A/N: So here we are, my first shot at an Ace Combat fanfic. I haven't gone whole hog and tried to jump in the deep end with a massive time-spanning story.

I originally wrote this for a creating writing thing we have in this Ace Combat fan 'Squadron' I'm part of. The story could involve anything as long as it mentioned an item/scene that we all agreed on beforehand. In this case, it was a dilapidated house, which you will find mention of a bit further down the page.

While I was trying to think of something that could use the house, it occurred to me that Larry Foulke mentioned how people still living near the Belkan nuclear impacts saved him after his defeat to Cipher. It just seemed...right.

Anyway, enjoy!

A Thank You To An Unknown

An Ace Combat One-Shot

by The Ace Combatant

Why do we live? Why do we fight? Why do we help the weak?

I wish I knew. God…I really wish I did.

Humility can do that to you; ruin a mind once carved in stone. You can live to a mantra with sure-fire conviction, yet witnessing it evaporate before your eyes blasts that stone to dust. Words used as its foundation are lost within the thousand-ton rubble. With that, you no longer have your voice.

That is why I struggle to this day, finding my voice in speaking to you.

I must first, however, explain the situation that led to our acquaintance. You had evidence on which to base natural assumptions, but you never asked. And I never told.

You and I were like a coin in a bank vault; two entirely different sides, never seeing the other yet aware of their existence, enveloped by the same darkness. The war ruined thousands of souls and destroyed countless more; if anything the dead were the only ones at peace.

Half of the continent was embroiled in that old conflict, one sparked over nothing but the greed for mineral-rich land. For the most part I took a backseat role as we fought for our employers, the limelight of victories seduced away by the flaring grace and intimidating dominance of a man bred for combat, a man who became a myth, a man…who was once my buddy.

We continued to oust the unwanted occupiers, fighting through the capital, over the border and back into your nation: the Oppressor. I watched from the skies in which I battled, beset by the ground and its lack of biased identity. There were no differences, no hints of malicious hatred. It almost looked…solaced, unified even. The twisted mind of Man had caused the divides and cultural segregations, and before my eyes the battlefields became unwilling prizes to bloody conflicts whereby pyrrhic became the only kind of victory.

The Oppressor was purged from my employer's borders…but Man's 'honour' would not simply lick its wounds; instead it was intent on stealing back some bandages. The battlegrounds finally returning to their rightful ownership was not enough, and the motivation for combat boiled down to nothing but 'eye-for-an-eye'. It was their turn to defend.

Soon after…the Oppressor became the Oppressed.

Even now, I cannot gauge the demented and twisted thoughts that were swimming through the heads of our commanders on the first of June: The Night of Fire.

Hoffnung was once an important industrial complex, obviously a strategic position. But then our bombers arrived…

The worst traits of humanity shone true on that night. The bloodthirstiness of revenge hidden under a pretence of justice, the abhorrent ignorance of puppet soldiers and the deranged, desperate methods with which the defenders tried to ensure that nothing was left to be plundered. Even my buddy, my comrade, made no objections.

On June first, alongside Hoffnung, my faith in anybody but myself burned to a cinder.

On June sixth, I began paving my own road to creating peace. On June sixth…I tried to kill my buddy. Having invaded deep into neighbouring sovereignties months before, they clearly couldn't take the same hits they gave. The cost of ceasefire? Twelve-thousand innocent lives: a disgusting, genocidal display of hypocrisy.

On June seventh, after defecting to a force neither allied nor Belkan, I cried for the world, for the lives eviscerated by your nation's unforgiveable possessiveness of its land.

I witnessed first-hand the downfall of humanity.

I recalled those moments in which I beheld the lands from my seat in the sky; you could not see borders or ethnic rifts. What you could see, though, was a collective; a harmonious presence with mutual regard and no disdain. Man-made territorial lines backed by sinful greed were too great a temptation, and I came to believe that as long as borders existed, so would conflict.

Fellow soldiers with my mind-set allied together. We epitomised what we wished for the world; forces from Osea, Yuktobania, Belka, Sapin and Ustio all putting race and creed aside to forward us to a greater goal. With the acquisition of an almighty weapon, we were prepared to reshape the governments of nearby nations to our vision.

My old buddy, however, wasn't having any of it.

His legacy in history was already taking shape, with each battle his power sought to ruin us. Eventually, he defied the odds and came to our proverbial front door. Then again, I say that as if I wasn't expecting it. The man had become a force of nature observing the world, a sceptre of justice ready to wreak mayhem upon whatever enemy his Ustian masters pointed him to. He had a new wingman, too, an Osean drink of water whose only reason for existing was to inflate the apparent demigod's greatness. He didn't last long.

