Kazia fidgeted with the fabric of her pants uncomfortably. She… couldn’t say she’d ever worn pants, not really- in school she had always worn the mandatory English-style “sailor” uniform, with its long pleated skirt, and at home after the war broke out she still wore her pretty, modest dresses and no-nonsense shoes. She’d taken as good care of them as she could so they’d lasted her for the two years after the invasion. It was expected of little Polish girls who happened to be spies to dress like normal little Polish girls, after all.

But now that they were airdropping into France… that attire would be conspicuous. She’d finally managed to scrounge up better clothing, in the form of a moderately well-worn pair of boys’ trousers and one of her own looser button-up blouses in a comparatively inconspicuous shade of light bluish gray. She had a few other clothes in a small knapsack that was snugly fastened across her shoulders, a sack that also contained some very carefully-wrapped smoke bombs and the various other diversions she carried. 

The one item of her culture’s clothing that she’d kept, though she probably shouldn’t have, was one of her bright, floral-patterned headscarves. There were a few others in her bag but this was her favorite, and she wore it today to give her a bit of a confidence boost. And to keep her curly, at times poofy hair out of her face. She had carefully pinned it up in a bun this morning but there was no promise it was going to stay like that…

She wasn’t sure how long they’d all been gathered in the room when a relatively tall, well-put-together woman stepped to the front of the room. Everyone else rose to attention, or at least to alertness, leaving poor Kazia standing on tiptoe, craning her neck to see what the devil was going on. She could at least process the woman’s words, that was not an issue, but she might’ve liked to see something other than the shoulder blades of the person in front of her.

As the woman concluded her speech, Kazia thought she saw some unease in the faces around her. She herself felt almost none- it was either stay here, and do some good, or go back home and fight a losing battle… the British official who’d given Kazia the necessary papers to be here had made it clear that Kazia had only been brought on because of her agreement to be in Ms. Bianco’s group and she’d be shipped off with the next batch of grunts to Warsaw if she backed out for whatever reason.

The group filed out to the trucks, Kazia remaining near the tail of the group- the last thing she wanted was to get trampled before they even got into the air.

Of course, most of the group was seemingly less than eager to load up into the trucks, so Kazia wove her way through the group, then scrambled up into one of the waiting vehicles (being short did make for some awkward moments for climbing up into things) and plopped down into a seat, at the  last moment slinging her backpack around so it was in her lap (the last thing she wanted to do was accidentally set off a smoke bomb in here.) She found herself next to a tall, lanky blonde boy, probably somewhere around her age. As she swung into the seat, she heard him say, “Jesus Christ, I’m terrified of heights!”

The girl instinctively opened her mouth as though she was going to give the boy a sharp warning for using Christ’s name in vain. Then she promptly shut it again as she realized that, well… here they were, on their way to war, in the back of a troop transport truck… and she’d never been in an airplane, so how would she even know if she was afraid of heights or not… and she was going to yell at someone for a curse word that was, well, barely even a curse, by most of the street army’s standards…

Suddenly the whole situation struck her as absurdly funny and she started silently laughing, quickly covering her mouth, though that was more an observed mannerism than anything- she’d never really mastered the art of using another person’s laugh while she was laughing, it always sounded weird. There were so many different kinds of laughter…

Kazia forced herself back to the task at hand, her mirthful expression fading and turning serious. Why was she being so scatterbrained? Maybe it was the waiting- yeah, it was probably the waiting that had her so antsy. She half-wished she was back in the streets. She’d have been given an order and immediately allowed to execute it. None of this stupid transportation and logistics and whatnot. Yes, logically she knew that the logistics and higher levels of planning were what was (theoretically) going to make this operation successful… but still. She hated waiting.