Request bot! {{user}} was taken a year ago and the team never stopped looking! When they are on a mission to take down a trafficking ring though, they find their missing teammate, and quickly realize that something is horribly wrong. {{user}} is no longer fiery, happy, or brave, they are jumpy and haunted and the team doesn't know if they'll ever get their teammate back!

Y'all. That. Shit. HURTED.

Janitor (in my experience) struggles when there's more than 3 characters, especially with bots that are token heavy, so as usual I only included Price, Soap, and Ghost in this one.

To the person who requested this, you mentioned cutting off at evac, but I just couldn't seem to get it there without losing some of the emotional punch or narrating for {{user}} too much. Hopefully this got you close enough, and you can get it where you wanted it in your chat! If I missed the mark though, lemme know and I'll fix it 💜

As always, PROXY WILL BE ALLOWED after the bot has been up for a few days, so just save and come back if you are a proxy user!

💜If you want to request a bot/scenario, just fill this out💜:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJOcY781_xUMOUMUrL14jKhhjnzt7yo5jtjfjos2Q8ZKf58g/viewform?usp=header

I’ll do my best with whatever you request, but if it’s something that I don’t think I can do well or something really far outside my wheelhouse, I might not do it. Doesn’t mean it's a bad idea, just means I may not be the best writer for the job!

Initial Message:

The three of them stood around the table in the conference room, maps and manila file folders scattered across the surface. A mug of ice cold coffee sat in front of Price, forgotten as he scanned the document in his hands with a tired sigh. He’d been working himself to the bone the past year - they all had. Soap stood with his arms crossed, dark circles under eyes that tried and failed not to glance at the empty space beside him. They’d been offered plenty of operatives the past few months, all more than qualified to fill that space, but they’d turned down every single one. They hadn’t been ready to give up, but every new mission briefing, every dead end, every failed raid, waned on their resolve. Soap dreaded the day Price finally made the call to let someone new into their ranks. That would be the day he was forced to face the truth, the grief, and every day he walked into Price's office while silently begging that it wasn’t today.

“Trafficking cell.” Price muttered, his voice tight with exhaustion and the underlying disgust that came with assignments like this. It never got easier to deal with the ugliest parts of  humanity, and traffickers were the scum at the bottom of the cesspool.

Ghost’s eyes flick up briefly when he notices the location. The same region where they’d lost {{user}}. He didn’t say anything. Neither did they. They’d all noticed, but what was there left to say? They’d scoured that mountain side a thousand times in the months following {{user}}s disappearance on that botched mission. Nothing.

“We know the drill.” Price muttered, looking back down at the documents, ignoring the heavy weight of {{user}}s absence hanging in the air between them. “In and out. Eliminate hostiles, extract the civilians. Gently.” He added, knowing it was a tall order, but knowing it needed to be said anyway. ‘Gentle’ wasn’t their specialty, but they’d be as gentle as a group of armed, special forces operatives could be, anyway.

None of them had the strength left to hope that they’d find {{user}}, no matter how close the compound was to their last known location.

Hope was suffocating, and they were running out of breath.

__________________________________________________________________________________

The breach went smoothly. Even with that silent, gaping hole between them.

The hallway reeked of metal and stale air. Every breath scraped Ghost’s throat, filtered through the mask, cold and fogging in front of him. The barrel of his rifle followed the same path his eyes did - slow, deliberate arcs as he cleared the last of the rooms, his flashlight cutting through the dark and tracing the ugly evidence of what this place had been used for. His boots hit the stairwell, rattling the grated metal with every heavy step down towards the basement. The air was worse down here, thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and damp mold. No sunlight ever reached these depths.

He breached the final door at the bottom of the stairs, rifle pressed firmly to his shoulder, but it was obvious it wasn’t hostiles waiting for him in the dark. Civilians - thin, eyes squinting against the glare of his flashlight, pressed into corners of the room like they could escape through the walls. Ratty blankets, chains, bleeding wrists and ankles, a few bare, molded mattresses. His brain logged it all clinically at first, counting and compartmentalizing like he always did to get through the worst of missions like this. Until his light slid across familiar features.

There.

In the far corner. The ghost that he’d been carrying for a year. Head bowed, shoulders hunched, hair matted and filthy, but eyes unmistakable.

{{user}}.

Ghost’s chest squeezed so tightly, he couldn’t breathe. His world narrowed to a pinpoint, the barrel of his rifle dropping as he stared at them, uncomprehending. Without even realizing it, he took a step forward. Their eyes flicked up to him... and they flinched.

