Days like these...suck [Natalya]

War changed. Natalya had seen it. She'd never understood when people claimed that war never changed. Certainly, it was the same idea the whole time, kill the other guys before they could kill you, but things had changed quite a bit from when war was swinging swords and knights in armor. So maybe they should, perhaps, be using some of that? The military knowledge of the collective centuries, you know, the things that humanity was supposed to be unfortunately quite good at, instead of, well...

"We outnumber them two to one right now, and yet, no advancing! Are you all more idiot than usual? They are not even doing tactics! WE SHOULD NOT BE LOSING GROUND." She'd stepped off the front lines at this point to shout at the commanding officers at some point- an odd site to see for many, as her uniform remained mostly unmarked and low-ranked- partially for a change of pace. Instead, she just became more bored and frustrated.

Yes, she could be bored and mad at people at the same time. It was a gift.

"Sir, we aren't really losing ground anymore, sir, we just don't know where their forces are," an obviously nervous aide tried to explain to Natalya. She rolled her eyes.

"Yes, overwhelming them with having more troops than them, and yet still barely advancing. How do you people still have positions? My brother no longer knows who he promotes." The General- General Nikolayeva, if Natalya recalled correctly, generally a decent commander according to her record thus far but apparently someone Ivan really ought to look into judging by her performance today, and the only person who had any idea who she was talking to, really- was significantly less worried than the aide. In fact, she looked irritated at Natalya's criticisms.

True, the nation was only yelling at the brass because she was bored, but they were genuine concerns. If it weren't for sheer numbers, this day could have been an unmitigated disaster. It helped that the United Allegiance, without Germany at the helm, had been fairly disorganized for a short period while it recovered from a leading figure being removed. They shouldn't have to rely on that, though.

"Well, if you think you could do better," Nikolayeva started (oh dear, Natalya thought, she is about to make a fool of herself), "why don't you make yourself useful and get us the intelligence we're missing? Go on." It took Natalya a minute to process what the General had said, but once she'd properly processed and understood it, she suddenly had a better idea of why the General was still in a decent position, even while on the difficult Polish front. She apparently actually had checked on everyone's capabilities, and the glint in the woman's eyes suggested that Natalya had only made an excuse for her to put another resource towards her problem.

Maybe Natalya should have been yelling at lower ranked officers for once. She nodded once. "Yes sir," she responded. "I will be back within three hours. Elsewise, assume that I have run into an enemy and begun to have trouble, and move in the direction I have gone." Besides, this was something new to do, and she was bored. She could occasionally do slightly impulsive things when bored. Rarely, but occasionally. A flaw, she'd admit, but she wasn't as much of an idiot about it as some.

It didn't take long for her to vanish into the decaying corpse of a town that had been taken by the United Allegiance. While much of the lost ground was being regained, the problem was that they now were not entirely certain where the enemy was. That, and someone in the chain of command seemed to be currently being as incompetent as possible, but Natalya hoped whatever was going on there was going to be resolved as she quietly moved through deaded streets, past blacked-out lampposts, towards wherever the enemy was hiding.

It didn't take long for her to find the hidden troops, either, though that was partially just luck. Natalya, being alone at the moment, carefully remained out of any reasonable eyesight. She only heard the troops, but then again, that was all she needed in order to realize that they were there. They could be as quiet as they wanted, it still wasn't working well. They were also sitting ducks now that she knew where they were. All she had to do was get back through the abandoned buildings and inform Nikolayeva of where to fall in upon.

She carefully used one of the few proper communicators that worked through standard signal jamming and EMPs, pinging her location. That alone was enough to inform the others of where to put the ambush. She was just about ready to turn around and get ready for action- but then it hit her that she still didn't know the capabilities of the troops here. Presumably not much, but considering how much of a clusterfuck most of the day had been, that might be all the Allegiance needed. Carefully- very, very carefully- she crept forward, trying to see if they had any assets that would give the Pact's troops trouble.

