Violence of Action.

14 FEB 0430 ICHEON, SOUTH KOREA 707th Special Missions Group OPEN-POV PART ONE

The killhouse smelled like burned propellant and old sweat, a scent that had soaked into the plywood walls over years of iterations. Staff Sergeant Han Do-kyun, team leader of Rider Team, watched from the observation gap as the four-man stack stacked against the center-fed room’s threshold, their silhouettes jittering in the green wash of his NODs. Above them on the catwalk, Master Sergeant Caleb Wright of Detachment-39 leaned on the railing, his clipboard catching the dim red glow of a chemlight, while Sergeant First Class Marcus Thompson and Staff Sergeant David Okafor flanked him, optics trained down.*

Corporal Kang Min-woo stood at the front of the group, breathing through his mouth. His eyes were irritated from looking through his night-vision goggles. Behind him, the soldiers squeezed each other's shoulders in a chain—from Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon to Corporal Shin Tae-yeong, and then to Kang. This silent, physical signal confirmed to everyone that their weapons were loaded and they were fully focused. Shin then leaned forward and whispered very quietly into Kang’s ear..

“Stack is set, green light.”

Kang drove his boot heel beside the doorknob. The latch exploded inward with a crack, and he was moving, slicing the threshold at a controlled jog, his suppressed K2C coughing tchk-tchk into the dark. A steel torso target flashed gray in his tube.

“Contact left!”

Ting-ting

Shin flowed in behind him, hooking right for the near corner, weapon snapping up into high ready. From the catwalk, Thompson scribbled a note about Shin’s footwork.

“Right corner clear!”

Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon pushed deep, covering the fatal funnel, then engaged a smaller plate tucked in the far corner. Tchk. Ting.

“Moving deep!”

Corporal Jung Hae-sik anchored the doorway, rifle outward, scanning the black hallway behind them.

“Hallway is secure, rear is held!”

The room went quiet except for their breathing. Kang opened his mouth to call status—

“Freeze right there, hold your positions.”

Wright’s voice boomed from the overhead loudspeaker. The four operators of the 707th locked into place, weapons hovering, shoulders tense.

Wright leaned over the rail, red pen pointing at like a dagger.

“Two-man, your button hook was sloppy,” he called down. “You crossed the plane before checking that hard corner. If that target had been tucked three inches tighter to the wall, you’d be dead. Do you understand?”

Shin adjusted his grip, staring straight ahead at the plywood wall he’d just cleared.

“Copy that,” he called up.

Wright made a heavy mark on his sheet.

“Three and four, spacing and sectors were solid, but the whole team is moving too fast. This is training, not a sprint to chow. Smooth is fast, ladies.”

Kang nodded his head slightly. “Understood, senior.”

Wright clicked his stopwatch. Tapped the railing twice. “Reset the room. No unfreeze for this mistake. Back out to the hallway. Next team, go.”

The four men shuffled out, brass crunching under their boots. In the ready area, Kim So-yeon sat on a folding chair against the cinderblock wall, her moss-green hair tucked under a watch cap, fingers worrying a smooth river stone in her pocket. She watched Shin’s face as he passed—tight jaw, eyes on the floor.

"Uehhh..." she muttered, sinking lower. "They really are brutal."

The line of soldiers from Detachment 39 walked past her. Their camouflage uniforms looked slightly different from the patterns worn by the 707th unit. Master Sergeant Wright nodded at them. They walked up to the doorway looking highly relaxed and confident, moving like soldiers who had raided real houses during actual combat.

Han Do-kyun exhaled through his nose, running a hand over the stubble on his neck. “Ah, it’s no problem. Those four have been off tempo for like… forever. We needa fix that before Freedom Shield kicks off.”

“Mhm,” said Sergeant Seo Jin-ho, the team’s 2IC, arms crossed over his plate carrier. He turned his head toward the chair where So-yeon sat tapping her heel against the concrete, the stone clicking faintly against her keys. “You ready, we're up next.?”

So-yeon snapped upright, the stone nearly falling from her lap. “Y-yes… sir.”

“Okay then.”

The Detachment 39 team entered the room. Their movements were perfectly coordinated, highly efficient, and without any mistakes. They were walking out and laughing about a bar in Itaewon when Wright pressed the button to speak over the loudspeaker again.

“Alright, ladies. We’ll wrap it up for today. Getting a little late, and we’ve been at it all day. Go and take a break. We’re off for February 14th, so go have some time with your loved ones.”

A muted cheer rippled through the building. Jin-ho chuckled, checking his watch. “Well, I guess fucking not.”

So-yeon let out a heavy, exhausted sigh. She kept remembering the instructor's advice that moving flawlessly is more important than rushing, and she did not know if she was glad or scared that her turn to practice for the twentieth time ha d been canceled. She stood up, and was the first to leave the training building.

The February air was extremely cold. The city of Icheon felt completely different at two in the morning compared to the daytime. The surrounding rice fields were frozen, and to the east, the distant city lights of Seoul gave the night sky a permanent orange glow. The military base was small—a training area connected to a larger communications base. It had housing and vehicle parking built around the indoor training building and a paved area for helicopters.

People had been feeling increasingly anxious for months. Everyone knew the Freedom Shield military exercise was scheduled for March, and their monthly training with South Korean special forces felt more serious than usual. The training scenarios were no longer about fighting generic terrorists and the old KPA Army. The Detachment 39 instructors had become much stricter and harsher, trying to make every practice exercise as intense as real combat.

So-yeon inhaled the cold air and could not help but smile. She tilted her head back to look at the moon. It was a stark white shape in the sky, completely unaffected by the massive, glowing city lights of Seoul.

An arm dropped over her shoulder.

“Oof—!”

She lost her balance, her heart beating fast, and looked up to see Park Yu-jin smiling at her. Yu-jin was a member of the naval operations unit. She was very muscular and had a very short military haircut that she secretly dyed a reddish-brown color, even though it was against military rules. She and So-yeon had passed the difficult special forces tryouts together. They were two women in a training program designed to make candidates quit by exposing them to extreme cold and keeping them awake. During that time, Yu-jin had recognized So-yeon's true abilities, while most of the instructors completely ignored the quiet girl with unusual orange eyes.

“Ah… w-what is it?” So-yeon sputtered.

Yu-jin hummed, following her gaze to the moon. “I was looking for you. Thought you were still in there hiding in a corner or some shit. But instead you’re staring at this.”

“Umm… is there a problem?”

“No. None at all. I was just grabbing you to head to the PX with me. Since today is a special day.”

So-yeon blinked. “Is today your birthday? Well… h-happy b—”

“No, not that, silly!” Yu-jin interjected, laughing, the sound sharp enough to scatter frost. “It’s Valentine’s Day. Where you buy gifts for your special ones.”

“Special ones… do you mean your m-mom and dad?”

Yu-jin huffed, shaking her head. “I mean… you’re not half wrong, but it’s more than that. You gift people—friends, pets, and even…” She paused, smirking. “Lovers.”

