[Academy RP] | Commuting in Rhodellia

[Rhodellia]

This is another snapshot into the civilian lives of Rhodellian citizens. This one specifically focuses on five mostly working-class university students studying in Gottesberg, the capital city, in the Rhodellian state of Königsheim. In contrast, the previous one I wrote was about two people from the Rhodellian state of Janbourg visiting Gottesberg to spectate Militärfestival 2018. In this sample RP, the five students are starting their long commute across and out of the capital to reach a popular campsite located in the countryside. Do note that they're not necessarily speaking English. I'm just choosing to translate them like this to better communicate intent and the variety of styles of speech between the urban working classes.

Gottesberg, Rhodellia

It was the early hours of the morning. The sky was still dark with the sun only starting to peak over the glass and concrete skyline. To the convenience of five university-age students - four boys and one girl - hauling carbines, tactical load bearing vests, and assault packs, most commuters had yet to start their morning rush hour. Most people out on the streets this early were local servicemen and women performing independent morning PT on their own. Besides them were the "early bird" commuters who either dreaded claustrophobia or had to travel to an opposite end of the city for work. And so, the Gottesberg Underground station “Lettow-Vorbeck” was nowhere near as packed as usual; they saw only a couple dozen or so early birds queuing up at the ticket barriers, with about a dozen more lining up at the self-service ticket machines and tills. It didn’t take too long for the group to get their tickets, pass through the ticket barriers, descend a long escalator towards the Rüdiger Line, and reach Platform 3 early enough to catch the next Northbound train.

