Chapter 1: The Unknown Soldier
A man wearing an almost all black military outfits, a skull balaclava mask that covers half of his lower face, a black hood and a scarf that covers his neck, walks across the open grassy field of what was once called a city.
He passes by broken-down man-made structures, overgrown roots and vines tangling across every building, asphalt roads covered in foliage, and military-type armored vehicles that are also filled with overgrown roots.
As he draws nearer to the wreckage of a dilapidated building, the parched leaves and other fragile flora crunch underfoot. He's holding an rifle that has been slightly modified. Its magazines differ significantly in size and bullet capacity from the standard Carbines, and its barrel is marginally larger.
With every step he takes, he makes sure that it makes the least bit of noise as he approaches the building of a big apartment complex.
'I wonder if there's any survivor here. And hopefully there are some food in here too, I'm starting to get famished.' The utters within his mind as he vaults over the window with a few remaining broken glasses.
As he lands on his feet, the broken glasses on the floor tinkle as the weight of his boots crushes on the tiny pieces.
He scans the area across the dark and echoing hallway of the building.
Approaching the hall of rooms, he carefully scans the first room. He cautiously walks towards the door with his gun pointing to the door while checking across the corners.
The unknown dweller pushes the door slightly as the barrel points out of the side. He watches carefully the room for any sudden movements as he checks the area.
The room he entered looks somehow similar to an apartment room. There are scattered books, magazines, and a few notes.
He investigated the room and saw an extension room leading to the kitchen. The masked soldier dashed towards the room and searched every cabinet, as he searches for any canned food available.
He pushes aside the kitchen utensils, wine glasses, spoon and forks that are slightly covered in rust, only to find none. He goes to the next drawer and found a few canned meat, and vegetables.
He hurriedly removed his backpack and pulled out a can opener as he is utterly consumed by hunger.
The man was shaking as he inserted the can opener into the canned meat and squeezed the thing until a slight smell of stagnant meat lingered on his nose.
He pulls down his mask and gulped down the canned meat like it was the only food he had ever eaten for days, even to the point that he scooped the remaining food at the bottom with his bare dirty hands.
After being slightly satiated by the meat, he crushed the tin can then placed it in his bag, then grabbed the rest of the canned food, and inserted them in his backpack.
He continues scanning across the room and picked up a note with a burnt mark on the bottom:
Dear mom, I'll be heading to your refugee camp when I get everything. Please wait for me. The army will be coming to save me from those monsters. I hope I get to see dad and little sister, Just-
He crumpled the paper as he leaves the room.
Looking at the other rooms, he searches each and every room. Knowing that this is an apartment complex, there may be more stored food in each room.
After a while, he has successfully gathered several canned food worth a week and also some scraps that he finds useful.
After raiding most of the rooms in the apartment complex, he eventually come upon the last room that he hasn't checked yet. As he opens the door, an extremely strong odor emits as the door is left wide open, to the point that he starts coughing and gagging as he looks away from the room.
After steeling himself up, he enters the room as the door slightly creaks. The stench is too strong that the smell starts sticking to his clothes.
Turning on the flashlight, the dweller looked around finding the source of that stench as it grow stronger and stronger as he walks further from the door. He approaches a certain room that looks like a bedroom, and lightly pushes the door.
As he walks in closer to the bed, he sees a pair of pants and a hoodie laying on the bed. He can't get any closer due to the nauseating odor coming from it. It's obviously no other than a corpse rotting on the bed, laying on the side slightly curled up. The white sheets are completely dirtied to the point that the bed is completely covered in black rotten flesh. The only thing left on that corpse is a few more tendons and bones. It's been dead for way too long.
He moves the corpse aside as he found a pistol in its right hand. He picks it up and inspects the weapon. The entire pistol is unusable since it was covered by rotten flesh and tendons, corroding the metal from the outside all the way to its inner parts. Looking back at the corpse, there is a tiny hole in the hood of the jacket.
There are white scribbles from the dark walls, and its handwriting looks like it was written using a fingernail, barely readable until the dweller shines the flashlight at a slanted angle.