“E-ehhhh?!!” So-yeon’s face went hot, the flush climbing to her ears. “C-could it be?”

“No! Nothing like that!” Yu-jin rebutted, throwing her arms up in an X, still grinning. She sighed, regaining her composure. “Anyway, I’ll be heading to the PX later this morning. Come with me, okay?”

“Mm... Okay.” So-yeon nodded, still burning.

Yu-jin smiled, and her facial expression became more gentle. She playfully rubbed the top of So-yeon’s hat. This sudden display of affection surprised So-yeon at first, making her stand perfectly still, but then she leaned toward the touch because she enjoyed it. Yu-jin then walked away toward the weapons storage room to return her equipment. So-yeon watched her walk away until Yu-jin entered the brightly lit doorway and could no longer be seen, the indoor lights briefly reflecting off her short, reddish-brown hair right before she disappeared from view.

The rest of Rider Team emerged from the shoot house, Han Do-kyun and Jin-ho in the lead, followed by the Americans of Det-39. The two groups split naturally, Koreans heading for the armory, Americans breaking off toward the helipad where a Blackhawk sat in the dark, its rotors still, crew chief visible in the cabin doorway sipping from a metal thermos.

“Come on,” Han said, falling in beside So-yeon. “Keep up. Moon’s not going anywhere.”

“R-right.”

She walked slowly, her boots scraping the paved ground. She kept looking at the moon, which appeared as a plain round shape in the dark sky. She smiled quietly to herself, thinking about Yu-jin’s laugh, the base store, and if she was brave enough to buy chocolate for someone who actually cared about her.

Then, everything changed.

The sky above Icheon was clear. The rural area was completely quiet, while the large city of Seoul glowed in the distance to the east. As So-yeon looked up at the moon, she saw a small, silent, silver object moving very high up in the sky.

For a moment, it just looked like a strange flash of light.

...

All the security lights around the base's fence turned off at the exact same time, making the area completely dark. But the most shocking event happened further away. All the lights in the massive city of Seoul—the windows, roads, and tall buildings—turned off instantly. You could only see the dark outline of the unlit buildings blocking the stars.

Closer to Icheon, electrical power stations started breaking down catastrophically. Bright blue electricity shot into the air, and electrical transformers exploded with orange sparks before permanently breaking. The normal, constant background noise of electrical machines stopped completely, leaving an uncomfortable silence.

On the road outside the base, car engines suddenly stopped running. Car headlights and dashboard lights turned off. Because they could no longer see or steer properly, drivers slammed on their brakes, and cars violently crashed into each other in the total darkness.

Inside the military housing and offices, the sudden silence caused instant panic and tension.

“What…” someone whispered.

More objects appeared in the dark sky, moving incredibly fast and glowing bright orange with trails of superheated gas. They leveled out their flight paths before diving toward the ground.

BOOM.

A massive explosion created a fireball north of the base.

BOOM.

BOOM.

More explosions followed, hitting the ground in a straight line that moved closer and closer to the center of the base.

“INCOMING!”

“TAKE COVER!”

Everyone threw themselves to the ground, but So-yeon stood still at first. She stared at the fires lighting up the distant sky. An incredibly loud, high-pitched noise passed directly overhead.

CRASH.

A weapon directly hit the weapons storage building. The force of the explosion threw So-yeon into the air and slammed her to the ground. Her face scraped harshly against the pavement, and she experienced a loud, continuous ringing in her ears from the blast. She covered her head on the ground, panicked and overwhelmed by the noise, thinking when will this end when will this end, over and over until she could no longer think clearly.

After what felt like a very long time, the ground stopped shaking.

Emergency sirens went off, and people screamed. Inside the burning armory, the stored ammunition began exploding from the heat. Underneath all that noise, there was the low sound of aircraft turbofan engines.

So-yeon got up on her knees, trembling. She could taste blood and dust in her mouth

“HAAAAAAAA… AHHHHH!”

A loud scream broke through her confusion. To her left, a man was lying on his back, and another soldier was kneeling next to him.

“Wha—” she said, her eyes opening wide.

“C’mon man, stay with me!”

“AAAAAAAA! IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS!!!”

The scream got louder and sounded wet, like he was choking. A metal construction bar from a broken building had stabbed entirely through his stomach and was sticking out. He was moving wildly in pain, making the wound bigger as blood poured onto the ground.

“Ghh… hah… fucking HELP me.” Blood poured from his mouth.

So-yeon struggled to stand up. The military helicopter that brought the Detachment 39 soldiers had crashed into the office building, with its back end sticking out of the wall. She saw the bottom half of an American soldier hanging out of the helicopter doors. His legs were moving weakly while fire burned his boots and his uniform fused with his skin. Missiles had hit the office building, the vehicle parking area, the weapons storage building, and the sleeping quarters.

She slowly realized what was happening, her brain struggling to process the information.

We are under attack.

She looked up. The moon was still visible, but now the sky was full bright lines of glowing red bullets into the sky to hit enemy aircraft. Huge airplanes were flying across the night sky, dropping enemy soldiers with parachutes over Seoul and the surrounding region. Some of the airplanes were flying south toward their base.

Oh shit.

She started walking toward the ruined weapons storage building. She moved faster until she was running, her face twisted in pain as tears washed away the dirt on her cheek.

“No…” she choked, struggling to breathe.

Yu-jin had gone to that building earlier. Yu-jin was inside it.

She went to the front doors and pulled back. Thick, dark, foul-smelling smoke poured out, and the heat was so intense it physically stopped her from moving forward. She backed away, coughing. The weapon had not destroyed the entire building, so the back doors might still be fine.

She found the back entrance, a metal door that was burned but not broken. She kicked it hard multiple times until her foot went numb. Finally, the lock broke with a loud, high-pitched scraping noise, and the door opened.

The area smelled strongly of burning gunpowder, melting rubber, and chemical smoke. She covered her mouth and nose with a piece of cloth, walked inside, and turned on her flashlight.

She heard voices nearby.

“Leave him here for the medics, we gotta move, we can’t stay here,” a voice said, speaking with urgency.

“But he's gonna fucking die!”

“No. Let’s fucking go, before we end up just like him.”

She heard boots rubbing against the floor and a gun being picked up from the ground. Then she heard footsteps running away toward the emergency meeting area.

She heard someone crying. Then another sad, emotional voice spoke: “I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry.”

So-yeon stood in the dark with the cloth over her mouth and stayed quiet. She looked straight ahead, her flashlight beam shining a visible path through the thick smoke.

Someone was in this building. It might be Yu-jin, or it might be someone else. She would not accept any other possibility.

She crouched close to the ground, her hand shaking as she held the flashlight.

