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Summary: Years after the 141 disbands, the world is plunged into a war unlike any other. The old task force find themselves on the same side once again. They are forced to find a way around their differences and past betrayals all while dealing with the consequences of a total war where child soldiers are now being recruited.
These child soldiers, otherwise called youth vanguards, have no one to look up to other than these four dysfunctional soldiers. Tasked with winning the war and keeping these kids alive, the old 141 knows they will not succeed.
(Set post mw3 where Soap survives and Price still goes rogue)
Chapter 1: The Old Man
Captain John Price had seen his fair share of carnage. He could stand there and lie to everyone, even himself, that he wasn’t haunted by the loss of the good men and women he’d seen laid to rest. He knew how to compartmentalize. Shove and bend and break every sour memory into a pit that stayed locked away inside him forever.
These days it felt like that's all he knew how to do. Shove everything in a box and swallow it down like bitter medicine.
It was why Price was always given the most difficult tasks. He got the jobs no one else could pull off.
Enlisted as a captain in the Global Defence Accord to fight in the war effort against the United Sovereign Alliance.
The title meant nothing. He hadn’t earned it. It was given to him along with the job in exchange for an official pardon for his past war crimes. For an army that was running out of capable intelligence and a man facing criminal charges, it didn’t leave anyone any options.
Price sat there with bitter compliance. It was the only emotion he seemed to have any room for these days. It was too taxing to spend the energy on much else. Even anger seemed to escape him. He’d feel it in a fleeting moment, like a rushing wave straight to his temples, but it never stuck for long. It too got bottled up and thrown into the pit in his stomach like the rest of his regrets.
He sat in a small office lined with short metal filing cabinets. A single wooden desk with faint scratches on its surface. There was an office chair that had a squeaky armrest and a flat seat that made his lower back ache after a few hours.
He was working late, going through a thick stack of manila folders, with only one bulb of his desk light to conserve power. Turning the thick bands of silver hairs in his beard a yellow glow. His hair was much more grey than brown these days. Probably more due to age than stress.
He had gone through files like this before. It was routine for recruitment. Hell, it was practically nostalgic. It felt like yesterday he was drinking tea with Laswell with a stack of folders just like these. Picking out his prized soldiers for his task force 141, like how a giddy rich man placed bets on racehorses.
His men, whom he hadn’t seen in years now, were the cream of the crop. Looking back, he still couldn’t fathom picking anyone else besides Gaz, Ghost, and Soap. No matter how things with that unit had ended. Those men were like polished war horses in their prime, but the folders in his hands now did not hold any decorated soldiers.
Price felt his eyes glazing over the words on the page and looking straight at the small paperclipped photo instead and lingering there.
Price scanned through the document. He didn’t bother to commit any of it to memory yet. He hadn’t made any decisions, not while he was still processing the little printed numbers in the left hand corner column.
Just to the left of the recruits' names at the top.
His eyes scanned over one he had pulled from the middle of the stack.
Name: Callum Fraser
Age: 14
No matter how many times he looked through the stack of folders, the age always tightened his throat in an unbearable grief.
‘Callum Fraser’ was one of hundreds of folders on Price’s desk. One of thousands of folders that would pass through the hands of every general, colonel, and captain tasked with filling their units with ‘youth vanguards.'
It’s what the world had come to.
This level of desperation to go as far as to recruit children.
Youth recruitment was the next frontier of the war effort. Any protests to the archaic practice had been silenced long ago. It hadn’t happened in a day. People didn't just wake up one morning and decide that they wanted to send their kids off to work in fabrication factories for military drones or to the front lines as first aid volunteers.
The nature of this war was merciless. The rules of engagement were thrown out the window the day the big bombs started raining down. When people got hungry, they didn’t care about right and wrong anymore. There was only survival. Winning the war was the only way to stop the bloodshed in the streets.
The number of civilians was low everywhere. None of it was enough to keep any infrastructure around. The decision was made to allow youth recruitments into military positions for support rolls and logistics. It was the fancy way of saying child labor was a free for all.
