Return To Base
#2 of True Suffering
The heavy footsteps resounded through even the mud and ground, splashing the rain water in every direction. There was over five hundred pounds of weight in each step, making the boots he wore sink into the earth a bit. He had scattered the main army, left their forces in disarray, and had sent his squad to catch and kill the retreating forces from the main army while he eliminated the rear and flank forces. It was a sound military tactic to occupy the front lines with a larger, less-than-adequately trained group, while the elite soldiers swept the right and left flanks and the best of the best attacked the rear. Were it not for him and his team being called in, it would've been a massacre for those that contacted his bosses and requested assistance.
A behemoth paw raised up and swept aside the long, matted white strands of hair that hung over his face. Those glowing red eyes a trademark symbol for him, next to the serrated and jagged knife he used. The male lupine despised using firearms unless it was necessary, or stylish. To him, killing was an artform, some days it was sloppy and horrific, and other days it was a masterpiece he wished he could hang up on his office walls. The med officer was an example of a good killing he thought. Further looking in retrospect, he nodded his head, the entire group was a good killing. A lift and stab technique on the doctor to silence his disbelief, two H.V.I.P. rounds turned the heads of the silent men into a fine red mist, and the bite-and-decapitate method used on the believer had turned the room from boring and lifeless, to bloody and lifeless.
Each step left with a squishing, suckling noise on his feet and a large boot imprint in the ground. His red eyes held no pupils, no irises, no cornias, nothing but the red color and the eerie glow. Further and further he walked, the rain pelting against his massive body, as if mother nature were attempting to drown him for his transgressions. But his body would not allow it, a walking, talking, breathing testament of science. His height alone a challenge to nature to strike him with lightning if it dared.
Finally beneath the canopy a tree, his features were not clouded by the rain any further, and one could look at him clearly. Normally straight, silky white hair was clung to his back and face. Pointed lupine ears atop his great head swiveled left and right, catching even the remotest of sounds. A long, sleek muzzle filled with sharp, piercing fangs and bone crushing teeth easily identified him as canine in nature, but it was the size and sheer magnificence of his body that labled him as wolf. The magnitude of his muscle structure helped clear up his species, he was a dire wolf. And since the fur coating his entire body was sheer white, he was an arctic dire wolf. The entirety of his body was covered in muscles that were corded and bulky. One might think he wasn't agile, but they had never seen him in a hand-to-hand fight against an opponent that was posing at least a decent challenge.
"Squad... report." Were his only words spoken since the murder of the final group of retreating soldiers in the rear assault.
There was silence before he heard in his ear the voices of his special ops team. "Yes Ghost, I'm here... front assault oblitered, all retreating soldiers dead." A second voice, "I second that, got at least two hundred kills myself." A third voice, "Right flank is no more." And a fourth voice, "Left flank is non-existant Ghost."
The lupine just nodded his head, "Then get to the LZ and return to base. Our job is done."
The first voice came back, "But Ghost, there's still a village or two in the surrounding area, we could just slip over a--..."
"Report to the LZ Shadow... if you're not there first, I'm going to kill you when I find you." His eyes remained the same but his voice carried strange authority over the others, even the rebellious Shadow. And his com unit was turned off before anyone could respond. Shadow knew his leader would indeed slay him and leave his corpse to decay in the earth if he was anything less than first. That's what made Ghost such a powerful, yet fearful leader, if you disobeyed or did anything less than perfect, that was the end of you.
There was no skip in his step, there was no increased pace to attempt to give himself a reason to kill Shadow, there was nothing but his calm, heavy steps. Those cold, fearful red eyes cleaved a path through the rain and darkness, catching every detail of the rain pelting leaves, dirt, plants... and bodies. His special team had brought their kills and presented them to their leader, creating a long trail of dead bodies that lead to the landing zone.
It took him almost ten minutes of walking to get there, the gentle whirr of a silent, stealth helicopter about to lift off and leave whoever wasn't on schedule behind. Waiting for him, leaned against the transport or sitting down, were his crew of four elite operatives.
Shadow was the lizard with the barbs on his tail, accentuated by the blade that had been attached on both sides, making his lengthy appendage a most deadly weapon. Coming out from the elbows of his suit were two long sharp and jagged pieces of metal, remotely resembling a shattered sword around the edges. Much like his leader, his eyes were also red with no pupils or whites. In fact, none of his team had eyes that were different from his.
Stalker was the one on the ground, sharpening his knife and cleaning the blood stains off it it. This feline was never one to talk a whole lot. Ghost liked him the most because he did his job, did it well, and didn't give him any shit about orders or motives. He knew just as well as Shadow that it would take something more powerful than a tank, and more manuverable than a ninja to even hurt him enough to pose a threat to the healing augmentation in his body. He glanced up from his knife and gave Ghost a silent nod. His leader returned the acknowledgement and looked to the last two of his group.
