Prologue
"How did I find myself into this mess in the first place?" A seventeen year old boy mumbled to himself. He cried out in pain as he clutched his bloodied side. The young man, determined to get out of the current situation he found himself in, tried to stand on his two feet. Unfortunately, he growled, clutching his side again once he felt a sharp pain. He laid his back against a large truck that was flipped upside down. Slowly but gradually, he felt his life being drained from his body by each second.
The young man had black hair with strands sticking up and snow finding its place on his head. He wore a plain blue shirt that was slightly torn up with the sleeves folded up to his elbows. Originally, the blue shirt, excluding the torn cloth, was in acceptable state but currently the blood from his bullet wound ruined it's blue and was replaced with red. His black jeans faced the similar fate as his shirt, slightly torn but in an exceptional state. Along with his pants, he placed a gun holster on his left hip where his P226 would be placed. His black Nike running shoes was soaked due to his feet covered in the snow. Some of the laces of the shoe were missing and the logo of his Nikes was ripped off. Prior to its current state, it was already in improper care. To the young man, just so as long as it fits and he could run properly in them, he could care less for the state of the shoe. There was a scar on his left cheek that he had recently gotten a day ago and small bruises covered his left arm.
Looking around the area, he found nothing. Nothing but white snow that reflected the sun's rays slightly blasted into his vision and white small puffs of warm breaths that originated from his mouth. The resonating sound of crackling fire was the sound that filled the silent void other than the whistling sound of a blizzard. His heavy breathing followed the same rhythm. Hearing those same sounds for the past fifteen minutes or so made the young man realize that he was alone. No one else was present and accounted for other than himself.
"There's no way they could've survived that crash…" The young man said, breathing heavily to grab tightly to dear life. Despite the heat emitting from the giant fire nearby, goosebumps formed on his skin. He shivered as he placed his hand on his bleeding wound. He felt his legs start to feel slightly numb due to prolonged contact with the snow. His nose started to leak and patches of snow on his body collected more from the flakes falling from the sky. The young man, attempting the second time, stood on his two feet in spite of the excruciating pain coming from his bullet wound. He grunted and put a tighter grip on his wound, slowly limping towards the crash site.
Suddenly, he stopped for a few seconds before his complexion became pale white. A face of horror formed upon hearing another fire ignited. Glancing back at the truck, he clearly saw the fire ignite at the front of the truck, specifically, the engine. He limped away from the truck as fast as possible. His breathing accelerated not only out of exertion, but also fear. The pain increased as he pushed himself to move faster. The truck was like a ticking time bomb excluding the time, you'll never know when it'll explode… And that only made him worry more. He didn't want to look back, but only heard the crackling of the fire become slightly louder.
TICK.
TOCK.
TICK.
TOCK.
Faster. Faster. Faster. Faster. FASTER!
BOOM!
The truck ignited into a fiery explosion with metal bits of its former structure flying in random directions and trajectories. The young man barely got away from the truck, but shockwave of the explosion flew him forward a meter. And his scream of pain proved that. His stomach laid directly on the ground and his face was covered in the giant patch of snow. Snow got into his hair like it was lice and his entire front legs and torso was covered in snow too. In fact, every part of his body was covered in snow; he started to look like a human-like snowman…with a big red stain on his side. He winced in pain, feeling blood flow out of his wound. He stood up once more not before covering up his wound again with his bloody hand.
He looked at the crash site. Just a couple of meters in front of him looked to be a giant piece of metal with parts of the exterior ripped off of it's structure, but after taking a closer, he realized it was a plane's wing. Directly next to the destroyed wing, after a few seconds to piece the wreckage together, it was a white cargo plane with both wings teared off it's initial placement. The wing's engines was no where to be found, but the only reasonable explanation for that occurrence was that the engine simply exploded. The main structure of the cargo plane, excluding the wings which already laid waste with snow piling up on top of it, wasn't left unscathed either. Similar to the wing, parts of the aluminum exterior was teared off of its metal structure with the blizzard already making it's mark, but fires still lit brightly burning the ashes into smoke. The other wing was nowhere in sight, but it would've obviously followed the same fate as its counterpart.
Cargo from the plane was scattered throughout the snowy mountainous wasteland. Some crates and boxes were found lying about on the ground next to the wreckage, some were hanging from the trees due to the automatic parachutes being caught on one of the sturdy branches of the leafless trees, and some were just never found, lost in the snowy mountains. Vehicles such as trucks and dirt bikes were also stuffed into the cargo plane, but now were scattered across the landscape. Obviously, one of the trucks exploded due to a lit fire in the engine, which the young man just barely escaped, but unfortunately, it left the bullet wound spill more blood increasing the chances of bleeding out. The young man grunted in pain, feeling a slight pain in his side once again.
"I-it wasn't supposed to…grrr…be this way….augh…" The young man shoved his right hand into his pocket, shuffling it around until he felt something metallic and circle-like. He pulled out the object out of his pocket. It was a coin, a gold coin with Japanese text written on it. The young man read the text: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained". He scoffed.
"Sadly, I'll always come out empty handed…grrrh… That's what happens to the misfortunate. But I did end up with something….this!" He said, looking back at the plane wreckage at the end of his sentence. He sighed in annoyance. "The things I do for treasure…" He shoved the ancient coin back into his pocket and surveyed the environment around him. Because of the blizzard, he squinted his eyes to gain a better sight on his surroundings. Unfortunately, he found nothing but snow, the obvious cargo plane crash, and mountains. Nearby, he spotted a weapon he could pick up off the ground. It was nearly buried in the snow, but it stuck out long enough for the young man to notice it's existence. Concerned for his safety, he limped his way over to the firearm and grabbed it. The weapon was the typical AK-47 he saw the mercenaries that chased after him carried around. He had to admit however, it was a reliable weapon and the accuracy was decent.
