Only a handful of experiences in his entire life, most of them having occurred in the past six months, had been more uncomfortable than this. He spent the first five minutes of the flight trying to size up his squad mates without making eye contact and the rest of the flight just trying not to make eye contact. (Not that he could actually see several of them thanks to the enormous Golem sitting next to him. He couldn't recall feeling this small before.) Was this a joke? Were these really the people the Enclave had declared the best of the best? Experts, geniuses, prodigies, monsters and cold-blooded assassins or a hodge-podge of ax murderers in need of psychotherapy? He took a deep breath, trying to keep it quiet so as not to disturb the tense atmosphere any more than the girl muttering to herself was.

The intercom crackled and a woman's voice dispersed the silence. Finally. As he listened a smile crossed his face and he was able to find his focus. Get through the mutant hordes and neutralize the FEV vats. Got it. He couldn't deny that the anxiety was giving way to excitement. There could not possibly be any better feeling than butchering mutants and God dammit if the prospect of bringing down a Behemoth wasn't making his trigger finger itch. It seemed that he wasn't the only one sharing in the sentiments as the squad stirred to life getting their equipment ready.

After a final check of his weapons (a legitimate check this time) he rolled his shoulders, tilted his head from side to side to pop his neck and slid his helmet on. This was definitely the most uncomfortable part of putting on his particular brand of power armor. The helmet initiated a "sync" of the mind and body to the suit via a module barely exposed at the base of the skull. The module tapped into the user's central nervous system and without it the prototype power armor would be completely unremarkable and in some cases completely unusable. With a quiet hiss and click the helmet, armor and flesh inside became a single entity. The dim lights on the visor flicked on looking like a grotesque set of arachnid eyes. His senses sharpened. His muscles tensed. The virtibird touched down. He was on his feet, gauss rifle charged.

 [i]"Good luck, Eagle Squad! Kill a few muties for me!"[/i] their lovely pilot gave them a farewell.

[i]"It'll be more than just a few for you, sweetheart!"[/i] Ginger called to the cockpit with a grin under his helmet.

A damp and slightly rank breeze swept in with the opening of the doors. They were off and he was all too thankful to put a little more space between himself and the rest of the squad.

It wasn't long after he passed up Deathstroke, the squad leader, before a bullet ricocheted off the shoulder plate of his armor. That was plenty close enough for his tastes and he found cover crouched behind one of the many boulders that littered the area. He could hear the garbled voices and roars of the mutants from here. Little cross-hairs danced over his vision where the visor picked up moving figures pressing through the landscape. He lined up his sights.

A sound like an other worldly hammer striking an anvil bounced off the rocks and cliffs. Simultaneously a supermutant found itself engulfed in electrical discharge with a soccer ball sized hole punched through its chest. Chaos erupted. Ginger could hear the rest of the squad making contact. Gunshots, dying yells of inhuman brutes, wails of disgusting creatures, bodies hitting the ground. And over the top of it all through his ear piece he could hear the sniper chime in with an all too fitting phrase. It brought the smile back to his face.

Another charge through the barrel of his gun and another mutant met its fate minus a leg and a good chunk of its hip. After it fell Ginger noticed a distortion that warped the trunk of a long dead tree only for a second. It was enough that his visor placed a cross-hair on it, but that too quickly vanished.

[i]"Watch yourselves,"[/i] he spoke quiet and calm over the comms, [i]"I've got a little son-of-a-bitch with a stealth-boy over here."[/i]
 
For a moment he thought about his new squad once more. Those strange people on the virtibird were now a team relying on each other to complete the mission and keep every member alive. This would be the supermutant extermination of the century... 

...Or they would all die horribly.