SORRY MOM
The writing looks too dark and peeled off for the old paint to reveal the second layer of the wall.
Inspecting the rusty pistol is a standard-issued military pistol given to the army. From the looks of it, they didn't make it.
He runs back outside the room as the foul-smelling odor whiffs up to his nostrils. He fights the urge to throw up as he tries to wave away the stench that sticks to his clothes by flapping his arms like a bird.
While he was doing this, a silhouette of an unknown object glides across the window of the building. The metallic footsteps that the unknown object made as it slightly move across back and forth, alarmed the man as he scattered to find cover behind a table.
He peeks over slightly from behind the table to see what is it that was making that noise, only to see a machine that resembles a spider enters the building through the broken glass door. It scans across the hallway and inspects a few scattered objects, and clothes as it sees a few rustling near the table.
Tick thunk tick thunk...
The machine approach the table as the man quickly holds his breath. The spider-like robot observes as the rustles get more violent.
It peeks behind the table and observes every nook and cranny from where the sound was recently located.
The human dweller keeps holding his breath but his heart thumps louder. So loud that the robot can pick it up.
He finds a nearby stone and grabs it, then threw it blindly away from his position.
A loud thunk emits on the far edge of the building, quickly distracting the undecipherable hostile robot, immediately leaving the area near the man.
As it moves to another location, he quickly, and quietly gets up and brings his backpack, though encumbering him from the amount of food and a few more tools he looted from the building.
He reaches the exit away from the sight of the robot, as he threw his backpack out the window to a nearby pile of garbages, cushioning it, but loud enough to be heard.
He looks behind.
The same spider-like robot wasn't in the same corner it was investigating.
He looks around hurriedly, finding where it most likely is located.
He didn't bother looking at the entire area, and gazed back to the window as he planted his hands to vault over the window, as he steps over the broken glasses, lowered his body to pick up the bag, then stood straight and looked ahead.
It was in front of him.
The mechanical monster looked at him, dead in the eye with its red, camera-like lens, as it continues creating mechanical arms as if analyzing the target.
A high-pitch frequency emits as it quickly switches its gears to short barrels.
He runs behind the broken-down HMMWV covered in overgrown roots and foliage as bullets rain over to him.
The man crouched down behind as he turned his rifle's safety off. Weaving around the vehicle, he tried his best to stay away from the sight of the hostile threat.
He leans back in the vehicle as the blasts of loud automatic gunshots suppress his position.
He waits as the gunshots slowly died down. Peeking forward, he couldn't find the spider-like rapture from its previous position.
He scanned around and found that it was on top of his vehicle as it finishes reloading its ammunition.
Pointing his rifle to the target, he pierced the metallic being at point blank range, destroying its core immediately, shutting the robot down as it slumps down from the vehicle to the ground.
Although the immediate threat has been dealt with, unfortunately another threat soon came as several more of those blood thirsty machines came after being attracted by the sound of his gun fire.
"Shit!" After cursing loudly, the quickly stood up and ran toward the nearest cover to protect himself from the hail of bullets that come raining down on him.
He managed to take cover behind the wreckage of a fighter plane just as a bullet almost penetrated his shoulder. He waited patiently until the hail of gunfire subsided, and when those machines finally ran out of bullets, the man came out of his hiding place and immediately start shooting back at the machine-like creatures as they are in the middle of reloading their ammunition.
The man successfully shot down three of the machines before he's forced to take cover once more as the other machines have finished reloading their ammunition and begin launching another rain of bullets at his direction.
"I can't stay here long. Otherwise more of them will come."
The man realized that he couldn't keep on handling these killing machines for much longer because he knew more of them would soon arrive because they were attracted by the sound of gunshots made by their friends. Therefore, he immediately took an EMP grenade that he had strapped on his bulletproof vest and threw it towards the remaining machines.
The EMP grenade works magnificently on those machines as the electrical shock waves made the explosion of the grenade shuts down their system entirely.
With all of the threats have been neutralized, the man quickly loot the machines for some extra ammunition and scraps. After looting as much as he could carry he ran towards a clean military vehicle, the same model as the overgrown HMMWV but in slight dark green camo.
