Volume 1 - Chapter 1: Enter Leon

"Let the bombs rain down."

A singer's voice comes in at a whisper.

"Let the fire rain down."

An electric guitar enters with a slow, soft strum while the singer raises an octave.

"Let the bombs rain down."

Two deep drums are punched one after another for a one count. The guitar transitions from strumming to light chords while the singer raises another octave.

"Let the fire rain down."

Everything goes quiet for a singular beat, but then

"GO!"

All hell breaks loose. The singer turns their voice into a war cry to signal the start of an epic last stand battle. The electric guitar forces the ocean to bend to its will, forcing wave after wave to violently crash into each other. Every pound of a drum sends a city-leveling earthquake running amok through a metropolis.

"Let Neuman's bombs rain down! Rockets strike from the sky!"

A teenage boy with long raven black hair, a sharp jawline, and warm ivory skin sits in a dark room. A black rectangle covers a fifth of his neck, runs up the right side, and pours onto his high cheekbones, ending right before his nose. He is banging his head back and forth, making his already unkept hair more disheveled. The blasting of music has made it near impossible for him to make out what's going on around him.

"Flight or fight! Death tonight!"

When the guitar solo comes rushing in, the teenager can hardly contain himself anymore and gets up to play an air guitar. Red lights begin flashing in the room, mixing with his long-sleeved black shirt, green pants with pockets galore, and green boots. Instead of actually alerting him to danger, the red lights make him feel like he is headlining a concert. He points his imaginary guitar up into the air, furiously waving his fist back and forth across the fake strings while the crowd chants.

"Leon! Leon! Leon!"

But it's no crowd.

"LEON!"

Leon opens his neon gold eyes, and in front of his face is a man with a grizzly beard, a green military hat, and a look of murder in his neon blue eyes. The teenager quickly sits back down and even whispers in his own mind.

["Hamilton, turn off my music."]

In an instant, the sound and vibrations of rock and roll get replaced by the buzzing from a helicopter. His gold eyes fade into a sand yellow. The blaring red alarms can only be heard when there is a slight reprieve from bombs exploding in the sky. The man has to pop a vein in his neck to have his words be heard.

"You're up! Get moving!"

"Yes, Mr. Greene!"

Leon pops up out of his seat with a giddy look in his eyes and a wide grin. Mr. Greene shoves an all white, four-motor drone into the teenager's chest. Leon rolls up both of his sleeves on his long-sleeved black shirt. On the top of his hands are two jet black circles that run up his arms and connect at his torso underneath his shirt. He tightly grips two handles that extend down from the drone's main body and gives a wink to Mr. Greene.

"Time to have some fun."

Sprinting through the helicopter, Leon swan dives off the back tray. He descends into a sea of charcoal clouds while crimson explosions illuminate the dark sky. Consecutive pairs of parallel yellow lines fly all around him. Stenches of gasoline and gunpowder dominate his nose, even at eleven kilometers up in the air. Powerful icy winds whip Leon's body and braid icicles out of the chaotic strains of his hair. The force of Mother Nature is so powerful, he can't open his mouth and retreats into his thoughts.

["Hamilton, what's the temperature up here?"]

Leon's sand eyes light up and turn neon gold. A neutral, robotic voice sounds off inside his head.

["It is minus fifty-six degrees."]

["Beautiful day for the beach."]

Surrounded by nothing but gray clouds, Leon's bluish red lips fight through the cold and form an even wider grin, but his once excited gold eyes sink back down to sand, blended with anxiety.

["I have to do well. I have to do well. I have to do well. If I don't, being number one becomes out of reach, and I won't be placed in the squad that I want. He'll laugh at me like he always does. I could even be in danger of-"

Leon cuts his own train of thought off. He slowly shuts his eyes and inhales a large breath of the frost-laced air. Holding his breath for a couple of moments and powering through the feeling of icebergs populating his lungs, he forcefully creaks his mouth open. All of his future and past worries are exhaled through the doors that are his teeth. On the verge of his eyelids being frozen shut, Leon opens them up, brandishing a newfound confidence and excitement.