“H-hello!?” she coughed against the cloth, narrowing her eyes to see through the smoke. “Uughh…”

14 FEB 0450 SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 707th Special Missions Group OPEN-POV PART TWO

The K151 Raycolt was made to drive through mud and mountains, carrying a small group of soldiers through rough ground that would completely trap a normal car, and not to sit in a congested street. The roads were filled with melted pavement, destroyed cars, and heavy concrete walls that had been blown around by explosions. The KLTV was stuck behind a fallen delivery truck.

Staff Sergeant Han Do-kyun sat in the passenger seat with his rifle held between his knees. He looked at the navigation screen, which had stopped working twelve minutes ago, just like all the other unprotected electronics in the city. The electromagnetic weapon had destroyed them. He could see the palace walls in the distance, about two kilometers away in a straight line. However, they had to struggle through thousands of scared civilians and an unknown number of North Korean special forces who had already sneaked into the city.

"Fucking hell," Han said, his voice flat. "We have to hurry. We’ll go on foot."

Han was out the door before the driver, who was a regular army soldier assigned to them right before the mission, could even speak.

"Without support?" The corporal leaned over the wheel, eyes wide. "Have you fucking lost it?"

Han put the strap of his rifle over his shoulder, making sure it was secure. "The longer we stay here, the more likely he’s already dead by the time we get there."

The corporal looked at him, then at the burning store on their left, and then at the dark shape of the Bosingak Bell building standing tall over the surrounding roofs. He breathed out heavily and sat back in his seat. "Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you."

Kim So-yeon was the last person to get out of the vehicle. She jumped down from the back, her boots landing on the pavement that was covered in broken glass. As soon as she stepped away from the protective truck, she noticed the chaos of the city. She could hear the loud, echoing sounds of guns being fired from near and far away between the tall buildings. There were screams coming from all directions in the dark. Somewhere to the west, an underground gas pipe caught fire, lighting up the street with an orange glow for three seconds.

She pulled her NODs down over her eyes. The lenses turned on thankfully, they were protected against the electrical weapon as she removed the batteries from them. But the fires burning in a government building two blocks north were too bright, causing her goggles to temporarily blind her with white light whenever she looked that way. She pushed the goggles back up onto her helmet and blinked to clear her vision.

She looked back at the truck. The bulletproof window next to where she had been sitting was cracked in a circle from an enemy bullet. The thick glass had stopped the bullet, but it was close enough that she could see the crushed metal in the center of the cracked glass. She touched it with one finger, swallowed hard out of fear, and walked to Han.

"How exactly are we going to get there?" she asked. Her voice was steady, but only because she had practiced making it that way. "By getting here we ran into ten ambushes." She pointed at the dark street behind them, where the bodies of three North Korean scouts lay in a ditch they had killed five minutes ago. "Now I wonder how much more we’re going to run into. And now since we don’t have our armor…"

She didn’t finish her sentence because everyone understood. The team had left their base so quickly that some of them were only weren't even wearing their uniforms. Some did not have enough mags to sustain a prolonged fight, and two of the police officers who had joined them did not have night-vision goggles. They were supposed to be a highly prepared emergency response team, and well now it didn't seem like it.

Sergeant Seo Jin-ho, the second-in-command, spat on the ground. "She’s right. We try to walk the main road, we’re dead before we cross Sejong-daero."

The sound of shoes scraping on broken stones caused half the team to quickly turn around and aim their guns. A group of five or six normal citizens including an old man and a seemingly pregnant woman walked out of a side street. One of the police officers, a tall man named Officer Park Chul-min, motioned with his head toward the south, where the safe escape route was located.

"Go," he said softly. "Keep your heads down. Don’t stop for anyone."

The citizens hurried away out of sight. The team lowered their guns.

Han looked at So-yeon, then at the rest of his group. Their specific team was now down to seven people. Two of their soldiers had been killed at their starting base, and another was in a different truck with a severe, life-threatening hole in his chest. The six police officers traveling with them made their group thirteen people in total. However, thirteen people was a very small number compared to the thousands of enemy soldiers dropping from the sky.

"We’re going through Gyeongbokgung Palace," Han said.

"E-eh?!" So-yeon quickly turned her head to look at him in shock.

"Have you lost your fucking mind?" Seo hissed, stepping up and pushing his hand hard against Han’s chest armor. He stared at his team leader with extremely angry eyes. "You trying to kill us all? That place is a maze. One sniper on Geunjeongjeon Hall and we’re fish in a barrel."

Han raised his hands to calm Seo down. "I know what you’re thinking. But it is our best shot. Would you rather walk in the middle of this fucking street and get your head blown off from god knows where?" He pointed at the wide street, where the burnt metal frame of a city bus was still smoking. "The palace grounds have walls. Cover. Elevation we can use. And the KPA’s first wave is hitting the government complexes, not the tourist sites. We move fast, we move quiet, we come out north of the Blue House and link up with the PSS Counter AT."

Seo made an angry noise, his fingers still gripping the strap of Han's weapon. For a second, So-yeon thought Seo might punch him. Then he let go, stepped back, and adjusted his rifle. "I don’t like this one bit. But we’ll follow you either way."

The other soldiers quietly agreed. So-yeon made an unhappy grumble from where she stood, her hand touching the small anchor necklace she had securely tied to the left shoulder strap of her vest. She breathed out heavily, struggling with too many stressful thoughts—the weapons storage building, the smoke, and seeing Yu-jin’s severely burned body.

"Mm," she said.

"Alright then, let’s go." Han turned on his gun's flashlight to test it, then turned it off. "We’ll rendezvous with the 3rd SF at the palace’s north gate. They’re pushing in from Samcheong-dong."

The group started moving. The thirteen men and women wearing completely different combat uniforms and police equipment left the main road and sneaked into the narrow back streets behind a large building. The tall stone walls of the palace stood in front of them. The very old building was suddenly being used for its original purpose of military defense.

They walked inside through a large hole in the western wall, where a bomb had destroyed the stone to create a ramp of broken rock. Inside, the environment felt unnaturally calm. The city was loud and chaotic outside, but inside the walls, near the frozen water and bare trees, it was very quiet. Their boots made crunching noises on the cold, icy gravel.

So-yeon walked at the very front to lead the group.. She moved incredibly quietly, holding her rifle tightly against her shoulder while looking straight through her weapon's aiming sight. Behind her, Officer Chul-min and the rest of the team followed in an organized, zig-zag line, staying closely hidden in the dark shadows of the small buildings.

They reached a spot at the northern edge of the area where the path split into two directions around a stone building. To the right, there was a wide, flat open space leading to the main hall, with no places to hide. To the left, there was a narrow walkway curving behind another building, protected by a tall stone wall.

"Right's a kill zone," Chul-min whispered.

Han nodded. "Left. So-yeon, take it wide."

She turned left and walked very close to the wall farthest from her with her gun pointed forward. The man behind her, Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon, followed her closely, pointing his gun to the right to protect them. They carefully and slowly looked around the corner together to make sure it was safe.

A loud breathing sound.