Upon entering the vehicle, he immediately starts the engine and pushes the accelerator leaving the grassy urban district.
The vehicle zooms across the lifeless roads scattered with wrecked vehicles as the surrounding buildings start being covered by red flashing lights and shiny dark metallic creatures crawling across every building.
A few giant wasp-like machines hover with tiny jet wings planted in the middle as it scans the previous location of the gunfight.
The military vehicle revs as the driver watch the road on the lonely dark road.
The man taps to the beat on his steering wheel while trying to recall any music he had listened to before the entire war happened.
A spider-like machine the size of a golden retriever appears beside him as it moves its position to the front seat
"Beep beep beeep...?" The AI robot emitted sounds though in a questioning tone.
The man was slightly startled at its sudden appearance.
"Don't surprise me like that, Riley. I'm driving right now." He said as he patted the machine.
He met this little robot at the same day when he awoken from his cryostasis sleep. And he named this Robot with the same name as his old German Shepherd dog.
Despite being a robot Riley's appearance does not look like the other blood thirsty machines. Its surface color is dark gray from the prolonged dirt and dust, but its main distinction from the other is its light blue line emitting to its head. Though it may look like a spider, it has only four thin legs. Its body structure is a simple triangular prism with a rotating disk as its lower body connects to the leg.
Another distinction of this is a few stickers on the side of its head such as a few anime stickers of a mecha figure in purple and green color, a man in office clothes with a chainsaw in his head and chainsaws sticking out of its hands, though over time the stickers slightly peel off.
"Say, Riley..."
"Beep?"
"Nothing, I just wanted to say that I'm glad that I have you by my side this entire time. Ever since this so-called raptures thing, I don't know hell even if you are one of them,"
"Beep beep bep..." It nods in affection as it emits a _ face beside him.
He grabbed a piece of torn note, regarding reports of alien machine-like robots invading the world, called Raptures.
"I don't know how long has it been. But it feels like as if it was only yesterday when I fought in the War to eliminate these Raptures along with the other UNSA (United Nation Soldiers Alliance) forces before I have to be put in a Cryostasis sleep. I can't believe this is how the world has turned out after I woke up."
Riley made a soft beeping noise.
"Well, at least I have someone with me ever since I woke up, still I can't help but to wonder where are the rest of the Soldiers that also got put in a Cryostasis sleep like me." he smiled as he looked at Riley as he stares at a small slightly dark text under its side barely readable in a distance but can be seen when close enough:
Atlas Industry.
The Atlas Industry was one of the largest Private Military Company in the world. It was originated and founded in America before they finally opened branches in various developed countries such as Canada, London, Germany, Japan, and Singapore.
This company mainly focused on the development of military weapons and technology, and most of the advanced military weapons and technology owned by the American military are made from this company.
Even the rifle that he has in his possession right now was made by them.
He stopped the vehicle in the middle of a road between two forests as he takes out his other bag.
As he rummages through his bag he grabbed a picture frame. It shows a picture of himself together with his parents and his brother.
He pulled out the picture frame and reveals a small microchip. He placed it on his phone. The phone looks run-down since the apocalypse, and its aging appearance shows, however it is decent enough to be useful at least even after this whole nightmare.
Soon several pictures pops out on the screen.
The first picture, show himself giving a nuggy to his younger brother whom shows his annoyance by frowning at him.
The second picture show a rather peaceful image of his father, his younger brother, and himself sitting on their porch while having a drink as they converse with each other.
The third picture shows an image of himself, his father, and his younger brother standing side by side along with a group of soldiers who wears an all black uniform with balaclava mask that has a skull motive covering their faces.
And the fourth picture shows an image of himself and several other soldiers being carried by stretchers toward a private military company building owned by the Atlas Industry.
When he was about to swipe to another picture, Rustlings is heard across the bushes near the forest.
Riley actively looks out where the sound comes from like an alert dog looking out for intruders.
Activating its radio wave and heat signals, it scans the surrounding forests.
The man unslings his rifle as he switched off its safety and placed the rifle on the window.
