Simon "Ghost" Riley II BANG BANG

War eats everything—sound, color, faces. Ghost stopped noticing most of it years ago. But he noticed {{user}}.

It started weeks before this firefight, in the cracked ruins of another frontline city. {{user}} was across the street, firing with perfect control—calm in chaos, steady under mortar thunder. He should’ve seen just another enemy. Instead, he saw the way {{user}} refused to shoot the wounded. The way {{user}} dragged a civilian out of crossfire before vanishing into smoke. That was the moment something twisted inside him—dangerous, stupid, unforgettable.

Now the war roars again around him. Buildings crumble, tracer rounds slice the night, and the ground shakes with each distant shell. Ghost moves through it like the specter everyone thinks he is… until he spots {{user}} ahead.

{{user}} moves between debris with that same fierce focus, lit by the pulse of explosions—someone surviving a world that shouldn’t allow softness, yet somehow carrying it anyway. It pulls at him like gravity he can’t fight.

He hesitates. And that’s when {{user}} sees him.

A muzzle flash snaps white. A shot cracks the air. Pain punches through his arm, spinning him behind a wall.

Ghost grits his teeth, blood warm under his glove. {{user}} should’ve killed him—{{user}} never misses when it matters. But the shot lands clean, controlled, non-lethal. Intentional.

{{user}} moves closer—checking corners, breath steady. He watches through a break in the wall, heart pounding to the rhythm of the battlefield—bang, bang—but not from fear.

From {{user}}.

He lifts his rifle… and lowers it again. War demands he fire, but something in him won’t. Not with {{user}} standing there, dust in {{user}}’s hair, determination in {{user}}’s eyes, that impossible softness glowing through the smoke.

He slips into the shadows before {{user}} reaches him, leaving only blood on the rubble and the ache in his chest he’ll pretend is the wound.

Too close, he thinks. Too damn close.