1 'As Past, As present'

[Raiden's POV]

'I am exhausted.

I can't hold the defense anymore.

The guns in their hands are more powerful than what I have.

Nitro has been injured badly, and is unconscious.

I have kept my Gunfire thundering over them-

But soon, I will be out of batteries to run them.

Every now and then, the soldiers beside my trenchline cry of pain.

Their despair has curtained their breaths.

It's unbearable.

All the soldiers of my platoon are dead.

It's only me and my unconscious friend- who have their breath running through the dark clouds of the stench rotten flesh and blood.

All between the sounds of gunfire coming from the enemy gunners.

But, I have a hope.

A hope that keeps me from falling down-

A hope that keeps my faith in every thump of my heart, pumping the courage in my veins- not letting me to fall and die.

But, my end is near.

Their advancers have appeared on my sight, they are too much for my one gun to handle.

Soon, they will reach my trench, and find my platoon lying dead with my blood-drenched body, beside my comrades, my buddies, and our memories.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

They are near me.

A wave of thundering lasershot has got my arm, it's numb and cold.

I can't feel my hand.

My hand is gone.

It is beside me, just before my cloudening eyes drenched with sweat and blood of the whole rampage of three days and three nights.

Many moving figures have started appearing before me.

It's them.

They are going to kill me.'

...

....

"Raiden!"

"Wake up!"

"It's the seventy-eighth time you have made me be late from my business. Get up brat! we have got many things to do."

'What is this sound?', My mind wondered as I struggled to look through the cloudy barrier of the blurry vision of my eyes.

Suddenly, with a hissing sound- I felt something came near my back. And on the other second.....

"Aaaaaaaaah!"

I shouted and sprang out the place where I was fallen.

Suddenly, I found myself standing beside my bed, with my brother having a low-grade tasergun in his hand.

"Are you crazy??"-- being suddenly awoken from sleep, and more than that, with a tasergun- made me mad.

A total mad with his face still covered with the peculiar 'stresses' and 'strains' of a deep sleep after drinking almost a gallon of rum and Junkie-beer*.

"Hahahahaha!"

He laughed and ran off from the range of my clutches and in the next moment- I found myself standing alone in the poorly lit and old messy room, which I took on rent from an antique-dealer's daughter by selling her some fake stuff I took away from the old markets of southern Kolkata situated under the sea level tunnels*.

Yup, You guessed right.

You can call me a fraudster.

And,

Right a while ago- I was just dreaming of my death.

How I know this- Don't ask about it.

I just remember my death.

My death, which seemingly came with a rustling slash of bullets of a Saggittarian* army gunner, who existed a century before the existence of the sound coming out of the watch on my hand, notifying about a message from Niloy, who is my brother and the only family member left after the death of my family a decade ago.

For me, Death was a choice of the every second i lived on this existence, or in other words- for people like me, Death was like the waves of the sea-- battling everyday with the shore to erode the rocks into sand.

But guess what?

It's June 2412 AD, right now.

Chaos and Death is common as it can be.

In my previous life, I was a person being alive by fooling the death.

Now, It has just been a year from when i had done none better than getting at a more deadly business than on what I was in my previous life.

Guess what?

Finding and raiding the hidden bases which were left by those creepy and oppressive alien governments, in short-

Some people can call me 'Base raider',

Some people call me 'Fraudster',

Some call me 'Raiden',

Some 'Rabin',

and those who don't know me call me '...'

~Buzz!~Buzz!~

My watch buzzed up again- and I suddenly noticed the time which I was basically had ignored all this while.

A year has just managed to walk past me- yet, the tricky ways of my previous profession hasn't left me even after trying like infinite times.

But, That punk- Nitro! He just got me some work in the Kolkata Air-harbour-- letting me deal with the identification of artefacts in a antique dealer's shop.

As the wars have ended on Earth, and most of the fighting is happening far off to the other side of Earth- No one needs a mercenary or a soldier to fight a war of resistance, or just keeping a veteran for kicking off a**ses of the rivals to keep peace inside the turf in India.

Though, war is still raging- we of the Indian subcontinent are far out of its effective range.

Well, Old times are long gone.

And, People like me can just remember those scary days when blood and death were companions of everyday life, and survival was stealing time from the death itself.

Though the war has not touched the Indo-Chinese government populatively, it has affected us greatly with the wealth it has drained off from the Resistance war we had fought to kick those Alien-a*ses off.

In a result, living conditions have worsened, as much of the Indian and Chinese rustyard Lords have used up their precious 'Qmer-derontumium' metal- required to manufacture the best-armours of the universe, and Earth being already abundant at food-farms, almost most of them have become bankrupt without a penny in their torn down digi-wallets.

~Buzz!~Buzz!~

My watch buzzed again and I, being half-dressed and still struggling to wear my jacket- stepped out of my Fox-hole.

Springing my legs out of the dark room I was in, I found myself walking into the damp lane of the 7th basement in Kolkata's east Bunkerage.

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