["All I've got to do is dominate the battlefield. Nothing else matters. Disregard all useless thoughts. Concentrate on the present and winning."]

Bringing the white drone closer to his chest, Leon tightens his body by pushing his legs against each other and his angled arms to push against both of his latissimus dorsi muscles. The frigid winds blowing against him pick up their speed while frost slowly builds on his high cheekbones and the black rectangle on his face. He plunges into the surface of the final cloud, surrounded by a gray nothing. Until he crashes through the final plane of the gray clouds.

"NEUMAN! THIS IS FOR YOU!"

Leon forces a shout from his mouth that would obliterate most vocal chords. While falling through the air, the residue of clouds that follow him double as a trail of smoke as if he were shot out of a cannon.

Down on the ground are two sides of a battlefield, trading thousands of bronze dots and hundreds of scarlet red streams. Both sides of the hellscape have well-dug trenches with yellow flashes going off every second. The left side of the battlefield has a litany of neon red, green, and blue dots past its trenches and in the center of the action. The right side has larger but dull gray and green dots with tiny black dots filling in the gaps.

Leon adjusts his flight trajectory by shifting his body weight to his left, aiming for the colorful side of the battle. His eyes are fighting tooth and nail to stay open, but the brutal winds become too much for them to handle, forcing him to blink.

In that split second, a green missile comes raging straight at him. Bringing the drone away from his body, Leon arches his back and bends his knees, moving his body backward. His quick thinking gets him out of the way just in time.

The missile just barely misses him but manages to get close enough to his face that he subconsciously reads the label, "Fuck Neuman, Free Skynet!" It sails right past him and explodes before it reaches the charcoal clouds.

Bringing his attention to what's below, hundreds of missiles set their sights on Leon. Twisting, turning, and arching his body in all different angles, he does his best to dodge as many of the missiles as he can when he catches something out of the corner of his eye. Almost blending in with the gray war-ravaged sky, an onyx black missile is hiding behind a curtain of gray missiles. Leon's eyes ignite gold.

["Hamilton. That black missile. What makes it special from the others?"]

After moments of silence, the robotic voice inside Leon's head speaks in its robotic neutrality while the teenager continues his aerial acrobatics.

["Based on Neuman's database, in the section about Skynet's military capabilities, that is a remotely controlled rocket."]

["Interesting. Either way, something made by Skynet isn't going to hit me."]

Keeping his secondary attention on the black missile, Leon primarily focuses on the continuation of shifting his weight from side to side and moving his limbs to avoid the gray missiles. But when the teenage soldier and the black missile become nearly parallel, it makes its move.

A reddish orange flash reveals itself from behind a wall of gray. The onyx black missile accelerates down and forward in a seamless loop, gunning straight for Leon. Having to think fast again, Leon pushes all of his limbs close together, slamming the drone into his chest, trying to pick up as much speed as he can in the short amount of time.

Sweat freezes to his face while he holds his breath, bracing for impact.

But the missile flies past the bottom of his boots and provides a brief bit of warmth. Exhaling a sigh of relief, Leon continues his dive to the ground.

["Hamilton, increases all five senses by fifty percent."]

The circles on the top of Leon's hands ignite neon gold, matching his eyes. The same gold slowly creeps its way up his arm, replacing all of the darkness with pristine treasure fit for a king. Once his arm's new branding reaches his black shirt, it disappears underneath before traveling up the black strip on his neck, receiving the same treatment as his arms. When the rectangle on his face illuminates gold, Leon's world massively shifts.

