Post by andromeda on Apr 26, 2024 3:07:29 GMT
Snake's Garden [ICA/SD][Journal]
_______________________________________________________________________
Czamensk, Kvetlogarsk Demilitarized Zone - 83 AME - 3 hours past curfew
There could not have been a less welcoming environment for the Selenican military police corps. An eternal winter of frigid snow, a star’s flickering light regularly crossed by another body in space, and barely a shine of warm, comforting daylight to cross the ever-lasting tundra. It was a shame, then, that the Selenicans were assigned to it, as resources stretched thinner and thinner against the Second Dawn.
Major Iresti quickly flicked his thin, black tongue out, tasting the fresh, fluffy snow falling from the sky. His tongue slowly melted the crystals as they fell, their taste reminiscent of the soil’s dust and dirt on barely-in-date rations, a grimy, bitter taste. With a sour expression on his face, he pulled his tongue back in, having had enough of its taste. The smell was indescribably faint, its registration in his mind unknowably slight.
Along his sightline were faint outlines of towering masts of bark and needles, as tall as any of the nearby buildings along this city’s main avenue. They were cloaked in profuse shade by the nigh endless shroud of nightfall, succumbing, slowly to the presence of the Reborn. The city’s borders were tilled and flattened, a sheer drop of dirt and rock from the forest Czamensk tore down to prop up itself, a kilometer-long border patch of dead sterility the only thing to greet those who entered.
With a sigh exiting his mouth, Isreti’s doubled-up goggles to protect his eyes fogged up with each slow breath he took, expelling the biting cold air he took in, warmed by a long heated cloak strapped to his body by belts periodically. A large box on his back controlled the temperature inside the cloak, constantly humming and covered in freshly-melted water droplets. Looking back and forth across the snow-covered street, he was to watch for Reborn who were out well past curfew. He was ordered to arrest them on sight, bringing them to the garrison for an “expedited trial,” the higher-ups had told him. He was well aware that “expedited trial” meant making minor examples out of those who had been apprehended.
With a dim heat signature in the corner of his eye, one that looked suspiciously moving, Isreti turned his head slowly to get a better look; a Reborn, no doubt. They were stealthy in the long, oppressive night, treading forward slowly, careful to mask the sounds of their feet in the snow. Step, wait. Step, wait. They were experienced in working past the curfew, it seemed. Slithering down the steps to the train station, the serpentine man slowly approached the heat signature, a greenish-white somewhat humanoid figure. The rubbery sole of his shielded belly made the barest noise while he slipped through the snow quickly and quietly.
With a sudden jerk, the Reborn clocked their head over to Isreti, seeing him glide over the snow with eerie silence. Almost instantly, they began to run, crunching following each of their unrhythmic motions. The major reached out with one of his long arms, wrapping his fingers around a pole stamped into the ground and turning the corner with haste, a drift of snow piling up along his turning arc. The Reborn’s panicked run intensified, nearly escaping their pursuer’s grasp.
A brief CRASH followed as the Reborn fell into the snowy drift, slamming into a trash can, one they had usually avoided through their careful plodding across the snow. Isreti dug his tail’s rubber-covered tip into the snow, slowing him down to a halt as the Reborn had barely gained their footing – in an instant he pulled his service pistol, a revolver with sparking coils underneath its steaming barrel, and held the gun at the unfortunate creature he had caught up to.
Their frame was battered and rusting through, creaking with each subtle motion they took, arms and hands raised in a surrender – their generator was dangerously exposed, parts of their body seemingly cobbled together from the sinew of useless machines left to rot. Their face possessed a deep, dark scorch mark, revealed under the streetlight - and decay. No other word described this soul he apprehended but decay. Wires like wild vines sprung out of their chest, barely contained and functioning.
With a calm silence, the two stayed still for a while - Isreti’s gun aimed at the Reborn’s head, the Reborn surrendering to him. But this…creature, this life…
“What were you doing out?” Isreti said, a deep, scratchy, gruff voice escaping his throat, choosing not to apprehend the Reborn on sight – a breach of protocol.
With off-rhythm pulsing, the Reborn’s response was curt and short – “Fuck yourself, shkalnazad.”
Gritting his teeth together with irritation, Isreti’s finger began to slowly squeeze the pistol’s trigger, before releasing with a sigh.