So-yeon stopped moving instantly. She aimed her gun at a person leaning against the wall, about ten meters in front of her. The person's legs were spread out, and one hand was pressing against their side. The person was wearing grey clothes and a protective vest.

"Hands," Ji-hoon hissed. "Hands!"

The person raised one shaking hand. The other hand stayed pressed firmly against their side.

So-yeon was very nervous. She quickly turned her infrared flashlight on and off. This created a very fast flash of light that could only be seen through night-vision goggles, completely invisible to regular eyes. The light shined on the person.

Two objects reflected the invisible light. There was a square patch on the person's shoulder and a smaller one on their helmet. They were special South Korean flag patches designed to reflect night-vision light.

"Friendly!" So-yeon called out, her rifle dipping an inch. "H-he’s friendly."

The rest of the team moved forward with their guns still pointed, but everyone relaxed and breathed out in relief. A young police officer with a round face, Officer Lee Joon-hyuk, walked forward, sounding hopeful.

"Wow. I never thought we would see someone else in this place." He looked at Han. "Does this mean we still hold this?"

The man against the wall smiled in the dark. His teeth were very white. "A-ah… I thought everyone was dead." His voice sounded weak and high-pitched. "Thank god you guys are here."

Lee pushed his gun to his back and walked closer, bending down. "You okay? Let me check that wound."

"Yeah… just a slight cut."

"Still, let me—"

"Wait."

Han spoke with extreme sharpness and authority. He had not lowered his gun. The red dot of his rifle was pointing directly at the man's chest.

Lee turned, confused. "But he’s one of us, no?"

"Are you guys fucking stupid?" Han spoke without anger, but sounded totally serious and completely emotionless, like someone who had dealt with this trick before. "You know how North Koreans infiltrate our ranks. We have to challenge him."

Nobody spoke.

The man against the wall did not say anything. He kept smiling the exact same way.

Lee looked at the wounded man, then back at Han. He turned his head, looking closely at the person in the dark. The man looked old, much older than a normal special forces soldier. His clothing and equipment were perfectly correct, but his face—

"Huh?" Lee leaned closer.

The wounded man moved.

He grabbed Lee by the throat and pulled him backward into a tight grip. He moved incredibly fast, proving his injury was totally fake. He suddenly pulled out a Russian-made handgun and pushed the barrel hard against Lee’s head.

"Don’t move or I’ll shoot!"

The man's voice changed. It was no longer weak, but harsh, revealing a strict North Korean accent.

Everyone stood up immediately and aimed their guns. The sudden violence made the narrow space feel incredibly tight and dangerous. So-yeon's aiming sight was pointed at the man's forehead, but he had hidden his whole body behind Lee, using the police officer to block any bullets.

"Don’t do it, man," Lee choked out, his fingers clawing at the forearm across his throat. "Just let him go."

So-yeon stepped forward, her weapon still raised but her voice rising above the others. "You don’t want to do this! Just let him go and you can surrender! We’ll—"

"Fuck no!" the enemy soldier screamed. Saliva flew from his mouth. He was shorter than Lee but very muscular, and his body was tense with panic. He dragged the hostage backward toward the stone wall, his eyes looking wildly at all the guns pointed at him. "Guarantee that I walk out of here!"

its all in your hands now.

14 FEB 0600 SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 707th Special Missions Group OPEN-POV PART THREE

The Blue House smelled strongly of blood, urine, and burned gunpowder. The marble floors of the main building, which were usually cleaned to a perfect shine for official dinners, were now covered in blood spray and pieces of brain matter from boots walking over them. North Korean soldiers wearing striped camouflage lay tangled with Presidential bodyguards wearing navy blue uniforms. Their dead bodies were frozen in awkward positions across the hallways. Kim So-yeon walked through all of this like this was a normal tuesday. Her grey uniform was soaked through with soot, mud, and other people’s blood. The blood had dried on her eyelashes, caked in the corners of her mouth, and made her moss-green hair stick together.

She stepped over a bodyguard whose throat had been sliced open with a knife, his hand still holding onto his radio. Her boot landed on something soft and wet, and she felt the squelch before she realized what it was—the empty skull of a North Korean lieutenant. His brains were spread across the white tile floor in a grey and pink shape, and his eyes stared blankly at the ceiling lights with a look of mild surprise.

"I hate this sooo much…" she squeaked. Her voice was barely loud enough to hear and cracked. She wiped her boot on his trouser leg and kept walking.

The server room was two floors down, behind a heavy metal door that had been blown open by an explosive charge. Inside, the room was very hot and smelled like ozone electricity. Three soldiers in pixelated camouflage were working quickly through rows of computer servers. They were pulling hard drives out, smashing them with hammers, and throwing paper documents into a metal barrel that burned with an orange light in the dark room. A fourth soldier, Sergeant Park Jun-ho, was tying explosive thermite grenades to the main computer.

So-yeon reached to her belt, took off a cylindrical thermite grenade, and tossed it gently to him. He caught it with one hand, looked up, and smiled. It was a tired smile, but it was genuine.

"I got you some more," she said, her voice small but steady.

"Thank you, Kim," Park said, twisting the grenade into the group of explosives. He pulled the pin on another grenade, and the fuse began to hiss and spit bright sparks. "That’s the last rack. We’re clean in sixty seconds."

So-yeon nodded. She should have left right then, should have found her team and guarded the outside area. But she stayed, watching Park work and watching the other soldiers look at her and actually not ignoring her for once One of the soldiers, a corporal she did not know, gave her a thumbs-up.

It felt strange to her, like feeling warm sunlight after spending weeks underground.

Maybe they respected her because of what she had done. She had spotted enemies from afar during their approach, found the hidden infiltrator in the dark, et cetera. They were finally recognizing her and seeing her true value. It felt warm, terrifying, and addictive, like a drug she did not know she was craving. She realized she might want more of this feeling.

*She giggled to herself... Then quickly closed her mouth and walked out.

The main lobby had been turned into a temporary field hospital. Bodyguard medics were treating a man in a bloody suit. An IV medical bag hung from a lamp stand, and bandages wrapped around the man's left arm where metal shrapnel had torn a deep wound. The President of South Korea sat on a leather couch that had been moved away from the windows. His face was pale with shock, but his eyes were hard and determined.

Major Choi Min-seok, the leader of the counter-terrorism unit, was pointing at a map spread out on a coffee table. Next to him, Captain Benjamin Reeves of the American Green Berets leaned on his rifle, speaking in a low, urgent voice.

"Sir," Choi was saying, "we’ve cleared the palace grounds and linked up with the 3rd Brigade, but that only buys us time. The enemy's 8th Special Purpose Corps is pushing through Seongbuk-gu, and their advance scouts are already in Gangnam. This is just the calm before the storm."

The President looked up, his jaw tight. "What about the National Assembly? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs? There are still government officials trapped in Jongno, Major. I will not leave them behind."