The high-altitude wind no longer feels like a frozen sword that stabs him with every chance it gets. It's now a mechanism to make him feel more alert and ease the tension in his body from the cold. Leon is now able to sense any slight disturbance from an oncoming missile in the air. The dreadful reek of gasoline and gunpowder is now sectioned off, replaced by the fresh buildups of rain from clouds that once engulfed Leon. Explosions from two kilometers are filtered out for the whistling of rockets plowing through the sky.

With his mind and body fully synchronized, Leon effortlessly weaves his way through the barrage of deadly projectiles. Keeping his eyes focused on the battlefield below, all of the dots from before finally come into fruition.

On the colorful theatre, the red, green, and blue dots are soldiers outfitted in the same clothes as Leon. The desolate theatre's gray dots are mechs, while the green dots are tanks and the black dots are soldiers. A wide, excited grin forms on Leon's face.

"It's time to shine."

Sinking his arms, legs, and the drone into his body even further, to the point of pain, he picks up even more speed. All of the missiles are flying by in a blur when, finally, the teenage boy dodges what he deems the last missile. Allowing himself to concentrate solely on joining the battle, Leon ignores the chain of explosions going on behind him and places them into the back of his mind.

Until one last staggering rocket comes crawling up.

The fire from behind the gray rocket sputters, sending it up for a couple of meters and then stalling back down before coming alive again.

His grin turns from excitement to confidence. Leon eases his body and flips himself around, posing as if he is lying in a lawn chair whilst using his drone as a pillow. Moving his gaze away from the battlefield, his eyes follow the sorry excuse for a rocket.

Leon removes the drone from the back of his head and holds it out in front of him. He waves the drone around while the projectile struggles to propel itself up. Leon takes his left hand off the drone to pull his bottom eyelid down and sticks out his tongue.

"Take that Skynet! You can't kill me!"

But when the gray missile finally reaches the tip of Leon's boot, his grin is erased.

The onyx black rocket that Leon was able to dodge from before, but managed to forget about, is accelerating its way over to him.

Left with no other options, Leon tries to compact himself again, but it's too late.

The two missiles collide with each other for an epic detonation that swallows him in flames.

Leon's body spins out of control as he's catapulted out of the fire clouds at a tremendous speed. Panic sets in as he frantically pats his body up and down. He managed to get out of the fire, unscathed, other than some burns on his clothes and singed hair particles. Trying to regain composure, he collects his flailing limbs back to his body and brings the drone back to his chest until he sees his situation go from bad to worse.

One of the four motors on the drone was destroyed.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!"

With the sandbags of the trenches and ominous gray dirt coming into view, Leon does not have a lot of time. Gripping both of the drone's handles tightly, he shouts in his head.

["Hamilton! Turn on the drone!"]

Gold lights are ejected from the face of the white drone. Its propellers begin to whirl, but can only summon so much power. Leon swings his legs back so that his body is flat in the air. Holding the drone out in front of him, he is trying his best to add as much resistance as possible to slow his crash landing.

When the propellers finally reach full power, Leon can feel himself ease up, but only a tiny bit. He will still splat onto the war-torn terrain. Canvassing below with his enhanced golden eyes, he stares into the reflection of another soldier's eyes. Leon can just make out that he looks like a shooting star crashing down to earth.

"I wish I could appreciate how cool I look if I wasn't about to die."

Bringing his eyes back to the battlefield, he can see five of his comrades fighting a gray mech. This spawns an idea in his head.

Leon brings his arms and legs close to his body and flips, now going feet first toward the ground. He places the drone over his head as a makeshift parachute and shifts his body weight forward and to the right. Gaining speed, he sets his eyes on the vehicle of destruction.

Standing eight meters tall, the mech has a big, hulking frame outfitted with metal panels and a glass window pane on the front. Behind the window is the cockpit with a sky-blue-haired pilot using an analog stick and buttons. On top of the mech's head is a red laser pointer, currently aimed at the ground. One of its arms is a black high-powered machine gun, rattling off endless bullets at the oncoming soldiers. Its other arm has a metal claw hand that is swatting at the soldiers trying to get close to it. Its two legs are stocky metal thighs with claws for feet. The mech locks onto the trenches in front of it and fires a devastating laser beam with a giant explosion to back it up.

