I Am A Hero
A Fanfiction by Keystone
Disclaimer: Guess here...a little closer...just a little more...THEY'RE NOT MINE!! Okay, but the story indeed is. Nor do I own the concept of war. If I did, I would take the note I wrote it on and throw it far, far away.
Author's Note: Okay yins, I'm sorry for the long wait. But here is the final chapter of I Am A Hero, in all of its war-torn savage glory. For this chapter, you would be well served to have possession of "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath. They capture the surreal nature of the most common event in human history with a passion I could never achieve.
Tour of Duty
It had been over fourteen months since Cyborg and the company he was in wrestled control of a Chinese outpost into American hands, lost it, and then regained it. He now was a Sergeant himself, promoted for honor and outstanding bravery in the field of battle. He had also been granted twelve Purple Hearts, after the brass decided even though he was armored, being punctured by enemy fire was still being wounded. The men under his command looked up to him and respected him.
No longer was he considered an outsider. Again. When he had enlisted, so many lives ago, that was his biggest concern. That he would not fit in again. But he had forced it out of his mind when he grasped the implications of the war. If America lost to China, then she would be to weak to defend herself against all of her enemies. So she had to win. And win decisively. Make an example for the rest of the world to see. And so she did.
Cyborg pondered the scope of that as he sat in his tent. In those seven months, had it been really necessary to see those kinds of 'examples'? Those...things...he had done, and ordered others to do? No. He had done his duty. To his country and his men. But did that make any of it right?
He leaned up off of his rack, rubbed his face with both of his hands, and then looked at them as he pulled them away. They had once been mirror smooth, and free of scars, scuffs, and the guilt that bore down on him now. Like he himself had once been. Fight a bad guy here, throw a bus there, all in the name of justice. Now, he wondered what he was fighting for. Such savagery he had seen in the last few months. Such disregard for the very same lives he was fighting to save as many of. The reality of the situation had hit home weeks ago.
He had to kill to save. At the time, he still believed the spoon fed lies of his superiors into thinking things were fair and even. Now, the very notion of it had made him feel ill. Taking lives to save them? No, something about that was wrong, very wrong. But he had his orders, and he could not just abandon them, or his charges. They viewed him as an idol. Only a few months older and younger than he was. They looked up to him. Looked up to him for his battle skills. His ability to take lives. How good he was at killing.
Nothing for him to be proud of. Not after what he had seen. Horrible things. He let his mind wander back to the night they all watched this one movie, something scary, but he could not remember what it was called. He decided it didn't matter. That was when he was Cyborg. Inhabitant of Jump City. Super Hero. Sparkling symbol of pride and power to all who saw him. Now, he was an emblem. A bright red flag for killers. The role model for those who would strip life. A muddy, blood-drenched, terror inspiring, and God invoking battery of death. A paid killer. He was no better than the mad men he had fought so long ago...
Every medal, every victory speech he had given and was given was so false to him now. Why should he feel so good with things? What did he have to feel so proud of? Men were dead because of him! Never would they ever hear the sound of laughter. Their children crying or playing. Families calling for supper. Nothing. He had taken that from them. Taken their lives, and simultaneously the lives of all those who knew them. Sons, fathers, brothers, friends, mentors, all lay dead at his feet. And he should feel proud?
He grabbed at the medal display on his dress plates and threw them to the ground in a fit of despair. Then he closed his eyes and allowed the machinery in him to gorge itself on the capacious batteries in the table. There was talk of a massive invasion into the capitol, to capture Chinese leaders and force a stalemate. Why bother...
He closed his biological eye and struggled to find a memory in his brain that was not one of terror. They came to him at once. A flood of emotion and images. Sounds and faces of men who he had stripped of their very existence. He tried to avoid them, but like the war, everywhere he tried to turn, it was still there. Looking him right in the eye, never moving, never blinking, and always reminding him. Reminding him of what he had done.
Play "War Pigs" now if you have it. Then play "Iron Man" when it finishes.
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"Stone! Incoming!!" The squad leader had shouted as a group of infantry charged up a bank to attack the freshly reinforced American position. Firing as they ran, their shots found their marks and two friendly men went down, their bodies ripped and torn by the burning metal. Dead before they hit the ground, they were forever unaware of the return fire that thundered down the slope from the Americans.
Several of them hit the dirt, but the remainder of the Chinese squad was unharmed and continued their charge. A private threw a grenade and as if it was carried by the winds it landed square in the American pit. All eyes turned to it, waiting for it to end all of their earthly worries and doubts. Until a massive steel hand grabbed, tucked it to its equally huge chest, and allowed a small flash of light out. Then that same hand flashed blue and changed into a cannon. And it fired down the hill, a razor thin beam across the entire formation, who continued to run up the slope.
