This chapter has now been updated to reflect my new abilities as compared to a few years ago. Have fun with it.

June 17, 2010

Baghdad, Iraq, 1327 Hours

Operation Fire's Reign

This whole operation had already gone to hell, and it was only twenty minutes underway.

"Sky-hawk to Fire-team Zulu, multiple hostiles are approaching from Sector A-9: estimated thirty or so, and they've got civilians with them, over."

The leader of the Legion squad deployed here mumbled some sort of curse to himself, his face hidden behind a sandy tan full helmet and a glossy black visor like everyone else. "Never underestimate the audacity of terrorists..."

He made a hand signal that ordered the rest of his fire team to gather around him and his cover, the steel skeleton of a destroyed pickup truck at the corner of a decrepit store front.

He turned to face the other three members of the Fire-team. "Alright Zulu, we've got another wave coming in from the northeast, and just like the last guys they're using civilians for cover. No blind fire. Don't take a shot unless you know you won't miss. Pay the fuck attention to what you're doing."

The newest addition to this fire team found the warning pointless. The rest of them took it to heart because they did not have such prolific accuracy.

The team leader motioned towards the opposite side of the street. "Ramirez, you've got the SAW, so you and Jenkins move to that corner over there and set up. If the civilians scatter, you know what to do."

The two Legion soldiers, indistinguishable from one another without their names printed onto their helmets, both nodded silently and proceeded to comply with their orders.

The leader then motioned to Church, the new resident sharpshooter. "Find a way on top of this roof, if there's any of it left, and do your thing. Focus on hostiles with RPG's first. Prioritize from there."

The sharpshooter nodded, unsure of why his superior needed to tell him what any sniper should have already known. "Yes, sir."

Either way, with his order given he turned to hop through one of the many shattered windows of the building he had been ordered to ascend. It was only one floor off of the ground, but it still offered a better vantage point than the ground level. A quick examination of his surroundings showed that the roof of the building had collapsed in the center. Fortunately, the crumbled stone made an improvised staircase that would lead him to what was left of the rooftop.

He scaled it quickly, his muscular legs and firm joints easily carrying his body over the jagged debris. After finding a good spot from where he would be able to see the approaching hostiles, he withdrew his collapsible urban sniper rifle and placed a few extra clips near his makeshift nest.

He reached his position just as the enemy came within view. Just as he finished setting up, the aforementioned hostiles from Sector A-9 turned the corner on the street ahead. It was mostly radical Al Qaeda, but in their midst was a smattering of women and children. The man in front, completely covered in his native dress, had a teenage girl held up against him, with a small pistol pointed at her head. This was a bad sign: it meant that he knew the Legion fire team was already there.

The ringleader of the group stopped his gang of extremists and withdrew a megaphone from a pack on his back. Using it, he shouted at the hidden Legion soldiers in Arabic. After a short burst of foreign words, and a few seconds of translation time, the helmets of the Legion translated what was said into English.

"Attention infidels! We know you are hiding here! You can do nothing! Come out and face us!"

Church placed the triangular reticule of his rifle on the turban-wrapped head of the target, careful to not let the megaphone he held get in the way of his line of fire. After acquiring a clear shot, he held his fire until the order came from to actually engage. It was not his place to determine when to kill as the newest member of the team.

In the silence provided by the disciplined Legion soldiers, the enemy leader continued his rant. Church's helmet translated all of the speech as quickly as possible, and each sentence was interpreted a few seconds after it was spoken.

"You do not have the strength to sacrifice! You are not willing to kill us because you are afraid! You are cowardly dogs, running from us because your hearts are weak! We, the chosen, will purge you with holy fire, and-!"

At this point the little LED light in the bottom right corner of Church's HUD turned green. This was the signal to engage from his leader. For Church, there was no delay in sending a piece of metal through the man's eye and out the back of his skull. The splatter of blood, bone, and brain matter showered the surrounding civilians and terrorists, causing plenty of flinching, screaming, and cries of surprise.

As for Church, he silently battled with the prospect of having killed a man, as he always did when he was forced to kill. On one hand, he did not revel in death. Yet on the other he was truly happy to have taken something evil out of the world. And the most basic level, he was simply glad to have protected his comrades and the innocent in some small way. He had no qualms killing for that cause.

The other enemies present did either one of two things: panicked and froze as they watched their leader die before their eyes, or scattered to find cover. Church targeted the smarter ones first, as his less accurate comrades could easily dispatch the static targets.

