in front of the base, they began splitting into their groups. Axel’s group ran straight towards the main street in the middle while the other two took streets to the far left and right. The way the port town was made was like a maze in the sense that there wasn’t just some straight street you could take to get from the entrance to the outskirts. Axel’s group had to turn many times to get to the town square.

The same went for the pirates that came from the docks. During their complicated path to the town square however, they made some pit stops in the homes of a few civilians, killing anyone inside of the homes and taking whatever treasures they could find. The pirates who split off from the main force were instructed to not make a peep, letting most of the marine be drawn in by the larger group. Their plan was to take the marine base and be able to take out any of the surviving marines falling back to the base, as well as reinforcements that may come from other islands. They had a feeling that there would be a few marines that would split to fight them on the sides, since Charles spotted a marine looking at his group when they left the docks. He was too far away and too quick for them to really do anything though. For this reason. Charles led the side team on the east and his first mate led the team on the west. The main force were all expendables, though they didn’t know that. Their valiant leader pumped them up with words of encouragement and how he heard that this base of marines were the weakest of the bunch, when in fact that was a dead lie. The sharpshooter Axel Rover was rumored to be stationed on this island, and if he led the main marine group to fight the main pirate group, they were done for.

The crowd was freaking out. There were shops everywhere in the town square, and even entertainers who kept those waiting in lines and walking around the streets from being too bored. Even though the island was small, there were still a numerous amount of people there, and most of them gravitated near the town square when they weren’t working. That is why the location was such an easy target for the eight pirates who began shooting and slashing all over the place, taking wallets and store items from the dead. The stores formed a large circle with the crowd in the middle. The people that were able to escape ran through the alleys of the stores, getting out of the town square, but some of the pirates aimed at these places, knowing that there would be those hoping to escape. Before there were any severe casualties however, Axel and his group came into the mix.There weren’t many people in the dead center now, so that is where the battle would take place.

“From how they are shooting the crowd, I can tell these pirates are amateurs. All I need you guys to do is be my cover fire,” Axel ordered them as he ran out into the open. His first target was an enemy shooting from the water fountain located in the middle of the square. Axel had both of his revolvers out and aimed the one in his right arm at the man, then pulled the trigger. The bullet found it’s way into his chest, pushing him down into the fountain. By this time, the other seven would stop terrorizing the civilians an try to stop the marines. Whenever they thought they had a clear shot on the man in the red coat however, they kept getting shot at from the crowd, by the other marines most likely. While they were distracted, Axel was able to successfully run around the town square and shoot them all down quickly. The marine recruits weren't the best at aiming, but they made sure that no civilians died by their guns.

“Alright guys, let’s get back to the marine base and listen out for gunfire. I don’t know their target, but it seems that it wasn’t the town square,” Axel ordered his recruits, who were all still alive since they were only supports in the fight. They looked at Lieutenant Rover as a hero for being able to take out so many enemies so fast.

While the 5 of them ran to the base, Axel restocked his revolvers with ammo since there were only two bullets in one of them, and that wouldn’t allow him to take down more than two of the enemies. There were 8 left according to one of the marines, so he was going to need all of the bullets he could fit in his guns.

“Be on the alert guys! I think I just saw an unrecognizable man go into the base!” Axel shouted as him and his group came up on the street that led to the marine base. His group saw the man too. It was pretty far away, but it was easy to see a marine coat’s colors even from that range, and that guy surely wasn’t wearing one. The five men ran to the double doors of the base and Axel kicked them open and took cover on the wall left of the door. The marines also took cover on either side. It was a wise decision, because bullets flew passed the door frame and out into the open.

“Shit, why are they here so fast? I guess Lieutenant Rover is the real deal, and I underestimated him!” shouted Charles from the marine base lobby. The groups from the east and west slipped through the marine groups patroling their sides, not even having to kill them since they hid well until they got to the base. Those marines were probably still searching their areas, not aware of the fact that they let the pirates pass them.

“I need you all to stay where you are and blind fire from your positions. I want to make sure that they don’t think I am going to be doing what I am going to be doing,” Axel said to his crew loudly. The gun fire was loud, so the enemies did not hear him talking, so it was safe. His group had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded their heads in agreement of their current task. The windows around the base had ledges and other objects like lamps attached to the walls that allowed the young man to jump up to an open window on the third floor of the base. It led Axel into the gym of the base. Avoiding the equipment, Axel ran towards the door that led to the second floor hall and opened it. The stairway was in front of the gym, and would go down and then turn to the left since the second floor was in front of that midway, then go down again until it reached the lobby, kind of like hotel stairs. Axel went own them and shot the guy standing near them in the back. Now the remaining seven enemies turned towards Axel and started shooting at him from the rifles they found in the base. He took cover on the second flight of stairs while his group as well as the other two who came back to the base just now advanced, now on even grounds with the men.

“Handle them you dummies! Me and Tom are gonna kill this fucker,” Charles shouted. Axel ran fully up the stairs as he heard footsteps approaching, shooting with every step, the bullets being placed on the wall behind him. Upon reaching the third floor, Axel took a left and entered the melee combat training room. There were wooden dummies everywhere in the square room with brick walls, as well as punching bags. So much cover, so Axel was prepared to defend and offend the opposing threat. He was now hiding behind a wooden dummy near the wall opposite of the door.

