A few words from the author: Thank you to all who read my story, and a bigger thank you to all who reviewed it.

Notes on the text: The author means no disrespect to anyone who fought in Vietnam, or the Vietnamese in general. Though the author has researched the topics mentioned at length there may be improbabilities.

Enjoy

Febuary 1, 1968; unknown local time; undisclosed location 50 miles northeast of Saigon, Vietnam

Is this death?... so cold... so very cold...

Ichigo slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a young woman, not much younger than he was. She had deep sapphire eyes and jet black hair. She held a wet rag on his forehead.

So beautiful...

He looked at her for a time as she dabbed some blood off of his lacerated face. He had gotten a few nicks and cuts from the underbrush, but nothing serious. Eventually his eyes turned to other things, taking in his surroundings. He was propped up in the corner of a one-room building, across from him he could see several wooden containers. To his right he saw a firepit and various cooking implements. The door was on the wall to his left.

He looked down and saw that the front of his shirt had been ripped by something, a shallow gash went down from his left shoulder to his the bottom right of his ribcage, he could also feel an intense pain in his back, crude bandages covered much of his torso. His right pantleg had been ripped down from mid-thigh to the knee, a shallow gash in was there too, under the bandages.

The woman stopped washing his face and wrung out the rag into a basin. She took the basin outside and Ichigo heard the water being poured on the ground. Ichigo tried moving his arms and legs, they moved, but it was painful. Ichigo drifted into sleep, against his better judgement.

Ichigo was woken up from his slumber by shouting emanating from the opposite corner of the room. He could hear a man shouting in Vietnamese, a language Ichigo understood very little of. Ichigo's understanding of Vietnamese was limited to; "yes", "no", plus vairious forms of the phrases "please don't kill me", and "DIE!".

Ichigo saw an older man with jet black hair yelling at someone in the corner. He heard a smack, and a girl cry out in pain. He didn't undersand a word the man said, but that wouldn't stop him from doing what he thought was right. His right hand fumbled around his left thigh and found his pistol. He pulled out the weapon and turned the safety off. Ichigo stood up and limped over behind the man, and saw who the man was yelling at. He was chastizing the girl who had saved his life!

The man raised his arm to backhand the girl again, Ichigo grabbed the man's arm. The man turned around and punched Ichigo square in the jaw, sending him to the ground and knocking his pistol onto the floor. The man then clamped his hands around Ichigo's neck. Ichigo panicked; He had to do something... anything. He couldn't reach his combat knife that was in its sheath on his leg. He looked to his right... his pistol. He reached his arm out and tried to grab the weapon, his fingers found the barrel assembly and he grabbed onto it.

Ichigo swung the weapon, the handgrip hitting his assailant on his left temple and causing him to go sprawling on the ground. Ichigo quickly stood up, cocked the hammer back and aimed the weapon at the man with vicious intent. The man was frozen in terror, fear was written all over his person. As Ichigo's finger tightened around the trigger, he heard a wimper... coming from the corner. Ichigo looked and saw the horrifed face of the girl, tears streaming down her face, her eyes pleading with him.

Ichigo's heart softened at the sight, he put the safety on his pistol and holstered it. "Saigon?", he asked them. They pointed to the southwest. He took some of the man's clothes and conical hat in order to disguise himself and set out through the jungle on a dirt path.

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Febuary 1, 1968; 2330 local time; undisclosed location 47 miles northeast of Saigon, Vietnam

Ichigo slowly limped along the path towards the city, his mind was troubled by what he had experienced. He knew he had many more miles to go, but already fatigue was setting in. His mind started wandering. Why did she save me? Why didn't I kill him? Why didn't he try to kill me after I put my gun away? Ichigo shook his head and continued on his way...

All of a sudden he saw flares go up into the air. Then unseen people started firing at him. Ichigo jumped behind some cover and drew his pistol. Then he heard some voices.

"Hawk, get a frag on that guy!" The voice emanated from the foliage on his right.

Ichigo heard the sound of a pin being pulled on his left, followed by a shout of, "CHEW ON THIS, CHARLIE!!" The grenade bounced right next to Ichigo. Ichigo jumped on the other side of his cover and the grenade went off.

Ichigo jumped behind the cover again and took off his disguise shouting, "DON'T SHOOT, I'M AN AMERICAN!!"

He heard a voice coming from his right say, "Hold your fire men. Alright, show yourself."

Ichigo holstered his pistol and stood up with his hands in the air. The one of the men turned on his flashlight and pointed it at Ichigo. Ichigo was standing in the middle of the dirt trail. his face was covered with dirt, his uniform was discolored with fresh bloodstains from his wounds that had re-opened because of the strain and dried bloodstains, his boots and fatigues were covered in mud.

A voice on his left said, "He's wounded, Doc get over here."

The group of men broke cover, some started picking up the mines and trip-flares they had planted

The medic hurried over to examine Ichigo. "Wow, you got pretty beat up. What happened?" the man called "Doc" asked.

"Fell out of my Huey... on the way to Saigon... Saigon... need to get... to Saigon" Ichigo said weakly.

"You are one lucky bastard, we had claymores about two feet past those trip-flares you activated." One of the men said.

The men put Ichigo on a strethcer and loaded him into a medevac helicopter. Doc gave Ichigo a shot of morphene. Ichigo smiled as the drug started working, the pain faded away as he fell into a deep fatige/drug induced sleep.

Trip-flares: flares that lit up when activated by a trip-wire, commonly placed at ambush sites to give away the position of an enemy.

Claymore: designated the M18a1 the claymore was an anti-personal mine that worked like a giant shotgun, it could be remote detonated by the person who placed it or detonated by the victim using trip-wires and other means.

Morphene: a strong painkiller made from Opium.

Author's notes: If you haven't already guessed the two other people in this chapter are Byakuya and Rukia. I know I made Byakuya very out of character. He was angry at Rukia because the Viet Cong did very unpleasant things to those who were caught helping Americans, and since Ichigo's falling out of the Huey was a result of a VC attack Byakuya worried that the VC might still be in the area.