As the stranger calmly approached the unit, Dinara noticed that most of her team tensed at the development.
It wasn't surprising, the different military forces here weren't exactly friends with one another, and it wasn't that rare to have skirmishes start out of nowhere for absolutely no reason.
It would be funny if the guy saved them from the Honkai just to kill them himself, but not exactly impossible.
As things stand, though, there's a non-zero chance that the gray-haired dude wasn't going to kill them, as well as that one of her newbies would pull a gun and get everyone killed anyways. So it was with some level of annoyance that the commander stepped forward to hopefully start amicable talks.
She didn't give it much thought before, but the only humans who can fight the Honkai head-on like this are Valkyries, meaning that this guy was a fairytale example of a real life male Valkyrie.
To be honest, Dinara didn't really believe these guys existed, she had never seen a male with proper Honkai resistance before. And she was the only one in the entire unit to have good enough resistance to survive an direct contact with the energy, which was the reason she wasn't currently dying to Honkai Radiation after almost getting hit by the Archangel.
Regardless of what she believed, however, it was time for proper introductions. And, hopefully, answers as to what Schicksal wanted here after completely abandoning them nine years ago.
"Lieutenant Dinara, Red Dawn Military Company" started the unit commander, showing none of the nervousness present in the eyes of her subordinates. "I would like to thank you for your assistance."
Thankfully, the tension in the air didn't seem to have affected the other party, and he showed no signs of wiping the ground with their carcass yet, small victories.
"Lucius, unaffiliated." The man, Lucius, nodded as he introduced himself.
"... Unaffiliated?"
The mere thought of an unaffiliated Valkyrie - a male, of all things - was so foreign to Dinara that she couldn't stop herself from tilting her head in confusion. Seeing that he didn't want to explain any further, she dismissed her doubts and went back to the conversation at hand.
"In any case, we owe you one, but..." She stopped herself from scratching the back of her head - helmet in this case - in embarrassment. "I'm afraid that all we have is a place to rest and some food to eat."
That was a fact that couldn't be more true, most of the food were rations sourced from outside the country, with a few products made by the village itself, while the few weapons and munitions they had belonged to the company, and were not hers to give away as she liked.
If the situation annoyed the male Valkyrie, he didn't show it. Instead, he looked over the village, his sight unhesitatingly settling onto the local church, where they had hidden the inhabitants before the fight started.
"... It'll be enough."
Dinara noticed where he was looking, he knew where the civs were kept despite not being informed. This either meant that he had been watching them before the skirmish even started, or that this was some Valkyrie mumbo jumbo in action.
The lieutenant failed to suppress the chill that traveled down her spine at this realization. She was honestly hoping that it was the latter, as it meant that he might not be trying to exploit them somehow by saving them at the very last moment before a massacre started.
She motioned for the Valkyrie to follow her as she walked deeper into the settlement, stopping briefly by the gathered group of her unit that looked at the developing situation with a mix of worry and wariness.
"Mischa!" She started, drawing the focus of the entire group. "Get Sasha and her pests to close off the area and get the house numbers for move out. Kir! You and Yuri go and inform the villagers, make sure they don't leave yet. The rest of you are to guard and scout, Alyona will make and lead the scout party!"
She didn't bother with the loud and clear affirmation that came from everyone, continuing to lead Lucius into the village.
The village was small, less than three hundred inhabitants, though its territory was rather expansive for such a small amount of people, as it was to be expected of a location that used to be mostly self-sustaining.
There was a good distance between each house, and they all had a fairly spacious courtyard. Most of them were quite pleasing to the eye, though there were some huts here and there that looked rather distasteful, as if someone had just randomly cut a bunch of trees in the surroundings and nailed them together to make a square shaped shelter to keep the cold away.
After a ten minute walk, the liutenant eventually stopped before one of the homes in better condition, close to the center of the settlement. She opened the gate to the courtyard, the layer of snow had been shoved aside to form a path to the house, the dirt and gravel underneath could be seen, though they were still mostly covered by white flakes.
The door to the house was closed, but it had been left unlocked, allowing her to just enter the place. The both of them cleaned their boots on the welcome mat left outside in front of the door before entering. Dinara sighed comfortably at the heavenly positive twenty degrees Celsius that occupied the place, shrugging her thick military coat and clunky helmet onto the coat rack by the side as she walked further in, the male Valkyrie following her in without the slighest reaction to the instant change in temperature.
The living room and kitchen were the first to greet the duo, the dining table - big enough for six people - stood in the living room, a few meters away from a CRT TV, there was a sofa on the side, but its positioning was rather akward to sit on while watching the TV. The kitchen side held the sink, wich extended into a counter to prepare food on, a small wood-burning stove, and an old-looking refrigerator.
"All houses here are mantained at this temperature." She said suddenly, walking straight to the refrigerator in the kitchen, opening its door in search of ingredients, Lucius simply sat by the table while listening to her explanation. "We built a central heating system station by the church, hot water and steam is provided by underground pipes to every residence in the village."
She took out a slab of butter, a wedge of homemade cheese, and a pair of eggs, putting them down on the counter, she lowers herself to open the cabinets below the counter to grab some bread - the homemade version - and a stove toaster, two metal sticks connected by their heads where the bread would be placed.