The group leader, Edward, glanced towards the electronic platform display. 
‘ETA for the 0530 train is four minutes’. His friends moved from close behind. They weaved in between other commuters, and apologised to the odd few they'd accidentally whack with their assault packs. After navigating halfway down the platform, they found an empty row of metal seats. ‘At least this bench is empty. Guys, let's set down our stuff over here while we wait.’
‘Noice.’  Decker took off his assault pack, tucked his rifle between his knees, and sat back on an end chair. The rest filled up the other spaces. ‘Ay. Jonas, Emil.’
‘Yeh cuz?’  Jonas nodded up and nudged Emil.
‘I’m bored. Let’s play a game.’
‘Sure, mate.’  
Decker leaned towards them. 
‘Listen up: Erika Wittman, Aloysia Kalss, and Emilia Seibold. F*ck, Marry, Kill?’
Jonas rubbed his chin at an advertisement on an opposite platform: it marketed four-eyed “Generation 4” night vision goggles (which looked very similar to the ones worn by the Rhodellian commandos who, only a few days prior, cleared an entire Separatist command bunker to assassinate a high-ranking tribal Separatist leader in Nordwalde). Emil scratched the back of his head. Alice glanced up from her smartphone and gave the others a repulsed look.
Jonas spoke up first.
‘Aight, so I’d f*ck Erika, marry Emilia, and kill Aloysia. Erika got that “back” you know what I mean? I’d bang her so hard, yeh, that we’d come up on the Richter scale.’
‘Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.’  Edward pitched in ‘I still think Aloysia’s an underrated Panzerfahren ace though. I’d personally marry her instead of Emilia.’
Emil shook his head to Jonas, laughing.
‘You do realise that Erika’s 16 and you’re 21, you utter nonce.’
‘Yeah but she’s still perfectly legal according to both state and national laws, mate!’
‘There’s still a five-year age difference between you both, so you’re still a flipping nonce.’
‘You for real bruv? You telling me that if a peng bird like her walked up to you and started chirpsing, you’d pass her up? About time you came outta the closet you massive homo.’
‘Mate I’m as straight as a ruler!’
‘A bendy one.’
Edward applauded. 
‘Congratulations Emil. You played yourself! Of all the things you could’ve replied with…’  he clapped even harder ‘...you just had to pick the one even secondary schoolers are smart enough to avoid!’
‘Well done fam.’  Decker chuckled ‘Aight, I reckon we oughta change games now.’
‘Aw why man?’  Emil asked ‘I was just about to say mine. It's jokes!’
‘Trust fam I wanna hear it, but look at Alice. She’s well shook.’  he nodded towards Alice, who had somehow gotten up and moved away from the boys to an opposite row of seats (without anyone noticing to boot). Decker laughed ‘You alright there Alice?’
Alice took off an earphone, smiled, and looked up from her smartphone again.
‘You lot are disgusting pigs. Honestly, yeh, I'm having second thoughts going camping with you!’
Edward replied.
‘You’ll be alright Alice. Just sleep with your back to the tent wall!’
‘F*ck’s sake.’  Alice simply laughed and went back to scrolling on her phone screen. 
Decker turned back to Emil.
‘Ayo Emil, since you wanna say something so bad… Here’s one for you: Bait out the biggest sket you know. Full name, address, phone number, credit card details, social security number, all that shit ya get me fam?’
‘Bruh. Bait-out vids have been rinsed for years.’
‘Innit cuz.’ added Jonas ‘We be living in 2018 now, not 2016 you prehistoric caveman.’
‘C’mon man just do it. Do it for the bants.’  Decker slapped his hands together, and pleaded.
‘For the bants?’  Emil paused ‘Alright then so… biggest sket I know, yeh? Initials Anton and Richard.’
‘A.R…’  Decker pondered ‘Ain’t that your ex from college?’
Emil shook his head. 
‘Nah mate. This’ a different one.’
‘Noice! What ‘bout the rest doe?’
‘Ha ha! Naaaaw, man.’
‘Why not my man?’
‘That’s bare deep bruv I can’t bait that out!’
Jonas joined.
‘You’re well dry you know that bruv? Help a mandem out. At least tell us her Insta.’
Emil nodded.
‘Alright I can least show you that.’
‘We’re just having a laugh my bruddah!’  Decker chuckled ‘So what’s she like?’ Spill the beans!'
Emil took a deep breath ‘Aight yeh... so this girl’s a proper sket, like… On the real, she bangs like ten boys a week bareback.’
‘Bruh that’s grim.’  Decker’s jaw dropped 'She be spreading STIs like it's Plague Inc.!'
‘It’s absolutely flippin’ disgusting, yeh. Back in July, I went skiing with her in Gottesthal. Our entire hotel was proper dyin’ of herpes cos’a her I swear down.’
‘Then why ain’t you dead cuz?’
‘Man’s smart and wears protection innit.’  Emil knocked on the plate carrier he wore over his shirt.
Jonas leaned in again. 
‘Oi. What’s her post code? Ya boy’s getting a medical discharge tonight!’
‘From spitting bars to spitting blood. Bloody hell Jonas that’d be one hell of a career path.’
‘To be fair though, with her body count, this Bad B probs knows how to have a banging time. Man don’t care if he gets mega-chlamydia. Allow “Taps”. Play “No Regrets”  and sick beats at my funeral!’
‘Oh my days fam… You’re well thirsty you know that?’
‘Yeh and?’
‘Heh, you’re an absolutely disgusting degenerate Jonas.’  Edward chuckled towards the electronic platform display
‘Yeh and?’  Jonas repeated. The rest were still too busy laughing to say anything back (with the sole exception of Alice, who remained silent). ‘That’s what I thought.’

