Girl Scouts are hardcore these days part 1
It was the very definition of shit duty. A fully armed and equipped patrol of 'fuckups' would be sent into the woods around Colorado Springs to assist the park rangers with monitoring the columns of Girl Scouts that went there on weekend outings.
Their mission was, broadly speaking, to stop anyone dumb enough to try and make off with a serviceman's kid from getting more than a hundred feet from their target.
Sounded about normal, right? The catch was that they couldn't let anyone but the Park rangers know that they were there. Which meant no mid-mission trips to the grocery store down the road, no goofing off ever, no trying to scare the civvies dumb enough to take a nap in the middle of what was a wild forest and palming it off as spooky ghost tales, nothing.
It was harder than it sounded, especially since it was home turf they were hiding in. At least when they did this shit in the Middle East there wasn't a proper Burger King within duck-off distance.
It was necessary though. There were factors in play that even the feds weren't cleared to know about and the number of idiots that were willing to play hardball with innocent civvies just because of who their parents were had only gone up since the end of the cold war.
Didn't change the fact that fact it was shit duty though.
And the current crop consisted of himself. He had, by the grace of God, somehow ended up as the only fuckup this month. It had its upsides-less chance of being detected, none of that petty drama bullshit new teams typically went through, nobody stealing his stash of candy while he was on watch, that kind of thing.
On the other hand, he was always on watch. Always. Didn't matter if he had to sleep or take a piss or eat. Didn't matter if it was raining, snowing, or muggy as all hell. If there were scouts in the field, he was on task and that was it.
And there was nobody else to bitch about it to.
So he sat there, ate his MRE and felt sorry about himself as he waited for his chaperone schedule to get called in.
"John, do you read over?"
"Yeah, I'm here over." He said, shuddering at the lack of radio discipline that was 'all part of the plan' according to the sergeant on the other end of the line.
"Got 1 batch of freshly hatched chicks from the barn today. Four sets total, pointed beaks, fresh imports courtesy of cyan row. Long itinerary, but they look pretty bushy-tailed. How copy?"
1 troupe of Scouts in your area. Four girls, mid-teens, foreign-born adoptees of a big-wig high enough to warrant a custom callsign. Going through the Grand Tour, but should be inexperienced enough not to notice you getting close.
"Solid copy. When's the pickup time over?"
"Delivery can be done in about three hours, give or take a quarter here or there over."
So about two hours then. Fuck this spy movie bullshit.
"Roger that. Bring 'em in, over and out."
The radio squawked twice at him. He began stowing his gear and getting ready for the day.
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These girls were weird. The only way he could tell they were girl scouts were by the berets perched on their heads. Everything else they were wearing looked like they'd bought it out of a milsurp shop. Sure, it was practical, but why the hell would a bunch of day-tripping girl scouts go out looking like an Eastern European recon squad? That girl with the Dark hair was wearing webbing for fuck's sake.
It offended him somewhat, no lie.
"So why the fuck are we in a forest again?" The redhead asked loudly in Japanese. He thanked his lucky stars he'd taken that as part of his exercise liaison training back in the day.
"Badges." The bluenette said as she took a photo of some piece of vegetation out of his field of view. "Mami and badges."
"Honestly, it'll be fun!" The blonde one said cheerfully. "We get to explore a new place, maybe see some animals-"
"Get away from my uncle." The dark-haired one said as she put a flower in some kind of container. "He gets a bit emotional sometimes."
"Well at least we now know where you got it from." The redhead said as she pulled a pocky stick out of her pocket. "Stone cold badass right up until he comes home to cooking..." she shook her head. "Poor fucker."
"The Cake is truth." Blondie intoned before giggling. "Is he alright by the way?"
"We're wasting time girls." Blueberry stated, stashing her camera away and pulling out a map. "The next stop is about two kilometres down the trail. We need to make good time now so that we can get to business later."
"Lead on, oh glorious berry girl." The redhead muttered.
Oh good, it wasn't just him then.
The girls broke into a jog. He found himself having to sprint to keep up. In hindsight, that was when things started to go into what the fuck territory.