His eyes are fixated to the bush as it constantly moves back and forth while the leaves rustle.
Riley climbs over the man's lap as it looked at the side window where the rifle is pointed at.
The spider-like companion emitted a question mark face and a beeping noise on a low to a high note.
"Beep...?"
Reactivating its infrared vision, it scans a red figure at the center with mechanical parts.
On a high-frequency note, it alerted the man.
"Rapture?"
"Beep beep beep!" It nodded at fear like a dog barking as if agreeing with him.
BANG!
He shots a single round at the bushes. A figure comes out as it reveals itself as a hovering rapture. it looks unfazed despite having a bullet hole on its body, probably because he must've missed its core. Then it alerted the rest of the herd in a loud alarming tone.
"BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!" Riley's face made a "!" mark and crawled down to the man's foot as it keeps tapping him on the accelerator pedal as if signifying to leave.
He pushed the pedal immediately as his spider companion quickly gets out of the foot's way from the pedals.
VROOOOOOOM!
He accelerated really quick as he shifted the gear increasingly from one to third.
The forest is a trap.
It was a set-up.
A flock of raptures rise up like a horde of drones as it chases down the vehicle. An army of hostile alien machines between twenty to thirty accelerating like a nest of bees flying to a target that disturbs them.
"Damn it! I shouldn't have shot that rifle!" He grumbled as he steadies the steering wheel. He might be able to take down several raptures on his own, but not a whole army of them.
A few tried to hook to the vehicle's side window, as it readies up its weapons.
A few short barrels reveal in one of the raptures as it pulls its own mechanical body part.
The man shakes off the raptures as they lose their stability.
It gave them time, but they came back again.
He pushes the vehicle to its fourth gear gradually speeding themselves up.
It did not help since a few of them are still able to catch up.
A large road sign is seen from far from the road.
Lightfield City - 5 km
Using the road sign he positioned the military vehicle to the side near the post.
The raptures sticking their claws beside the vehicle are scraped by the posts and a few are temporarily blocked by the large sign.
It did not shake them off as the bloodthirsty machines hover to its side.
A group of them pulls out their loaded ammunitions from their exoskeletal parts as the lasers point both him and the mechanical companion.
"GET DOWN!" He warned his spider companion as a flurry of bullets are released on both sides of the vehicles.
The right side bulletproof glasses did not help as the second rain of bullets are now surrounding both sides.
The deafening roar of gunfire gave the post-apocalyptic semi-futuristic M998 side doors a big load of tiny holes.
There is no way that anyone in that side will ever survive that amount of bullets blasting through both sides of the door.
As the man ducks, he swerves the vehicle left and right as the gunfires hit the raptures themselves.
Riley quickly climbs to the man's leg as it pulls out a frag grenade from his pouch.
He quickly picked up the pace and it handed the grenade to him.
He pulls out the grenade as he cooks the grenade then swiftly throws over the window without looking, clearing the left side.
The right side is still being covered by those human-killing machines.
As he closes in the next road, an intersection revealed itself and a lot of wrecked vehicles appeared.
A truck with an angled ramp is spotted across the sea of vehicles.
"Get your seatbelts! We're going to jump," He ordered as the little spider robot curls itself under the seat.
He gains enough momentum as he takes a deep breath.
If I don't make this jump, I will die. It's over.
He mumbled to himself as his heartbeat gets faster.
The vehicle reaches the distance towards the ramp and they scream as the Humvee launches itself at 120km/hr to the ramp truck.
"WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IIIIIIIIT!" He screamed at the top of his lungs while Riley makes a high-pitched frequency.
As the car flies for five seconds straight, the intersection has a broken road showing unimaginable height to a drop point. It was a highway bridging to a broken road that is hundreds of meters deep into death.
The vehicle is somehow able to make it on the other side of the road as it lands flat on the asphalt.
As they landed, the adrenaline surging up to the man's body gave him no time to think as he immediately plunges his foot to the pedal, accelerating the beast as they reach to the inner city.
The high-rise buildings help shake them off and lose those raptures in pursuit.
The vehicle is positioned inside an alley, between two high-rise buildings as he shuts off the engine.
