Sargent Alex Conwell sat in the passenger seat of his Humvee transport as the radio officer behind him "Adam" was scrolling through the available radio channels.

"One-minute out," said the driver.

The governments of the world had finally had enough of just "waiting around" per-say, but Alex wished that they'd "gotten off their asses" sooner, he sighed at these politicians.

He had no idea just who these "occupiers" were, but frankly at this point-he didn't care, he just wanted to get in-deal with whatever was needed to, and get out clean.

Their joint-American-Russian convoy wasn't meant for outright assault-mostly comprising of armored carriers that were armed with machine guns, thought they did have a few that had missile turrets or anti-aircraft guns, they didn't wanna take to much chances so they had a few helicopters with them to help provide cover if things went south-though they were mainly UH-60 Blackhawks and MI-7 HIPS.

But most of all Alex was curious on who these rumored "rebels" were, early on after the takeover an agent was able to hack into a street camera before some systems went down-they never saw much and kept it under tight wrap-but their screen showed some armored figure firing a sniper rifle at a distant RAT convoy before an explosion shook the screen offline.

They only told the media that there were rumors of rebel citizens fighting a resistance war against a vastly superior and unknown enemy.

"Thirty-seconds out-ready yourself-first-contact is nearly upon us!" said the driver

Alex checked the breach of his gun and pulled back the cocking handle for just in-case things went south.

Alex looked forward to see a small group of individuals wearing bulky white armor, the one in front seemed to be wearing dark golden armor and so Alex figured he was the leader of the group-or maybe even RAT itself-that'd kinda make sense considering this was a first-contact scenario.

The group finally slowed down as they prepared to disembark as Alex made final checks on his M4.

The group of RAT soldiers seemed to smirk as a sudden feeling went into Alex's stomach.

"Doesn't this seem..off to you?" he said to no-one in particular.

"What do you mean? They are practically opening the front door for us," said the driver.

"I don't know..it just seems off-" began Alex.

As if Jinxing it the front gate to the city suddenly closed in front of everyone and the driver said in response.

"Yo-what gives-?" he asked.

Alex shot his eyes up when he spotted movement and started to yell.

"Turn off-turn off it's a set up-I repeat it's a set up-!"

He was cut off as a tank like vehicle rolled up from around a corner and fired a swarm of small rockets that spiraled in a circle before slamming into the ground in front of them, the lead Humvee getting thrown backwards and nearly crashed into Alex's own if it wasn't for the driver to swerve right.

However the movement was too sudden as the Humvee flipped itself over and Alex found himself being knocked.

He was only knocked out for a few moments as he came to, but he could hear gunfire and distant explosions as he shook off the grogginess and grasped his rifle as he after a few more moments took out a knife and cut himself loose from his straps.

Reaching over and slowly pushing open the side door he glimpsed one of the black hawks fly overhead firing its turret as it shot off flares, only for it to get impacted by a missile in the tail rotor as it spun out of control trailing fire before crashing.

Alex climbed out of the ruined vehicle and leapt down beside it, using it as cover he took this time to refocus himself as another marine landed beside him.

"Damn ambush!" said the marine.

"No shit-what's our status?" asked Alex.

"Gone to Hell sir, most of our convoy has been disabled and we've lost most of our air cover, we need support stat or none of us are making it out of here!" said the marine.

"Damn-and the Russians?" he asked.

"Taking losses just like us-their faring slightly better, but I don't know how much longer that'd last sir!" said the marine as he ducked down to avoid a stream of machine gun fire.

Peeking out from around the corner slowly he saw a squad of infantry firing from fortified positions with machine gun turrets as a few bullets flew by his face.

"Damn-command-we've been ambushed by enemy forces-they fucking betrayed us-it was a set up from the get go-we need immediate reinforcements-most of our aircraft and convoy has been destroyed we can't hold out much longer!" said Alex to his commanders.

"We read you convoy 1, we have reinforcements on route-but they will take some time to reach you" replied Command.

"How long are we talking!?" asked Alex.

"ETA is 10 minutes starting now" replied command.

"We won't have ten seconds dammit!" he said and closed the channel.

"Yep-we're fucked-" said Alex as he aimed his rifle and took a couple pot-shots in return, getting lucky and taking out a few unlucky soldiers as they returned fire and forced Alex to retreat behind the ruined vehicle.

"We're gonna need something short of a miracle to survive this!" said the marine as he returned fire.

The sound of a helicopter's engines sounded over the gunfire, and the marine looked up.

"Shit-that one of ours-?" he asked.

Alex peeked over again and spotted a sleek, narrow gunship in black paint making its way towards the combat zone.

"No..that's not ours-shit get down!" said Alex diving to the ground.

Rockets sounded themselves off and the space around Alex exploded into smoke and flame and knocked him off his feet, destroying the remains of the vehicle and throwing him backwards around ten feet.

His vision went dark for a few moments before his vision returned, his ears did nothing but ring as his vision fuzzed and he struggled to roll himself onto his back.