Spectre and Reaper were both foxes with a passion for torturing their victims long after they got the information they needed. Ghost liked them because they were sadistic like himself, and also quite stylish with their kills. Like a Van Gogh from someone's nightmares. The detail and intricacy of each stroke of their knives and other tools was like watching an artist paint. Ghost had actually complimented them once, and ever since they'd been working as a tight-knit team to please him further. After all, Ghost was the highest ranking, most decorated, most augmented, most lethal killer-hunter ever dreamt up. Regardless of that fact, the male and female couple had made it clearly obvious to him that anytime he wanted to sit in on any of their 'interrogations', he was more than welcome to.
Reaper, the female fox, had also made it plain to her commander that if ever he wanted something to fuck as hard as he wanted, she was more than willing to rip his clothes off and slam his shaft into any and every hole in her body. Ghost had... no replied to that offer yet. Her sadistic nature had attracted him only so slightly, but there was a tone in her eyes, a slight swish her in tail as she spoke that led him to believe she had other intentions for his dick than to suck and fuck. To those twin foxes, torture was sex, and sex was useless.
The two of them looked up at him and smiled as best they could, coming off as more of a sneer or curl of the lip than anything happy-to-see-him looking. He'd come to know that look well. They had tortured plenty on the flank attacks he was sure of it, and probably had enough time to fuck each other afterwards. He didn't care if they were semi-related, having been spawned from the same genes. Ghost didn't care one bit if they fucked and sucked, so long as they got the job done and kept up their streak of stylish endings to their torture sessions.
The commander got on the stealth transport and sat down, the rest of the team following behind him. Specter and Reaper sitting near Ghost, while Shadow and Stalker sat across from him. The lupine looked at the feline and between them passed a mental thought, a silent communication that gave Ghost the confirmation he needed. Reaching inside his cloak, he removed a remote detonator and sat it in his lap.
"Pilot, take off. Be out of a sub-nuclear explosion's range in three minutes." Were the foreboding words that rolled off the wolf's tongue. The mink pilot nodded and raised the transport up and engaged a cloaking device that was far more advanced than anything this world had ever seen. The entire chopper became invisible to both the eye, heat vision, radar, and sonar. The aerial vehicle shot off like a rocket in the direction of its base, and in exactly three minutes, Ghost pressed the detonate button on the remote.
In the city they had just protected, a sub-nuclear explosive device was activated and triggered. The resulting shock and heat waves tore the city apart and erased all signs of life within those walls and a good deal outside them. Since the nuke was also detonated at ground zero, there were no ruins or walls, no pictures of shadows burnt against cement. There was nothing but a smoking, glowing crater.
The chopper was indeed well out of the range of the explosion. Shadow watched with insatiable lust for more destruction and death and his tail wriggled at his feet. Ghost raised the remote up, and crushed it soundly within his giant paw, then extended it out the opening on the side of the transport, and let the pieces crumble out of his hand and fall down, down, down to the ground.
"Mission Success... number of casualties confirmed. Over fifty thousand buyers eradicated in blast radius, and another seven hundred killed when the raiders came to the city."
Reaper grabbed Spectre's crotch and grinned at him, "And they thought we were going to help them... stupid fools..." She stroked her brother's dick through his pants and he grabbed one of her tits and squeezed it hard. The strength augmentation was always active in his squad, so it must've felt like vice grip was crushing her tit in her brother's paw. But Reaper only moaned and returned the favor to Specter's balls. This continued until Ghost punched Reaper in the back of her head so hard she smashed her face into Specter's. Fangs were broken off and jaws were knocked loose from the impact of that sledgehammer sized fist. The two foxes settled back down into their seats and cracked their jaws back into place as their fangs and missing teeth began to immediately, but slowly reform.
"The rest of this Goddamn trip better be in silence, the first one to fucking twitch is getting tossed out of the transport. Now shut up and don't move till we get back."
Everyone fell silent and still at his command. Ghost was so heavily altered and augmented, that he could've killed all four of them even if they teamed up against him. While they were the four most elite of their kind, Ghost was a prototype S-class soldier who could modify his augmentations, turn them on and off at his will, and even had a much stronger ghosting capability than anyone else. So it was only logical that he be made the leader, and his orders be followed quickly and concisely, lest he be tempted to actually follow up on a threat. Even Shadow didn't argue with his commander further when he knew he couldn't get away with it.
As the chopper shot through the sky, Ghost began to wonder about which meatbag recruits would be spawned today that he would have to look over. He could never have known that one particular recruit, the lowest of the low ranked soldiers, would be the one to spin his life off-course and change it forever.