Some of them stopped, a look of disbelief on their faces as their upper bodies slid from their lower halves and coated the ground with their own red life. Some continued to run however, as the beam missed them. They were blown back off their feet by a single thick cerulean shot, caving in their chests and crushing their spines. One had enough life in him to scream before he pushed out his last breath.
In any language, pain is pain. Screams know no barrier, and to ignore that sound, that primal howl of anguish, requires years of training in being un-human. Despite the fact he was largely metallic and robotic, he was and always would be a human. He understood that pain. It was the same pain he felt when he was shot and knew he would never feel the pain of it, even if it meant he would live longer. No, he heard the yell. And he knew it was sent to him.
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Sneak attacks were not rare, but they were hardly common either. So it came as something of a shock that Victor's base would be the place of one. One hundred Chinese soldiers, moving with the shadows, in them, as them. Silent, no sounds escaping their steps, they entered the small encampment and were preparing to ambush the entire company. If all went according to plan they could eliminate at least half of the Americans in seconds. The rest would be forced to surrender or die.
Luckily, outside of Stone's tent a new soldier crushed some gravel under his boot. His highly developed metallic ear caught the sound and sent the signal to his brain, causing him to awake silently. Ever slowly rolling off of his table, he crept over to the entrance to his tent, his colossal bulk making no sound on the smoothed dirt ground under his feet. As he neared the edge of it, he remotely set off the alarms and then burst through the zippered opening, rendering his domicile with a new air conditioner.
Not daring to fire the cannon in such close proximity to fellow troops who he may hit, he had only one single option: hand to hand.
Fortunately his hands were more than up to the task as the iron fingers closed around throats and squeezed together with oiled servos. Bones cracked like twigs and he moved with deft speed through the soldiers, grabbing, crunching, pulling, tearing, swinging, punching. No question about it, metal was thicker than water.
Soon he stood alone in an area outside of the tents. Bodies lay around him, cracked open for the world to see. Others, twisted at odd angles lay there in the dirt, as if scoffing God to the form they should be in. Mouths agape in expressions of suffering. Eyes that told tales of demons in there midst. Arms and legs that were no longer attached to their bodies. And standing in the middle, above all the chaos and gore of the earth, was the one black teenager whose body armor couldn't come off.
As the sun rose over the treetops he felt the warmth of the rays as guns thundered off around him and orders were barked. All around him hung death, and nowhere could he find hope.
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Had it been any other time, this little field might have been a nice place to see. It had wide open plains, big shady trees, rolling hills, green grass, all the things that make it worthwhile to be outside. But today, it had a few new items in it. Tanks. Four of them. Big green monsters with American stars on them. And bodies. Thousands of them. Some alive, others not.
Those who were alive were not necessarily alive though. Not in the true sense of the word. They cradled broken arms, bleeding dressings, and shattered dreams. One soldier held two of his fingers in his hand as he waited for a medic. Another still was held by two others, trying to keep him calm as he made the discovery that half of his face was gone.
But it was not Stone's job to look at the dead and dying. It was his job to add to that number. And he did the best he could with his man-given limbs, his man-given weapons, and his man-given orders. The only thing in him that had nothing to say was his God-given conscience. Nothing any other part of him would have listened to anyway.
Some said he looked like a God himself, standing atop the lead tank, firing again and again into the Chinese columns as enemy soldiers unloaded fragments of metal at velocities that killed. Stood there as baseball sized metal spheres fell into the Chinese formation and blew up like obscene fireworks, providing the red so common in these times. Stood there as helicopters landed hundreds of yards downrange that more and more Chinese soldiers exited from.
He adjusted his aim, barked orders into his radio and had snipers focus on the distant aircraft. He himself fired on the farthest chopper, and watched with forced satisfaction as it became nothing but a yellow ball of flame. His smile faded however, when he saw among the burning wreckage with enhanced eyes that all of its contents were marked with red symbols. Crosses, that for the men in the field meant some bit of comfort when they needed it most. A way to keep from focusing on the death and destruction all around them.
He saw the last helicopter take off again and began to wonder just why he was there. He was interrupted when a mortar landed maybe thirty feet from him and a column of scarlet dirt plumed into the air. He could worry about the morality of it all later. He still had a job to do. Even if it meant more crates like that would be needed. Many more.
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At night, the tracers from the marine's assault rifles appeared as shooting stars. Blazing across the sky to their destination. In the villages, it seemed almost unreal, to see the soundless flashes of light streaking through the air. Silent for Stone had disabled the audio circuitry built into him after deciding he could no longer hear the screams. The screams that haunted him in his sleep. The screams that he heard even when he was alone.
