Don't mess with girls.

Gray ran as fast as he could with the wolf-size rat slung over his shoulder, the parent rats were only about 50 meters behind and catching up. Gray tried to remember not to look back at them because that's when the person running away always trips in the movies. While running Gray would drop grenades behind himself. Although not very effective against the giant rodents, they were adequate to make them pause momentarily and give Gray a chance to gain some ground on them.

Gray's legs started to burn from tiredness and he started to think "What kind of game limits your running distance with normal fatigue." Despite the burning, Gray kept saw hope when he had finally reached the crater.

Gray burst through the foliage and headed down to the center of the crater, the two parents were at this point only 20 meters from him and also burst through into the crater kicking up dirt as the chased down Gray. Gray dropped the baby in the center of the crater and yelled "LIGHT IT!" to Yurika who then ignited the trails of napalm.

A ring of fire encircled the crater causing the 2 parent rats to stop chasing Gray as they scurried to cover their baby Gray had dumped in the crater. As soon as Gray got out of the line of fire, the others started to fire upon the adult rats. The rats had surprisingly thick hides and only suffered superficial wounds, seeing their baby not moving, both rats became and enraged and with a hiss charged towards the five of them.

"Aim for the eyes!" barked Gray. "Yurika hold mama back with your flame thrower, everyone else aim for daddy's eyes and face!"

Yurika tossed Gray his gun back and picked up her flamethrower and started to aim it directly at the mama rat while the others concentrated their fire on the daddy rat.

"S*it! I only have 5 seconds left of napalm Gray! Take Daddy down!" yelled Yurika.

Under the concentrated fire of all 4 others, the Daddy rat began to slow down and eventually came to a stop as the concentrated firepower on his head disoriented it and all of the blood loss made it weaker. The Daddy rat finally collapsed but Yurika was already scrambling as she had ran out of flamethrower ammo as the Mama rat swiped her chest hard, knocking her back.

"Finish Daddy off!" Gray yelled at Caleb, Geoff and Stacia. Caleb edged his way to the side of the downed rat while Geoff and Stacia fired at its eyes, ears and nose. Caleb pushed the muzzle of his gun against the rat behind its skull where he estimated the rat's spine would be connected to its skull and blasted a hole through where Caleb expected the cervical nerves to be.

After finishing off Daddy finally, Caleb, Geoff and Stacia heard a painful groan from Gray and then turned to look at him.

"GGRRAAAYY!"

__________

The battle against the rats was going almost as planned in Gray's mind, with Yurika keeping one of the parents back with her flamethrower, the other 4 could focus fire on the other without it being able to ambush them. Unfortunately Gray never took in to account the amount of fuel Yurika had already used and was surprised when she ran out only after a few short bursts. The mama rat looked absolutely disgusting as all of the fur on its face had been burned off as well as its head. Burn marks scored across the mama's flesh and Yurika felt her heart drop when she pulled the trigger and no more napalm came out.

Yurika dropped her flamethrower and pulled out a pistol and started firing at the mama rat, but the rounds barely penetrated the flesh of the massive rat and it struck out with its claws at Yurika. At this point, Gray noticed Yurika was in trouble and had commanded the others to finish off the Daddy rat. Yurika continued to fire the pistol until the rat's claws raked across her chest and flung her sideways like a rag doll.

Gray was no longer thinking at this point and was just running at the mama rat to try and save Yurika. Gray tackled the mama rat and wrapped his arms around her neck, the mama rat shook her head furiously and flung Gray off. Gray tried to grab her again but was only able to get one arm over her head when mama's mouth finally chomped down on Gray's arm.

"AARRRGGGHHHH" screamed Gray in pain, his whole arm would've been chomped off, but he had grabbed his combat knife in his left hand before mama chomped on his left arm, the blade pierced the roof of the rat's mouth and made it let go in surprise. Gray did his best to not let go of the knife, but the blood was leaking out of his arm fast causing him to lose strength. Yurika regained herself enough that she could reload her pistol and aimed inside the rat's mouth once Gray let go of the knife.

CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK!

Yurika fired 4 rounds as fast as she could into the mouth of the mama rat, the rat fell down and finally stopped moving. The massive pile of fur, flesh, and blood could still be seen breathing but only faintly.

Caleb, Stacia and Geoff finally reached Gray and Yurika as the mama rat was knocked out. Gray felt his consciousness start to fade from blood loss and Caleb did a hasty examination of his arm, then applied a tourniquet above Gray's elbow on his left arm to stop the blood loss before using an atomizer to give Gray a light dose from the last bottle of Ketamine they had.

Yurika was still conscious and her state wasn't critical, just painful. The rat had left 3 deep gashes across her arm and chest and the force of the blow may have cracked some ribs even. Still, she looked worriedly at Gray after she realized he probably saved her from being rat food.

"He'll live, but we have to get him back to base fast or he might lose his arm" said Caleb without his usual intellectual swagger.

Caleb disinfected, medicated, then bandaged up Yurika's arm. The 3 gashes on her chest were deep and might require stitches, but without any hesitation Caleb tore off Yurika's top and cleaned and treated her chest wounds. Yurika's face turned bright red when he took off her shirt and Stacia was about to yell at him, but when they both saw that Caleb was being completely professional about it they let it go as modesty had no place on the battlefield.

Everyone got patched up that needed it, Yurika was weak so she could only carry one weapon in her non-damaged arm and was unable to sling anything around her shoulders as her damaged ribs made it too painful. Stacia carried most of the weapons slung over her small body which in any other situation would appear quite comical. Geoff was stronger than Caleb so he hefted the unconscious Gray over his shoulders in a fireman's carry and all 5 started to head back towards the farm.

"Wait a moment, we need to make sure mama is actually dead." Said Yurika.

The mound of flesh and blood that was the mama did still appear to breathing. Caleb started to walk over to the mama rat but Yurika waved him off.

"Allow me"

Yurika grabbed a grenade, kicked open the rat's mouth, under-handed pitched the grenade into the mama rat's mouth and down its throat, the mama twitched as it instinctively swallowed the grenade. Yurika turned around and started to walk back towards the others when the grenade went off and the rat's body blew apart like a piñata raining blood and bits of flesh around the corpse.

Yurika continued to walk towards the farm they had come from without looking back. Caleb, Stacia, and Geoff stared at her wide-eyed and thought. "Never piss her off."

Everyone else followed Yurika before Caleb said "We need to destroy the nest still, I'll take care of it though alone, you guys keep going back to the farm."

The others agreed and the two girls and Geoff carrying Gray made their way back to the truck after Caleb took the last 3 grenades they had. Several minutes later when they finally reached the gate to the farm again, loud explosions were heard in the distance from Caleb blowing up the nest of the rats followed by several gunshots. Shortly after, Caleb joined up again with the group and said "Nest is destroyed, shot 3 babies, mission accomplished."

Gray finally regained consciousness and was leaning heavily on Geoff now, but he felt like he could pass out again at any time. Geoff smacked the entry button next to the intercom by the gate once he could see Caleb through the darkness.

"Who is it?" said the same farmer.

"Pest control, took care of the rats, we're injured and need help!" said Geoff.

"HOOOEEEEEYYYY You guys managed to kill off old Matilda? The boys are ne'er gonna bel_" the farmer started to say as a thick vein started to bulge visibly on Stacia's head.

Stacia suddenly burst out "Open the <insert your own expletive> door you idiotic son of a_!!!"

<BZZZZZT> The door was buzzed open as Stacia was finishing yelling at them.

The group made their way back to their truck as the farmers looked at them timidly through their windows.

"They left yet?" asked a farmer.

"Yep, whew, that one girl is scarier than old Matilda was…"