The government praised it. Calling it the National Youth Service Initiative, the NYSI, like it was something to be proud of. The death toll counts started coming back better. Fewer soldiers were being killed on the front lines because the ‘youth vanguards' were instead, and they weren’t being counted as soldiers. Just more unfortunate casualties no one would take responsibility for.
These recruitments were canon fodder. Work drones to compact into a bleeding wound in hopes that maybe the trained soldiers could have enough time to cut the head off the enemy. Price didn't try to fool himself into thinking that any of them had good odds. Had he been a better man, he would’ve taken arms against his leaders to defend the names listed in the folders on his desk, but he wasn’t. There was no way to stop it, and no side to turn too. The enemy side had been deploying similar tactics for much longer.
He’d seen it firsthand.
A harder memory to swallow from one of his earlier operations when this damned war started. He’d been on a sniper's watch for the worse half of a month, watching the enemy forces mobilize. He’d been given the order to open fire, and he did. Listening like the same dog he was when he had blindly followed Shepard. And like a dog, he was sent down to fetch what information he could from the havoc he caused.
When he got to the first soldier he killed, he had hardly looked at their face. Just reached into their blood covered pocket and fished around. He could still remember the faded plastic Superman wallet he pulled out. It was slippery with slick warm blood still cooling in the February air. Inside, there were 2 gift cards and a flimsy ID labeled in bold with a high school emblem at the top.
His eyes caught on the picture before they focused in on the body in front of him.
A boy.
Hadn’t even finished high school, and Price killed him.
He hadn’t noticed until then, but if he took the time to unravel the faces lodged in his memory of the fallen soldiers he’d killed, he’d be hit with the flashes of young faces. How many he had been responsible for ending since the war started he didn’t know. God knows how no one was counting.
Now he was on the opposite side of the fence. Faced with being responsible for his own vanguard recruits, who would be facing the same circumstances as those dead kids in Price's memory.
If there was a God, it was his divine punishment. To have Price pick out the names in those folders of the kids, he’d be all but condemning them to a death sentence.
Yusuf Ali was the name of another boy from the stack of files. Aged 15 from Leicester. His ASVAB scores were low, but the lad was tall. No one bothered to check how capable these children actually were or whether or not they would have a chance of survival. If that was the case, they wouldn't be recruiting children in the first place at all. He was one of the older boys. Old enough to have been included in the draft for his age group in a few months anyways.
Yusuf had a kind face. Dark brown eyes and a gentle gaze in the small photograph in his file.
Price took the file and pushed it to the corner of his desk. Pulling another from the stack and flicking it open with the pad of his thumb.
Cian O'Sullivan, aged 14. An Irish lad with a freckle spotted face and a heavy brow. Another low ASVAB score. Kids these days were lucky to be alive with how many civilians were targeted in enemy attacks. Not many had been able to continue their basic schooling. Still, it was disheartening to look through all the low scores of boys who would inevitably struggle with the simple maths necessary for logistical work on base.
Price looked through another.
Oliver Bennett.
Aged 12.
A boy from Liverpool. A decent ASVAB score for a child and his age. The youngest the NYSI was accepting. He had a low physical fitness test score. His chart noted his mild asthma and slight nearsightedness. The picture in the file was of a thin-set boy with mousy brown hair and wide circle glasses that rested on ears he hadn’t grown into yet. He looked like the kind of kid that always had his nose stuck in a book.
A kid too young for any of this.
Price had to pick a minimum of 15 for his squad. He could’ve taken up to 35 to fill the ranks of the platoon, but the more he took into his unit, the more the chances of losing some went way up. He had grown so cold to all the carnage around him, but as cold hearted as Price was, even he didn't think he could bear to be responsible for so many.
Although he technically wouldn't be responsible for them alone. He had 9 trained men in his squad and another 4 on their way.
Price had been looking through the youth recruits' files as a distraction. As sick as it was, it was easier to fixate on recruitment detailing than having to face his old team again.