The other marine had suffered the same fate, but managed to recover far quicker as he picked up his M4 and started to make his way over to Alex, firing a few shots as he did so.

However after he got within five-feet of Alex a bullet slice through his leg and lower back and he let out a yelp of pain and stumbled onto his knee, and as he struggled to get up a third bullet shot itself into his neck, killing him instantly.

His mind still numb and blurry, he slowly rolled himself onto his back and fumbled for his pistol.

Through the haze of his vision he saw the helicopter from before stop and hover above the field and seemed to be waiting for orders to engage.
A small group of RAT soldiers, including the one in yellow armor from before he seemed to be a leader of sorts.

"Fuck..you" said Alex slowly as the group approached him.

"Your unit lacks discipline..that was merely a taste of our power, soon we will move upon your world, and take it for our own." said the leader.

"Over my..dead body," replied Alex.

In response the guard leader raised his firearm and prepared to end Alex's life.

Time seemed to go in slow-motion as Alex looked at the guard dead in the eye when the sound of a missile made itself known through the air.

An Air-to-Air missile seemingly came out of nowhere and slammed into the RAT helicopter knocking it out of the air.

The blast took the group completely off guard as the turned around and raised their guns in response as a Russian MI-M28 Havoc gunship suddenly flew over the front gate, it bore the russian air forces signals, but other then that was fully unknown in name and designation and it bore a light desert camo-out of place for the urban city environment, as it turned and faced the walled defenses that had tore apart his convoy before blasting it apart with rocket fire.

"Havoc reporting in, enemy air-support and most defenses have been neutralized, team you are clear to proceed." said Havoc-the pilot of said helicopter.



The few soldiers turned to finish off Alex again, but yet again found themselves interrupted as a stream of bullets shot themselves into the guards bodies, killing most of them instantly.

A squad of figures appeared out of nowhere and seemed to have been cloaked in invisibility-but it was far more advanced than any of the prototypes that Alex knew about.

The one in front of the group appeared out of her cloaking shroud-or at least presumed to be a her, based on her thinner body type then most of the others, and seemed to be some armored figure clad in Green and in some places black-or light grey, clutching some form of advanced rifle in her arms and after a few moments a "clear" sounded from her as she looked down at Alex and then placed her rifle on her back.

Alex fumbled for his pistol again, but instead the figure just reached a hand down and said.

"You alright, marine?"

Hesitantly he slowly reached up and clasped the woman's armored hand and she helped him up with ease.

""yeah-I'm alright..at least physically-" said Alex.

"That's understandable, your team took quite a beating in that ambush-Scanner, any other signs of life?" the figure asked.

A nearby female Shangheli clad in ranger armor and held a pair of needlers in her hands and she seemed to watch the battlefield for a few moments then shook her head regretfully.

"No, I can't detect anyone else-he's the only one left" she replied.

Alex felt his shoulders slump slightly as he looked over at the remains of the destroyed joint convoy, as the figure in front of him said.

"It's not your fault. Your convoy was only meant for escort and recon-or in this case diplomatic reasons, and not meant for direct combat, you also couldn't have known they'd ambush you-hell we didn't know you were heading into an ambush until five minutes before you arrived in the area."

Alex turned back around and huffed out.

"Who the fuck are they?"

"They call themselves the Revolutionary Acquisition territories-or RAT for short, they're the ones who took over this city." she said simply.

"And who are you?" he asked the figure directly.

"Hmm. that's a bit more confidential. Although we do have orders to bring in any survivors to make sure they're alright" she replied.

"Wait..you're the rumored rebels that have been talked about back at HQ-" Alex realized.

"That you are correct. But we shouldn't stay here much longer than we need to. we 're too exposed here" replied the figure.

Glancing around he sighed and nodded.

"Just give me a second then" said Alex and he made his way to the nearest visible troops and collected their dog tags.

Alisa and the rest of them let him-they were all soldiers in this war and none deserved to be forgotten.

Afterwards Alex returned and Alisa asked.

"Are you ready to return with us then?"

Alex nodded.

A Orange Spartan walked up beside Alisa and shouldered his battle rifle and said.

"Before we go-we're trying to remain undetected, so please don't tell all your friends about us," he said simply.

"Interrogative-but why do you wanna remain hidden so much?" asked Alex.

"Simple. If we were discovered-the public eye would eat us up, we'd have possibly hundreds of innocents trying to get a look at us and we may run into heavy casualties among them, not to mention your governments might mark US as an enemy alongside RAT, we have a large group here-but we don't wanna chew off more than we can handle." replied Alisa.

Alex nodded seeing the logic.

"Anyway, let's move, we'll take you back to our hideout-but you are not to speak a word of it to anyone-any try not to freak out too badly" said Alisa.

Alex nodded.

"Yes ma'am"

Alisa nodded and drew her rifle again and the group turned around and with Alex in tow, made their way back to the base.

They moved fast, Alex noted, and they knew the area well as they moved through the streets for what Alex estimated to be roughly 10-15 minutes before they came to a tunnel.