The subway train rolled into the station. The group stood up from their seats, strapped on their assault packs, and picked up their rifles. Edward beckoned the others over to his position.
‘Alright boys let’s cut the meme’ing.’  He watched the lights of the forward-most carriages whizz past. ‘Oh look, they’re pretty empty.’
‘It’s five in the morning mate of course they’re all empty.’  Emil patted him on the shoulder. A carriage door stopped directly in front of them.
‘Calculated.’  grinned Edward. The glass safety barrier and carriage doors beeped and automatically slid open. The group strolled right on through, followed in by other fellow commuters. There weren’t a lot of others in the carriage. Among the more conspicuous were three builders wearing orange high-vis PPE and white hardhats. Chatting to them were five soldiers wearing full battle dress, kevlars included. The soldiers seemed to be complaining about how their unit's not getting deployed to Nordwalde, and how they didn't get to spend their Christmas season smoking some uppity tribesmen in the face for disrespecting their country. The builders expressed similar sentiments, stressing above all that if only they knew Nordwalde would blow up again so soon they'd have re-enlisted as combat engineers instead of becoming civilian contractors. Elsewhere in the carriage were three secondary school-age kids showing off their rifles, bragging about their shot groupings in school, and whose family members had the coolest MOS. A couple of foreign tourists were also in the same carriage and in some of the others. The tourists appeared to keep to themselves, probably intimidated by the fact that practically every Rhodellian chooses to carry either a gun, knife, or most likely both on their person at all times.
Decker unstrapped his assault pack and took his seat, followed by Alice, Jonas, and Emil. Decker looked up at Edward, who was still wearing his assault pack and preferring to stand.
‘Oi Ed, so how 're we getting to the campsite again?’
'Let me check...’  Edward opened up his smartphone. He managed to connect to the Underground station’s free Wifi and search up his route just as the train was departing into a tunnel ‘So… Going over our route again… We’ve got five stops left on the Underground.’  he pointed up at the Underground map for the Fegelein line ‘We’re changing at Wilhelm II Station. From there, we’re taking Maglev train to Manstein Park station. Using the Guderian Line, that is.’
‘Guderian Line? I swear if we're going to Manstein Park it’s faster to take the Ludendorff  Line.’
‘About that…’  Alice looked up from her phone again ‘I already said it on the group chat, but umm...  there’s basically massive railworks going on there until February.’
Edward nodded.
‘Yeah. But who knows? Maybe if there aren’t any scheduled delays on the Ludendorff Line’s timetable we can take that line instead. Alice, go search up "Ludendorff Maglev Line delays" when you connect to the station Wifi at our next stop’
‘Sure thing Edward.’  Alice went back to her phone.
Decker nodded a few times.
‘Aight that’s safe. What time's our train?’
‘Yeah, so if we’re still taking the Guderian Line… when we get to Wilhelm II station we’ll need to take the 0600 train on Platform 4.’
‘0600?’  Decker stretched his legs ‘Mate, we’re legit gonna have to pace it.’
‘Mhm.’  Edward agreed ‘Good thing we’ve never skipped leg day.’
‘Yeah it’s chill bruv. We’re all gym lads. Man’s never got a failing PT score in secondary school or college. I ain’t mucking up my record now ya get me?’
‘I haven't suffered the disgrace of failing PT scores either. So yeah, when we get to Manstein Park we’ll be changing again onto the GNR high-speed train going north…’  Edward paused ‘Hey Alice?’
‘Yeah?’  Alice looked up 
‘Where are we getting off on the high-speed train? Closest stop to Carius National Park. Preferably with a bus station directly going to our campsite’ 
Decker seconded that.
‘Yeah. Allow having to haul this gear all the way. I already did my Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum Duke of Edinburg awards in school. Doing a fifth one would be bare effort.’
‘Hm…’  Alice recalled her memories ‘I think that would be Macharius station. That’s where my brother and his mates got off when they went camping last November.’ 
‘Alright. Macharius station it is. Cheers Alice.'
Emil looked up from his seat, seeming a tad concerned.
‘Yo, Ed. You know Carius National Park? Bruh I swear it used to be like, an actual military training ground. My dad was in the 12th Panzer Division, and his unit used to train there a lot. The place must be radioactive as hell with all the depleted uranium lying about.’
Alice looked up from her phone again.
‘Emil. Uranium-238’s got a really long half-life. We're talking billions of years. I remember, like, in secondary school... our teachers taught us that the main risk from depleted uranium munitions comes from alpha particles. Those don’t go through our skin or our clothes. They don’t travel far through air either.’
‘So... that means we should be good for the most part, right?’  Emil asked.
‘Yeah.’  Alice nodded‘The government’s also done a lot of cleaning up over there before opening it up to the public. The background radiation, for the most part, shouldn’t be much higher than normal. Do you honestly think they’d screw us over like that?’
‘Well, our government’s actually not retarded, so... that’s fair enough.’  Emil gave a thumbs up.
Edward spoke up.
‘Okay, so here’s what we’ll do… Just to be safe, we’ll avoid anything that looks like a crater made by a 120-millimetre tank gun. Also, keep your Geiger counters on around sites where depleted uranium's known to have been used. Use your mobile data to brush up on their locations in the field if you have to. Pay attention to any warning signs of radioactive or chemical contamination. That way, none of us ends up with Leukaemia like those tourists who ignored all of the signs last year.'