Nothing in this God forsaken war was fair. Price wasn’t the only one getting his pardon for his war crimes after all. Lieutenant Simon Riley, Sergeant Kyle Garrick, and Sergeant John MacTavish, although their ranks would probably be different now from when Price had worked with them, had been signed on to his squad once again.
He hadn’t seen or heard from them in years, some longer than others, and he had made no plans of changing that. Unfortunately, Price was in no place to be making demands from the brass or to go rogue in protest like he might have in his younger years.
These days there was no room for petty squabbles about having to work with old enemies or argue over hurt feelings.
The Global Defense Accord didn’t give two shits about how Task Force 141 went down. The details didn't matter. They had been an effective team once, and they were expected to pick up where they left off and attack the enemy with all they had or die trying, because there was no one else. It was already falling on the shoulders of children to take on the burden of war.
Price would deal with the churning in his stomach at the regret he felt for the past later when he was dead in the grave and the enemy was in hell waiting for him.
“Fuck." Price lifted his hand to his temple. The throbbing of a fresh new headache behind his eyes. He was getting too old for this.
His shoulders hunched forward on his desk. His elbows digging into the stacks of yellow folders. His chair squeaking with every movement.
It was already late. Picking through the recruits tonight or tomorrow morning wouldn’t make a difference. He was too tired for this fucking bullshit.
Price let his hand drop below his desk to the mini filing cabinet under the table by his feet. He pulled at the handle of the little metal drawer, and it opened with a highpitched squeak. It rattled softly. Tall, thick bottles were standing inside the tiny drawer. Compact together and jingling like a wind chime. Price didn’t look at the label of any of the bottles. He just grabbed one and closed the drawer with his foot.
He had several bottles of alcohol stored away. All in various states of being open or almost empty.
He was drinking on the job. He never would have done that, say, 8 years ago. Smoking used to be his poison of choice. He’d get away with stashing some expensive cigars in his gear.
Having a whole ass minibar under his desk was pushing it, but he didn’t care. Who was going to come in and reprimand him? Everyone was dead or dying. The world had gone to shit. He was going to drink until he was drunk enough to pass out. It was the only way he got some sleep anyways.
Price didn’t bother fishing out a glass. He took long swigs straight from the bottle. The liquid burned down his throat, pushing down the disgusting, vile feeling that lingered in his gut.
He only put the bottle down when his head felt too heavy to keep up. Propping the bottle of cheap tequila down on one of the files like it was a coaster.
He didn’t want to remember any of those kids' faces. He didn’t want to add them to the long list of faces that would flash in his nightmares. He sat with his regrets every waking moment.
Price felt a buzz throughout his body. A subtle vibration that lulled him down into that dark place in his mind where he was stuck in the past.
The alcohol only shut down the dreams for so long. Eventually he’d start to feel it pulling on his mind again.
Tonight his thoughts wandered to Kyle.
He had been the last person Price cut off after Soap got injured in the London tunnels against Makarov. At the time Soap had barely survived a shot to the head. He had been taken to the hospital in a coma no one thought he'd wake up from.
For a moment Price, Ghost, and Gaz were on the same side going after Makarov.
But it was Price who turned away. His sights were set on General Shepherd for his betrayal. Price went rogue to kill the man in his office. An aggressive move that set Price straight to the top of the list for AWOL and hostile soldiers.
Ghost and Gaz had been with him then, but Price's resentment for the corruption had started to run deep. He started going on more aggressive operations and escalating far more than in the past.
It was then that Price saw how deep all the corruption went, and he let go of the last of his restraint.
He got in contact with Valeria from Las Almas, needing her connections for his plans to go after Makarov.
It was the last straw for Ghost. Price had gone off the deep end on this hunt for Marakov. GHost wanted the bastard dead just as much as he did, but Price was like a man possessed. Willing to cross any line without any regard. Ghost couldn’t accept Price working with their enemies.
They parted ways for their 'disagreements.' At least that was the kind way of describing the fight between Ghost and Price.
