Fumbling
Oh God I feel so embarrassed. Im not sure how Catnap feels but I hope he's not too mad, I really didn't mean to hurt him. But now Im wondering, while we are driving back to my base. Why do I care this much? Even though I'm pretty attracted to Catnap, I don't know why I even care this much about a guy I just met, but here we are. Leading that same guy to the location of my base.
I pull out my radio to talk to Catnap. "Hey Catnap." I say and wait for a response. "What's up?" I heard him say. "I already called ahead to my base. They know you're coming. And they seem excited for you. Just giving you a heads up." I tell him. "Right." He replies. Eventually we make it to our base. A largeish, walled off compound. I signal the gate guard to let us in, and the two gate doors opened. We drove inside till' we reached our vehicle storage area, and parked our bikes.
"Dogday! You made it back! And this must be your guest." I heard someone from behind me say. It was Bobby, with all of the other critters following behind her. She gives me a big old hug. "Hey Bobby, any news from anything?" I say to her. "Well the only news right now is you with your new guy you've brought home." She says with a mischievous smile, looking behind me. I also turn around to see Catnap analyzing the walls and our defences. Probably never even seen the rest of the group yet.
He then finally looks over at us. "Is this the rest of your friends?" He says to me. "Yup this is all of them." I say to Catnap. "Here let me introduce them to you. This blue elephant is Bubba, our brains of the group. She comes up with most of our plans. This red bear is Bobby, our medic. This green bunny is Hoppy, our fastest scout. This yellow chicken is Kickin, she is our weapons expert. This unicorn is Crafty. She is our main radio operator on base. This black sheep is Baba, she is the gate guard earlier. And these two are Maggie and Picky, they are the ones who keep the entire base from falling apart." I say, before turning back to the critters. "And everyone this is Catnap! The new PMC that showed up according to Bunzo." I then added.
Catnap took a moment to look at everyone and analyse their faces. "Yes hello, Im Catnap, I'm a PMC operator, which basically means I do military stuff because I get paid for it, and not because I want to or Im ordered to. Now where's your planning room? Dogday here said that you guys are planning an ambush on some FIN higher-up?" He then says. I turn to look at everyone and they all have strange smirking faces, looking at me. "Uh yeah sure. Bubba and Hoppy, you two meet me in the war room, everyone else go back to your posts." I say as my squad follows my orders. "These guys are not the only ones part of COES, there are others but we are like the inner circle of COES. And of course Im the leader here." I say to Catnap as we walk towards our main building. He just nods in affirmation.
After we get inside the building which is an old embassy building that we repurposed as our main base of operations, we walk into the war room and inside we see a large table along with some chairs, a large map of the entire country on the wall, and Bubba and Hoppy there like I asked. "So, are we ready to start planning?" Bubba said to me and Catnap. I turned to Catnap to see him nodding. "Who is the high priority target." He then says after nodding. "Two guys actually." Bubba says as Hoppy lays down and unscrolls a map on the table. I recognise the map's location as it's the south-western region of the country, with mostly empty roads, and very sparse buildings.
"The two targets are a bat named Poe, and a rat named Touille. And they will be using this road in about 24 hours to move closer to the frontlines." Bubba says. Catnap nods, staring at the map, looking like he is memorizing the route. "Then we will ambush them at this section, because there is a good overwatch position here, there is no easy escape, and we have laid down some mines on this part of the road here, which will be the signal to start engaging." Bubba says while pointing and circling some portions of the road. "Hoppy will be up on the road ahead while Catnap will be here, closer to the road, and Dogday will provide overwatch from here." Bubba says while pointing at three positions with red circles on them.
"Alright, that sounds like a plan." Catnap then says making me feel happy as I had a hand in making this plan. "So, in 24 hours you said?" He then added. "Yup, so we have ample time to prepare." She replied. "All right, guess I have some free time then." Catnap says, making me feel excited, I could spend some more time with him and hopefully not embarrass myself and not look like a total fool. "Well, since you said so, I could give you a tour of the whole base if you want?" I said. I see in the corner of my eye, both Hoppy and Bubba smirking a bit.
"Sure." He then says. I give him a short tour inside the building like the armoury, some of the sleeping quarters including my room, our storage rooms and clinic. And we walk around outside talking about the vehicle storage, mortar systems, and walls. And the whole time, Catnap was silent and just listening while analysing every single detail of everything I talked about. "I was meaning to ask you this." He then says, making me stop in my tracks. "Why did you look at and clean my firearms?" He said questioningly. "Oh, I was just enamoured at how nice and modern they looked compared to mine." I said, while grabbing my rifle from my sling. "Yup, your kar98k looks like an antique, like it was an original one used in WWII." He says, stepping forward to take a closer look. "Well it is one I think. Same with my 1911. At least, that's what Kickin said when we found it in a gun cache." I reply to Catnap. He got a lot closer than I thought because now our faces are only a couple inches away from eachother.
Catnap, noticing our sudden closeness, pulls back a bit. "Um, I hope they continue to serve you well, as they do now." He says while looking off to the side. Even though he's real quiet, he can be pretty cute sometimes. And the difference on how he had acted with me earlier, compared to the rest of the critters, probably means that he was just more comfortable to talk with me than with the others! Well its a good first step for this relationship.