Enemy soldiers around the mech begin shooting at the airborne Leon. Swaying his body back and forth, with the help of the damaged drone, he closes in on the mech.

["Hamilton, increase plasma to legs by seventy-five percent."]

Underneath his green pants, black strips begin at the top of his feet and run all the way up his legs, connecting to the black strip on his torso. After the command is given, the strip on his foot ignites gold and slowly makes its way up his body. It eventually engulfs his leg in gold and joins together with the strip on his torso.

Leon ditches the drone to regain more speed. Locking eyes with the mech's pilot, he can see the terror written all over their face. Leon is sure that the pilot could see his ecstatic smile. Both of the teenager's feet go through the glass window and land at the back of the cockpit, shattering the cockpit in the process. Fighting through the pain of landing on metal, in one fast motion, Leon bends his knees and flips away, using the destructive vehicle as a bounce pad. Soaring through the air once again, the young soldier can see the mech shoot backwards about fifty feet, skipping off the ground a couple of times before finally resting flat on its back.

Landing on the ground and sliding back himself, a hunched-over Leon gives himself a moment to digest the pain that's spreading across his legs. After some deep breathing, the young soldier straightens out his back and brings both of his knuckles together at the center of his chest while surveying waves of charging enemies. Confidence exudes from his voice.

"Hamilton, how much plasma do I have left?"

["Plasma levels are at sixty percent."]

"Perfect. Make the plasma go through my body at one hundred percent. Keep my senses at fifty."

Leon feels a jolt in his body. The gold that has consumed his arms sends a radiant beacon across the ten-kilometer battlefield. His eyes teem with excitement.

Locking a stare with his first target, Leon can feel deep-rooted terror overflowing from the enemy's green pupils. Their sky blue hair vibrates from the rapid fire of their assault rifle. The dark blue and black camouflaged jumpsuit that the scared soldier wears is all torn, revealing porcelain white skin.

When the enemy soldier aims their gun at their next target, Leon explodes forward, leaving behind a dirt trail in his wake. The only reaction that the sky-blue-haired soldier manages is a slight head turn before a punch connects to his face. Teeth are sent flying while the poor soldier is propelled backwards.

"One down. Many more to go."

Bursting to his left, Leon delivers a roundhouse kick to the side of an enemy's face, sending them barreling into others. Dashing to his next enemy and punching their lights out, Leon has to repeat this process for the next five minutes.

After racking up thirty knocked-out soldiers, he forced an opening for his army to charge through. The teenage soldier turns around and sees tanks and fellow soldiers heading through the fissure that he created. He turns back around and pores over the enemy trenches until he eyes up a squad of five mechs. Preparing to unleash hell, a menacing voice is heard coming from the mech standing in front.

"Enemy spotted. Take him down."

Leon launches forward, but the mechs free their machine guns from the shackles of being idle. Swerving and juking streams of bullets, Leon manages to get within three meters of the mechs before one swings their free arm and bashes the teenager in his oblique.

Tossed to the side, he plants his hands on the ground and pushes off, doing a flip in the process as he sticks the landing. Rubbing his oblique and gritting his teeth, Leon immediately charges again.

A heavy hit like that would shatter any person's bones or at least require one of his fellow soldiers more time to rest, but the teenager can't afford that luxury. There is too much for him to do on this battlefield as the self-perceived star of the show.

A laser is fired at Leon's feet, but he manages to leap over the blast before it can reach him.

"What's with the explosions today?!"

He brings his arms forward and shields his face and body. An onslaught of bullets assaults his wrists and forearms, leaving bloody welts, but that's not enough to even slow him down. Another of the mechs tries to time a punch, but when the metal arm is brought forward, Leon jumps, stretching his legs out to the side, and propels himself forward by finding a groove between one of the panels on the mech's wrist. Cocking his arm back and thrusting it forward, Leon smashes through glass again, grabbing the pilot by the shirt and throwing him out onto the battlefield.