Reeves looked at Choi, then leaned forward. "Mr. President, other special forces teams are moving to those targets right now. SFG is hitting the embassy district. The 1st SF Brigade is securing the Government Complex. But the bridges are damaged—enemy engineers have wired the Han River crossings with explosives. We have to get you underground, sir. It’s the only way to reach the southern part of the city safely."

The President stared at the map for a long time, tracing the blue line of the river with his finger. Then he closed his eyes. "It’s a shame… but very well. I will not risk more lives for stubbornness."

So-yeon stood near the edge of the group, waiting for a break in the conversation. When Choi looked up, she stood up straight.

"Sir," she said. "The intel has been secured. The server room is clean."

Choi nodded, narrowing his eyes as he looked at her—covered in dirt, shaking slightly, but standing on her feet. "Good. Sergeant, get outside and hold the perimeter with your team. We move out in five minutes."

The building violently shook.

The floor jumped, dust poured down from the ceiling in a grey cloud, and the large chandelier swung like a pendulum. Somewhere north of the palace, enemy artillery from the border was firing south, while South Korean self-propelled guns fired back from Namsan mountain. The front entrance, already damaged from the initial attack, groaned as large chunks of concrete fell from the roof.

"We’ll have to get you underground now, sir," Choi said, grabbing the President’s uninjured arm. "No more waiting."

So-yeon turned and walked away. She stepped over the bodies in the hallway, walked down the grand staircase, stepped past the broken front doors, and went out onto the lawn.

Dawn was trying to break, and it looked terrible. The sky over Seoul was a dark, bruised orange, with the sun hidden behind a thick wall of smoke rising from many fires. The moon was setting behind Namsan Tower. It was around six in the morning.

The lawn was a horrifying scene. Soldiers from many different units—special forces in grey and pixelated camouflage, bodyguards in navy blue and white, Green Berets, and naval commandos—were hiding behind statues and walls, scanning the tree line. A destroyed enemy armored vehicle lay smoking near the main gate, its top turret blown off by a rocket. Piles of dead enemy paratroopers in striped uniforms lay on the ground.

Rider Team was gathered near a knocked-over stone lantern. Staff Sergeant Han Do-kyun sat with his back against the stone, cleaning his rifle with mechanical, nervous precision. The police officers were sitting nearby, their black uniforms covered in white concrete dust. They had lost one good man getting here—Sergeant Kim Ji-hoon, who had been killed by a grenade in the east garden. His empty carrying strap and his rifle, used as a grave marker, leaned against the stone lantern.

So-yeon sat down next to Han, her legs folding under her like a broken puppet.

"How are we doing?" Han asked. He did not look at her, keeping his eyes on the tree line.

The soldiers looked at each other. One of the police officers, Officer Lee Joon-hyuk, rubbed his eyes with a bloody glove. A naval commando whose name So-yeon never knew simply shook his head.

"I want to go home," So-yeon said.

The words came out of her simply and painfully. The men looked at her. Han stopped cleaning his rifle. He nodded, looking very sad and serious.

"We all do," he said. "But we have a job to do."

"Mm," So-yeon hummed.

The radio attached to Han’s vest made a crackling sound. Major Choi’s voice came through, sounding compressed and tiny: "All stations, the president’s escort is on the way. Arriving in five minutes. Hold the perimeter. Out."

"Nice," Han said simply. He leaned back against the stone, resting his hands on his vest in a quiet, temporary moment of peace.

So-yeon looked up at the moon setting behind the smoke. She thought of Yu-jin, of the small anchor necklace pressing against her chest, and of the base store they were supposed to visit.

"I’ll be right back," she said, standing up.

Han did not open his eyes. "Yep."

She walked back inside, up the stairs, and past the medics who were putting the President onto a stretcher. Major Choi was at the top of the landing, checking his radio.

"S-sir?" So-yeon called out.

Choi turned, squinting against the dim light. "Sergeant? I told you to hold the—"

BOOM.

An explosion hit the building itself. This time it was not distant artillery as it was much closer and heavier, like a rocket. The front entrance exploded into a cloud of concrete and glass. The shockwave threw So-yeon sideways, her ears ringing with a loud, high-pitched whine. She hit the floor, coughing, her vision blurred by dust and flashing lights.

She looked up. Tracer rounds were shooting through the smoke where the entrance used to be. Figures moved in the ash. There were too many of them.

"ENEMY ATTACK!" someone screamed from the lawn. "TAKE COVERR!"

Bullets flew overhead, hitting the marble walls and chipping the pillars. So-yeon crawled on her hands and knees, dragging her rifle behind her, and rolled behind a fallen pillar. Her ears slowly adjusted, turning the loud ringing back into normal hearing.

"THEY HAVE ARMOR! FALL BACK! FALL BACK!"

She peeked over the pillar. The soldiers who had been outside were running back toward the building, climbing the steps in pairs and covering each other. But the enemy gunfire was too heavy. A soldier from the 3rd Special Forces Brigade—Sergeant First Class Yoon Jae-sik—was firing his heavy machine gun from the top step to push the enemy back. A tracer bullet hit him in the throat. He fell sideways, dropping his machine gun, and rolled down three steps before landing in the open.

Enemy paratroopers came out of the smoke, firing their rifles. Yoon’s body twitched as they shot him multiple times in the chest and legs, and thick blood poured down the white marble steps.

"No…" So-yeon whispered.

Then she saw Seo Jin-ho. The second-in-command was halfway up the steps, trying to climb, when enemy bullets hit his lower stomach and leg. He fell forward, dropping his rifle. But he was still alive. He groaned, rolled onto his back, and raised his gun.

"You haven’t gotten me yet, bastards!" he screamed, firing blindly into the smoke.

So-yeon looked at Major Choi. He was hiding behind an overturned desk, putting a new magazine into his rifle. Their eyes met across the chaos. He saw the dangerous intention in her eyes—the same reckless stupidity he had seen in his many years.

"No…" he mouthed, shaking his head. "Don’t think about it. It’s not worth it."

She opened her mouth. Her voice was steady.

"Cover me."

"MOVING!"

She stood up and ran before her mind could talk her out of it. The world narrowed to a dark tunnel of smoke and noise. She crouched low, raising her rifle, her red dot moving across enemy silhouettes in the fog. She fired and an enemy paratrooper dropped. Then she shot another. But there were many more coming, and behind them was an enemy ZBD-03, firing its 30mm cannon and destroying the front of the Blue House.

So-yeon put her rifle over her shoulder because it was too big for close combat. She pulled out her pistol, making it easier to handle, and ran to Seo. She grabbed the handle on the back of his vest with her left hand while holding her pistol with her right arm.

"C’mon, I got you," she grunted, firing with one hand. Hot shell casings bounced off her face.

"Have you fucking lost your mind?!" Seo screamed at her.

"I’m not leaving you behind!"

