The bushes rattled more rapidly. Ivan did not give in any chances as he aimed at the spot next to the bushes and pulled the trigger. With a thunderous crackle, a warning shot seemed to drive out whatever was hiding successfully, but what hopped out of the bushes made Ivan question his sanity.
"What the fucking hell..." Ivan watched as a boar-sized creature hopped out of the bushes and scrambled past Ivan. This creature can only be described as a mix between a wolf, a leopard, and a unicorn.
He stared at the alien-like creature for a straight 10 seconds as it ran away while making some angry noise. He raised his shaky hand up to his face, then he gave himself a hard slap across his cheek.
"FUCK! Alright, this isn't some hallucination or fevered dream." Ivan groaned as he wander around in this unfamilar woods, anything can be hostile to him. The woods looked almost the same as the ones back on Earth, but of course, with those alien-like critters; caterpillar with dragonfly's wings that glows like some deep ocean fish, owl-like bird with three legs, three eyes, and a small horn sticking out in front of their face, and a beast with the mixed appearence of a Tiger, Coyote, aligator, and some stuff Ivan couldn't even make sense of.
It's growling at him.
"Hungry eh?" Ivan muttered under his breath as he raised his assualt rifle up, "Walk away and mind your own bussiness, hunt something else. No one will get hurt."
The beast's growl turned into a snarl as it showed its fangs.
"Alrighty then, fuck around and-" The beast lunged at him.
A few thunderous crackles followed by a loud thud on the ground.
"Find out." Ivan finished as he walked away, the beast's corpse is behind him. A second later he regretted shooting the beast, "Great, now every single critters out there would want to check this place out. Honestly, I don't wanna find out how many predatory species are out there with only three rifle mags on me."
Ivan decided it's not a great idea to wander around aimlessly for too long, with those alien-like creatures being so diversed, he doubt an assualt rifle could save him from everything.
"Hm? Are those... sands?" Ivan bent down on one knee as he studied the sands on the ground, he moved towards the area where the sands. The woods began to fade as bushes became more populated, he stopped as he squinted his eyes.
"Seems like a desert to me, damn the geography of this.. world, is testing my sanity..." Ivan figured he wasn't on Earth anymore after encountering lives that are non-existence on Earth. Far ahead, there were golden-coored dunes of sand, in high contrast to the green of the woods behind him.
As Ivan was still looking over the vast desert ahead of him, he suddenly heard something, something he can never forget in his life.
The rumble of tank engine.
Almost subconsciously, Ivan immediately turned around and got on his stomach while pointing his rifle at the woods. Then realization struck, he's not even on Earth, yet he knew there is no way he could mistaken the sound of a T-64BV's diseal engine. He has been libving inside that tank throughout his battlefield life up until his 'death'.
He held his breath as he saw a familar silhouette, the low profile hull, brick-like ERAs all over the turret, and the massive IR light on the left of the main gun.
"How the hell did you get over here..." Ivan murmured under his breath, dare not to stand up.
The T-64BV tank stopped several feet from Ivan, the driver hatch opened, then someone Ivan would never expect to see in real life appeared from the driver hatch.
It is a girl, with turquoise-colored long twin-tailed hair, tealed eyes, and pink hairband that's at the roots of her twin-tails. She looked just like she does in fanarts or her offical MVs.
"Hatsune fucking Miku?!?!" Ivan's jaws dropped.
The girl, now revealed to be Miku, waved at Ivan, she's wearing a typical Russian armor unit uniform, wearing a rather big tanker cap on her head, which only makes her look cuter, "Heya Commander Ivan! Took me a while to finally find you!"
Ivan slowly got up, his brain is screaming at him for this insanity that's displayed in front of him, "Wha-how? Huh?"
Miku giggled as she got out the tank and hopped down, running small steps towards him, she stopped rather close to Ivan. The man could now take a closer look at the ACG idol, she looked EXACTLY like what the art has deplicted, no traces of a real-life human feature. She just looked real.