“You would pick this room, you prick,” said a man who walked into the room with a revolver in his hand and a sword inside of it’s hilt attached to his left hip . He was only wearing blue jeans. No shirt, socks, shoes, etc. The man had spiky blonde hair and his face was pretty smooth. Behind him entered his first mate Tom who was a large man. Not fat, but kind of like a giant. He stood 9 feet tall and were clothes that made him look like he was in a biker gang. He was also bald and had a rough looking face. He was pretty much the definition of acne, with bumps all over his face, and even down his neck. He had a shotgun in his hand. Axel wanted to retort to that comment, but that would give away his position. These dummies were large enough to conceal him, and with so many of them around, they had shadows which made it hard to tell apart Axel’s from theirs. “Alright, you don’t have to answer to that. We have another way of dealing with you,” Charles would say, then command his first mate to to shoot at the wooden dummy nearest to them. He aimed his single-barrel shotgun and the blast from the now separated bullets that were packed tightly together blew it out of it’s stationary position. Axel heard the dummy fall to the floor with a heavy thud, then swallowed. He would be a sitting duck if he didn’t act soon. That is when he got his next idea.

Right as Tom shot the fourth dummy with his shotgun, Axel got up from his position and moved in for an attack. With every wooden dummy that fell to his blasts, Tom would slowly continue to the other side of the room. He was now in the middle of the room while Charles stood near the door. Tom shot as soon as his shotgun would allow, and that is when Axel figure out that there was a long enough time span from one shot to the other for him to get up and get Tom in between then. He knew his position from the gun shot, so as soon as he got up, aiming the revolver in his right hand and aiming at the man’s heart wasn’t that hard, as well as pulling the trigger. Good thing for the marine that Tom was so close, or else he probably would have accidentally shot at a dummy. Fortunately, that is what happened when Charles spotted Axel between the dummies, aimed and fired. He hit a dummy. The marksman ran around the training room now, know that his assailant would have a clear shot. He had to dodge-roll a few times, but now Axel was on his left flank closing in on him, and Charles’ magazine ran out, so he threw the gun on the floor and got his sword out. Axel was now behind the wooden dummy nearest the enemy, the same one that the swordsmen slashed at horizontally. With his brute force behind the slash, the object was sliced in half, but luckily Axel was peeking at him while he began his slash, backing away from the dummy and backing into another one.

“I have you now!” shouted Charles as he took the sword in his right hand and thrusted it into Axel’s heart, or at least he tried to. The man in the red coat moved his chest as far to the left as he could, so his legs was in the same position but his upper body was leaning off the right side of the dummy. To end things, he aimed the revolver in his right hand towards Charles’ head and attempted to fire, but the blonde man’s open left hand grabbed It, and forced the marine to shoot upwards. Axel still had a revolver in his left hand which he was getting ready to aim with, but Charles caught the hand with his own right one, so now both of the men were in a stalemate, or at least until the pirate could pull his sword out of the wooden dummy and end it, somehow.

Axel shot all of the remaining bullets in his magazine towards the roof, which was how Charles had the guns aimed from holding Axel’s hands upward.

“So, you didn’t want me to kill you with your own weapons then? I could have easily taken them from your hands and done so, and you probably knew that. You want your death to be honorable and get stabbed with my sword then? Alright, heh,” Charles said with a huge grimace on his face, staring directly into Axel’s face, which had a worried expression mixed with one of calm, as if he had something up his sleeve, which he did. Charles decided to swing Axel around and then throw him to the ground. The young man would roll on the floor as Charles pulled his sword out of the wooden dummy with his right hand and then turned around to finish the deed, but as he ran towards Axel and was going to chop him in half with his rising blade that would end in a vertical slash downward, cutting him open into two, Axel had his hands on his double barreled shotgun that was hidden between his back and red coat up until now.

“die for your sins,” Axel said calmly as he pulled the right trigger of the shotgun. The shell separated into twelve separate bullets tightly packed together, all aimed at the pirate’s chest. Once they landed on their destination, the force pushed him back into the wooden dummy behind him, causing him to bring it down with him. As that occurred, the remaining marines came into the room to tell their lieutenant that the enemies were neutralized.

“Great, now I can rest, but not before I...” Axel began to say while eyeing down the Dead Charles. There was dark gray-colored apple that seemed to have slipped out of his pocket. Axel hasn’t eaten since the morning, so he took the apple from near Charles. He concluded that it must have been an exotic fruit and began eating it. It tasted horrible, but it still filled his belly. After that he ordered his troops to clean up the mess and then set up the reservations for a funeral for the brave marines who fell this day, then found some comfort within a bed in one of the rooms on the third floor. After a few minutes, he went to sleep. His final thought before going unconscious were if he was really doing the world good by just eliminating the bad, and not trying to give them redemption. It was a change he made ever since the fight on Baterilla, and it stuck to him even further in the fishmen raid. His mind kept telling him it was needed, since most enemies never changed, but his conscience would tell him every now and then that it was wrong, and that everyone deserved a second chance. He didn't really want to deal with it now however, so he just let the thought exit his mind in order to get a good nap.

END OF TASK