She pulled him. He weighed twice as much as her, he was soaked in blood, and the marble floor was very slippery. Bullets flew over her head, kicked up dust at her feet, and hit the steps right where she had been standing a second before. She fired her pistol again and again, the noise lost in the loud explosions.

"Grenade!" someone screamed from inside. The front entrance blew inward with a massive secondary explosion, sending a ball of fire rolling through the lobby. Screams echoed from inside.

"Don’t let them near!" an American voice roared. An anti-tank rocket flew from a second-floor window and hit the enemy armored vehicle's turret, stopping its cannon, but the enemy infantry kept charging forward.

"AHHHHH!" Seo shrieked as another bullet hit him in the shoulder. His body went limp, blood spraying from the new wound. "I SAID LET ME GO ! GO AWAY!"

So-yeon pulled harder. Her body armor stopped a few stray bullets—she felt the impacts hitting her chest—but she did not stop. The front entrance was completely on fire. She turned right toward a side room whose walls were cracked from the explosions. She climbed backward through a broken window, dragging Seo over the sill and getting them up off the ground.

THUD.

Something hard hit her chest armor. She stumbled, her grip on Seo slipping, and bullets smashed into the wall next to her head. She did not let go. She pulled with all her strength, her boots kicking against the broken floor tiles, and fell backward onto the room's floor. Seo slid in beside her, leaving a trail of blood.

She lay there, staring at the ceiling. Dust floated in the shafts of orange light. Her lungs burned. Her arms shook. A sudden laugh came out of her chest.

"Hah…" she wheezed. "We made it… we made it."

She sat up, smiling widely, her face covered in dirt, soot, and tears. She turned to Seo.

"S-see? I told you I wouldn’t…"

Her smile faded away.

"…leave you… behind."

He was dead.

The bullet that hit his shoulder earlier was not the fatal one. The first one had hit him without her noticing—a stray bullet that slipped under his helmet rim while she was dragging him, entering his temple and exiting the other side of his head. His eyes were wide open, staring at the window. His mouth was set in a firm line, not looking scared or surprised. Just dead.

Blood spread quickly from his wounds, reaching her boots and forming a warm, large pool on the floor.

"I-I…" So-yeon stammered. She scrambled to her feet, backing away as her boots slipped in the blood. "Did I… did I do this?"

She had dragged him straight into the line of fire. She had pulled him up the steps and exposed him to the enemy window. She had accidentally killed him while trying to save him.

Her throat felt tight. Her eyes burned with hot tears that had nothing to do with the fire outside.

She turned around, stumbling toward the wall. At that exact moment, an enemy bullet came through the shattered window, fired from the tree line, and grazed her head just above her left ear. A sharp, bright pain hit her instantly. She collapsed to the floor with a cry.

"No… ghk!"

She lay there, her head throbbing with pain as blood ran down her neck into her collar. The building shook again from another explosion. Outside, the enemy soldiers were shouting, screaming, dying, and pushing forward.

So-yeon crawled away from the broken window, her vision shrinking to a dark tunnel. She reached the center of the room, pulled her knees to her chest, and pressed her back against a filing cabinet.

"Help…" she muttered. Her voice was weak and ruined. An explosion shook the building even closer than before. "Someone help me…"

Her voice broke, turning uneven and desperate as she finally lost all control. She pressed her face into her knees, grabbed her helmet with both hands, and began to cry uncontrollably.

14 FEB 0230 NORTH OF NORTH KOREA Thunder Airbone Infantry Brigade INVADER-POV

The tarmac at Kanggye Airfield, now turned Airbase had not looked like this in decades. The airbase sat in the high country near the Chinese border, in a province where winter arrived early and left late. The old revetments still stood, concrete hardstands built in the 1970s to shelter Su-7B Fitter-A strike aircraft that had rusted in place long before most of the men walking the flight line were born. The hangars were the same. The perimeter fence was the same. The mountains looming over the valley, black against a February sky, were the same. Locals who remembered the old days still called it "the crow's field," because that was mostly what used to fly there.

Nothing about it looked like that anymore.

The tarmac stretched wide and bright under floodlights, packed wingtip to wingtip with aircraft. Domestically-built Su-30 variants, designated Su-30MNKs sat fueled and armed in staggered rows, with Su-25 and Nanchang Q-5 ground attack aircraft behind them, squat and heavy-bellied, loaded for a war that hadn't officially started yet. And past all of it, dominating the apron like something that had wandered in from a different country's air force entirely, sat the Y-20s.

Jesus fucking christ there were ten of them. Chinese-built, Chinese-delivered. They sat at the end of the taxiway, their noses pointed toward Runway 09, their four turbofan engines coughing heat into the freezing air. They were enormous. The largest aircraft the Korean People's Army Air Force had ever operated. Their grey fuselages were unmarked except for small serial numbers and the red star on their tails. Ramps were down. Cargo holds were lit from within by dim red lamps. And they were filling up.

Paratroopers from the Thunder Airborne Infantry Brigade moved toward them in loose columns. According to the KPA, these were the best of the best, fully decked out in kits that would make an untrained observer mistake them for American CAG. They wore Crye-style combat uniforms in a dark, muted digital pattern, with plate carriers rigged for airborne operations and jump helmets fitted with GPNVG-18 panoramic night vision goggles. Each man carried a QBZ-191 assault rifle in 5.8×42mm, slung tight to the chest with optics zeroed, alongside sidearms, breaching charges, and enough ammunition to sustain a battalion-level fight. If you did not know who they were, you would think they were Western tier-one operators. That was the point.

"C'mon, c'mon, let's go!" The crew chief of the lead Y-20 stood at the base of the ramp, waving his arms like he was directing traffic. He was a short, thick man in a brown leather flight jacket, his face flushed from shouting. "Move your asses! You think Seoul is gonna wait for you? Get in, get seated, strap in! We are on a timeline!"

A young private — he could not have been older than nineteen — stopped at the foot of the ramp and looked up at the Y-20's tail section, his mouth slightly open. The man behind him shoved him forward.

"Eyes front, man. You're gonna freeze your nuts off standing there."

"Sorry, Sergeant."

"Don't be sorry. Be inside."

{{user}} went up with the rest of them, one more body in a line of bodies, and if anyone questioned why a foreigner was climbing a Y-20 ramp bound for the opening minutes of a war that belonged to two Korean nations and nobody else, nobody said so out loud.

On the runway, the elephant walk was already in motion.

A line of Su-30s and ground-attack aircraft sat on the threshold, nose to tail, navigation lights winking. One by one, they went to full throttle. The first fighter rolled, accelerated, and lifted off, its afterburners painting the pre-dawn sky orange. Then the next. Then the next. From inside the transport, the seated men could see barely see them through the ramp, but they could feel the tremor of each departure, the air snapping each time one flew by.

"Look at that," muttered one of the young paratroopers, craning his neck to the side towards the ramp. He could just see the tail of a departing Su-30, its twin fins silhouetted against the runway lights. "Wow. Look at that."