Price still had a scar on his upper arm from Ghost's knife from the day they found themselves on opposite sides of a fight. A matching scar for the one Price left in the meaty part of Ghost's thigh that day.
Gaz tried to bargain with Price. After all, it had been the captain who had told him that they drew the line wherever they needed to. Gaz saw that line and how Price would redraw it wherever he wanted. He’d kill whoever was in his way. Price was losing himself, and Gaz wouldn’t follow him down that path.
In the end Price had betrayed them both to go after Makarov alone. Something he hadn’t been able to accomplish. He was a fucking failure of a man.
A drunk that had abandoned his principles and for what? Makarov still got away in the end and found himself in a comfortable seat organizing the attacks on America that would throw the nations into a devastating war like no one had seen before.
The only men he trusted had gone their own ways. There was no hope for any reconciliation. Price didn’t deserve it. Having to see them again was his karma. They could see how far he’d fallen. Just another rat they couldn’t trust.
This would be his last war. He was sure of it every night he drank himself down. His body was getting slower by the day in his old age.
—-
The bottle only silenced his mind for so long. Eventually his demons came up to claw at his mind like starved dogs. A mix of his past and lingering regret twisting into taunting and torment.
Tonight it was of Kyle. He could almost hear Kyle's voice in the back of his mind calling out to him again with eyes full of disgust.
“Price…Price!” Kyle's voice was deeper than in his memory. Like his mind was subconsciously making him picture the man Kyle would be today. The man he’d have to face in the coming hours when he’d eventually land on base, the same as Simon and MacTavish.
“Look at you. A fat drunk drowning himself to sleep. Is this what you betrayed us for? A bottle?” Kyle's voice was circling him like a wolf.
Kyles' voice swirled in his mind like a dizzying vortex. His body started fighting the drunken sleep to wake up from the nightmare.
“Get up. Bloody drunk, get your arse up!” His voice came out more clearly than any nightmare before.
Price felt hands grabbing at him in the darkness. Like a sharp grip into the fleshy part of his shoulder and shaking him.
“Get up!”
Prices' body jerked up before his eyes could open. His heart was pacing quickly in his chest, making his stomach contract and sloshing unpleasantly. Drinking himself to sleep on an empty stomach was a stupid idea.
His eyes opened to the main overhead light in his office, turning on and blurring his vision. Forcing him to blink away the wetness that budded up in the corners of his eyelashes from the burning sensation.
“What the fuck!” His voice came out slurred. His head started to pound with a hangover he’d be feeling for the rest of the day. He lurched up from his rickety chair, but his balance wavered. He had to press his palm onto his desk for stability. His weight was pressing on the messy folders that slid from the pressure of his weight and the lack of friction on the table. A handful of papers slid off the desk with an insignificant plop to the floor tiles.
A scoff came from the other side of the room that made Price refocus on his surroundings.
“Gaz?” He asked before he could fully comprehend what he was looking at, or rather who he was looking at.
Kyle was there in his office. Not some drunk dream hallucination either, in the flesh.
He looked older now. It had been 8 years, so of course he was bound to change. His hair had grown out a little in small coiled curls that stood in small peaks on his head like a crown. His facial hair was scruffier. His jaw looked soft compared to the rugged shave he had in the past. The biggest change was his eyes. The small crows' feet and lines in his brow from a frequent furrowed expression. His eyes had a coldness. He looked at Price like he was looking right through him.
Price swallowed down the tight feeling in his throat.
“Garraick.” He spoke again, correcting himself and nearly stumbling over his words. His confusion of Kyle being there had to have been written clear over his face. The man in front of him wasn’t his ‘Gaz’ from years ago. The familiarity of the callsign felt almost foreign to his lips even if the habit was still there imprinted in the back of Price’s mind. It was too familiar for them. A familiarity and trust that they no longer shared.
Kyle let out the smallest of scoffs.
