<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic">Fire rained down on them. Lighting up the night sky, like the fourth of July...<br/><br/>â€œMcCain! McCain! Get your ass back!â€ <br/><br/>Came the voice of his commanding officer, it was so hard to hear him though. The gunfire combined with the hammering of his heart it was all he could hear. <br/><br/>â€œMcCain! Mc....Cain!â€<br/><br/>Everything was slowed, as he stubbornly returned fire. He had to hold the line, they just needed a few more minutes. <br/><br/>â€œGoddamnit McCain!â€ his CO shouted at him again, though there was really no effort made in stopping him or removing him from his position. The pair of them were crouched side by side, rifles unloading round after round, their eyes on the men who were struggling to make it to them. Just a few more feet and they would be out of range and in cover. <br/><br/>The distant whistle of a mortar ground screaming as it made its entrance from the sky. Movement beside him and before he could react his CO was running across the field to the injured men. <br/><br/>â€œSIR! NO!â€ McCain cried out vaulting over the sand dune and running to try and stop the man, only to arrive there just as the mortar impacted on the ground. <br/><br/>Pain like hot lightening shot through his body, his head felt like it was going to explode, his ears were ringing and the world no longer made sense. <br/><br/>The ringing.....that ringing.....<br/><br/>RING! RING! RING!</span></span><br/><br/>With a gasp 27 year old, Lt. Tobias Andrew McCain sat up in his bed. Covered in a cold sweat, as his chest heaved, his eyes darting about for a moment before his hands went to his head, clutching at it in agony from the pounding headache that assaulted him. Growling he backhanded the offending alarm clock across the room, needing that noise to just stop. Needing the pain to just stop.<br/><br/>The pop of a couple of pills, which he crunched like so many tic-tacs and Tobias was up starting his day.<br/><br/>The cold sweat that he awoke with was quickly replaced by a good hot one, as he pulled himself for sit up, after sit up. Tobias might have been discharged from the Marines that did not mean he no longer lived like one. Up before the sun, and straight into his morning exercises, which consisted of being suspended from the door frame to his bathroom by his ankles while he performed his situps. It was worth the overall physical<a class="postlink" href="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9718239/1296896287473.jpg">form</a>that he had. Tall standing at an impressive 6'7, broad of shoulder, with well defined muscles that told of the inner strength he possessed.<br/><br/>After a quick shower he found his blue eyes staring back at him in the mirror, water still dripped from his chest and down his back, while the black towel was wrapped about his waist. There was the light beginnings of a beard which he promptly began to took a razor too before lathered up his face. Using the â€œold fashionâ€ straight razor, but nothing got a closer cut or required such practice and patience as the sharp blade. It had been something that his father had taught him and his father's father, so on and so forth. Just one of those things that had been passed on. Washing his face clean of any remaining lather he ran his hand through his shortly cropped dirty blond hair. There was just enough on the top that he could run his fingers through it. Feeling himself presentable he turned to get ready for work, allowing for a large and mangled scar to be shown in the mirror. Where it looked like his shoulder had been ripped apart, burned and then put back together. From the severity of the scar it would be easy to guess that it often if not constantly gave him pain and possibly hindered his movements and strength with it.<br/><br/>Did not take a genius to guess that was why he was no longer in the military.<br/><br/>About an hour later and Tobias was hanging off the side of a garbage truck, ear-buds in his ears as he sang along to the music that blared in his ears. The life of a garbage man was not glamorous but it gave him something to do with his time and, according to his therapist, it gave him a connection to society. Which he had been lacking when he first came home from the war, but it was not something that could be helped, given the lack of family and friends who did not get his pain. So, he began finding himself clutching his service pistol, without any idea how he ended up with it in the first place. Before he hurt himself or someone else he went to a therapist who suggested he get a job. Something to help him reconnect with humanity.<br/><br/>After a few trial and errors he settled on this, a garbage man. Thus far, it was perfect. He got to see the city, got some exercise and was exposed to people without having to see their looks of pity when he talked about himself. A friendly wave, nod of hello and even some pleasant chit chat. Just what the doctor ordered, at least to him not potentially killing himself or going on a killing spree. It was good honest work and he honestly enjoyed it. Go figure.<br/><br/>As the truck pulled to a stop he hopped off, singing to himself,<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;">â€œSay so long to innocence<br/>From underneath the evidence<br/>You taste like Heaven, but God knows you're built for sinâ€</div><br/><br/>Humming the next couple of lines to the song he grabbed up some trash bags by the stairs, though he paused in turning around when movement caught his eye. â€œWell what do we have here?â€ he says with a smile as he removed his ear-buds, as he peered in at the girl.