"What's the matter? Ivan? Tongue caught in a knot?" Miku snickered, "Let's just say I'm not exactly the vocaloid 'Hatsune Miku' you thought, in fact, I was sent here with you by... Mm... that entity to assist you. I scanned your memory and saw the excessive hormone peak at this 'Hatsune Miku', so I took her form~ You can refer me to some sort of AI created by that entity, my ability is to mimic gears, tools, items, and weapons of Earth by converting your mana into the emergy I can use. So... I am Miku, but not really her... Get it?"
"Y....yeah... I'm gonna just call you Miku." Ivan nodded slowly, "Wait, you mean this... entity that you're refering to sent me here?"
"Yeah, all I can tell you is that there's a reason as to why the entity sent you here, as of why, that I cannot tell you. But you'll be noticified when the time comes." MIku's expression turned serious for a brief moment, then turned back to her usual cheerful face, "We can worry about that later, climb on in first!" She then walked back to the T-64BV while skipping on the way.
Ivan scratched his head, then followed her.
As the tanker stepped onto the brick-like surface of the ERA, Ivan's mind couldn't help but floated back to that blood-soaked battlefield, the cries and shouts of his crew are still lingering in his memory.
"Ivan?" Miku's voice snapped him back to reality, he found Miku looking at him with a concerned expression.
"Ah, nothing, just nostalgia." Ivan smiled and waved it off, the past is the past, at least he doesn't have to fight in that war anymore.
He slipped into the commander compartment inside the turret, everything were just like the tank he fought in. With muscle and hardcore training memories, Ivan quickly activated the Fire Control System and the Thermal Imager, he then overtook the empty gunner compartment's control of the main gun.
"Uh, Miku, you're driving?"
"Technically, I'm capable of performing all three roles, driver, commander, and gunner."
"Good to know... but we can't just leave the gunner out, but..." Ivan had his upper body out of the hatch as he checked the NSVT heavy machine gun in front of him which is attached to the commander hatch, "We don't even know if this world is civilized. I know T-64BV can temporially handle two crew members, but that scraps most of its maximum combat capabilites."
"Who knows," Miku shrugged, "Maybe we'll run into one of the natives."
Ivan snatched a binocular hanging at the side of the battle compartment, "We should probably go check out the desert, to get a better view at the exact location, maybe we can find our ways to places that are most likely to have some sort of civilization."
"On it." Miku stepped on the gas as the 42 tons steel beast began to rumble forward.
Over the dunes, Ivan saw a vast desert ahead of them, the heat waves formed mirages near the surface. Ivan wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead as he scanned the sands over and over again.
Then, he caught something... or some one being chased by another group.
"Miku, stop. I think I see something... er, someone. A lot of people actually." Ivan patted the turret, making some loud bangs enough for Miku to notice.
What Ivan saw as these people got closer, finally convinced him to completely toss his sanity from Earth aside; It was two figures on a horse, both look humanoid, with the only difference being their ears, they;re pointy elf-like ears. The aggressors behind them loked like orcs, they're throwing old-school weapons such as tomahawks and javelins at the two elves. They were eventually hit and captured.
"It's... uh, elves and orcs." Ivan said out loud, "the elves pissed the orcs off and... oh shit, they fucking... cut his head off!" Despite he had some looks of the brutal and goresome battlefield back on Earth, cutting people's head off wasn't as common as blowing them into unrecognizable pieces.
Ivan's eyes widened in shock and anger as the orcs pressed the female elf onto the ground and stripping her clothings off.
"Motherfuckers." As a veteran, Ivan hated war crimes, he had to withness some of his collegues executing several prisoners of war, right afterward he got in a huge fight with them. Ivan himself had captured some POWs in the past, yet he never tortured them or starved them; Ivan would hold them back until the enemies offers an exchange of prisoners of war.
"Ivan? What's going on?" Miku asked as she sees Ivan taking out his AEK-971 assault rifle and took aim.
"Just... shooting some animals." Ivan replied with a cold, deadly tone.
The shots were brief and precise, all the orcs were shot dead on the spot, while the elf girl looked shocked and terrified.
"Come on Miku, we have a guest." Ivan said as his tank moved towards the elf girl.