Price felt his eyes follow Kyles as the man looked over the room. His eyes were sharp on Price’s face and the messy desk of files and the empty bottle still open and soaking a brown ring around one of the recruits' papers.
“I didn’t expect a lot from you coming here, but this is low, even for you.” Kyle said with an icy glare.
It was the same dark tone from Price's nightmare. For a moment he had to wonder if those harsh words were his own thoughts tormenting him in a dream or if he had just been hearing Kyle speak in his sleep. He wouldn’t have any way of knowing.
Price’s teeth gritted against each other and scrapped the soft inside of his cheek.
“You’re here early.” It was more of a question than a comment. It had to be early in the morning because of the darkness behind his drawn office curtains. He knew that his old unit was currently on their way to report for their required service on base, but last he was made aware Kyles' flight wasn’t due in for another 5 hours. Simons and MacTavish were due in another 7 and 14, respectively.
“There was a change of plans.” He gave an unamused hum. Stepping closer to the desk with his boots heavy on the floor. He bent down to grab a handful of the files that fell. His eyes sharpened on them when he caught a glimpse of the children's faces hidden between the yellow covers.
“I wanted to be here before these had to be sent in.” He waved the papers around slightly before letting them drop down to the desk in a heap with the rest of the unorganized pile. Gaz reached for the bottle and inspected it over. A growing look of disgust distorted his face into a sneer.
"These all of them?" Kyle picked up the file that had the alcohol ring stained on its front pages. Another boy whose name Price didn’t remember. Recruited 3 weeks ago with a big red stamp saying eligible for service. The kid couldn’t have been older than 13.
“Must remind you of old times. Getting your pick of the litter,” his words mocked but had a thinly veiled tone of denial that Price understood all too well. No one wanted to sit there and accept the reality of the current military administration they were all under.
Kyle stood in front of him with taut shoulders and a dangerous expression. Price felt his body anticipating a fight his mind wasn’t sure was coming yet.
“Watch yourself, Garrick.”
Standing on either side of the room, it was difficult not to feel like enemies again. The 8 years of not seeing each other did little to cool down the heat of the betrayal between them. Kyle could see the dangerous tension in Price's face beneath the grey hair and age showing on his skin. He was just as unhinged as he had been back in the day. Completely untrustworthy in Kyle's eyes.
“The truth hurt Captain?” He said like it was a dirty word. "They're bloody kids, John," Kyle pressed. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Some kind of reaction. Some sign on Price’s face that he was just as appalled and resistant against the idea of picking soldiers out of a pile of children.
“I fucking know what they are!" Price slammed his fist against the wood of the table.
“And yet you're still sitting here picking through them.”
Price clenched his teeth hard. “The front lines are down a 3rd of what they were when this war started. If they don’t fight, they will die anyways when the enemy picks up more ground.” It wasn’t a rational defense, and he knew it, but the war had really gone so far there was no other option. Most of these kids' parents were already whisked away from them in some way to support the war effort. Fathers and grandfathers were pulled away first, while mothers were forced to join the nurses' brigade or civil jobs just to keep things functioning and food on the table. The enemy had cost them so much. Most of the boys in those files had already been long displaced from their original homes when the war front took over with boots on the ground in their home towns, and they were only going to keep losing ground until they could push the enemy back.
“It’s always some fucking agenda with you. You don’t care what you have to do as long as it gets your way. Working with the enemy, turning on your own, fighting your brothers in arms,” Kyle counted off a few of Price's betrayals, throwing his crimes in his face.
“I’m not surprised you're adding child murder to the list.”
“What does that make you, Gaz?” Price snapped lowly. “Take a hard look in the mirror. You are just as fucking complicit in this.” He pointed an offended finger at the folders on the desk that he hated to look at.
“You’re wrong. Unlike you, I draw the line at sending kids off into minefields."
“Drawing the line?” Price questioned. The words felt familiar in his mouth. He could remember once in the beginning telling Kyle that they drew the line wherever they needed to, because someone had to do the dirty work to keep innocent people alive. It had been a long time since that conversation.