And so my buddy and I did battle over Avalon. The victor would decide the course of the world.

I will not bore you with details, for as you could gather from the state in which you found me, I was truly defeated. Not even superior technology could stand up to the left hand of the devil. He was destined to win, to strike down tyranny, to show Man the error of his ways.

He briefly circled me as my parachute lowered me to Earth. My plan was reprehensible, and he was intent on demonstrating that in the harshest manner…by forcing me to watch from a helpless front-row seat as he foiled it before my eyes. It didn't matter whether he wanted to end me or keep me alive, I broke down into tears all the same, tears that the wind carried away with the coming rain. He spited me, departing without a gesture and the roar of his engines drowning out my despaired cries of regret and pleas for forgiveness. It was like a spell had been broken. I saw sense far too late and as a result I lost him, becoming only a memory that he would associate with betrayal and jaded morality. I could sense, on the other hand, that he was wracked with disappointment.

I was already injured from our duel, both emotionally and physically, yet I urged my body to stand and run. I had nothing left, nothing but the flight suit on my back, the firearm at my hip and the MRE in my leg pocket. I was ruined, no home to return to and no comrades to confide in or fight beside. Loneliness, while dampening on the soul, allowed me to sieve my thoughts, critique my philosophies and reform them. But reform them into what? Perception of right and wrong is not black and white; twice I had fought for what I believed was good, and all I had felt thereafter was shame and a twisting in my stomach.

The barren, snow-covered plains of northern Belka were a depressing sight, and for two days I crossed not a single living soul bar a wandering deer. Even the mere sight of me had the creature running back into the lush density of a nearby forest. Perhaps the beings of the world knew of what I had attempted?

I watched an atomic mushroom cloud sprout from the horizon while I was sat safely in a fighter cockpit. Seeing a blackened, charred, ash-laden mile-wide crater in the distance from the crest of a hill brought so much more weight and barbarity to the events. All I remember is sinking to my knees, the very life drained from me by the death drifting latent in the air. That was when I blacked out.

I remember very little after that. A native Belkan dialect yelled between a man and woman, a child's cry, the scorching sting of an alcohol-soaked cotton swab dabbed against a large gash across my left abdomen. I only remember a glancing sketch of a face. Bag-eyed grey irises, drooped skin, thinning black hair and a thick coat that had seen better days…the look of a man exhausted from the obstacles of life.

The most vivid image that remained with me, however, was the two-story cottage taking refuge amongst a scattered arrangement of trees already succumbing to low levels of radiation. I remember awkwardly walking backwards, the deep cut in my leg forcing a limp, while two figures stood at the window solemnly waved goodbye. I waved back, my deepest words of gratitude a mere whisper on my lips.

So it comes back to how I began. Why live? Why fight? Why help?

I lived to fight. You lived to survive.

I once fought for justice, the concept of which is now twisted and meaningless. Now I only fight to survive. You fought just to keep those you loved around you.

I do what I can to help those dear to me, those not capable of preservation through power of self. Those you aided were unknowns, tended to by the goodness of your own heart.

Even now, it's something I've yet to fathom. Such bestowing of compassion from one so desolate, so unfortunate and deserving of much more than that which fate handed them. Mercenary life lures the mind into relying upon one's self. It's why the hospitality you provided has not once left my memories, for a lesser man like myself would have been selfish and cruel in the same position.

I don't even know your name or that of your wife and child, and yet…I am syllables away from deeming you a friend; one of my two saviours, both of whom I am sure I will never see again until aeons after my final breath.

Words to this day still evade me, and so I leave this letter here, written in the house you used to shelter and treat me. My heart breaks at its now dilapidated form, for it was once a home bustling with life and benevolence. The windows are blown out, the walls teeming with head-sized holes and razor sharp splinters, cobwebs forming silken barriers between ceiling beams…the dewed and torn up couch upon which I once lay as you treated me now sits forsaken in a hedgerow outside. The natural light inside is miniscule, such darkness has had me shivering ever since I arrived.

Whether or not you ever return to find this, I hope upon all hopes that fortune has finally favoured you, the merciful guardian, and sent you to greater lands.

Thank you for saving me. Thank you for opening my eyes to those I never considered.

Thank you. You will never be forgotten.

My name is Larry Foulke; once born of Belka, once a comrade, once a traitor, once a tyrant…

…forever humbled by a nameless family.

A/N: So what did you think? I wasn't trying my utter best at this when I first got the idea, since for this little collaboration there was also a 3-4 page limit. This met 3.5 pages at size 11 Calibri.

All critique is accepted as long as it's constructive. Flamers are cowards hiding behind anonymity.

Ja ne!