The United States War machine and its NATO allies has left its mark all over the world. From Laos and the Philippines to Chad and Niger. From Iraq to Turkey. The War on Terror lasted far longer than anyone had expected. Even as Endbringers seemed to bring the nation to its knees, its military kept production of its greatest export, war. In the beginning, the intentions were while not altruistic, at least understandable and justified. To each soldier, it was always personal. They have seen the faces of their victims. The innocent. They have seen the horrors of what their enemy can do against their own neighbors. They would stone adulterers. They would burn non believers. They bullied their subjects into obedience. Dissent was quashed with violence and death.

Private First Class Scott Daniel Hebert was only 19 when he was first deployed to Sudan. He was very tall and thin when he first joined the military. Almost too light to be sent to boot camp. In the months since, the exercise and hearty eating filled him out somewhat. Now he was still thin, but not such that he was boney. It was a harsh word. "Deployment" has connotations of despair, of discontent and sparse accommodations. For Hebert and those like him, deployment consisted of being put up in hotel like rooms and working for 7 to 8 hours a day on mission and resting. At any time there were three or four ARSs in this particular part of Sudan at a time, all from his very small platoon consisting of less than 12 people. There were really more pilots than Airborne Reconnaissance Specialists in Sudan at the time.

PFC Hebert climbed into a very small aircraft carrying 2 duffle bags and a backpack behind another young man carrying radio encryption equipment. Hebert spent a few minutes fiddling with the equipment aboard the aircraft. Flip a switch here, a button there. The cramped cabin of the plane was filled to the brim with electronics and wires. Dim red and green lights were all through the inside of the aircraft, dimly illuminating Hebert as he moved about the cabin.

Scott was excited. Within the week he was going home. He missed his father and his baby sister dearly. When he first left Brockton Bay, he thought he'd never want to come back. Now however, he regretted all the times he dissed the place and couldn't wait to go back.

He was not allowed to tell his family that he was in Sudan, nor was he allowed to talk about what he did . He could tell them he was in Africa, and that he did support. He could not mention any operations in Africa. He could not tell his family how he once watched a US ranger fall in the middle of the night during a mission, having tripped in the darkness and was subsequently blown to bits by indirect fire. The IR camera on the NT-36G was very powerful. He could see the fingers on the hand that separated from the rest of the arm. He did not survive. Within 5 minutes after the strike, he had eyes on a POO site and was calling in Support by Fire. The Apaches destroyed the POO site. If the enemy fighters hadn't been hit the by missiles and killed, they would likely have died of cancer from the powerful IR laser he shined on them for close to 10 minutes.

Tonight, Scott was going to provide support for an operation the SF were conducting. A high profile target. Scott knew who he was, what kind of car he drove, where he lived, who his close associates were and where they slept. The operation would take approximately 4 hours. This guy was the leader of a terrorist cell with ties to Al-Qaeda. His men were responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians and IEDs that have killed almost 100 soldiers in its 4 years of known operation.

If he used his walkie talkie Scott would know about it. If he called his mother on her cell phone he'd know. If he went to his shit shack he'd know. The village looked dead from above, as remote villages often were at night.

As this went, it went off without a hitch. A very successful mission. The target was captured along with 6 of his associates ripe for interrogation and the site was combed for information very quickly.

"So Hebert, what will you do once you get back home?" he heard through the chatter on the radio from one of his pilots. Chief Proctor.

"Well sir, I think I'll go back to drinking," Scott replied. A titter of laughter came through his headset from the Chief and the LT. LT Watson and Chief Procter were very friendly with Hebert. The familiarity they shared would be frowned upon in any other circles. "But I will be going back to Brockton Bay."

"Fuck man, I know that place is pretty fucked up from what I've heard."

"Some parts are, but it's where I grew up. I can't just never go back," Scott was not as spiteful about his place of birth as he once was, now that he had lived in Sudan for almost 6 months.

"What the fuck is that!" LT Watson was looking out the left window with alarm in his voice.