Careful to avoid the civilians, he dropped one enemy after another with well placed shots to the head or torso. After expending his five-round clip, he reloaded and scanned for more targets. Unfortunately, the break in his attack had given the remaining hostiles ample time to hide themselves from his onslaught. Church took a brief moment to add up some numbers in his head. With this, he had added five more victims to list list of the dead, and it now totaled seventy-three.

Even for a soldier, a normal person would have found this sickening or at least disconcerting, especially so considering Church's young age. But for him, it was simply a matter of killing the enemy. Not even of killing evil, but of dispatching those that threatened him and the people he cared about. Whether or not that rationalization was just an attempt on his part to quiet the murmurs of his own mind, he wasn't sure.

Church eyed the rest of the battlefield, acknowledging the breathless bodies of the enemies that had been too shocked to move, gunned down by his comrades. The unharmed civilians had scattered in all directions, screaming at the top of their lungs, adding to the cacophonous din of the war-torn city.

The morning had passed in a manner very similar to this. This was actually the fourth such engagement in which Fire team Zulu had been forced to avoid civilian targets. Those accursed terrorists cared little about their own people if it meant they could harm their enemies.

His thoughts were interrupted by a large blip on his HUD's radar. Some sort of aircraft was inbound, but it didn't have a friend or foe tag. It would be over his team's heads in less than a minute. Before he could comment on it, the team leader did so for him. "We've got an unidentified aircraft coming in team. Let's take cover, just in case. It's unlikely that it's hostile, but you never know."

Zulu began to move, but as they did so, the surviving enemies in the buildings ahead began to fire at them. Caught off-guard, the team was forced to get back into their cover to avoid the small arms fire. Unfortunately, this left them exposed to the sky, which Church realized was a lot worse than it seemed when the aircraft came into view.

Whatever it was was not friendly, as Church had never seen a Legion or U.S. chopper that looked like that. It was a hulking metal thing that resembled an Osprey, but it had four separate propellers instead of two and a slanted triangular cockpit. It's underbelly brimmed with rocket tubes and two .50 caliber turrets.

Who this machine belonged to was unknown: there was no way Al Qaeda had access to something so advanced. but whoever owned the thing, it was about to fire, and that was bit more pressing at the moment.

"Zulu, that is not friendly! Get the fuck down, take cover!"

All four members of the team scrambled to find cover to hide them from the unidentified aircraft. Church had just finished grabbing his gear when the chopper turned towards him. Staring impending death in the face, he knew that his only option was to leap off the building and hope for the best. He turned and jumped over the edge of the gutted structure, just as a HE rocket blasted what was left of it to smithereens and flung him across the street and into an abandoned car's windshield. He slammed into it with a resounding crack, but his body armor prevented any more damage than some minor bruising.

Church heard the sputter of mini-gun fire, and scrambled to get behind the car he had landed on. He quickly realized the bullets were not directed at him, but at his teammates. He would've helped them, but the lingering dust from the crumbled market building veiled his vision, and consequently, his aim. Fortunately, there was a taller, two or three story building nearby, and Church figured that if he could get there, he could acquire a better vantage point and perhaps distract or damage the enemy chopper.

The Legion sniper dashed across the street, carried quickly by his trained and fit body. Upon reaching the door to the building he wished to enter, he found it to be locked. Taking a step back, he launched his right foot into the center of the door, and its crumbling hinges failed to resist his strength. The slab of wooden slats flew a foot or two into the room, leaving the dark interior open for examination. Spurred on by the urgency of the situation, Church wasted hardly a second in checking the room for possible hostiles, and dashed inside.

He stopped in the middle of the room as he looked for a way up to the next floor, but couldn't immediately identify one. In his concentration, he didn't notice the light patter of feet behind him until the canteen at his belt was being tugged on. Startled, Church turned to face what could have been a potential threat, only to be met with the face of a small, native child. She had dark brown eyes and equally dark hair, and was pointing at something in the corner of the room. Church would have placed her age at six or seven, considering that she only came up to his waist.

Not knowing what to do, he remained silent and merely stared at the little girl, his eyes hidden from hers behind his visor. Noting his lack of reaction, the girl tugged on his canteen again and pointed at the corner of the room once more, with much more gusto than last time.

Following the girl's gaze and her pointing finger, Church laid his eyes on the prone body of a man in the corner of the room, and he immediately feared the worst. Coming to kneel over the body, those fears were confirmed the moment he saw the man's torso riddled with bloody holes.

Unable to find a pulse in the man's wrist or neck, Church stood and looked at the girl with sympathy. He remembered the pain of losing a parent all too well. As the child knelt beside her deceased father and whimpered, the estranged soldier keyed his radio. "Zulu Lead, what's your status, over?"