The situation around him was bad. They were outnumbered at least six to one, in addition to being trapped in unfamiliar terrain with no intel and little chance of reinforcements. Nothing except a quick air strike. Like the kind he had called for maybe five minutes ago. HE could survive the battle. HE had the ability to fight his way through the Chinese lines and secure the victory. HE would most likely be the only one still standing when it was all over.
That thought tormented him every waking second. Knowing he would ALWAYS be the one to survive. Him and only him. That he would ALWAYS be there to watch young boys, his age or less, fall and die painful deaths. Cold, alone, and afraid. And he would ALWAYS be there to see that last breath, to hear that dying call for home or mother, to feel for pulses that had just run from his touch.
And worst of all he would be congratulated for it. The audacity of it all! How hundreds of men could die for a cause they may have never even known, and he would be given a pat on the back!? The perverse satisfaction he always felt now made him wish he could vomit. All in a day's bloody work.
His radar picked up the approaching aircraft and he re-activated his audio, and wished he hadn't. As soon as he had, he was treated to a symphony of evil. Discord and chaos taking the mic and singing their fatal song for all to hear. The signals from the aircraft pilots and the strike began.
Shrapnel fell from the sky and the heavens became alight with fire as machine guns walked across the Chinese positions.
One round at five thousand feet per second will shatter bones it does not even touch and the shock wave will turn organs into pulp. Ten, twenty, fifty rounds took what was once a marvelous example of nature and twisted it into something obscene, something that should not be.
Rockets flew free and detonated. Skin parted from bone and existence was ripped from so many outstretched hands.
Worst of all was the napalm. Cyborg did his research and found that napalm was a gel-like substance that burned ferociously for several minutes. And most of all, it stuck to whatever it landed on. Meaning when the Chinese soldiers began to burn, they could not put out the flames of confusion. The flames of inhumane minds. The flames of desperate men, willing to commit unspeakable atrocities to other men for the sake of "freedom". He would have spit if he wasn't entranced by the sight in front of him.
Men ran to and fro, trying to extinguish the fire clutching their jackets and melting their lives away. He saw one man stand up and run toward the American lines. Burning limbs thrashed in the air as the soldiers fighting for someone's freedom fired on him, trying to kill him before he met them and set the whole line ablaze. Victor could not even raise his hand to fire on him as he watched the man take rounds in the face, the chest, stomach, legs, everywhere. Still he kept on coming until stored ammo on him exploded in the heat and ripped his body in half, flying bits of flaming skin decorating the brilliant night sky.
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Dreams flashed across his mind, images he would have taken his own life to forget...
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A young woman, dead. Chinese. Her shirt and skirt ripped open. A bullet hole in her head....
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Children, babies, clutching onto their parents lifeless bodies, shot as they tried to run. Crying, screaming with their innocent lungs at the hypocrisy they would never understand.
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Wooden poles sticking out of the ground. With people tied to them. People with jagged red lines for decoration. Ropes keeping them standing. Hatred keeping them from resting.
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Bombs falling. Whole towns exploding. Thousands of people who never lifted a gun erased. Entire blood lines and histories erased from existence.
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"Sergeant Stone, sir!! Wake up! The war's over! We got the president and he is calling for a cease fire! We're going home!" The private had yelled to him. An eager young boy, trying to please. Maybe eighteen years old. Maybe.
Home. He contemplated the word as he looked up at the roof of his makeshift room. He did have a home, didn't he? Yes, the tower. With all of his friends. So innocent, so pure. Robin, the proud leader, obsessive yet loyal down to the core. Starfire. Alien pride and honest intentions. Beast Boy, joker and the spirit of the group. And Raven. The quiet one. The one who thought. The one who understood and approved of his decision in the first place.
His room with its rows of quiet computers. The gym and the weights he hefted with ease. And the kitchen, where he dazzled his teammates with his culinary knowledge. The television where he had played games. Played. Play? No, he would never play again. Not after this.
He leaned up in his seat and contemplated the young man in front of him. He was just barely older than him, only a few feet away from him. Even still, so distant, so much older, so very, very far away...
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I hope, with every shred of my being that this has horrified you and put you in a mood you have likely never felt. Maybe now you see why we protest this, this, atrocity. War is glorified everywhere. It may be absolutely necessary. It may save more lives than it takes. And it may mean the difference between most of our survival or all of our deaths. But please, please know it never a thing to be glorified. One more chapter. I hope you're ready. No songs for the next one.