Approximately 75m to the North was what looked like… a man? Hebert knew it was likely a cape but what was he doing flying at 10,000 ft in the air? He approached the plane and the Chief started to steer away from the man, jerking them violently. He was dressed in warm looking clothes, an oxygen mask on his face reminiscent of what fighter pilots would wear.

Hebert could hear LT Watson shout to control that they had a man, a cape, approaching the aircraft. He was carrying two large metal poles and hefted them one after the other at our rotors and sped away. The plane gave a shudder as the propellers broke on the heavy poles and started shaking violently.

They were losing altitude fast. There would be no emergency landing except a crash. Hebert scrambled to get to the back of the plane where the emergency parachutes were. Hebert scrambled to put on the chute and get the others to the pilots. Once they had secured their chutes, and what gear they could recover they did a practiced sweep of the craft, destroying any software that might be recovered by an adversary and gave one last message before exiting the aircraft.

-SHADY-

Once they were on the ground, they buries the chutes and unpacked their weapons. They had 3 M4A1s and 3 M9 pistols. It could have been worse, Scott thought. They could have been stuck with just the pistols. They decided to move towards where they thought the SF group might be to meet up with them. They likely were already informed of our plane ditching and hopefully were directed to come search for us.

In years past, Parachutes were not issued to aircraft crew because it was too expensive and the likelihood of going down was fairly low. Until recently crewmembers accepted that if they went down, they had no hope of survival.

Even then, they were very poorly outfitted for any kind of operation except flying. They had no helmets, no ballistic vests, no kneebow pads and no NVGs. They had to stuff extra magazines in their pockets. They moved as quietly as they could through the deserts of Sudan.

Without warning they were taking contact from the rear. Scott nearly jumped out of his skin with a yelp. They all dropped to the ground and started shooting before they could even see what they were shooting at. They only had muzzle flashes to go by under the moonlight there were at least 10 different places they were coming from. They were close too. About 50 meters away.

Scott had never been in a firefight. Neither had Chief Proctor or LT Watson if he had to guess. They started shouting calls and responses. Scott choked on his responses, eventually resorting to shouting in a vaguely affirmative manner. They started bounding backwards one at a time. They made it 25 meters before LT Watson fell down and didn't get back up.

There were too many of them. Scott thought he was going to die right there as his friend just laid out with black wet staining his back in the dark. Crawling towards him through the sand with his face as low as he could hear Chief Proctor shouting at him to get up. LT Watson was definitely dead. The bullet had hit his heart. With a cry for vengeance and more than a little fear, Scott began shooting at the enemy, more rapidly than before. he could hear them approaching, their voices carrying over the noise to his ears. They were close enough that he could see them running towards him. Close. Less than 20m. Scott aimed his rifle and shot at the nearest man and hit him dead in the neck, right where the adam's apple might have been. Scott began crawling away as fast as he could abandoning the body of the Lieutenant with bullets flying over his head.

He didn't make it very far before someone struck him in the back of the head with an AK type stunning him. A strong body flipped him over and hit him in the face with the buttstock of his rifle and Scott blacked out.

-STAYSHADY-

When Scott woke, he knew he had a broken nose. His hands were zip tied and he was tied down to a chair. The room was constructed from cinder blocks. More like four walls and a tin roof with a dirt floor. It had no windows and no other openings except for a wooden door. Scott knew he would die. These people did not keep prisoners alive for long. Nobody who was capture that he knew of was ever recovered alive. He didn't know where Chief Proctor was. He hoped he was alive. A sudden crushing despair came over Scott. He would never see his family again.

No! I can't afford to give up now! I can still escape. I'm still alive. He couldn't imagine how his father and sister would feel should he die. For them.

An Arabic man came through the door. He had been expecting a Sudanese man, but this man was likely from Al-Qaeda and not this branch that was just targeted. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He had a pistol and a long knife on his hip.