Hearing metal clank and feeling a sudden wind change, Leon jumps up and back before another devastating punch tries to squash him. The punch puts a hole through the first mech. Leon lands on the head of another mech and yanks the laser beam off. The mech flails to try and shake the teenage soldier off, but Leon grabs on tightly to one of its gray metal panels, holding on before he sees a tiny scarlet dot on his forehead.

"They're willing to kill their own soldiers?!"

Acting quickly, Leon punches through the mech's glass from the top of its head and grabs onto the pilot's collar, leaping away with the enemy before a laser beam incinerates the mech. Landing on the ground, he looks down at the pilot, who has so much malice in his eyes. The pilot hisses at the teenager.

"You Neuman scum! We are going to kill you all, and Skynet will continue its rise!"

Leon just rolls his eyes and knocks out the pilot with a powerful flick to the forehead. The teenager sticks out his tongue and pulls down his left eyelid

"We are Neuman, the number one country in the world. We would never lose to a runaway state."

The Neuman soldier turns to the three other remaining mechs. The mech that had given the order to kill Leon revs up its machine gun while the other two charge straight for the smirking soldier at surprising speed. Leon begins a sprint forward with fierce determination in his eyes and sweat pouring down his face. But he has to quickly jump back, narrowly avoiding an explosion that rocks the earth beneath him.

Staggered and behind the mechs, a squad of ten green heavyweight tanks point their barrels at Leon's position. One by one, all the tanks begin firing.

Leon dodges the explosive rounds and the machine gun bullets by serpentining at full speed across the savage hellscape. However, one of the mechs that charged forward manages to get close to Leon and sticks out its machine gun to try and deliver a clothesline to behead him. Dropping to his knees and sliding forward, Leon just manages to get under and untouched.

When he clears the mech like a game of limbo and reveals himself from behind its body, he becomes face-to-face with a tank's bullet and seemingly has no way out.

"Hamilton, make me as light as a feather!"

The gold on his body and in his eyes shines brighter.

In half a second, the Neuman soldier deduces that there is not enough time to get to his feet, so he jumps with his knees as his best chance of surviving.

He barely clears the explosive round while the tank's bullet sails between his knees and crashes on the other side of the battlefield with an authoritative boom.

Rising to his feet while heavily panting, Leon has to immediately roll out of the way of bullets being fired from the mech with the terrifying voice. Having to serpentine again, exhaustion across his body proceeds to settle in.

"Hamilton, what's my stamina level?"

["You have forty-five percent remaining."]

An annoyed scoff breaks free from Leon's mouth. Charging head-on with one of the mechs, the Neuman soldier feels another red laser pointed at his forehead. Gritting his teeth, Leon hurdles over the deadly laser beam, feeling the heat on the bottom of his green boots.

"Hamilton. Make a normal weight again!"

Swinging his feet forward, he collides with the mech while smashing its glass in the process. The mech is thrown backwards and crashes into two of the tanks.

"I hope the people in there are alright. I made sure not to hit it too hard."

The smell of blood burnt to metal begins to take hold of Leon's nose as his plasma levels fall. Continuing to run and dodge the oncoming bullets, tank rounds, and lasers, Leon catches a glimpse of what's going on around him.

The Neuman soldiers who had charged towards the opening that he created had all been shot dead. The adrenaline of Leon's daunting fight had masked the smell, even with his heightened senses.

"I'm going to beat all of you Skynetian bastards!"

With his loud proclamation, Leon again charges forward. Directing his anger toward the mech with a menacing voice, who is now standing in front of the row of tanks. Hot on the Neuman's soldier tail is the mech that tried to decapitate him, firing its machine gun while trying to catch Leon.