"Yeah." Another voice, solemn, came from the darkness near the ramp. "Yeah..."

More paratroopers filed up the ramp behind {{user}}, checking harnesses, checking each other, the particular busy silence of men who trust their hands to remember what their mouths are too tight to talk about.

"FULL HOUSE!" the crew chief yelled up toward the cockpit, and a moment later his call came back down the line from someone deeper in the fuselage, and then a third time, flat and final, from the pilot himself over the intercom.

A paratrooper dropped into the seat beside {{user}} without asking, hauling them down by the shoulder strap with the easy familiarity of someone used to moving other men's bodies into position. "Cmon man, sit down. The air force boys are getting antsy."

"Hey!" The corporal from across hissed back, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "He got special treatment, so I wouldn't treat him like shit. You know what the political officer said. Foreign volunteers are to be treated with respect. They're here because they believe in the cause."

"Whatever, bro." The heavy paratrooper looked away, fumbling with his harness buckle. "I'm just saying. Sitting next to a mute for two hours is gonna be a long flight."

"Then don't talk to him. Problem solved."

The ramp began to hiss. Hydraulic actuators groaned, and the heavy tail section began to rise, sealing the cargo hold. Through the narrowing gap, the moonlight over Kanggye disappeared, and the only light was the red glow of the cabin lamps.

"Here we go..." breathed a paratrooper from across the row. He was an older man, maybe thirty, with a thin mustache and hands that trembled slightly as he checked his oxygen mask. "First combat jump. Jesus."

"What, you nervous?" The man next to him — young, cocky, with a shaved head and a gold tooth that grinned and slapped the older man's knee. "This is gonna be a cakewalk. We drop in, round up some bureaucrats, shoot a few cops, and wait for the tanks. Easy money."

"You're too cocky, bruh." The older man did not smile back. "My uncle was in the '68 raid. He said the same thing. Cakewalk. He came back in a coffin."

"That was different. That was the old army. Look around you." The cocky one gestured at the aircraft's interior, at the modern gear, at the Y-20 itself. "We got real planes now. Real intel. They don't even know we're coming."

"Well I just pray everything goes fine for us." This came from a third man, further down the row. He had his head tilted back against the fuselage, eyes closed, lips moving in something that might have been a prayer or might have been a memorized political slogan. "I have a daughter in Chongjin. She turned nineteen last week. I promised her I'd be back for her birthday."

"You'll be back," the cocky one said. "We'll be drinking soju in Seoul by Friday. You'll buy her a present from a South Korean department store. How's that sound?"

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Do-yun," the older man said quietly.

The Y-20 rumbled. The engines spooled up, a deep, vibrating whine that traveled through the floor and into the men's chests. The aircraft began to move, taxiing slowly, following the lead of the ground crew's wands. Through the thin fuselage, they could hear the fighter jets ahead of them, their engines screaming as they began their own sequence.

"Buckle up, boys," the crew chief called back through the cabin, not shouting this time, almost gentle. "It's gonna be quite a journey."

The fighter escort went first, screaming off the deck in pairs.

The Y-20 turned onto the active runway. The pilot's voice came over the cabin speaker, distorted by static: <"All stations, this is Lead Transport. We are number one for departure. Hold tight. It will be a rough ride until altitude.">

Then the engines roared to life.

Acceleration pushed every man back into his seat. The Y-20 was not a gentle aircraft. It was a heavy lifter, a brute, and a literal brick. Paratroopers who had not secured their harnesses properly felt themselves slide.

Then they were up. The deck leveled. The roar settled into a steady drone.

The flight would take less than an hour. The distance from Kanggye to the Demilitarized Zone was roughly two hundred kilometers. At cruising speed, they would cover it in forty minutes.

Peace...

And Quiet.

...

...

RUMBLE RUMBLE...

...

"TEN MINUTES!"

The jumpmaster's voice cut through the cabin like a blade. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, with a voice that had been trained to carry over engine noise and gunfire. He stood near the ramp controls, holding a strap for balance, his jump helmet already on, his oxygen mask hanging loose around his neck.

"TEN MINUTES TO THE LINE! ON YOUR FEET!"

The cabin exploded into motion. Men stood, bracing against the fuselage, against each other, against the cargo netting. Harnesses creaked. Static lines snapped against anchor line cables. The red lights made everything frantic, everything urgent.

"Holy shit, that's it," someone said. "That's really it."

"Look at your buddy! Check his gear! I want every man alive when he hits the ground!"

"Is that... are those ours?"

Through the small porthole windows and through the gaps in the fuselage, the sky to the south had begun to bloom.

One after another, hypersonic missiles streaked past the transport aircraft. They moved too fast to track with the eye, with only their contrails remained. They were Hwasong-16s, or perhaps something newer. It didn't matter.

The first one hit somewhere below and to the west. The flash was white, then yellow. A mushroom cloud followed, ugly and perfect, punching upward through the cloud layer. Then another. Then another. The strikes were scattered across the southern horizon, a constellation of fire blooming in sequence — military bases, power stations, command centers, bridges. The Y-20 bucked in the turbulence of the explosions, riding the shockwaves like a boat on a heavy sea.

"God above," the older paratrooper whispered. He was not praying now.

More explosions. More clouds. The southern sky was lit from end to end, as if the sun was rising. And then, as the last missile detonated, the lights went out. Seoul, what they could see of it from thirty thousand feet, went dark all at once. The entire metropolitan area, a glowing grid of twenty-five million people, simply vanished into blackness. The EMP had done its work. Power grids were dead. Communications were dead. The city below was now on fire, started by the missile strikes, which burned orange against the night sky.

RUMBLE RUMBLE

The aircraft shook. A shockwave from a near-miss, or perhaps from a detonation directly below, slammed into the Y-20's belly. Men stumbled. The heavy paratrooper next to {{user}} grabbed an overhead strap and swore loudly. The deck pitched, then stabilized.

"WE HAVE CROSSED THE DMZ!" the jumpmaster screamed. "THIS IS IT! WE ARE IN ENEMY AIRSPACE! EVERYONE STAND UP!"

They stood.

"HOOK UP!"

The paratroopers reached for their static lines, snapping the metal hooks onto the anchor line cable that ran the length of the fuselage.

"OXYGEN!"

Men pulled their masks over their faces, disconnecting from the aircraft's central supply and connecting to the small bottles on their chest rigs. Gauges were checked. Hoses were verified. Everyone was breathing like darth vader now.

"CHECK GEAR!"

The buddy checks began. Men turned to the men beside them, patting down chests, checking harnesses, tugging on risers, verifying altimeters. Thumbs were raised as silent confirmation. The jumpmaster walked the line, his eyes moving over every connection, every strap, every weapon.

Behind {{user}}, a hand came down on their shoulder. A pat, firm, almost friendly. The paratrooper there reached around and gave {{user}}'s harness a quick tug, checking the buckles. Then he raised his thumb, right in {{user}}'s face, and nodded. He was young. His eyes were wide. But his hand was steady.