"Oh look who's awake! I thought you would have died with how long you've slept, Private Hebert!" he spoke slightly accented English. Definitely not a Sudanese accent. He looked like he could have been the cape that took down their plane.

"You don't have to speak boy. I just wanted to have at look at you." He walked around me slowly. "You know when we captured you, you were putting up a pretty good fight. Only three Americans gave my men a spot of trouble. I lost 6 men to you." he was snarling at me by now.

"Tell me where your airfield is."

"I would need a map to show you," Scott said with a nasally and scratchy voice.

The man pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it in front of me. It was a detailed map of the village and the surrounding area. "A bigger one would be better" Scott said.

"Shut up." He slapped me with the back of his hand. "You will tell me what I want to know."

"What do you want to know?"

"You will start simple by telling me where your airfield is and how many more NT-36s you have. And then you will tell me when the Americans will next leave their hovels." He has in Scott's face now. His dark eyes and beard like a shadow over a skull.

"I don't know all those things." Scott was obviously lying. It didn't matter to this man if he told the truth or not, he would still kill him. The only way for Scott to win was to deny any information he could from this man.

"We will see." The man likely did not know just how much Scott knew. If the knowledge he held came out, US troops could suffer dearly.

At least my life insurance will help dad and Taylor.

-SHADY-

Danny Hebert missed his son. It had been a long time since he had heard from him. About 3 months. Danny looked at his daughter as she lay in her hospital bed. A new wave of shame washed over him. If he had been a better father, he could have kept Scott from joining the Army and maybe Taylor would never have been hurt.

-SHADY-

This would not end well for him, Scott knew. He was probably going to be executed.

When the torture began, it was immediately an experience that Scott would never forget. He begged for it to stop. He started to pray. He cursed God. He swore vengeance upon his torturers. The Arabic man simply laughed and went on with the torture. The Arab used a corkscrew on Scotts hands and legs.

Scott could feel his hatred overpower him. When Scott's eyes were closed, he started to see something. A terrible symbol. A stylized horseshoe with other alphabet like symbols along its edges and in the center.

His torturers name was Abu Hassan. He felt it more than understood it.

He felt fear and begged for the torture to stop. He heard a name whispered to him. It was a grating name, guttural. Like a man said it with his dying breath. A word promising bloody violence. He shouted it, gurgling through the water in his throat and mouth.

"Yogorzabothl!"

Reality seemed to tear.

-SHADY-

The creature that appeared before Abu Hassan was something out of a nightmare. It was the vague shape of a dog with what looked like a squid head and tentacles around its head and neck. The jet black creature howled a sound that made Abu fall to his knees and cry out in pain. The noise was crushing into his skull and scrambling his thoughts. Me felt a madness well up inside him. He wanted to pluck his eyes out with the bloody corkscrew. He wanted to hit his face with his hands until his teeth came out and nose went into his brain. His urges went unanswered as the creature reached for him with its tentacles and pulled his arms from his shoulders and his head from his neck.

The creature went through the village and killed several of Abu's men, while Scott shot the rest of them with a stolen AK type rifle. They began to beg for mercy. He knew it was wrong to kill in those circumstances. Illegal even, but he would not let them live. The voice of the symbol he saw when he closed his eyes seemed pleased with his actions so he didn't stop. He counted forty-three men. When the danger seemed to dissipate, Scott's creature disappeared in a crack of sound and light. Scott found Chief Proctor in a poor state in a room similar to his. He was also tortured but had survived and was not in any immediate danger. Scott found a satellite phone in another building, likely Abu's home. He tried several times to call someone from his unit. He eventually got ahold of someone and gave his location to await pickup.

1SG Fox looked at Hebert with hard eyes. "You know, with what you've done, you will probably be awarded the Silver Star."

"First Sergeant, I did what I had to do to get Chief Procter and myself out of there."

"Fuck yeah, you did. Look, we are going to send you to CID for a full investigation. You won't get in any trouble from what I can gather. What you may or may not have disclosed can be waived due to the duress of the situation."

"I should hope so," Duress was a light word for it.