pressure

"What on earth are you doing?"
"I'm a tech. I'm teching things," He told me without looking up from his hands.
"Huh?"
He paused, twisting around to face me with an odd look in his eyes. "I'm about to blow this place to bits."

Watching the mines go off from the air was like watching goose bumps ripple over skin.
"Tech to base, mission complete." I heard several other confirmations, including the one from the person up in the copter, manning the feed I was watching.
"Base to tech, confirmed." I heard in my ear. The people around me took off their headsets and began to leave.

I looked around for something- a reason he might have had, like a target. There were only trees. "Why?"
"It's a test. I'm testing new weaponry. No one lives here, right? It's no major place?"
"Hm-mm, not here."
He let me watch him. It was a land mine. He was chomping on a piece of gum like it was nothing, he laughed at how tense I was. The explosion was something else.

Back at base I sat, half listening to the people who passed through my office. A Private threw a list of names on my desk.
"You could always change," He said.
"Don't speak unless spoken to, Private."
The kid looked back at the Command Sergeant.
"But she's killed so many people, aren't you supposed to take the name of the last one to fall? Out of respect?"
The Command Sergeant looked at me.
"It's fine. Private, you're dismissed," I said without looking at the list.
"But-"
"Dismissed."

"I can teach you how to make them."
I looked up at him. "Really?"
"Yeah. You'll end up in the underground military, though."
I made a point of looking over the surrounding forest. "I ain't got nowhere else to be."
He smirked. "I'll introduce you to the Colonel."

Around 2am I picked the list up off my desk. It was the first time I'd looked at anything of the sort in a while.
"Is it a tradition for tech-specialists to be unable to sleep?"
I turned. It was the Command Sergeant.
I smirked. "Tech isn't like the rest of this military. It's a lot more than learning to fire a gun."
"They don't teach techs. They find them. They're not beaten into the underground military, they're coaxed. To be coaxed, there needs to be bait." Command Sergeant used my words. We'd had this discussion before.
I looked down at the packet. The first name was the last recorded person to die because of my weaponry.
I flipped to the last page.
"Craig Dustin Barculo," I read.
"Never made it past Staff Sergeant," The Command Sergeant said with a small sad laugh.
I didn't look up.

He didn't have a car, so we'd ended up taking a three day hike back to base. Clearance reasons, was his excuse.
"My name's Pressure," He'd told me.
"That's an odd name," I'd replied.
"It's not my real name, stupid," He chortled threw his chewing gum.
"A name you took?" I asked.
He paused for a minute, his eyes glazed.
"Nah… It was given to me…"

"You don't have to keep that name for me," The Command Sergeant said. "Not for me."
"I'm not keeping it for anyone. I didn't take it for anyone except myself," I told him.

"There you go, you're getting it. That's a decent landmine. Good enough to test, even." The base was amazing, but the tech building was magic. Me and him practically lived in the workshop.  If I hadn't known any better, I'd say he brushed his teeth with that gum in his mouth. I grinned. "I'll show you how, c'mon."

"You know, he didn't want me to take his name. He didn't want to be remembered."
The Command Sergeant looked at his feet. "You know, that's another tradition among Tech's."
He left, then. I threw the stack back on to my desk.

"Kid, remind me again, what's your name."
He didn't look much different than he ever had. His face was a mess, his clothes were dirty… I couldn't remember how to breathe. "E… Eleanor."
He laughed, broken only by the fluid that had found its way to his throat.
"Not anymore."

I flushed thoughts from my head, laying back.

"My names not Eleanor." I'd told the Command Sergeant before I'd had an office and before he was the Command Sergeant. "And I'm not a Private anymore."
"Than what exactly are you?" He'd asked.
"PFC. My name's Pressure."
"You can't take a name that someone else took," He told me.
"He didn't take it. It was given to him. And now he gave it to me."