After a few moments of static, Zulu Lead replied, "We're all OK. Jenkins hit that bogey with his grenade launcher and it pulled out. Where are you Church? Over."

"I'm in a two-story building just down the street. More importantly, I have a civilian child down here: she's alone, and I don' think she's safe here. Over."

There was a brief moment of silence over the radio channel. "...Alright, the rest of the team is still pinned down at the corner up here, so we can't get to you: try to get the civilian to the forward base, or somewhere that's at least a little safer than here. Over."

Church looked down to the girl that was staring at her father with sullen eyes. It didn't seem like she fully grasped the reality of the situation. Sighing, the Legion soldier moved towards the girl and prepared to grab her.

"Roger that, Zulu Lead. Be careful out there, over."

Finished conversing with Zulu Lead, Church knelt down and grabbed the young girl under her arms and hoisted her up to tuck her against his chest, so that he could shield her if they were shot at by insurgents. The girl kicked and screamed, unwilling to leave her father, but her struggle against the soldier was futile. Church ignored her agonized cries as he took her out of the building he had entered but a few minutes ago. Knowing that there was no way this girl would stay quiet, he immediately disposed of the idea of sneaking back to the forward base.

Anticipating trouble along the way, Church cradled the girl in one arm and held his Mk5 SMG in the other. Despite his astounding marksmanship, even he could not wield a sniper rifle with one hand, so he had slung his primary weapon over his back. Still ignoring the little girl's whimpering pleas for her daddy, Church began to jog eastward, making use of the alleys between the narrow buildings so that he could stay off of the streets. He was alert to all of his surroundings, lest he get caught off guard by an ambush or another insurgent patrol, and endangering this child's life.

Every time Church had to cross a seemingly abandoned street, he would treat it like crossing a road back home. He peeked his head from out of the alleyway, weapon raised and ready, and would look both ways before crossing into another alley across from his own. The few times he did notice any hostiles, he stayed hidden and waited until they were gone. During those times, Church would have to clamp his precious cargo's mouth shut, so that she would not unwittingly give his position away.

This little game of sprinting across open streets and squeezing through tight alleys lasted for nearly two hours, but after avoiding any direct confrontation and making it to the outskirts of Baghdad, Church finally came within view of the U.S. military forward base: which also secretly housed a few Legion teams that were testing their fangs out in the field. However, despite being within his visual radius, the base was still about a half a mile down the street. Although this was still a bit of distance to cover, especially in this dangerous environment, it was a straight run, and Church doubted that there would be any hostiles this close to the heavily fortified base.

Church began jogging towards the haven, winding between abandoned cars and occasional debris from bombed out buildings around him. He briefly wondered if the rest of Zulu team had completed their mission, but he assuaged his own doubts by reminding himself of the elite status of all Legion teams. The girl he cradled in his arm had fallen silent quite some time ago, and although he was unsure, Church believed she might be sleeping.

About four hundred feet into his half mile jog, Church came to a long stretch of the street that offered little to no cover: all of the buildings were so close together that the alleys between them were too narrow for a human to hide in, and the street itself had only a small car or two along it, which was paltry defense against explosives and such. This was a kill-box. And under normal circumstances, Church would have never gone in there. But for the moment, the area seemed secure, and he was eager to get his burden to safety.

Continuing down the path, Church realized his folly when he heard the whir of rotary blades, which unfortunately did not bear the easily recognizable thumping of Black Hawk choppers. He turned to identify the source of the noise, and when he did, his heart filled with dread. Hovering over the street was the same quadruple propeller, Osprey-like chopper that had hounded his team earlier, with the only difference from before being some smoke billowing out of the rear section.

Church quickly analyzed and evaluated his options in his head, and unfortunately the lack of cover meant only one was available: run, and run fast. Church bolted away from the chopper and towards the base as fast as he could, hoping to bring the enemy within the effective range of its anti-air batteries. He was followed by hundreds of bullets burying themselves into the sand as the enemy chopper tried to gun him down. Miraculously, the majority of the volley either missed or glanced off of his armor, but the few direct hits made huge dents in his suit and caused Church to stumble forward when they hit him. Fortunately, the back and chest of the suit were the most well-armored, so none of the bullets penetrated. What Church was really worried about was his legs: the armor wasn't as thick there, since mobility had to be maintained in an infantry unit. That mini-gun would tear through his legs like a knife through wet paper.

