Arknights- Neos

Part 1

A distant shout was enough to rouse David out of his dream of being a normal man in a countryside farm.

He looked around, seeing not the bloody mess of a blasted experimental laboratory, but rather a burned storage building in a school field. Ruins of other school buildings within sight, the cold air gliding through his cheeks, and mixed voices and sounds of metal clashing to each other not far from his position.

What the hell? His memory supplied. David had no idea what happened. However, the first thing he'd done was check himself. And much to his bewilderment, he felt that the scratches, bullet holes, and injuries that he had was gone like the wind. Even his equipment, gear and weapons were unscathed despite having a hunch that he was just in a firefight. He was missing something; he knew he was missing something.

Fuckin' hell. He removed his team scarf that covered his nose and mouth, alongside his Cross-com, and let out a big breath that formed a dense cloud of vapor. Then David stood up, unknowingly wearing a concerning grin on his face.

"Where the hell am I?" He said, covering back his face.

He came up empty and what could be the worst thing about the situation was that David would be forever unable to remember-and he's all alone-after all, he was just a person who just woke up in a strange place.

David thought back. He was on a ship, preparing for a black operation, a reconnaissance mission. But he couldn't tell what, where or the details of the operation. He couldn't even recall a single thing other than he was preparing for a mission and a firefight after.

He was a heartbeat away from realizing that the data recorded in his Cross-com could have answers, when his senses instinctively told him to focus out of nowhere. His senses giving him something painfully familiar. And for a few seconds of running up into an another burned storehouse not far from where he woke up, David assumed what his senses was trying to tell him earlier-the burning smell of rubber, metallic scent of blood, and the sweet stench of human flesh.

A war zone.

David ran along the grassy path clutching his rifle while huddling a much heavier sniper stored in a hard rifle case strapped alongside his backpack. It started to drizzle when he spots few cars in the darkness, detailing that there is a glimmer from a rear bumper of each of them. As he neared at a large courtyard where the noise was coming from, David stood close on a wall and activated his optical camouflage. The Ghosts' fatigues, boots, gloves, scarves - everything -became near invinsible by refracting light which can be activated by voice commands on the device strapped on his shoulder.

The Ghost's continued use of the optical camouflage started when John Dmitri Kozak was sent out to Anthony "Nomad" Perryman's team to field test the technology during Operation Spade. Major Scott Mitchell, their OIC at the time, even remarked that if it wasn't Kozak's desire for fieldwork they would have lost him to the tech company that made the camouflage possible.

"What the hell is going on?" David said as he booted up his Cross-com, projecting a heads-up display accompanied by a flashing 'no satellite signal' followed by targets marked by flashing red outlines of the figures and displayed unknown details of each targeted individual.

David may be a veteran of several battlefields, knowledgeable in many aspects of war history. Possessing knowledge on both fiction and historical subjects, however, it was his first time witnessing a battlefield where the combatants were young students, covered in blood and dirt along with their melee weapons, glaring at each other like it the only way to survive.

It was a horrific sight. David may be used to the chaos and absurdity of such things but wished it were that easy that he could be that cold not to care. However, he caught a glimpse of his reflection on his PDA on his left wrist and hated what he saw: a hooded man that looked like one of the masked cold killer robots you see in modern movies, which allowed him to kill, oppress or intimidate without any worries.

Nevertheless, David brought out his M14 EBR into his front, checked the ammo, his finger near the vicinity of the trigger, and then used the scope to scout intel more clearly.

David grimaced over the numerous dead bodies of students just laying on the damped soil. Blood splattered everywhere, young adults screaming, killing each other. All of them were young ladies, disheveled, exhausted, yet still able to fight.

David couldn't think straight as to why such messed up event could happen. He wasn't stranger of such conflicts, like in Africa, Russia and the Middle East, but this was his first encounter of the FUBAR kind of situation.

Unexpectedly, everyone stopped fighting when one of the students managed to overpower her adversary.

The prominent one was wearing a stylized seifuku school uniform with distinct red accents, while having a thick maroon coat over it. She was standing in front of the student, who is on her knees, who wears a white variation of a military service uniform that has red sash on the shoulder, complementing her white hair.

The student was gripping a bloodied black hand ax. It seemed that she was deciding what to do to the weakened student in front of her.

It took a couple of seconds before one the students broke their silence.

"Kill her, Sonya." The girl said in Russian.

Sonya, however, just looked at the lady in response and took a heavy breath.

Despite having the confidence on easily dropping the situation's hostility, David couldn't bring himself up and break concealment just because one of them are about to be done in. Not that they are helpless, but when he had a hunch. He paid attention to it because years of combat experience had taught him to 'read the signs' and 'watch the skies' in order to get better sense what is going on. These were a soldier's instincts, forged over decades in the battlefield. He knew that he would risk everything in one move.

David reflexively adjusted his aim, the reticule floating over the dominant teenager's head, however, he abruptly took off his finger near the trigger and moved his sight away from the scope. The moment was before him, the moment every soldier doubts about the job-the gloves being off. He was bothered by it. David knew the tension had already found its way into his hands, and he gripped the rifle a bit too tightly. He knew this feeling all too well, and if he didn't keep it in check, maybe he'd laready fired off a round before he knew it, as though his hands had a mind of their own. David was puzzled of such thoughts.

He wished it were that easy to decide: that he could be that savior who will save everyone. But he knew that nothing comes out good when people tries to be a hero. 

Before he could return to his sight behind the scope, the uproar of the battlefield went a complete turn when all of a sudden, a piercing scream of a girl was heard on the rooftops.