"If there is one unit in the army that I want to be, it's the marine! Why? Because they're strong willed and can stand up against anything." These were the words that I said when I was just five years old. At the age of 20, I was sent on my first mission, to Char. Terrified as I was, I was not worried for my life because I was told that my unit would be guarding supply dropships away from the front lines.
The mission didn't go as planned right from the beginning. Just a few moments after the battlecruiser that I was in warped into Char territory, I was sent tumbling on my face as a zerg drop-pod crashed through the wall. Scrabbling to the closest weapons rack, I was just able to get a rifle when a hydralisk appeared before me. As its huge scythe swung towards me, I raised my gun while closing my eyes, hoping to get a lucky shot, something that would keep the scythe from slicing me in half. I was barely able to fire off a bullet when I got hit be something that felt like a truck. Lying on the ground, I opened my eyes to see the dead body of the hydralisk covering me. Hearing the screams and the dying sounds of my fellow soldiers, I felt pain, then nothing as darkness covered my vision and my mind.
I closed my eyes, waiting for death, while wishing that I could've at least become the hero soldier that I had always dreamed of. Instead, I was lying in a battlecruiser far away from home and covered in an alien's dead remains.
It wasn't heaven or hell when I woke up. While my head hurt a lot and I couldn't move my body, I knew that I was still alive and still under the hydralisk. When I had enough strength to move from under the dead zerg, I got up to see Char through a hole in the wall. There was nothing alive that I could see around me. A quick investigation of my suit made me realize that nothing was wrong, though there was a gash on the side. I felt like throwing up as I realised that there were, in fact, remains of dead Terrans and zerg littering the ground and walls around me. I stopped myself from openly crying and yelling when I heard slithering sounds coming from above. Taking all the equipment that I could, I hastily made for the corridor, collecting dog tags along the way. There would be time to mourn for the dead later. Now, I had to make sure I survived first.