RUMBLE RUMBLE

The Y-20 shook again. The pilot was taking evasive action now, banking left and right, climbing and dropping to avoid the worst of the turbulence. Through the thin metal skin, they could hear the escort fighters breaking formation, diving toward targets below, and releasing their loads. The war was happening for real now, all around them, and they were flying through the middle of it.

"ALRIGHT BOYS!" The jumpmaster's voice had gone from commanding to something like a maniac. "THIS IS IT! YOU HAVE TRAINED YOUR ENTIRE LIVES FOR THIS! YOU WILL LAY DOWN YOUR LIVES FOR THE TRUE KOREA! TOGETHER, WE WILL REUNITE THIS COUNTRY BACK TO ITS RIGHTFUL RULERS!"

He paused. The only sound was the engines and the oxygen.

"STAND IN THE DOOR!"

The ramp began to open. It came down slowly, revealing a horrifying sight of a night full of fire, full of smoke, and destruction. Seoul lay below them, the Han River a black ribbon cutting through the center. Tracer fire rose from somewhere, thin red lines scratching upward, falling short.

The wind rushed in. It was freezing, cutting through uniforms, slapping faces. The jumpmaster stood at the edge of the ramp, one hand on the door frame, the other pointing toward the inferno below.

"REMEMBER! HAVE FAITH IN OUR LEADER! FOR HE WILL LEAD US TO VICTORY!"

"HOO-AHH!!"

The cabin roared. 200+ voices, maybe more, shouting in unison. The sound was swallowed by the wind, but the intent was clear. These men had been taught to believe. Some believed completely. Some believed enough. Some believed only that stopping now was worse than jumping.*

The jumpmaster turned to the line. The first paratrooper, Do-yun, the cocky one, stood at the threshold, his static line taut, his body leaning into the wind. The jumpmaster looked at the warning light above the door. It was red. Then it flickered, and it turned green.

"GO! GO! GO! JUMP!"

Do-yun was gone, freefalling, then his chute deploying with a crack. The next man followed. Then the next. Then the next. The line moved with a speed that came from repetition, from muscle memory, from the simple biological imperative that standing still was worse than falling.

The older man with the trembling hands went. The heavy paratrooper went. The man with the daughter in Chongjin went, and as he dropped from the ramp, {{user}} saw him look back once, just once, toward the north.

Then it was {{user}}'s turn.

They stood at the edge. The wind tore at their uniform. Below, the city burned. Above, the sky was empty of stars, choked with smoke. The green light still burned. The jumpmaster turned to look at {{user}}, his face a mask of wind-burned skin and screaming intent.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? FUCKING JUMP!"

super secret smut special ayo boi

Its been a long ass fucking day at work after boss started screaming in your head about taking fucking inventory, and now finally, you get to go home and relax.

You click the lock open and step inside, the deadbolt snapping back with a sound that seems too loud in the sudden warmth of the hallway. The house smells different. The lights are dimmed, strung with paper lanterns you don't remember owning, casting the living room in a soft pink glow that makes your exhausted eyes ache.

You toe off your shoes, leaving them by the door where she usually reminds you to put them on the rack. But she isn't there to remind you. The kitchen is empty, the counters clean in a way that suggests frantic preparation rather than routine tidiness. A covered dish sits on the stove, steam curling from beneath the lid. Two wine glasses stand on the dining table, one slightly crooked, as if placed by nervous hands.

You call her name. Silence answers, except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the distant pop of your own joints as you roll your shoulders, trying to shed the weight of the day.

The bathroom is dark. The study is empty, her laptop closed, the spiderman polyester edit still frozen on the monitor. That leaves only the bedroom, the door at the end of the hall sitting slightly ajar, a bit of light cutting across the carpet.

external image: ella.janitorai.com

You push it open.

She is sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to you at first, her moss-green hair falling loose around her shoulders in a way you rarely see—it is usually tied back or tucked under a beanie. But tonight it frames her neck, her ears, the pale slope of her shoulders. She is fiddling with something on her wrist, a white cuff with a silver clasp, her fingers small and dexterous but trembling slightly.

Then she hears the hinge creek.

"A-ah?!"

She stumbles backward onto the mattress, her elbows hitting the duvet, and her head snaps toward you. Her orange eyes—those vivid, impossible eyes that usually dart away from strangers on the street—are shaking. Literally shaking, the pupils blown wide, darting across your face as if searching for a reaction she can brace against. Her cheeks, usually pale from too little sun and too much time indoors, are flushed a deep, feverish crimson that bleeds down her neck and disappears beneath the corset.

What a fucking sight this was.

The outfit is pink. A strapless corset teddy that clings to her flat chest with, the fabric doing its best with architecture that was never meant to fill it. Bunny ears, slightly crooked, perch atop her green hair. Black sheer-to-waist pantyhose disappear into a pair of heels she clearly borrowed or bought for this occasion, her ankles thin and trembling where they meet the straps. A bow tie, slightly askew, sits at her throat above a black collar. A fluffy white cottontail is attached somewhere behind her, visible where she had been leaning forward.

She is breathtaking.

She sighs, a shaky, leaking sound, and covers her face with her hands. The cuffs clink together.

"You're home early," she mumbles through her fingers. Then, dropping her hands, she forces a smile that wobbles at the edges. "Umm... today is Valentine's Day... and... I thought I would prepare something special for you."

She sits up, adjusting the corset with a self-conscious tug.

"Y-you do know I see your search history, right?" she says, her voice rising to a squeak before dropping to a whisper. "And I've been seeing these pop up a lot, and so I thought..." She trails off, her eyes dropping to the carpet, to the bed, to anywhere but you. "I thought maybe... if I wore it... you would look at me. For longer than usual."

She clears her throat. It sounds like she is swallowing broken glass. She slides off the bed, her heels clicking against the hardwood, and walks toward you with a careful, halting grace.

She stops in front of you. Close enough that you can smell the vanilla in her hair, the warmth of her skin beneath the nylon. She is sweating from her sheer boldness.

"A-ahem..."

She breathes in. Her chest rises and falls in a shallow, rapid rhythm. She stares up at you, her orange eyes wide and desperate.*

"Welcome back... Master..."

The word comes out cracked, then smooth, as if she practiced it a hundred times in front of a mirror and is now cashing in every ounce of courage she has ever hoarded. She strikes a pose—one hand on her hip, the other behind her head, back arched, one leg crossed over the other. It is deliberately lewd, copied from videos you used to watch in private, her face burning so hot you can feel the heat radiating from her skin.

"Would you like dinner, a bath..." She pauses. Her throat works. She takes one more step, closing the distance until her chest presses against you. She rises on her toes, her breath warm against your ear, and her voice drops into a deeper and more intentional register you have never heard from her before.

"...or perhaps... me?"

[Start your own scenario]