Church continued to run, not bothering to move in an erratic path to throw off the enemy's aim, since he knew that was pointless and would only slow his speed, and subconsciously noted that the girl he carried had been awakened. Ignoring her terrified screams, Church tucked her head into his shoulder to protect her, and scrunched up her body to minimize her chances of being hit.

The soldier continued to sprint down the street, aiming for the end of the kill-box so that he could get some cover. Of course, he knew that his chances of survival in this situation were slim. He was being gunned down by an advanced chopper while his mobility was hindered by the weight of a civilian, and he had nowhere to hide. Another burst of machine-gun fire helped reinforce his assurance in imminent death as the volley either impacted the ground around him or ricocheted off his thick body armor. Again, none of the bullets managed to incapacitate him, and Church briefly wondered if he was being protected by some higher power.

A few yards later, he realized that such a thought was ridiculous. He heard a concussive thump from behind and turned just in time to see a rocket accelerating towards him. He had only a split-second to try and sidestep away from it, but he knew it would be to no avail. His last thought was to throw the girl out of harm's way, but by the time it crossed his mind, it was already too late. A fiery explosion followed the impact of the missile near his feet, and it sent him careening through the air until he smashed against the side of a building.

Church coughed and sputtered as he choked on the blood coming out of his mouth, and he spattered the inside of his helmet with the crimson liquid as he tried to rise to his feet. His body simply lacked the strength to do so, and his eyes focused on the emergency medical diagnostic that was scrolling down his visor. A mechanical voice read out his injuries, just in case he was unable to see the diagnostic.

"Major fractures detected. Minor lacerations detected. ACL tear detected."

As the list of injuries was told off, a small hologram of his body came up to show the exact location of his injuries. The hologram was blue, but flashed red in places that were critically injured. Large sections of his back were riddled with fractures, and his right knee tendon was torn in two. Normally, he would be feeling incredible amounts of pain right now, but his suit had automatically administered morphine to dull the pain. To counteract the negative effects of the painkiller, several other fluids were also administered.

Temporarily numb to the pain wracking his body, Church rolled over onto his belly and looked around for his weapons, which had both been separated from him in the explosion. He spotted his rifle lying a few yards away, and began painstakingly crawling towards it. He was aware that the hostile chopper was watching him, but apparently it did not consider him a threat at the moment, and instead turned its attention to the U.S. Humvees approaching from the direction of the base. The two forces began exchanging fire as they came within firing range of each other, leaving Church to flounder in the dirt as he crawled towards his weapon.

As he finally laid his hands on the stock, his eyes were drawn to something else lying in the dirt as well; the crumpled, broken, and bloody body of the little girl he had tried to protect. She didn't move, squirm, or utter a single whimper or cry of despair, Church knew with absolute certainty that she was dead. Because he had failed. He hadn't been fast enough. He hadn't been strong enough. Because he had failed, the life of an innocent little girl had been wrongfully taken from this world.

This realization filled the soldier with misery, but the sheer exhaustion he was suffering from made it impossible to shed a single tear. He merely rolled onto his back, oblivious to the conflict around him, and succumbed to his agony, slipping into unconsciousness.

Church rose from his resting place on the ground, his eyes frantically searching his surroundings for anything reminiscent of the world he had been snatched from well over two months ago.

A few moments was all it took to assure him that he was not in the war-torn city of Baghdad, or even in the dying throes of his post apocalyptic world at all. No, he was camped with Airi and Melona under a large tree, and both of them were seemingly sleeping peacefully as Church struggled to conquer a demon from his past that he thought had been defeated a long time ago.

Burying the last bit of his panic from his memories, Church stared up at the starry sky, mostly obscured by leaves. A lot had happened that day. For one, he had been permanently injured. His knee had been torn to shreds by shrapnel from that missile, and he had never fully recovered even though he had been able to walk again a few months later. The psychological impact of the incident lasted far longer, made obvious by the fact that it still haunted him now.

Surprisingly though, he found that such things had not bothered him much of late. Back in New Eden he dwelt on the past all the time. But since his arrival in this new world, it had not plagued him nearly as much, if at all. He supposed it had to do with the drastic environment change: he was always reminded of the state of the world and his role in it when it was all around him. When the skies were a bloody red, the earth scorched, and the seas a slightly glowing green. When he was surrounded by soldiers that reminded him of that day and the way things were.

Now he was away from it all. He was surrounded not by scorched earth, but by life. Trees, clean water, clear skies... it was a picture of what had once been back in his own world, and it brought him a great deal of comfort and relief. He found greater appreciation for it all than he used to, that was for sure.

