DT 2023: Cold Droppings

Once more in uncountable repetition, someone young and dumb whispered through the foggy night “It’s fucking freezing.”
The usual response was a couple hisses and the ruffling of dirt and fabric as Spartan trainees increasingly resolved minor discontent in their ranks. Two years on of training at ONI Camp Ambrose taught Spartan trainees valuable lessons including better to discipline within their fireteams rather than suffer severely from the training cadre as a whole unit.
The tops of small black helmets bobbed a centimeter or less over the edges of their manmade craters in a field of dead grass and winter’s first snowfall. Dead twigs and pebbles stuck to the helmet tops with duct tape and spray paint to mask their presence like fake stones. The battlefield camouflage did not stop the shifting flashlights of armed men in the field and nearby forest as they pointed light beams in the direction of the hushed voices.
Someone else muttered in the distance from one dugout to their teammate, “No swearing. No talking.”
A muffled groan followed.
A dark-haired boy in a central dugout huffed rapidly into his shoulder, an oily and itchy tear dripping down his eyelid and along the ridge of his nose. His sweat collected from all his bodily surfaces, trapped in the thermal layer of his softshell armor, and separated from the subzero temperatures outside. Only the stenciled name on his armored chest declared him “Daiki-D217.” His armor didn’t help much, and rubbing itches made things worse. Sweat, especially old sweat got cold. Became frigid and the beginning of frost.
The evening training exercise banned all fire and chemical heat solutions. Two options emerged, picked from fireteam to fireteam on personal preference. Some clung together in huddles, using their ambient body heat. Others chose earth and grass twine, stuffing openings in their armor to trap heat. The trainees on lookout duty for two- or four-hour perimeter watches made do with the second option.
But then there was a third option. Daiki glanced around him through the darkness, observing his four teammates paired together in huddles at the east and west corners of their team foxhole. He looked outwards toward the flashlight beams and the darker shadows where other foxholes await.
Pulling his bundled arm from his exposed chin, Daiki revealed a slight smirk aimed at the closest crater to the southern direction. He clutched his stomach with his other arm, growling with a quiet, appropriate urgency. He glanced at his shaking boots and without fear, unlaced the top knots. His soaked socks followed, pulled free of chattering toes, and stuffed into the hollows of the set aside boot pair. His pale feet touched down on the dark earth and light layer of frost, sparking away in shock on contact.
Daiki didn’t let the frostbite deter him. He grasped the edges of his dugout and pulled himself up and out, into the defenseless open field. He flattened himself as a beam of light passed close by him but seem to miss as it did not return to his form a second.
He rose to his full height and let his bare feet though the frozen ground. There was a small crunch with each step but ninja-walking heel first narrowed his noise profile. None of the lights refocused in his direction. Twenty strides later, he was kneeling over the southern foxhole and five warm bodies huddling together. It was impossible to make out which trainee was which in the darkness and the tangle of limbs but whoever was on their perimeter watch clearly failed.
Daiki didn’t say anything, avoiding a smirk, chuckle, grimace, frown, or whisper. He turned on his crouch with the grace of a dinosaur, and bent back his butt and pulled down his pants. A stream of gas began as a quiet pass before popping like a trumpet.
The boy wasn’t clear what happened next, but he left a few brown pebbles for the foxhole’s residents. Someone, an adult or two, were yelling and flashlights were streaming in his direction. Daiki leaped and flattened himself to the ground, dragging himself back to his hole six meters away. His hasty retreat and exposed butt disappeared into his own foxhole as lights burned down on what was the Team Boson dugout.
“Bravo-Three. Up, up! You failed your watch. Get up!”
“What the hell?”
“Who pooped on me?”
“Trainees, shut it!”
“Someone popped on us!”
“Figure it out yourselves. Eighty pushups, then a ten-kilometer run. Spread out!”
“But—”
“Spread out now or I double the count!”
Team Boson’s members grumbled incoherently as Daiki watched over the edge of his dugout, identifying six adult shadows with downward flashlights and five bewildered children rapidly running through pushups on the cold earth. Daiki rubbed his gloved hands over his frozen feet. Somehow, he wasn't so cold anymore. And in no way tired.
“Daiki, what did you do?” Daiki couldn’t help grinning, glancing back to Jardon-D156, his chuckling fireteam leader. The troublemaker pointed to the Team Boson dugout out of sight of the cadre flashlights. 
“I got us a free bathroom.”
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories