The Other Side

One After Another

Location: Atlas, Remnant

After the war the Atlesians surrendered to the New Orderians, ditched the military for civilian life, or just became mercenaries. At least most of them did. Some parts of the Atlas military, along with the most radical of believers had regrouped after the fighting ended and began rebuilding. With NO forces occupied with Operation: Hand of God the remnant groups were able to get away with much more than normal, especially considering the few NO patrols stay cleared of the exclusion zone. 

Inside of said exclusion zone was the largest dust mine in Atlas, and all of it's "workers". SDC mercenaries pledged allegiance to the new Atlas and the management of the mines did as well. The laborers were less enthusiastic but when you have rifles pointed at you and will die from the cold if you leave, would you really revolt? The laborers were forced to start excavating large cavities and constructing fortifications across the less irradiated parts of the exclusion zone.

Rebuilding would be hard, the few villages that refused to evacuate weren't open to anyone, NO or Atlas, and asking would risk being exposed. The Atlas forces had to move under the cover of darkness and never stick to roads. They also needed to gather research materials to regain some aspect of their technological advantage, it was already clear Atlas naval vessels could down all but the very best of the New Orderian N-R craft, if they wanted to fight the superpower they needed to get everything they could. More laborers would be needed and there wasn't many places to get them, at least legally.

Location: Mistral

A few NO soldiers from the 12th infantry stood beside a stopped convoy of trucks, one of which had a flat tire. As soldiers worked to fix it others stood guard. This wasn't some secret operation, or even an important one, it was solely focused on delivering supplies to villages inside the exclusion zone. Simple.

Soldier: Imagine this, a few months ago we are storming Salem's castle and now we are standing in a street in buttfuck nowhere. Isn't there a civil war to fight or something?

Soldier 2: It is boring, but still important. Who else would deliver food to those people? They would literally fucking starve.

Soldier: Fuck that, who picks a frozen wasteland to live i-, never mind, let's deliver the food.

Sergeant: Caught yourself there didn't you? Correct me if I'm wrong Kromer but isn't your family notorious for being New Orderian from the start?

Soldier 2: Now come on Frasel, he is a dumbass but at least give him a shot at a rebuttal.

Kromer: Fuck you too Ikeman. Oh fucking dammit.

Behind Frasel and Ikeman the truck being repaired had yet another mishap, the jack broke and the truck dropped. The axel bent and the soldiers working on it gave up. The captain, a man named Uyghur, got a local police officer who offered to take it to the Mistral Police Dept's fleet services two blocks away. 

Uyghur: Everyone, I'll buy the hotels, we are sleeping at the address sent to your MDTs, flash your military issued ID and they will tell you the rooms. Do whatever, don't harass the locals, this is still a hearts and minds op.

Kromer, Frasel, and Ikeman took this as fucking wander the streets looking for something interesting. The soldiers passed a crime scene where a distraught Faunus woman cried while a few police officers took her statement. The soldiers decided to ignore it because clearly she had been through enough and didn't need some dumbass New Orderians to annoy her. A block later Kromer stopped at a pole used for electricity.

Kromer: Holy fuck, take a look at this.

The other two soldiers walked over and looked at the pole as well, they were equally surprised. The entire side of the wooden post had missing person flyers, all of different people, stapled to it. Even weirder was everyone went missing recently and all of them were Faunus.