But more than that was the people that surrounded him. Back in New Eden, everyone was filled with despair. They saw no real future in their demolished world, they had nothing worth loving or living for, and those beliefs carried into the people around them in a vicious cycle that affected them all.

Here things were different. The first people that came to mind as far as being rays of sunshine were Alleyne and Nowa of course. The applied to the latter more of course, but Alleyne had her own appeal in the same light. Sure she wasn't as enthusiastic or cheerful as Nowa, but she was someone that appreciated life, and you could tell just by talking to her. She had lived a long time after all, and it was obvious that she found some degree of excitement in seeing what the future would hold.

Airi and Melona were a little different; the way Church interacted with them was not the same at all, and he certainly wouldn't call either one of them a ray of sunshine, though Airi came close when she was in a good mood. But even so they helped quell Church's demons simply because they weren't like the people back home. They were driven, had things they were doing and things they enjoyed, and that overall sense of meaning in simply living was just different from New Eden, where living meant little more than surviving.

Of course, considering the way Melona had treated him just a day ago, Church was unsure if he had misjudged the way she felt about him. He had at least considered them friends, but she had been rather cruel...

"Hey."

Church would've leaped out of his skin if such a thing weren't so unprofessional. He immediately turned to face the source of the voice, which ended up being Melona lying down next to him, her head propped up by her arm. How she had gotten so close to him without him noticing was a mystery and also slightly concerning.

"H-hey?"

"I would ask if you have time to talk, but clearly you've got nothing better to do so I'm gonna say you do."

She was to the point and rude about it as usual, but Church supposed that was rather typical of the girl that still held first place for eccentricity in his mental ratings.

"Of course. You have something you want to talk about?"

Melona shrugged, and Church got the feeling she was intentionally trying to make things more nonchalant than they really were. "Yeah. It's nothing important really, and also kind of your fault, but I guess it needs to be said. I get the feeling you misinterpreted the things I said the other day."

Church felt that it was more likely Airi had told her as much, but either way he decided not to comment on that. "I think I interpreted them pretty clearly."

"Look, it's true that you're kind of a tag along. Realistically speaking, there's no denying that you are. You got to come with us because I was bored. That's the truth. But I never said that it was a bad thing."

Unsure of how to take that, Church tried to observe some giveaway that this was a joke or something on Melona's part, but all he managed to conclude was that her eyes were far different than he had ever noticed before. Her pupils were completely ordinary in the sense that they were shaped like crosses. Naturally Church berated himself for somehow not noticing this until now, but ultimately he decided it to attribute it to some aspect of beastkin he didn't understand.

"And what do you mean it's not a bad thing?"

"Well, maybe we didn't bring you along for any profound reason or anything, but so what? You're enjoying yourself, so you're glad you're here. I think you're pretty fun to hang out with, so I'm glad you're here too I guess. Isn't that enough?"

Church wasn't sure if this was supposed to be an apology, a declaration of friendship, or something else entirely, but he could at least tell that it was supposed to be something good. At least Melona thought so. She actually looked a little embarrassed. Just a little.

"I'm just saying I didn't mean to sell you short the other day. You really are just along for the ride, but it'd be way more boring without you, so I'm... y'know, glad you decided to tag along, I guess."

Church wanted to ask if this was her saying that they were friends, but before he could do any such thing the voice of their mutual redhead companion wafted through the night air.

"I appreciate that you two are getting along, but could you finish already? I need my sleep."

Melona refrained from pointing out that Airi did not in fact need sleep at all, since that would have revealed to Church that she were inhuman. While Airi could sleep, it was more of a luxury for her than an necessity. Physically, she didn't require rest to keep functioning. Mentally though, sleep gave her a chance to rest a weary mind or at least do away with her waking frustrations for a few hours. When she wasn't having nightmares of course.

"Don't be jealous Airi. You can always ask for a turn when I'm done with him."

Praying that was a joke since he felt like anything of that nature would be dangerous with Melona, Church decided not to comment on it in the first place, which allowed Airi to retort.

"Take your time. I have nothing to be jealous about."

"Oh, I think I will then."

With that, the bunny-eared pinkette practically glued herself to Church's side, burying half of him in her ample curves. "You should honestly thank Airi for this Church. It was her idea after all."

To his credit Church actually did offer silent thanks to the redhead for bringing about this undoubtedly sensual experience, but he might have felt a little differently about it if he saw the heavy frown that marred said redhead's face. As for Airi, she simply did her best to bury her questions as to why the thought of those two being so close bothered her at all.

Few changes were made, it was mostly just little dialogue things.