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Clash at Wuqingmen

Khemia

Establishing Nation
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
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2,837
Location
Hawaii
Nick
Saaya
Wuqingmen. It was a wonderful region that marked the beginning of the karst ecosystem to the west that defined much of the land of Yujin. To the south, nestled upon the higher mountains, the Great Wall, one of the great monuments of Yujin, stood defiantly against history. The Crusades of Keida had tested it, and had broke against it like water upon the face of a great cliff. It stood like an icon of Yujin, relentless. Green grass and sporadic trees clung to life in a region where the myriad of underground caves had consumed all the water necessary for growth. Despite the difficulties, they thrived, brilliant green in the daylight.

The sun had only barely passed it's apex in the sky, the unrelenting rays beat down on the back of Bei Renling. His fatigued clothes absorbed the heat, and Renling grabbed at his collar and pulled the cloth away from his skin. As a soldier in the People's Defense Force, he had been stationed in his region for 2 months longer than regulation designated, a fact which perturbed him every time it occurred to him. His mouth contorted into a frown at the thought, and he looked around at the scenery around him once more. Wuqingmen was a small border village in the far north of Yujin, far away from the well defined barbed wire, minefields, and trenches that delineated the border to the south. The Great Wall, ten miles to the south, ran the entire course straight to the coast. He wondered for a moment if an ocean breeze would dare race along it's parapets to kiss him with it's cool grace, but he realized his foolishness. He kept looking, sitting upon the balcony of a house that maintained a strong vantage point of the Keidan border.

The 'border' was difficult to define. Wuqingmen lay like an egg within a nest of rocky hills, his vantage point was the balcony of an abandoned residential house that crested the hill. The hill area continued for some ways eastward, to Keida, where the trees became even less common as the mountains in Keida rose. At some point, the two ridges formed, and tucked within was a Keidan village. Somewhere in between Wuqingmen's rugged hills and the mountainous Keidan village was the border. The marker's designating it had long since fallen over, and neither side was foolish enough to go put up a more permanent fence.

Renling glanced at the hills for a moment, imagining a strange rock atop one of them. It was not uncommon for the hills to have their incongruencies, the rocky slope broken by a ridge of even larger, aberrant rock. He pondered for a moment, as his eyes focused in on the strange rock. Such stone structures would provide excellent cover, he imagined, and the thought occurred to him. He grabbed his binoculars and peered out at the crest of the hill, adjusting a dial in the center to focus the image. The rock had disappeared. Curious. He looked around a bit more, to another stone rampart, and saw something that caused his heart to skip several beats.

Binoculars.

The green lenses stared back at him like alien eyes, causing him to pause like prey in the path of a predator. It was watching him. He dropped his binoculars and grabbed his radio, "Contact east! Contact east!"

The figures he had been watching suddenly started to run, and he grabbed his rifle, not caring to notice which direction they were moving. He put the target in his ironsights, aimed high, and pulled the trigger several times. Each time the rock around his target shattered, sending dust and fragments of stone flying. A bullet clipped into the metal paneling of the house, and a flute sounded inside the town. He could hear more of his platoon shouting orders and slogans, ready for battle.

In the distance, he heard more rifle reports, and several more dings resounded as the bullets shredded the paneling only a foot or two from where he sat. He pushed himself to the floor, taking a prone firing position before returning fire.
 
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