At 1945, Travis put on his casual clothes, black jeans, black high top sneakers, a white shirt and a thin gold chain. Then he headed out to the front of the company building, where he found the Ashvale sisters and Victor waiting.
"Yo!" He called to the trio. Then he turned to Victor as he drew closer. "Haven't seen much of you for a couple days now. Everything alright?"
"Yeah, just been doing some solo training. Didn't want to get left behind by powerhouses like you, Kiara, and Vanessa here. Pretty impressive fight you two had."
"More like terrifying. I never imagined my sister could be like that. And the fact that something like that could happen to any of us at any time is even scarier." Victoria said, shuddering at the memory.
"Well it's not like either of them meant for that to happen." A voice called out. Travis turned and saw Kiara and Taylor walking towards them.
"I'm not sure that makes it better." Travis said.
"Well it's not like it really matters. None of us can do anything about it anyway." She said back. "So how many more are we waiting on?"
"Justin and the O'Neils for us." Travis told her.
"I've got 2 more coming. Supposedly."
"We're here!" Another voice called out. Justin appeared and threw his arm around Travis' shoulder. "I'm not late am I?"
Two men appeared on either side of them. "We still have about seven minutes before the agreed time, so no, we aren't late." One of them said.
"So who are you cutie?" Kiara asked.
"Oscar Stanton. My buddy here is William Hillyard."
"How it hanging everyone?" The one named William asked. "Hope you're all cool with us joining you."
"Of course, the more the merrier." Travis said, then turned to Kiara. "So you're buying me a drink today right?"
"For what?"
"Because you lost today, obviously."
"You expect me to buy you a drink because you beat me at a video game?"
"You would've expected the same if you'd won right?"
"Yeah that's fair. Alright I'll do it."
"Sorry about that! Hope you all weren't waiting long!" Rebecca's voice called out from behind them.
"Nah you're good. I was wondering though since you have kids, how do you both go out, or one missions? Like how does that work?" Justin asked.
"Oh the company has a child care center. They take care of the babies whenever we are out." Lance told him.
"Yeah! there are actually quite a few kids here, so it makes sense that its something they offer." Rebecca added.
"Well, now that we're all here, should we head out?" Travis asked. They all agreed and walked to the bar.
○○○
When they got there they found a bar that could fit about 100 people, with a large bar, 6 pool tables, 2 dart boards, and a karaoke machine.
"Woah! This is much better than the one in the field!" Justin said.
"The one in the field was a fucking tent, so it's not hard to be better than it." Travis told him.
"Lets grab that table over there." Victor said, pointing them to a corner booth that could fit them all, and they headed over and sat down.
"So does everyone know what they want?" Travis asked.
"Yeah, I'm going to come with you so I'll take half of our orders so you don't have to remember everything." Kiara said as she started taking orders.
"A whiskey sour for me." Taylor said
"I want a long Island ice tea." William said.
"Can you get me a frozen mango margarita?" Victoria asked.
"I want a Vodka soda." Vanessa told him.
With the orders in hand, they went to the bar and ordered everything. While they waited Kiara turned to him.
"Hey, so are you feeling ok?" She asked.
"Yeah, im not feeling psychotic right now. If that changes I'll let you know though." He said with a wry smile.
"Yeah I'd certainly appreciate that. I would really prefer to not get brutally murdered. But that's not what I meant. I was asking about whether you are adjusting to being back in the land of the living ok."
"Oh. Yeah I'm doing ok. You all definitely make things a lot easier. Makes it easy to remember that I'm not alone, you know?"
"Good! I'm glad you feel that way. Although I don't wonder if you're just saying that so I won't worry."
"Haha, no nothing like that. I'm just appreciative of you guys. I wouldn't lie about the fact that being with you and Justin has made me much happier."
"Oh alright." She said. "Thats enough being sappy. I'll buy you this drink, but next time I'm going to win, and you'll be buying me a drink."
"Speaking of drinks, here's your order." The bartender said.
They grabbed the drinks and headed back to their table, passing them out. As he sat back down, Travis turned to the ones from second platoon.
"So where did you guys go?."
"We recaptured the Hawaiian Islands." William said. "What about y'all?"
Travis and Taylor exchanged a significant look. Then he responded. "We were in South America. I heard there were a couple squads with us but we never saw them, and I have no idea what they did. So did you recapture Hawaii then?"
"Well of course." Oscar replied. Wouldn't have left if we weren't successful. Suffered pretty heavy losses though. Us four are all thats left of our squad."
"Jesus, so you guys got hit pretty hard then. None of you are leadership?" Justin asked.
"Yeah, most squads did. And no, both our team leaders and our squad leader died. Victoria is actually the only survivor from her team. Why how many did you lose?" William asked back.
"We lost a team leader as well as 3 of the soldiers in that team. The other two were extremely injured. Still in the hospital despite our accelerated healing. Plus these three chuckle fucks had to leave early because of their injuries."
"Wow, you guys got off easy. Some squads didn't make it back at all yet you only had 4 deaths." Vanessa commented, partially awestruck and partially envious.
"It would've been a lot worse without Tay, she saved all of us." Kiara said. "Even Travis was struggling dealing with them."
"Well, then, I say we toast to her then, it would've been a shame if we couldn't party with you guys. Here's to Taylor!" He shouted
"To Tay!" The rest shouted, joining in the toast.