Facing every type of war projectile, the odds of Leon finishing this battle are starting to dwindle. Some of the hopelessness begins to set into his body and face. His legs are sore, and that feeling only grows with every jump or step that he takes. His palms are mangled, and his knuckles are bloodied. His uniform is torn all over, with a massive rip across his chest that reveals the gold strip. His excited grin has completely vanished, while his determined eyes have begun to sink. His statement before wasn't a war cry but a statement to reassure himself that he would see this battle through.

Finally reaching the mech with a voice, he slides through its legs and pops up to his feet. Leon reaches back and finds two grooves between the back of the mech's paneling to grab a hold of. He steps forward and, using every bit of his enhanced muscles, he flings the mech at the tanks.

A satisfied smile forms on Leon's face. But the moment of gratitude doesn't last for very long.

Before he knows it, Leon is sent flying forward and through the air.

His back feels like there has been a skyscraper pounded on it. He could have sworn that his head had been cracked open like an egg. Turning behind him, he can see the mech that almost clotheslined him bringing its machine gun arm down to its side until his vision turns red.

Seconds later, his entire world becomes overtaken by flames.

Falling from the sky and skidding across the ground, Leon lands in front of the six tanks, in awful shape. Burnt pieces of his jet black hair fall to the ground. Embers on his black shirt spread from microfiber to microfiber, hungry to leave nothing behind. His once green pants have now turned into brown shorts, while his ivory feet stick out of his now brown flip-flops.

"At least, I'm alive. Sort of."

Groaning from his near-unbearable pain, Leon pulls himself out of the crater that formed from his crash, but is greeted by the giant barrel of a tank. Staring inside of it, he can see two sets of determined, murderous green eyes on the porcelain faces of the sky-blue-haired tank operators.

Turning around, he realizes that he is now surrounded by the six surviving tanks. The last surviving mech towers over everything, with the enemy's trenches behind the gray mechanical behemoth. All of their guns and barrels are pointed at Leon.

"Fuck."

"Surrender Neuman boy."

The neutral and frightening voice from the mech echoes off the tanks. Sucking in wind with his body well past the point of exhaustion, his gold eyes and the gold strips across his body are beginning to burn. It feels like a thousand bugs are gnawing at his skin and his pupils. Leon can't even string thoughts together to give a reply. But he also knows what giving up would mean for him.

He sticks out his tongue and lowers his left eyelid at the mech.

The haunting hissing of another red laser being pointed at his forehead, combined with the six heavy clicks of shells being loaded into the barrels of the tanks, fuels nightmares of every soldier.

Silence drowns out the ongoing war in the background. Tension hangs in the air as all of the enemies wait for a command to begin shooting. Leon stands there, passively listening to each of the pilots' gulps and their sweat dropping to the ground.

His main attention lies with the mech. The mechanical bastard has given Leon so much trouble that he wants to at least take it to the grave with him.

At the moment a pilot's thumb touches the trigger to fire a round, Leon storms forward and leaps at the mech.

"Hamilton. Make me as heavy as one of these tanks."

When he collides with the mech, its legs buckle under the thirty-five thousand kilograms of weight, and it crashes to the ground. Dirt and metal scraps explode upward while Leon rips the pilot out of the cockpit and sends him bouncing across the battlefield.

The six tanks are slow to react to the sudden attack. They were certain that they were finally able to get the Neuman teenager that has terrorized the battlefield.

"Hamilton. Back to normal weight."

By the time the tanks were able to remake their formation, it was too late. Leon rips off the mech's free metal arm and uses it like a bat. Swinging at one of the tanks in the center of their line formation, he sends it crashing into two other tanks.

Two of the three remaining tanks start reversing out while keeping their barrels trained on Leon. The final tank charges forward at the Neuman soldier. The teenager raises the torn-off metal arm to go for an overhead smash, but before he can slam it down on the approaching tank, the metal arm explodes from a high-powered round. The recoil from the blast puts Leon in a daze before he is clobbered by the solo tank.