‘That’s safe bruv.’  nodded Jonas, who was fiddling around with his rifle’s optics ‘Oi. Do you reckon the campsite has its own KD range? My new ACOG came in yesterday so I gotta zero it.’
‘It probably does.’  Edward shrugged ‘I mean, every other campsite we’ve been to had its own KD range, and the one we’re going to was a former military training ground. It’d be a damn crime it didn’t have a KD range’
Decker whistled.
‘Ay mandems. Speaking of crimes…’  he gestured towards the group of three kids they spotted earlier. ‘What is that? What the f*ck is that?’
‘What…?’  Edward squinted at the group of kids ‘I don’t get it. What’s wro-oh… Yeah, now I see it. Damn...’
Nothing about the kids themselves was out of the ordinary: they looked like the kind of kids that went plinking with friends in the day, played street football or basketball in the evening, and online battle royales at night. The problem lay with their straps: they had so many attachments decorating their rifles that the weapons systems looked as if they were 3D-printed straight out of a video game.
‘Bloody hell…’  Emil rubbed his eyes ‘On the real though, do they honestly think they look allie putting 30 pounds of shit on a 9 pound service rifle?’
‘They must think they’re hardmen.’  Jonas looked up briefly before going back to servicing his own rifle ‘Kids these days think they’re so allie with their “Tacticool” mall ninja gear. I swear down. It’s flipping annoying.’
‘Like you can talk fam.’  Decker chuckled ‘Let’s not forget, right, how you also went through a “Tacticool” phase back in secondary. Shit was bloody hilarious. I swear, yeh, you woulda slapped a thermal scope onto a bayonet if your mum gave you the pocket money’
Jonas laughed.
‘Man’s a big boy now, innit. I ain’t about that mall ninja shit anymore. Besides though… 50 metres, 100 metres, 200 metres, 300 metres... I scored higher than you in all my Marksmanship exams, and everyone had to use iron sights for those.’
‘Ah, shut up fam. At least I actually came first in our area’s Schützenfest last year!’
‘Bruh, that’s cos you bare sweated it that time around. Nearly every day after lectures, yeh, you’d DM me saying “Oi come outside fam let’s go to the range” and I’d be like “Nah mate. Man's got exams to study for innit”. You are a proper tryhard.’
‘Gotta do my duty to Rhodellia, ya get me mandem? Moment I start National Service, yeh, I be flexin' on the other crows with my rifle game. Big man ting.'

Edited November 14, 2021 by Rhodellia (see edit history)

[Orioni]

OOC: Nice writings @Rhodellia. This is different than your previous stories. Less meme, more story. The quality is certainly there. Nice writing.

[Gallambria]

OOC - Interesting choice of story line, but I too, am happy with this. Lays a good foundation for possible further RP with the other members.

[Sunset Sea Islands]

OOC: Another very enjoyable piece! Congratulations on your graduation.