“Answer my question, Reborn – what were you doing out?” He repeated, a growing ire in his words.
“Not gonna shoot me?” The Reborn replied, a sarcastic twinge in their inflection, a thick and guttural accent to their voice. “Better than other 40 of your type here.”
The Reborn began to stand, their condition better showing in the dim, fluorescent light illuminating the snowfall around them, their hands still on their head. Isreti’s aim stayed fixed on their body, moving down from their head, still and unwavering.
“Been struggling to keep myself…built recently. Shortages of…everything have been…hurting me.” A sad dejection poisoned every word, but…not maliciously, not in the major’s view. “Been slowly dying out here…need to do things I don’t want to do to get by.”
Isreti’s grip began to waver, his cold limbs shuddering in the snowfall as his jaw clamped shut. While his eyes were cold and unfeeling, observing the glowing heat emanating from the Reborn’s core, inside his mind he couldn’t bring himself to destroy this sad, defenseless thing. His arms shaking, he lowered his gun, flicking the safety back on, a waft of acrid steam jolting from the gun’s interior as its coils shut off.
“...Get your ass home. If I see you out again, you won’t be so lucky.” He said after a brief moment’s contemplation.
Without a word, the Reborn nodded their head and began to wade through the ever-growing snow drifts of Czamensk, out of Isreti’s sight.
“Security in this sector is light, they should be able to make it back.” He murmurs to himself, gliding across the drifts once again, back to his post’s flickering lights, a disorder brewing in his mind.
_______________________________________________________________________
Czamensk, Kvetlogarsk Demilitarized Zone - 83 AME - 8 Hours Later - 1 Hour After Daybreak
The snowfall had slowed the following morning, a brief period of daylight piercing through the shade of night. Light, fluffy crystals of snow continued their pirouette from the clouds, snowdrifts shoved out of roads and streets by heavy, loud vehicles spewing a filthy black smog from their exhausts as another 2-day work cycle began. Light bounced off of the off-white snow, surrounding Czamensk in a radiant glow. Isreti enjoyed little sleep, the two-day cyclic nature of work requiring adopting a schedule similar to the Reborn. His duty the night prior ended as day broke, a rookie comrade of his eagerly taking up the mind-numbing position as a guard.
Slithering slowly through small piles of heaved snow, Isreti was repeatedly looking over his shoulder. Reborn stared at him with malice, anger, frustration, despair, whirring and clicking following their steps and movements, rusted creaks accompanying some. Isreti held his hand to his side, gripping his pistol, keeping his awareness high.
As he trudged along Czamensk’s main avenue, a beggar, in much worse shape than the Reborn last night, clearly on the brink of death, held a small box out. Reading its label, Isreti saw: “Потерял работу, нужно что-нибудь.” Complete gibberish to him, however, as he slithered through the snow, his hand froze in his pocket, gripping a Gerazt-hide wallet, made of valuable natural leather and an heirloom. Turning back to the decrepit Reborn, an odor of repulsive rot and decay wafting from their breaking machinery, the Selenicann leaned forward, pulling his tail into more of a coil.
“You need money, yeah?” He asked, a softness in his voice.
The Reborn nodded their head slowly, whatever energy they had left valuable and precious.
Isreti retrieved a small card – a limited holocard, with a budget enough to keep a man comfortably alive for a week – from his wallet, a gift from his significant other back home. He flipped the card several times between his fingers, staring intently at it, hearing the machinery inside the Reborn slowly start to sputter.
“It’s yours. I can make do with the rations.” He said, handing the card to the Reborn, who elatedly snatched it from his hand.
“Thank y-you…sir.” The Reborn, with a shaky and almost feminine sounding voice, replied, beginning to stand – walking away with her box and tattered clothes to a nearby fuel vendor.
Flipping the wallet closed and slipping it back into its warm pocket, Isreti’s hand dove into another zipped-closed pocket, scrambling to grab the zipper in the cold morning air, diving his hand deep inside and grabbing a small, disposable box. Flipping open the lid, he sees thin, long cylinders, overflowing with an addictive herb from the bogs of Anxios’ swamps. He stares intently at them, his other hand trembling as he looks away, closing the box before slipping it back in. He refused to go back.