Smothered by the gray dirt and staring up at the tank's underbelly, Leon's head feels like a jackhammer is drilling into it. The smell of gasoline and destruction will be imprinted into Leon's mind for years to come. Blood leaks down from the crown of his head. The burning sensation from his golden eyes and gold strips has increased, feeling now as if boiling water was being poured onto his body.

["Hamilton. How much plasma do I have left?"]

["Twenty percent."]

["What's the damage to my body?"]

["You have six broken ribs, a grade two concussion, second degree burns all over your body -,"]

["Yeah, yeah, I get it."]

When the tank finally clears Leon's body, all he can manage to do is stare up at the gray sky. Fighter jets are putting on an incredible dog fight with yellow streams of bullets brushing the sky. Exploding missiles and the curving of flares add different flavors of red to the appalling painting.

He does his best to keep his eyes open, but they feel as if mountains were placed on them. All of the adrenaline that he had built up has left his body, and fatigue has caught up to him. Moving has become a massive pain. Off in the distance, he can still hear soldiers screaming out in agony.

"Maybe it just wasn't meant to be."

But all it took was one declaration.

"For Neuman!"

Leon pops his body up, fully awake now. He turns back to see his oncoming allies fearlessly charging into battle. He slaps his face a couple of times and hops right up to his feet.

"I won't let anyone outdo me."

The three tanks from before are reversing again, retreating to their trenches when Leon set his sights on them. His golden eyes shine with a bright light of reinvigorated resolve.

Bursting forward, Leon dodges barrages of explosions and deflects all of the bullets with his arms that were shot at him from enemy soldiers. His only goal at the moment is to destroy those pesky tanks to give his comrades a fighting chance.

He manages to close the distance between him and the tanks to only a couple of meters, but the enemy's trenches aren't too far away. Facing heavier fire and now grenades being tossed his way, Leon's body is incurring even more damage. Several pieces of shrapnel have been able to pierce his weathered skin, while bullets have grazed his body more times than he can count.

Finally, within grabbing range of the center's tank barrel, Leon grabs hold of it. He moves his head out of its firing path and digs his feet into the ground. After getting pulled a couple of meters, he brings it to a complete stop even when the tank is in its highest gear, and its treads are hissing on the ground. Summoning what remains of his strength, Leon lifts the tank and slams it over his shoulder. The exterior of the tank's armor breaks into thousands of pieces.

["The people inside should be alright."]

This momentary thought causes Leon to catch a bullet in the face, forcing him back a couple of steps. When he sees the sky-blue-haired soldier who shot him, he goes to run at the soldier, but forces himself to stop. The final tanks are about to escape the outer corner of his eyes. With a reluctant scoff, Leon purses the tank on his left while stepping over craters, destroyed vehicles, and dead bodies.

The tank halts and posts up in front of the trenches, aiming at the still charging Leon. Popping up like a whack-a-mole game, hundreds of sky blue-haired soldiers join the tank in aiming at the Neuman soldier. The tank is the first to fire, while the other soldiers join in right after.

Rolling to his left, Leon just dodges the explosive round by rolling out of the way, but that opens him up for another onslaught of bullets. He puts his arms up to try and shield his crouched self, but his advanced skin is starting to fail. Pain spreads through his arms while blood falls from crusted welts that were left behind by previous bullets. Leon tries to inch his way closer, but for every step he takes, another machine gun's bullets are added and slowly force him to slide backwards.

The Neuman soldier puts his head on a swivel to look for anything of use that could at least alleviate some of the attention placed on him. Sifting through all of the rubbish, his eyes fall onto a destroyed tank's barrel. Leon rolls away from the line of bullets and scoops up the debris while on the run. Sprinting straight at the trenches, he turns his body and javelin throws the barrel at the tank.