“There’s no line anymore, Garrick! It’s just them against us.” Price shouted. Spit catching in the grey hairs of his beard he hadn’t trimmed. The taste of alcohol was still fresh in his mouth. It only made his words feel more bitter to say.
“If you want to stand on your soapbox and shout about your bloody morals, then you're no good to me here. Find some other unit to work under; see how long it takes for more files to end up on those desks too.”
Kyle was left silent. His eyebrows knit so hard on his face it made his nose scrunch in a silent snarl.
The order had come from way over both of their heads. The current military regime they were under was a collection of whatever countries were left behind from the war's initial attacks. There was no changing sides or fighting against it. They had no option but to be complicit in the slaughter of civilians.
The worst part was Kyle already did try to get his deployment moved under another team's directive. The brass already made the decision that the old 141’s gloves off approach was exactly what they wanted on the battlefield. Refusing to cooperate was asking for a trial. One neither Price nor Kyle would win.
“You’re a sick bastard.”
Price could only stand there and blink at the insult thrown in his face.
“Whatever happens to those kids.” Kyle pointed a finger to the papers under Price's palm. “It’s on your fucking hands.”
Kyle turned out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him.
Price fell into his chair. His back hit heavy against the seat. Eight fucking years, and it was like they were only continuing the argument they had left off on.
Kyle was only the tip of the iceberg. Simon would be worse. So much worse, and by the time MacTavish got there, Jesus Price wasn’t sure they'd be able to hold out from strangling each other by the time Tav rolled in.
Price was already grabbing his bottle of alcohol before he registered; he was reaching for it. His head hurt something awful, or maybe it was his heart? He couldn't tell. His blood pressure was hammering in his veins like a pipe going straight to his brain.
He drank up the last of the amber liquid at the bottom of the bottle. A bad cure for a hangover, but again, who was going to stop him?
No one.
—-
Kyle kept his pace fast when he walked out of the small office. One more second in there and he would’ve done more than just cussing Price out and slamming the door.
He needed a breather away from all the bullshit. This bullshit war that had made monsters out of men and boys into soldiers.
Kyle fumbled with his back pocket to pull out a small heavy metal box. It was an engraved lighter he’d nabbed off of Nikolai years ago. A small compensation for falling out of a helicopter.
Kyle rubbed a thumb over the engraved pinup girl on the lighter. It brought up bitter memories of the past and how things used to be.
His other back pocket had another metal case about the width of a small wallet. Inside was the cigarettes he kept handy on him these days. He’d easily go through a pack a day if cigarettes weren't one of the first things to stop being imported to the country.
He knew he had to ration them, but fuck, if it wasn’t going to be difficult.
Price couldn't be trusted anymore.
His betrayal aside, the man had become a drunk. A unit under his command had no hope. Kyle had felt no reassurance that Ghost would be any help either when he got there too. Last Kyle had heard he’d become nothing more than a hired gun. A nasty thing that leaned into working alone, and he wouldn’t take kindly to listening to Price and his demands.
The only one that would be reliable would be himself.
Kyle had his cigarette between his lips, puffing out smoke with every other breath to settle him.
When he was done, he stamped it out on the ground and kicked it off into the gravel. He made his way across base to the men's barracks. There were 9 trained soldiers that would also be working in the same platoon, and Kyle was going to make it his mission that they were on the same page. That someone would be there to make the hard calls needed to end this war, with or without Price.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Read Chapter 1: The Old Man from the story Before We Learned War by behindthebread with 10 reads. captainprice, warfare...
Context: this Jamack is trapped in a terrarium to be forcibly transformed from a furry into a regular brainless frog and waits for his jaguar human daughter Kipo to come and save him.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I actually finished this one a long time ago, along with some other stuff of Kobu's, but as most were illustrations and previews, I had held onto them to put them together in one Log post, but then I never finished the rest, and months passed on by and here we are. Now that I'm working on an actual dj of Kobu's, I've decided to at least post this short comic while I'm busy.