_______________________________________________________________________
Czamensk, Kvetlogarsk Demilitarized Zone - 83 AME - 2 Hours Later - 3 Hour After Daybreak
The Mantlese side of the line was in near total anarchy. Reborn, both going about their days and protesting alike, were corralled into a park by the Mantlese forces, where a loud buzzer was heard, piercing Isreti’s ear holes as he was just in range to hear, his supposedly brief time out of the barracks growing longer and longer.
An order, it seemed, was being played.
“Factory Maintenance Crew Z-11, please step forward in surrender. Construction Crew C-28-E4, please step forward in surrender. No harm is coming to you or your loved ones. Proceed to the nearest military police to be detained - you are in no danger. As the lawful and just Mantlese Republic Army & Marine Detachment , it is our duty to protect you.”
The order seemed to repeat ad nauseam, more and more cells of Reborn being called forward, marching towards the Mantlese military police, hands behind their heads in surrender. The off-tempo crunch of snow as boots treaded upon it filled the air as the sun began to wane in the sky, a vibrant greenish-pink aurora dancing against the dim stars of Ancerious. Isreti was across a deep trench carved through the pavement and asphalt, with Mantlese guards across him. They had eyes planted directly on Isreti, who was oddly out of place for a military police – normally, they were on post or bumming around the barracks around this time. An ANTIGEN, taller than the lamp posts around it, peering both over and through the buildings, once a symbol of the Second Dawn’s brutality and abuse of force, stood among the Mantlese soldiers, scanning the horizon back and forth, its main gun hanging low, pointed at the trench.
Nominally, they were allies against the Second Dawn’s death throes, its putrid offspring of Potius Cras and the EPA. In practicality, their relations were as cold as the ice and snow beneath their feet - with several ICA members viewing Mantle as nothing but a second coming of the Second Dawn, and Mantle’s junta, headed by Sarcerogon refusing to cooperate on the international level. Many skirmishes between the backline troops of both factions nearly burnt the rickety bridge of trust that was established by a common enemy, kept together by smart, careful diplomacy.
Isreti heard the snow and ice following the Reborn’s movements as it seemed that an EPA cell was uncovered – to where they were to be brought, only the Great Shepherd knew.
It seemed as if the tensions would continue forever more at this rate…
—
On the Mantlese side of the trench, Vorbach’s engine expelled hot steam after the EPA had been rounded up, piled into the back of his personnel transport like cattle. Darkness was beginning to fall, the beautiful aurora of Kvetlogarsk’s poles proving a comforting sight for them. With the almost comedic putter of the transport’s engine pulling the vehicle along sluggishly, conversation among the former EPA filtered directly into their processors, decoding the speech in a second.
“Where’re we goin’?” One asked.
“Probably a ditch if I had to guess.” Another replied, curtly.
“Eh, bet we’ll make good toxins to whatever plants manage to survive later!” A third replied, chuckling at his own grim joke.
“Shut up.” A fourth Reborn said.
On a turn, Vorbach spun the wheel to the right, deeper into the city, closer to an army barracks. The three talkative EPA felt the unusual jostle of a truck making an unusual turn, looking to one another in confusion and deep, guttural worry.
–
Vorbach pulled into the Mantlese camp in the city, holed up in what once was a city center – a place for play, relaxation, and events was transformed into a bustling ant’s nest of Reborn, chronically poorly fueled and undersupplied. Twisting the key to their vehicle, Vorbach lazily grabbed their submachine gun, hoisting its lanyard over their shoulder in a vaguely threatening position. They swung their truck’s door open, plodding one foot in front of another as they trudged to the back side of the truck, slowly opening the doors into the pitch-black cargo bed.
“Alright, hands on your heads. Out, one by one.” They said, counting off the ex-EPA Reborn who had been collected the day earlier. The planet’s aurora was on full display, angrily twirling across the night sky, a vibrant viridian green and magenta in the dark night sky. Leading the Reborn to a here-to-empty building, he lined them against a wall, facing it before he began to speak.
“As an officer of the Mantlese Republic Army & Marine Detachment, I am offering you a choice – you can join with us, and receive a bonus alongside immunity for whatever you may have done under the EPA. If you deny, well…”
Cocking his gun, the message was clear – they would either join, or die.
No gunshots were heard that night.
_______________________________________________________________________
Tensions between Mantle and the ICA were high following the beginning of the Second Dawn’s occupation as the Civic Republic of Mantle began consolidating its power, with the Selenican division of military police especially willing to butt heads with their “allies.”