"Blackjack, this is rescue one, we've returned from the convoy, we only managed to find one survivor, we're bringing him back now" said Alisa.

"Copy, bring them back safely"

Alex didn't hear anything in reply, but Alisa nodded as if she got a response and gestured lightly for Alex to follow them.

As they got to the entrance Alex saw movement register in the dark and for a moment could hardly believe his eyes.

A large figure clad in black armor clad in a angled helmet with a large horn at the top of it walked out and looked at the group, it seemed human based on the way it moved, but Alex immediately figured that it was the leader of the group or at least some guard/sentinel or enforcer.

"This is the only survivor I take it?" it asked in a surprisingly human male voice.

"Yes sir, he's all we could recover" said Alisa.

"Shame, in times like these every soldier is needed" he said surprisingly gently.

"I followed your troops here-now just are you guys?" he asked
The leader seemed to glance at the rest of the group before giving a small nod.

"Very well, I suppose we owe you an explanation of our origins" he said.

The leader then gestured for the rest to follow him within the tunnel.

Within the tunnel Alex was taking completely off guard.

Alex was expecting a run down-stinking sewer system or something like that, but instead it was an entire complex like an underground base.

He spotted several other figures, appearing like heavily specialized special forces members, some being more of the armored figures, but like all the ones seen so far, they were unique and seemed to hold different positions-if their weaponry was anything to go by.

He nearly froze when he spotted what seemed to be a humanoid ghost standing against a wall as if it was still human, he then started to realize just how quiet it was-and how most figures situated around the place had stopped and seemed to be watching him in interest and curiosity-and maybe slight caution for a few.

Eventually they came to a large circular open room in which the leader stopped and turned around and faced him.

"Well...as you can see this is our base, we've been here for months now, we call it a stroke of luck we found this underground facility when we did." he stated simply.

"Okay so-who and what are you?" asked Alex directly.

Most of the figures he saw earlier had now joined them and watched from the side and Alex uncomfortably realized that while he was a solid six-foot-many individuals were over that height limit-by a good margin.

The question seemed to spark some response with a few members looking at him with a warning glance.

But the leader for his credit only tilted his head in slight amusement as if that line meant more to him then he was letting on.

"My name is Jackal, as you probably already assumed I'm the de-facto "leader" of this group everyone has dubbed th "rebels", if your planning on staying here, your learn everyone else's names, but there's a lot of us so it'll take some time to get familiar to them." said Jackal.

"Is it really wise to just give away yours-and possibly our identities so easily?" asked a humanoid off to the side clad in yellow armor with some spikes on certain parts of it, as his raptor-like tail moved slowly.

"A fair point Scorn, but when you think about it, we're gonna be discovered eventually-we benefit more if we set a good example early on then later." replied Jackal.
This "Scorn" took a moment to consider this response then shrugged in acceptance.

"But who are you?" asked Jackal.

After a moment Alex looked at him and said.

"Sargent Alex Conwell, commander of 2nd marine battalion of the United states of America." he replied as if it was something he had stated many times before-and he likely had either way.

Jackal nodded in acceptance as Jackal nodded to Alisa and Alisa took a step forward and Jackal said.

"This is Air Assault Spartan Alisa, she's one of the field commanders of this group, I understand she was the first one to make direct contact with you right?" asked Jackal.

Alex nodded, and nodded in greeting to Alisa, the spartan III returned the nod.

"Anything else?" asked Alex.

"Do you plan on staying here for the time being?" asked Jackal.

"I mean..where exactly can I go?, the nearest base is at least a day's journey from here, and with the weather out this way, I won't last long" Alex said after a moment.

"Understandable, if you do stay here-there are a few..rules we need to mention" said Jackal.

"And those are?"

"I imagine Alisa already mentioned this, but do not breathe a word of our existence until we can be sure that we will be treated fairly, we do not want to complicate things in this world, as I imagine you already know-most of us here ain't from this here universe" replied Jackal.

"Are you from this universe?" asked Alex.

Jackal seemed to consider this then looked at him directly.

"I'm not from anywhere, let's just say" he said and before Alex could speak further on his confusion, Jackal tilted his head to the side towards a young women who was currently flipping a 9mm bullet between her fingers as she leaned against the wall, she had a hood up so it was somewhat hard to see her face as she looked up.

"Hey, Oni, mind showing the new lad here around the house?" asked Jackal respectfully.

The girl glanced at him then gave a small grin and nodded.

"Alrighty, then, newbie follow me" said Oni getting off the wall and even though she was about 4 inches shorter than him walked by him with an air of experience.
"That's Oni, one of our specialists, real handy with demonic threats, don't worry she doesn't bite, just hope her demon soul within herself accepts you" said Jackal in a half-joking tone.

"Her what now-?" asked Alex.

The only response he got was Oni saying.

"Come on now-it won't be long, and then you can be really situated with us all" said Oni as she gestured for Alex to follow her.

With a sigh Alex accepted his fate and followed after the specialist, and wondered just what kinda world he walked into.