The young man tossed the AK-47's strap over his shoulder and let the weapon hang over his back. As much as he liked to take his time, he had to move. Fast. The bullet wound obviously didn't serve him any good and it was only getting worse as he winced in pain. Despite the snow, he treaded through it without any regard of his surroundings. All that was on his mind, was to move fast and get out of the area before enemy reinforcements arrived to survey the crash of any "survivors", namely him. In spite of his wound, he climbed over crates that blocked his path, shimmied through small spaces that restricted him of regular movement, jumped far distances to reach crate to crate similarly to jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and made new pathways; all to retreat from the wreckage and immediately tend to his wound. But every move he made worsened the injury.
He grimaced as he walked into an open crate. Recently seeing that there was no other obstacles in the way after this crate, he walked to the other side of the crate and forced the door open by ramming his shoulder into it. Adding up already to his wound, his shoulder now felt bruised and it slightly pained to move his arm around in certain directions, but he didn't show much care since he knew the way he opened the crate door had a consequence to his shoulder. But frankly, the young man didn't think of rest to temporarily tend the wound and rest his shoulder. Scowling at his wound and shoulder, he knew that in a firefight, he would barely survive that at a cost of his wound worsening drastically, or death. Either way, both outcomes would result in pain and possibly death. If he didn't act quickly, he would most likely bleed out or die by the hand of the rival group of fortune hunters. As much as he wished to escape unscathed by the mercenaries closing in on the crash site, it wasn't going to play in the way he hoped for.
Picking up a magazine from an AK-47 to stock up on more ammunition, the young fortune hunter trod quickly across the snowy landscape, retreating from the wreckage that still burned brightly with smoke and ash rising up into the the sky like a flare shot up from a flare gun. Suddenly, an alerting vibration occurred on his thigh. Two vibrations. A message. He reached for his other pocket, pulling out a cell phone that blinked its LV light combined with the vibration alerting the owner. He turned on the phone immediately greeted with over twenty messages from many people. The senders' names, reading from the top of the message, were along the lines of Ben Cadwell, Miho Nishizumi, Hana Izusu, Saori Takebe, Yukari Akiyama, and many others from Team Hippo, Team Rabbit, and etc.….his friends.
The latest message sent, which was a few seconds ago, read: "Ethan Drake, for fucks sake pick up your phone. I tried to call you but you never answered. Please, we're all worried."
He gripped his phone tighter after reading the message. The young man, now known as Ethan Drake, shoved his phone back into his pocket and continued to travel through the isolated mountains. Ethan bowed his head down enough to cast a shadow over his eyes and nose, only revealing his grim frown.
"Sorry guys, but this is something I have to face on my own. Just…keep on doing Sensha-do and Hohei-do…." Ethan grabbed his AK-47 and rested the weapon on his shoulder. "I'll be back soon…"
{—}
So as you all may already know, this is a prologue to a new story I'm starting called: "A Fortune Hunter's Calling". I may change the title later to fit the story slightly better. Now this is a crossover between two unlikely series that most would never expect: Uncharted and Girls Und Panzer. I tried to do a story with Girls Und Panzer a few months before I went on my year long hiatus. It was crossed with inFamous but I found that to be too strange. You don't expect a person with superpowers to ride around in a tank, but then again, you don't expect a fortune hunter to do that either. Oh well, it fits better with Uncharted mainly because, again, why have a person with superpowers run around with tanks when you can have a fortune hunter who has experience with firearms with no strange abilities other than parkour? It just makes more sense than the man shooting electric out of his hands.
So how did this came to be? Well lately, I've been reading Girls Und Panzer manga, especially Little Army, and decided to replay all three Uncharted games. Yes, I ended up playing Drake's Fortune, Among Thieves, and Drake's Deception all in one go because I was bored since the internet was cut off. I was able to read the manga because there's this wonderful thing that allows me to go on Safari on my phone and search the web without bothersome Wi-Fi, it's called LTE cellular data. I pondered a lot in my sleep after reading some GuP manga and finishing Among Thieves and thought: "Hey! GuP and Uncharted…. Yeah I'll try that". So it just…happened. Really… And one of the protagonists isn't Nathan Drake himself but his OC son, Ethan Drake. I thought it would be a little iffy if seventeen year old Nathan Drake went to Oarai and do a sport similar to panzerkraft. Honestly, I thought it wouldn't work out so sorry if you were hoping for Nate to come into this story.
And I realize the prologue was just a mashup between the train wreckage scene combined with the plane crash scene from Uncharted 2 and 3. But cut me some slack here, Naughty Dog did an amazing job with this game series. They created this series so effectively that they took every "good" landscape that temporarily trapped and tortured the protagonist in. Desert was taken. Snowy environment was taken. Ocean was sorta taken. Uncharted 4's trailer showed Nate alone in the jungle so I assumed that was taken. The forest is too mellow. The rainforest is similar to the jungle. I didn't want to spend all my time thinking of landscapes and become a geologist, so I decided to choose the snowy mountains. I really liked Uncharted 2, as it was my favorite out of all of them so snowy mountains it was.
I'm writing this at 12:54 am right now and I'm about to turn eighteen within thirty or so minutes, so I'm just gonna hit the hay for now and say sayonara! I'll see ya all later.