Czamensk, Kvetlogarsk Demilitarized Zone - 83 AME - 3 hours past curfew
There could not have been a less welcoming environment for the Selenican military police corps. An eternal winter of frigid snow, a star’s flickering light regularly crossed by another body in space, and barely a shine of warm, comforting daylight to cross the ever-lasting tundra. It was a shame, then, that the Selenicans were assigned to it, as resources stretched thinner and thinner against the Second Dawn.
Major Iresti quickly flicked his thin, black tongue out, tasting the fresh, fluffy snow falling from the sky. His tongue slowly melted the crystals as they fell, their taste reminiscent of the soil’s dust and dirt on barely-in-date rations, a grimy, bitter taste. With a sour expression on his face, he pulled his tongue back in, having had enough of its taste. The smell was indescribably faint, its registration in his mind unknowably slight.
Along his sightline were faint outlines of towering masts of bark and needles, as tall as any of the nearby buildings along this city’s main avenue. They were cloaked in profuse shade by the nigh endless shroud of nightfall, succumbing, slowly to the presence of the Reborn. The city’s borders were tilled and flattened, a sheer drop of dirt and rock from the forest Czamensk tore down to prop up itself, a kilometer-long border patch of dead sterility the only thing to greet those who entered.
With a sigh exiting his mouth, Isreti’s doubled-up goggles to protect his eyes fogged up with each slow breath he took, expelling the biting cold air he took in, warmed by a long heated cloak strapped to his body by belts periodically. A large box on his back controlled the temperature inside the cloak, constantly humming and covered in freshly-melted water droplets. Looking back and forth across the snow-covered street, he was to watch for Reborn who were out well past curfew. He was ordered to arrest them on sight, bringing them to the garrison for an “expedited trial,” the higher-ups had told him. He was well aware that “expedited trial” meant making minor examples out of those who had been apprehended.
With a dim heat signature in the corner of his eye, one that looked suspiciously moving, Isreti turned his head slowly to get a better look; a Reborn, no doubt. They were stealthy in the long, oppressive night, treading forward slowly, careful to mask the sounds of their feet in the snow. Step, wait. Step, wait. They were experienced in working past the curfew, it seemed. Slithering down the steps to the train station, the serpentine man slowly approached the heat signature, a greenish-white somewhat humanoid figure. The rubbery sole of his shielded belly made the barest noise while he slipped through the snow quickly and quietly.
With a sudden jerk, the Reborn clocked their head over to Isreti, seeing him glide over the snow with eerie silence. Almost instantly, they began to run, crunching following each of their unrhythmic motions. The major reached out with one of his long arms, wrapping his fingers around a pole stamped into the ground and turning the corner with haste, a drift of snow piling up along his turning arc. The Reborn’s panicked run intensified, nearly escaping their pursuer’s grasp.
A brief CRASH followed as the Reborn fell into the snowy drift, slamming into a trash can, one they had usually avoided through their careful plodding across the snow. Isreti dug his tail’s rubber-covered tip into the snow, slowing him down to a halt as the Reborn had barely gained their footing – in an instant he pulled his service pistol, a revolver with sparking coils underneath its steaming barrel, and held the gun at the unfortunate creature he had caught up to.
Their frame was battered and rusting through, creaking with each subtle motion they took, arms and hands raised in a surrender – their generator was dangerously exposed, parts of their body seemingly cobbled together from the sinew of useless machines left to rot. Their face possessed a deep, dark scorch mark, revealed under the streetlight - and decay. No other word described this soul he apprehended but decay. Wires like wild vines sprung out of their chest, barely contained and functioning.
With a calm silence, the two stayed still for a while - Isreti’s gun aimed at the Reborn’s head, the Reborn surrendering to him. But this…creature, this life…
“What were you doing out?” Isreti said, a deep, scratchy, gruff voice escaping his throat, choosing not to apprehend the Reborn on sight – a breach of protocol.
With off-rhythm pulsing, the Reborn’s response was curt and short – “Fuck yourself, shkalnazad.”
Gritting his teeth together with irritation, Isreti’s finger began to slowly squeeze the pistol’s trigger, before releasing with a sigh.
“Answer my question, Reborn – what were you doing out?” He repeated, a growing ire in his words.
