"Huff, huff, huff, haaaaaa, man, this is awful..."
Aeris spoke as he was running away; some unknown entity had spotted him and was now forcing him to make a run for it.
He had been on the front lines for nearly five months. In those five months, he managed to take down numerous enemy soldiers. Always using cover and moving from one spot to another after each time he had fired, he managed to survive for five months.
Being twenty years old, he was a prodigy for his age, possessing skills unlike any other soldier his age or even older. His kill count was the highest on the battlefield, since the modern way of war mostly involved drones and tactical missiles.
Aeris was a twenty-year-old young man who stood at 200 centimeters. Some may say that it was a disadvantage for a sniper to be that tall, but for him, it was an advantage. His height allowed him to move quickly, helping him survive for so long.
Enlisting at the age of eighteen, he was sent to the battlefield as soon as he finished primary training camp. Most people would say that it was a shitty thing to do, given his age and lack of experience. But... not like anyone cared, especially not the government.
Silence fell again on the battlefield, which was a trench warfare. Aeris hid inside a bush and covered himself with mud. Rain was still falling, so he used it to his advantage; this way, he could cover his tracks.
He wasn't running from a soldier or a vehicle; he was running from a deadly drone that had recorded him and now chased after him. It was a miracle that he wasn't dead by now; somehow, he had managed to escape its grasp at first.
At first, he was scouting the enemy territory as usual, with some kills here and there, but all that came to a halt when he heard a buzzing sound in the sky. He looked up and noticed a white drone carrying some kind of explosive. And that was how he ended up in this situation, from a skilled recon sniper to a young man running for his life.
'If it catches me, then the best scenario is me ending up in a LiveLeak video with the edgy idiots making memes about it in the comments.' Just thinking about it made him mad; he despised drone warfare. He would rather be killed by a missile than a drone.
'Dammit! Some idiot behind that drone is probably enjoying it in comfort now while I rot here!' Aeris cursed as he tried his best not to move. The drone above him flew around, searching for him.
bzzzzzzz
It flew past his cover.
Aeris thanked God for sparing him from getting blown up and from ending up on some gore site. He now needed to find that drone operator and take him down, but for that, he'd need to be stealthy.
He lay there, drenched in mud, for about half an hour, awaiting the drone to reappear, but fortunately for him, it didn't.
'Okay, the danger had passed. The drone operator must've broken his controller for losing someone like me, I don't know, but something tells me that I've pissed them off greatly.'
Aeris chuckled and carefully crouched, eager to find a new good spot to hide and take down the enemy drone operator. It wouldn't be easy, but the enemy base wasn't far from here, about two kilometers at best.
It wasn't that he liked killing people for fun like some on the battlefield; he never disrespected an enemy corpse. He had respect for the enemy, but he also didn't feel any remorse for killing enemy soldiers, because they were just that: enemy soldiers who willingly came to a war knowing what they would have to do—kill or be killed.
Sure, it would be bad for their families who would lose their sons, but such is the price of war, where ordinary men died while rich men ate and drank. He knew the truth, but still willingly went into a war.
'Maybe I'm foolish, but I don't regret my decision one bit...' He was true to himself; army life gave him purpose and the willpower to push forward.
His parents died when he was seventeen, leaving him alone with pain and regret that he hadn't spent more time with them when they were alive. Soon after, once he turned eighteen, he joined the army and the war effort.
The war had been raging for three years, and he had been training in the camp for two years, undergoing severe hardcore training made for this specific war.
Due to his height, he was supposed to be a machine gunner, but he pleaded with his commander to send him to a recon team. Not because he hated carrying a machine gun or anything; hell, sniper rifles could be as heavy as some machine guns.
It was because he always, always in life, in games, anything... preferred to be at a distance, from somewhere afar, and kill his enemies.
He wasn't that brave, he could admit easily, but being a sniper was a good opportunity for him. In games, he always used ranged weapons and fought from behind the lines. In Minecraft, for example, he always preferred to use a bow in PvP rather than any other weapon. Crossbows came in handy, too, but they were severely underpowered in vanilla; at least that was his opinion.
After he passed the training in a recon unit, Aeris got sent to the front lines without much experience.
And now he was sneaking his way toward the enemy camp, through the forest full of enemy soldiers who were looking for him. He was being hunted; he knew it from the way shots quieted.
He approached one huge old tree that stood above the others. Crouching behind it, he glanced past it and noticed two enemy soldiers taking a break for a cigarette.
'Seriously? Your comrades are searching for a dangerous recon sniper that took many of your fellow countrymen, and you stop for a smoke?' Aeris died internally, but he was going to be a better man and punish them instead of their commander.
He quietly grabbed the pistol with a silencer on it. It was a Glock 19 with a quality silencer attached. Built for versatility, it balances firepower, concealability, and reliability, making it a favorite among the army.
Pew, Pew!
Muffled shots blasted at the two men, who had just dropped onto the forest floor, their heads pierced by two bullets. It was quick; they didn't know what had happened to them before they departed from the world.
Aeris quickly retreated into the bushes and sighed, 'Once they find them with cigarettes dropped, they'll be glad that they are dead, LOL.'
Two hours later, he arrived at the enemy base that was in the distance. It was nicely hidden in a forest, covered in various trees. He hadn't looked back ever since and now knew that it would be very hard to return using the previous pathway. Once he had accomplished his mission, he would need to find another way; either way, he was prepared for a rough time ahead.
Aeris positioned himself and pulled his sniper rifle. It wasn't super heavy like some sniper rifles could be. It was a Knight's Armament SR-25 with a suppressor attached to it, a semi-automatic sniper rifle perfect for mobile recon snipers like him.
There were probably other, better sniper rifles, but he grew attached to it and even added an anime sticker to it. Many had called him a psychopath for it, and some even feared him for his easy attitude, towering height, and skills of a Terminator.
But not like he cared; he had one mission to accomplish, and that was to find the enemy commander and take him down, but now he had another goal, and that was to take down that drone operator.
click
He adjusted his rifle to a comfortable position and aimed. The first thing he noticed was that the camp looked nearly deserted, with only a few guards passing by.
He was far inside the enemy lines; his side was in a stalemate with the enemy, but his camp was far away. It wasn't the first time he was deep inside enemy lines; many times before, he had cheated death and escaped with his life.
His luck made the higher-ups respect him, often sending him on dangerous missions that no other people could manage. Not just because of his skills; that was only partly the reason why he accepted those missions, even if he didn't have much choice anyway.
The second reason was that he didn't have a family, girlfriend, or anyone to care for and want him alive back home.
Therefore, he was the best suitor for the suicide missions because if he died, no one would cry back home. Aeris never bothered with women because he found their attitudes and their demands unreasonable and absurd. Plus, he was asexual; he yearned for touch at times, but not the sexual kind.
'Okay, let's see, let's see... ah there you are, little shit!' he thought as, through his scope, Aeris saw a young man with the controller in his hand and a beer right next to him.
'A drone operator....'
His eyes squinted in annoyance as he had the man in his sights, the very same man who had tried to kill him with a drone before.
The same man who could end up in a LiveLeak video, for him to be ridiculed by edgy retards. Zooming in, the young man's face was now clearly visible to Aeris, a face of a young man laughing about something while controlling the drone.
Just as he went in for a trigger, aiming to blast his head off...
His surroundings suddenly changed, and he found himself in the clear blue sky, falling as if he were in some dream.
"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!"