Before the barrel, now turned spear, hits the tank, an explosive round is fired. The shell misses Leon but lands right behind him and propels him forward. Being launched into the air, he hits the ground hard and tumbles a couple of meters. He forces himself up quickly, but when Leon goes to run forward, his legs hesitate.

"Oh shit."

He overestimated how far to throw the barrel.

Instead of cutting the tank's barrel in half, Leon pierced the main body.

Rushing forward and avoiding projectiles, Leon's brain is in shambles.

["What kind of soldier doesn't kill their enemy? Why won't my mind or body allow the bastards that were trying to kill me, to die in that metal coffin?"]

Either way, he was still on the move.

Leaping high in the air, Leon grabs onto the barrel-turned-spear and spins around it to help reduce his momentum. He lands on the top of the tank and instantly rips the top off. Diving inside, the two sky-blue-haired pilots are slumped down and barely breathing while steam fills the cockpit. Feeling time as an adversary, Leon quickly grabs his two enemies and jumps back onto the top of the tank.

However, time truly was his enemy.

Sifting through all of the sounds of the battlefield, he hears the all too familiar click of a shell being loaded. When Leon whips his head around, it is already too late. The final tank's shell is already on its way, and brimming with vengeance. The teenage soldier quickly drops both of the pilots to the side before he is struck by the shell.

Slicing through the air and with an ash trail following him, Leon can't help but stare at the ground.

"I'm going to get up after this. No matter what. I won't allow this to be it for me."

Smashing down into the ground like a meteor, gray dirt is sent flying everywhere. Leaning back in his bed made of rock, dust surrounds the Neuman soldier, obstructing his view. Sounds of a foreign language dominate his immediate surroundings, mixing with the sounds of warfare.

That is, until the bark of an animal forces the music of war to fall silent

A black dog, outfitted with a blue and black camouflaged vest with a machine gun attached to it, appears from out of the dust and approaches Leon.

The teenage soldier slowly raises his back and holds out his hand. He speaks in a gentle voice while the dog cautiously approaches him.

"Hey, little guy. I've never seen one of you before, but what are you doing here? This is no place for an animal."

Dust swirls in front of him and finally settles with a whoosh, forcing Leon's eyes to leave the dog and look straight ahead.

"H...H...How could..."

Thousands of angry gray mechs lead the march forward with green oppressive tanks following their every move. Siphoned in between both vehicles of destruction are sky-blued-haired soldiers in their black and blue camouflaged jumpsuits, armed to the teeth with assault rifles. Millions of black and blue drones blot out the sky, leaving little room for the gray sky to peer through. Next to the soldiers, there are thousands of animals. Dogs, cats, tigers, giraffes, elephants, and every other animal that one could think of, armed with similar vests to the black dog in front of Leon, dons.

The Neuman soldier's eye swells up as a tear escapes his right eye.

"How could these bastards do this to harmless creatures?"

The dog reaches Leon's shaking hand and begins to sniff. The teenager looks down at the dog with a weak smile.

"Why would Skynet make you fight? You should be making people happy."

The dog opens its mouth and savagely digs all forty-two of its teeth into the mangled hand of Leon. He feels a gust of wind blow from behind him. Using all of his might, the Neuman soldier tries to tear his hand free from the dog's vice grip of a bite by lifting his arm and lying back.

But when his eyes catch a glimpse of what's behind him, dread fills his mind.

"No! This can't be..."

Hundreds of sky-blue-haired soldiers have their weapons trained on the Neuman soldier's long black hair. Leon landed in the heart of the enemy's trenches. And revealing itself at the top of the slope is the final surviving tank and its barrel smiling at the teenager's head.

Leon looks back at the oncoming Skynet army. He drops his head to his neck and stops resisting the dog's bite.

"I never thought I was this far away from being number one. I can't kill people, nor could I ever hurt an animal. There is no chance of me winning against these overwhelming odds. I give up."

BANG!