“Not gonna shoot me?” The Reborn replied, a sarcastic twinge in their inflection, a thick and guttural accent to their voice. “Better than other 40 of your type here.”
The Reborn began to stand, their condition better showing in the dim, fluorescent light illuminating the snowfall around them, their hands still on their head. Isreti’s aim stayed fixed on their body, moving down from their head, still and unwavering.
“Been struggling to keep myself…built recently. Shortages of…everything have been…hurting me.” A sad dejection poisoned every word, but…not maliciously, not in the major’s view. “Been slowly dying out here…need to do things I don’t want to do to get by.”
Isreti’s grip began to waver, his cold limbs shuddering in the snowfall as his jaw clamped shut. While his eyes were cold and unfeeling, observing the glowing heat emanating from the Reborn’s core, inside his mind he couldn’t bring himself to destroy this sad, defenseless thing. His arms shaking, he lowered his gun, flicking the safety back on, a waft of acrid steam jolting from the gun’s interior as its coils shut off.
“...Get your ass home. If I see you out again, you won’t be so lucky.” He said after a brief moment’s contemplation.
Without a word, the Reborn nodded their head and began to wade through the ever-growing snow drifts of Czamensk, out of Isreti’s sight.
“Security in this sector is light, they should be able to make it back.” He murmurs to himself, gliding across the drifts once again, back to his post’s flickering lights, a disorder brewing in his mind.
_______________________________________________________________________
Czamensk, Kvetlogarsk Demilitarized Zone - 83 AME - 8 Hours Later - 1 Hour After Daybreak
The snowfall had slowed the following morning, a brief period of daylight piercing through the shade of night. Light, fluffy crystals of snow continued their pirouette from the clouds, snowdrifts shoved out of roads and streets by heavy, loud vehicles spewing a filthy black smog from their exhausts as another 2-day work cycle began. Light bounced off of the off-white snow, surrounding Czamensk in a radiant glow. Isreti enjoyed little sleep, the two-day cyclic nature of work requiring adopting a schedule similar to the Reborn. His duty the night prior ended as day broke, a rookie comrade of his eagerly taking up the mind-numbing position as a guard.
Slithering slowly through small piles of heaved snow, Isreti was repeatedly looking over his shoulder. Reborn stared at him with malice, anger, frustration, despair, whirring and clicking following their steps and movements, rusted creaks accompanying some. Isreti held his hand to his side, gripping his pistol, keeping his awareness high.
As he trudged along Czamensk’s main avenue, a beggar, in much worse shape than the Reborn last night, clearly on the brink of death, held a small box out. Reading its label, Isreti saw: “Потерял работу, нужно что-нибудь.” Complete gibberish to him, however, as he slithered through the snow, his hand froze in his pocket, gripping a Gerazt-hide wallet, made of valuable natural leather and an heirloom. Turning back to the decrepit Reborn, an odor of repulsive rot and decay wafting from their breaking machinery, the Selenicann leaned forward, pulling his tail into more of a coil.
“You need money, yeah?” He asked, a softness in his voice.
The Reborn nodded their head slowly, whatever energy they had left valuable and precious.
Isreti retrieved a small card – a limited holocard, with a budget enough to keep a man comfortably alive for a week – from his wallet, a gift from his significant other back home. He flipped the card several times between his fingers, staring intently at it, hearing the machinery inside the Reborn slowly start to sputter.
“It’s yours. I can make do with the rations.” He said, handing the card to the Reborn, who elatedly snatched it from his hand.
“Thank y-you…sir.” The Reborn, with a shaky and almost feminine sounding voice, replied, beginning to stand – walking away with her box and tattered clothes to a nearby fuel vendor.
Flipping the wallet closed and slipping it back into its warm pocket, Isreti’s hand dove into another zipped-closed pocket, scrambling to grab the zipper in the cold morning air, diving his hand deep inside and grabbing a small, disposable box. Flipping open the lid, he sees thin, long cylinders, overflowing with an addictive herb from the bogs of Anxios’ swamps. He stares intently at them, his other hand trembling as he looks away, closing the box before slipping it back in. He refused to go back.