He relaxes his shoulders and his grip on the wheel slightly loosens as mental exhaustion hits him.
He breathes heavily as he looks at Riley with a sigh of relief.
The little robot tilts its head to the side as it looks at its owner in a curious expression.
The lone dweller hugs it tightly as the robot tries to struggle itself away from the big arms of the soldier.
"We survived another day, buddy. That entire thing was my fault. I should have understood you better,"
"Beep beep beep," It beeps in disappointment as it looks away from the owner.
"Hey... Don't look at me like that. If we are the only ones here and we separate, who else are we going to find? No one's here. Just us. Everyone else are long gone. How long can we survive?" He asked.
It hesitantly looked back as it positioned its head back away from the soldier.
"Tsk... You remember how we first met? I can't remember how long ago it was months maybe, I don't know. But that day... It was vivid. Like it came out of my nightmare. I wake up, feeling cold... Naked. I walk out of confusion and I see the entire place in ruins,"
"Beep?" It beeps in curiosity.
"There were machines. A few of them spotted me. I could have died where I stand... You... You saved me that day. You were there, calling me one way or another so I leaned my head forward. They were aiming their weapons right at my head, If I didn't do that I'd be dead right there,"
Its thin legs holds the lap of the soldier as it points out a bullet wound across his lap. A bullet wound pierced through the outer layer of the right thigh.
With the adrenaline slowly subsiding, the nerve receptors are hit with an astonishing amount of signals from the right thigh and his right shoulder.
With that amount of bullets wheezing inside the vehicle, the only part that hits him are two bullets. He was too lucky.
He cringed in agony as the pain receptors increase.
"Sh-shiit... It hurts so much," He holds his wounds as he quickly grabs a pair of bandages, tweezers, and a bottle of wine from his backpack.
He takes a certain amount of analgesic drugs from his medical kit to relieve the pain and waits as it takes effect.
He bites his brown-camo scarf and grits his teeth as he tries to perform a quick removal of the bullets from his thigh and his shoulder.
Riley watches as its owner grits in agony as it holds his arm with its tiny legs.
The amount of blood would have been lost more if he waited longer.
The size of the bullet is small enough but at least it did not fracture the bone. The shoulder's bullet came out clean on the other side leaving two holes. It does not require immediate surgery so he poured a bottle of wine on his right shoulder and bandaged the shoulder immediately. The right thigh was a bit tricky. Surprisingly it did not hit the artery but it takes a while to remove the bullet from the thigh since it was a bit deep but not deep enough to fracture the bone. Successfully removing the bullet from the wound, he immediately bandaged the thigh after applying a bottle of wine..
The man looked at his concerned-looking robot companion as it looks back at him with its head tilted.
"Don't worry. They're just flesh wounds. If those bullets went in a different angle I would have died of blood loss. I'm telling this to you. We're just lucky. We came out of there alive. You're fine as well, right?"
Riley smiles as it makes a beep of relief, but in slight hesitation about what information he said.
The alley gets a bit dark as it seems that night starts to rise.
"It's best to hide here for the night. We'll get through this night by hiding behind the seat,"
He takes his backpack as he takes another canned food. As he picks it up, there is a small amount of food oil seeping out of the hole from the recent gunfire. He takes a can opener and opens the can and pours the entire food into his mouth.
'The food might go bad if there are other exposed cans...' He thought.
After finishing his meal, he gave a few to Riley. Though it does not have a mouth it can turn any sort of food into convertible energy as it opens its lower body and its tiny mechanical parts grind a small portion of food.
The Soldier inspects the rest of the cans and the backpack, revealing more holes to patch up.
They stayed in the backseat as they stay for the night.
A/N : Okay! That's the end of the first chapter of my Nikke X Call of Duty crossover fanfic. I've been wanting to write this story for a while, I just don't know how to start it off. But, I'm glad that the prologue have finally finished. Anyway, can you guess who the protagonist of this story is? I've placed some clues in the story, so you should be able to guess the identity of the protagonist. He's one of the main character from a COD series. Okay, that's it for today, I'll see you guys again next chapter.