She paused.

Oh no. There was another Nation here. Well, that would be a pain. Then again, it couldn't be Germany, and Natalya had intelligence that suggested Alfred was well out of the area she was currently in. England was almost certainly in a higher command position with Germany missing, and the only remaining troops in this particular group were Hungarians and Italian. It was probably Hungary, then, though Natalya knew Hungary well enough that she was fairly certain it didn't feel like Hungary. Which left...

Italy? What was he doing with troops that weren't naval? Natalya knew he'd once been dangerous on the oceans, but he'd never struck her as terribly competent. Oh well. Better luck for her own fight. Wasn't he close to Germany as well? She could use that...

She began to creep back, but if she had noticed Italy's relatively weak presence, he'd probably noticed hers. Pity. She hit the button on her communicator several time, to indicate that the attack should go ahead. It was a signal that many of these particular troops had been using on this particular week, but the codes never did stay exactly the same. She wasn't as concerned as she'd been when she'd first realized there was a Nation here. If it was, in fact, Italy, he was least likely to tear through too many troops on his own before being properly put down.

The only one in danger from him was her, because for now she was alone, and even against Italians, that was a very dangerous place to be.

Too bad for him that when things got dangerous, Natalya tended to get even more dangerous in return.

To her surprise, the presence did not chase after her as she left- perhaps this was the final confirmation she needed that the Nation present was, in fact, Italy, and not a more conscientious, battle-hungry Nation. This left Natalya with a choice- she could either continue to try to flee, or take advantage of the situation and try to see what further information she could gather before United Allegiance troops arrive. After all, even though she was quite certain Italy had noticed her, he had not investigated, leaving her at the advantage of being otherwise unnoticed- she could do a great deal if left unsupervised.

When it came down to it, what made the decision was the fact that Natalya was bored and needed a distraction from her slightly shaking hands and her slightly pounding head, a new project to focus on for the next few minutes. She checked her transmitter again. She had to make sure the ever-common signal jammers on the battlefield were not currently rendering useless. Luckily, being so close to the United Allegiance camp, they had no signal jammers running so that communications would work correctly. She'd lose the ability to continue coded communications if Italy was smart enough to call for a communications blackout, though.

See, the beauty of these new communicators, the ones she used to broadcast her location when she did an infiltration mission such as this one, was that they piggybacked off of United Allegiance frequencies as opposed to the normal Joint Pact ones, and were therefore difficult to isolate, jam, or even notice. However, they had some glaring weaknesses: a communications blackout from the United Allegiance side would cut off communications on Natalya's end, for one. However, she also couldn't talk through the communicator, or really do much other than give some coded signals and send a location, as she didn't actually have the correct clearance to piggyback off of Allegiance signals, and would be noticed the moment she did anything unusual as a result. Also, they'd fail if no one knew she had one of them on her instead of a normal communicator- after all, while the Joint Pact did try to pick up on Allegiance signals when it could, in the middle of a battle was not the time to try to crack the newest Allegiance codes, so coded communications often slipped through the cracks- as would Natalya's.

Well, that, and the communicators would fail the moment a member of the Allegiance figured out what the Joint Pact was doing- the only reason they worked now was thanks to equipment captured recently that, thankfully, the Allegiance had yet to completely prevent the Pact from reverse-engineer. In all likelihood, the Pact only had a few weeks left before these new communicators went useless, once the Allegiance finished switching equipment to prevent devices exactly like this one from working. The point was, it worked now, and Natalya could take advantage of it.

And since the transmitter was, for now, working, her location would continue to be read by the actual troops, and the location for the ambush would remain readable. She continued to creep further into the camp, treading very, very lightly as she hid in the shadows, trying to get a feel for how many troops were there. The camp was oddly quiet, and looked to be somewhat packed- perhaps they were leaving soon? She crept around another corner. No alarms set off yet. This was going well. The moment someone noticed her, well, then it would be killing time, but for now things seemed to be going decently enough.