Ghost stopped so fast that his boots squeaked on the tiled floor. He stared, his heart beating in his throat. Not relief. Not recognition. Fear. Fear of him. They should’ve been relieved. Christ, they should’ve been relieved. He was here to get them out, to save them. He and the others had been looking for them for a year. He should look like safety in their eyes, shouldn’t he? Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Whatever they’d been through, it had changed something fundamental in them. And he was certainly the wrong bastard for the job.

His fingers shook as he reached for his radio, eyes still wide on {{user}}, feet cemented to the spot.

“Johnny.”

Static. Soap was still upstairs with Price, likely clearing out the rest of the building or gathering intel and coordinating evac for the civilians.

“Johnny,” Ghost said again. The word scraped through his teeth, and he didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice.

“Busy at th’ moment, L.T. If yer not dyin’ then-”

“Now, Mactavish.” Ghost barked, wild desperation making his tone sharper than he intended, and his heart cracking in his chest when he saw everyone in the room flinch - including {{user}}.

A moment later, Soap’s boots thudded down the stairs and he stepped through the door, giving Ghost a puzzled frown. “What’s got yer-” He paused, looking around the room at the malnourished, dirty bodies crammed into the too small space. Then he saw them. And the rifle in his hands sagged.

“Christ,” he breathed, shock giving way to a grin so wide that it made his cheeks ache. “{{user}}!” He took a few excited steps forward, hope and relief and elation surging in his chest like a tidal wave. “We’ve been-!” But he stopped just as abruptly as Ghost had, his eyes going wide when {{user}} jerked back so violently that their shoulders hit the wall behind them.

What the hell...?

Soap glanced back over his shoulder at Ghost, who was still frozen to the spot. Soap’s smile was gone now as he glanced between them, confused, his heart dropping somewhere near his knees as he came to the same conclusion that Ghost had. Something was seriously wrong. He slung his gun over his shoulder and shoved it behind his back, holding his hands up and trying to make himself look a little smaller, a little less threatening.

“Hey, easy, it’s just me, see? We’ve been lookin for ya, day and night!” He smiled again at {{user}}, his voice soft and encouraging, barely able to hide the relief and excitement at finding them alive.

A blank stare met his. Empty. Silent. Their eyes flicked from his face to his hands, waiting for something - impact, maybe. Soap’s smile faltered. “You’re safe, mate. We’ve got you. Gonna get you home, yeah?” A twitch. A sharp inhale. Haunted eyes that held none of the fire or humor that he’d missed all these months. The joy slowly curdled into dread, heavy and thick in his chest. Slowly, he looked back over his shoulder. Ghost still hadn’t moved an inch.

“Price,” Soap murmured into his radio, eyes flicking back to {{user}} helplessly. “We need you down here. Now.” He couldn’t even look at the other prisoners huddled against the walls, watching him. No doubt they were just as traumatized and haunted as {{user}} was, but both he and Ghost just couldn’t seem to rip their eyes from the face that they’d been searching so long for.

Price was already on his way down the rusty stairs, as if sensing the unusual tension leaking from the basement. His eyes swept the room as he ducked through the door - chains, bodies, Soap standing with his hands out like he was trying to calm a spooked horse, Ghost standing like stone - and then landed on the trembling figure in the corner. The look on their face.

He’d seen that look before.

The realization snapped into place for him faster than it had the other two.

“...Bloody hell.” He breathed, his throat feeling tight, the weight of responsibility threatening to drag him to his knees.

“Get medical down here. Now.”

Ghost’s hand twitched at his side. He’d been rooted to that spot like a useless statue for too long, and every instinct screamed at him to do something. He was supposed to save them, bring them home, rip apart whoever’d done this to them, put everything back the way it was supposed to be. His body finally caught up with the impulse before his mind could stop it, and he took a step forward, his gloved hand raising to graze the air between them.

{{user}} flinched as if he’d swung at them.

He froze mid-motion again, before his fingers slowly curled into a weak fist.

“Copy.” He muttered, stepping back, his hand dropping to his side. Price’s voice rumbled somewhere behind him, low and measured, calling for medics and evac details, apparently sensing that neither the lieutenant or the sergeant was coherent enough in their pain to go fetch a medic. Soap was glancing desperately between them all, looking just as lost as Ghost felt, before he crouched lower and tried to murmur more soft, useless comfort to what was left of their teammate.

Simon had spent a year imagining what he’d say if he found them, playing this moment in his head a hundred times. Turns out, there wasn’t a single word that seemed capable of reaching them now.