_______________________________________________________________________
Czamensk, Kvetlogarsk Demilitarized Zone - 83 AME - 2 Hours Later - 3 Hour After Daybreak
The Mantlese side of the line was in near total anarchy. Reborn, both going about their days and protesting alike, were corralled into a park by the Mantlese forces, where a loud buzzer was heard, piercing Isreti’s ear holes as he was just in range to hear, his supposedly brief time out of the barracks growing longer and longer.
An order, it seemed, was being played.
“Factory Maintenance Crew Z-11, please step forward in surrender. Construction Crew C-28-E4, please step forward in surrender. No harm is coming to you or your loved ones. Proceed to the nearest military police to be detained - you are in no danger. As the lawful and just Mantlese Republic Army & Marine Detachment , it is our duty to protect you.”
The order seemed to repeat ad nauseam, more and more cells of Reborn being called forward, marching towards the Mantlese military police, hands behind their heads in surrender. The off-tempo crunch of snow as boots treaded upon it filled the air as the sun began to wane in the sky, a vibrant greenish-pink aurora dancing against the dim stars of Ancerious. Isreti was across a deep trench carved through the pavement and asphalt, with Mantlese guards across him. They had eyes planted directly on Isreti, who was oddly out of place for a military police – normally, they were on post or bumming around the barracks around this time. An ANTIGEN, taller than the lamp posts around it, peering both over and through the buildings, once a symbol of the Second Dawn’s brutality and abuse of force, stood among the Mantlese soldiers, scanning the horizon back and forth, its main gun hanging low, pointed at the trench.
Nominally, they were allies against the Second Dawn’s death throes, its putrid offspring of Potius Cras and the EPA. In practicality, their relations were as cold as the ice and snow beneath their feet - with several ICA members viewing Mantle as nothing but a second coming of the Second Dawn, and Mantle’s junta, headed by Sarcerogon refusing to cooperate on the international level. Many skirmishes between the backline troops of both factions nearly burnt the rickety bridge of trust that was established by a common enemy, kept together by smart, careful diplomacy.
Isreti heard the snow and ice following the Reborn’s movements as it seemed that an EPA cell was uncovered – to where they were to be brought, only the Great Shepherd knew.
It seemed as if the tensions would continue forever more at this rate…
—
On the Mantlese side of the trench, Vorbach’s engine expelled hot steam after the EPA had been rounded up, piled into the back of his personnel transport like cattle. Darkness was beginning to fall, the beautiful aurora of Kvetlogarsk’s poles proving a comforting sight for them. With the almost comedic putter of the transport’s engine pulling the vehicle along sluggishly, conversation among the former EPA filtered directly into their processors, decoding the speech in a second.
“Where’re we goin’?” One asked.
“Probably a ditch if I had to guess.” Another replied, curtly.
“Eh, bet we’ll make good toxins to whatever plants manage to survive later!” A third replied, chuckling at his own grim joke.
“Shut up.” A fourth Reborn said.
On a turn, Vorbach spun the wheel to the right, deeper into the city, closer to an army barracks. The three talkative EPA felt the unusual jostle of a truck making an unusual turn, looking to one another in confusion and deep, guttural worry.
–
Vorbach pulled into the Mantlese camp in the city, holed up in what once was a city center – a place for play, relaxation, and events was transformed into a bustling ant’s nest of Reborn, chronically poorly fueled and undersupplied. Twisting the key to their vehicle, Vorbach lazily grabbed their submachine gun, hoisting its lanyard over their shoulder in a vaguely threatening position. They swung their truck’s door open, plodding one foot in front of another as they trudged to the back side of the truck, slowly opening the doors into the pitch-black cargo bed.
“Alright, hands on your heads. Out, one by one.” They said, counting off the ex-EPA Reborn who had been collected the day earlier. The planet’s aurora was on full display, angrily twirling across the night sky, a vibrant viridian green and magenta in the dark night sky. Leading the Reborn to a here-to-empty building, he lined them against a wall, facing it before he began to speak.
“As an officer of the Mantlese Republic Army & Marine Detachment, I am offering you a choice – you can join with us, and receive a bonus alongside immunity for whatever you may have done under the EPA. If you deny, well…”
Cocking his gun, the message was clear – they would either join, or die.
No gunshots were heard that night.
_______________________________________________________________________
Tensions between Mantle and the ICA were high following the beginning of the Second Dawn’s occupation as the Civic Republic of Mantle began consolidating its power, with the Selenican division of military police especially willing to butt heads with their “allies.”