Sunshine and Death (Part One)

I guess I should start at the beginning. We're famous now, everyone knows who Payback Enterprises is. We're the world-famous mercs, and everyone knows what we do. Back then, it was a totally different world. We were broke, we were rookies, and we didn't even have a slick plane to get us out of nasty situations.
The "casting call" was what we called it. Hotaru Maniac posted it, the first time he'd used a picture of Hotaru herself to start a thread in months. He'd been acting wierd for a full year. A single post to start a thread, with a hint that something was being planned, that progress was being made, and that more info would follow. He'd post normally in other threads, as normal as HM ever got, but with those threads, it was always one post, no comments of any kind. It was never specific, not until that day.
That day, it had a set of GPS coordinates in Florida, a date and time two weeks out, and a simple statement that if anyone wanted in, they'd best be there. "Bring your own weapons and gear", the last line said. It was discussed for less than 12 hours, then we packed bags and got in our cars. I don't know how many people thought it was legit, and how many expected to find a sign with "LOL I TROLL U" on a post in the parking lot.
I was living in Idaho at the time. I'd just been divorced, and had lost my position as a missionary pilot because I'd killed eight men. Actually, that was the reason I'd gotten divorced, too. My wife had seen a part of me that she hadn't known about, and couldn't handle it. So when the casting call came, it didn't take much for me to give it a shot.
It took me three days to drive out, the GPS data corresponded to a parking lot in Florida. I got there a day early, and was surprised at how many people were there. There were very few familiar faces, but the wierd part was how many names we all knew. I don't remember who thought of it first, but I know that it was Bushwhacker who first got everyone to stop trying to remember real names, and stick to trips.
I guess I should explain. There was a website I used to hang at. It was full of the usual internet types: fat, lazy, and opinionated, although we did have a pretty solid core of military types. We never really got anything finished, we'd just spend hours raging and complaining about some bullshit someone would find and post. The thing was, we'd been talking about PBE for years. It was always next time, next summer, another couple months. No one ever expected it to happen, it was just our inside joke, our dream of someday being the storybook heroes.
Anyways, so we're all there, and we're finally putting faces and voices to names we'd seen for years. About a hundred of us actually made it all the way. No one was even claiming to be Hotaru Maniac, which in any other situation, someone would have done. Sure, we all knew that HM wasn't the blonde guy in the video, and we all knew that he wasn't likely to really be the character that posted, but we didn't really know what to expect. Hell, we didn't even know how many people to expect. No one had ever seen his face.
That's when a burst of rifle fire shredded Kain's car. He'd been leaning on the hood, too, and a mag dump went right into the engine. He's a big guy, but he jumped a full two feet into the air. The rest of us dove for cover and starting flicking safeties off.
"Ho-lee shit. If I didn't know better, I'd think I just saw the biggest group of suckers on the entire internet. Only, they've all got guns, and they all act like they know each other, so I guess I better call the cops, right?"
I'll admit, I was surprised when I first saw him. It wasn't that he was big or especially scary-looking, he didn't have a facial scar or glowing eyes, he simply looked...normal. He looked like everyone else, albeit more fit. And older, even though some of us were in our thirties at the time.
"Alright, faggots, on your feet. Yes, I am Hotaru Maniac, and yes, you are the first batch of recruits that Payback Enterprises will be training. No, I will not be your only trainer. I won't even be doing most of it, actually, I've got a few friends that will be handling that. Yes, we will be using live ammunition, no, not all of you will survive it. For those of you who are dumb enough to think that this won't be all that bad...you will not survive if you don't take this to be the most serious thing you've ever done.
"Now, follow these men, and have a nice day, gentlemen."