"You know, we didn't have that heating system until recently..." Dinara said offhandedly as she looked in confusion at all the ingredients gathered at the kitchen counter, feeling like she forgot something stupidly simple, and couldn't progress with her cooking. She honestly sucked at multitasking.
The liutenant slapped her forehead once she finally noticed the lack of utensils. Opening the uppermost cabinet under the sink in a rush, she swiftly gathered a knife and a fork, then went on to cut the bread while continuing her story.
"The village didn't have the money, it was too much of a luxury before two thousand, and when the year finally arrived, well... we had our good ol' Eruption. Honkai Beasts were everywhere, the sickness they brought infected whomever came in contact with it, exceptions might have been one in a million."
Butter was spread over bread, cheese placed over it, an egg was cracked open and its insides were carefully dropped over everything. Dinara took salt from a container nailed to the wall over the sink and sprinkled a little bit over the egg, then poked the egg yolk with a fork until it was visibly leaking, finally the weird sandwich just had to be heated in the stove toaster. Dinara inwardly noted how odd it was to to tell such a grim tale while making such a homely lunch.
"The cities that weren't directly invaded by the beasts fared a little better, despite the famine that quickly broke out, there was at least some level of relief aid given to them. Villages and small towns... not so much." Dinara stopped once again when she looked at the stove. Being fueled by wood as it was, the thing needed to be pre-heated to properly cook anything.
She wordlessly grabbed the firewood placed beside the stove, as well as a few pages of newspaper bellow the wood, opened the lid of the stove, and shoved everything in, then she looked down at her hands. There was no match to light a fire, she groaned.
"Anyways, small towns and villages were too dependant over young people," The matches were also on the cabinets under the counter, so starting the fire had been a simple proccess, though the commander struggled a bit more than necessary due to having carelessly tossed the newspaper together with the wood, difficulting the spread of the fire. "So when the elders were suddenly left with the sick, the children, themselves, and more than double of the previous workload... things stopped working out."
Finished with the preparations, Dinara walked to the table and sat on one of the chairs, turning herself so that she can watch the fire lashing at its surroundings, licking the extremities of its cage with deadly savagery. Maybe she had put a bit too much fuel.
"The PMC was our savior, so to speak. The heavy presence of Honkai was a strong deterrent to most military organizations, since the necessary firepower to counter them is too costly for anything but behemoths of warfare to cover, getting people to come from outside to die in this hellhole was just as costly, so corners had to be cut."
Words were stuck in her mouth, speaking them felt like opening festering wounds she forgot she had. Suddenly, the previously silent listener cautiously spoke.
"Local enlistment... and child soldiers?"
"... Yes." She managed to answer, and continued. "I lived in a small town, Honkai radiation spiked right in its center. One moment, me and my family were having dinner, the next, everyone but me collapsed and stayed unresponsive for several minutes. When they stood up again, they were monsters that wanted nothing but to rip me to shreds."
There was an empty smile to her face, an attempt to disassociate from her own past. "I was 10 years old at the time, with no other family to care for me. Too young to be enlisted, too young to not be a burden, I was basically abandoned to die on my own. It was the Red Dawn, with the reasoning that picking me up and raising me as a soldier would be more cost effective than using mercs from other countries, who gave me - and many other children - the chance to survive."
Silence filled the house for a while, both the storyteller as well as the quiet listener watched the fire in a slight trance, as if seeing the scenes being told within the flames.
There was panic, there was suffering, there was blood. Darkness engulfed the life people knew, despair spread its wings to eclipse any hope, death consumed all. Hatred seeped like poison, victims leaving victims to die and even killing one another.
"... Anyways!" Dinara stood up to check the heat of the stove, satisfied with the temperature, she directly put the bread in the stove toaster and positioned it on top of the stove.
"That was my reason for having no more than food to repay you. Heck! This isn't even my house, its Sasha's." She laughed after saying that, the plight of her subordinate was quite fulfilling to the commander.
"... And yet," Lucius suddenly said, bringing the attention of his host back on himself. "This is not the only reason for reopening old scars. Something more important seems to be at stake."
The truth suddenly came out of left field, and Dinara failed to find a reply immediately. She just looked at the superhuman in front of her.
"On your own, you could accomplish more than my entire unit of twenty soldiers, quite a few of them are already veterans in the battlefield despite their age, you know. And yet, we were going to die because of two small-fry Honkai Beasts and a few zombies."
"You want me to join the PMC?" The question was direct, the tone left no space for nonsense, Dinara's bland, tired brown eyes stared at a deep sea, a strange abyss of light that looked back and understood her sorrows, as well as fears. Suddenly, she noticed that there was an unbearable weight to his presence, and yet, she couldn't feel any pressure.
"In short, yes. That is my intention."
The man took a minute to think, each moment felt went by agonizingly slow, stretching seemingly without end. Then, he opened his mouth.
"That will depend on its purpose, I wish to speak with the leader of the Red Dawn."
It wasn't exactly a positive answer, which made sense since as a measly commander of twenty soldiers, she didn't really make the decisions for her employer. But the fact that she wasn't faced with an outright rejection was already a small victory.
Dinara allowed a faint smile, though she held the sigh of relief back in.
"Thanks for giving us a chance, then."
