Friends Reacting To S.T.A.L.K.E.R

Prologue: Horrors of the Past

"I see that you all are getting along." The masked woman appeared as she floated down to the ground. "To understand what memories caused him to become violent, we'll look at a small moment of his past."

"What moment?" Lupa asked. Hearing that it was a memory he was recalling peeked her interest. She never knew much about him, but that was nowhere near his fault.

"What made him so cold when you met up after your separation." Lupa heard about what, but knew there was a lot more that went on than that. The detail he said that made her come to that conclusion was when he said it was at night.

"He had to kill a kid, right?" Nekonome asked, remembering the short description of his time in the forest.

"Yes, but it could have been much worse. Had Hunter not already been fighting in a war, he would have died there." The acknowledgement of a war he fought in made them unnerved. No one other than Lupa could believe it.

"What caused the war?" Vail asked. "I didn't know the United States went to war outside of the Middle East."

"Because he came from another reality. For you it's 2018, for him it's 2026." Hunter's students and colleagues jaw dropped. "Well, the war began with a preliminary attack from Russia."

"Why am I not surprised?" Mitsuya said as he placed his palm on his face. "What was the attack? An assault on a foreign base, an invasion on an allied country, or a cyber attack?"

"Nuclear strikes on Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, New York, and Washington DC." All the humans eyes widened at the admittion of a nuclear attack.

"What's wrong? What's a nuclear attack?" Cream said as she stepped behind her mother.

"A nuclear attack. It uses a specific weapon called a nuclear warhead. When the bomb detonates, it's explosive power is enough to annihilate entire cities and leave nothing left." Rais responded as she began to realize the severity of the battles he fought. "Does that mean..."

"Yes he was fighting in the third world war." Seeing all the Earth born occupants sharing a collective fear made the rest tremble. "However, he was already in Ukraine by the time that happened. Russia had invaded Ukraine about a year prior. Once China began supplying Russia with men and weapons after suffering defeat after defeat from Ukraine. The US got involved after the "insurgency" upped its lethality. Hunter would have his call sign changed from Hero to Black Cat after his few missions left him the lone survivor of all the teams he was left with. The military would give him solo missions and have him act as executioner. This is when the attack happened and the US officially went to war with Russia and China. It was after his last execution that he fell into a river that carried him into DarkWood, where the moment will take place."

"Wouldn't it be faster to watch?" Scourge asked, annoying by the explanation.

"No, because then we'd have to go into politics and the 'Spy Balloon' incident that heightened tensions." The masked woman said as she snapped her fingers. "This is the incident that made him close off his heart and learned how to kill without remorse."

The feed opened as it showed Hunter running through a dense forest. In his hand was a shotgun and he seemed to be wearing his camo pants, combat boots, and the issued tan shirt. Over his shirt was a dark brown foux leather jacket with a cotton hood sown on the back. A cotton collar stretched around the base of the hood and to the front of the jacket,  but it didn't have a zipper on it.

"Shit, I was careless." He said. The screen focused on his left hand that had a digital watch that seemed to also work as a calculator. It said 1830. "It's almost dark."

"What's the issue for it being dark?" Liona asked as she looked at the masked woman.

"The forest is more dangerous at night. That's when the horrors really become active." Lupa responded. She was going weapons checks on her AK. No one knew what she was talking about, but they also didn't know how bad DarkWood was.