[Shadows of War|July 17-2015| Act 8| Scene 1| Take 1]

Several soldiers were moving towards a military truck that was ready to move. They were carrying their rifles on their backs, and the exhaustion caused due to being on the battlefield could be clearly seen on their faces.

Some soldiers were just staring into the distance, thinking about something that was better left untold.

The skies were cloudy, and the atmosphere was pretty stale, with the smell of gunpowder in the air.

Among them, one of the soldiers was Ethan, who had yet to recover from the wounds of his previous war experiences.

He moved towards one of the trucks and climbed up on it. Several soldiers did the same.

At that moment, he saw a soldier panting and running towards the truck. The reason Ethan’s gaze stayed on him was because of his unique features. 

He didn’t look British or even French. His features were something he had seen before, and his identity was easily given away by the rifle he was carrying. It was not the same as Ethan’s or any other British soldier.

He was a soldier from the British Indian army.

The Indian soldier, Aiden, reached the military truck and tried to enter it, but a British soldier in front of Ethan stood up and kicked him.

With a thud, Aiden fell down and groaned in pain. He looked up at the soldiers smirking at him but didn’t say anything.

Although they were fighting on the same side, the discrimination was something that he had seen and experienced a lot. Something he was already used to.

His eyes had a bit of pain in them, thinking of the times he was beaten up by a group of soldiers or when someone had spit in his food. 

But he knew that this wouldn’t end in a day. His only hope, for now, was that the British would win the war and his country would get the freedom their people deserved._.

That was the only thing that was keeping him going in this war.

Sighing, he stood up and finally entered the truck.

Coincidentally, he sat down next to Ethan as the truck began to move. Throughout the journey, the other British soldiers glared at the Indian guy or just straight out ignored him.

Ethan was the latter, as his experiences had told him that it was better to save his energy than to do something rash. After all, they were from the same side, and in war, it was better to be together than have differences between a group.

He just rested his head on the hard metal surface of the truck.

“Cut!”

The director’s shout came out as the scene finished. He hadn’t expected that the newbie wouldn’t make any mistakes.

Although the scene was simple, everything went very well.

“Good job, everyone. Take a break and get ready for the next scene.”

***

[Shadows of War|July 17-2015| Act 8| Scene 4| Take 3]

The scene changed to a desolate town where reportedly, German troops were hiding. Several British and French regiments were here to search for them.

Ethan was walking with a group of soldiers, searching for a shadow of the German troops. Aiden was also with him, and after walking for over an hour, they stopped to take a short rest.

Ethan sat down on a nearby bench, and Aiden did the same. Feeling a bit of curiosity about him, Ethan suddenly opened his mouth to ask.

“How long have you been in the war?”

He didn’t expect any answer from Aiden, knowing full well that he wouldn’t even know what he was saying. But he was too tired of the silence of the surroundings.

“…a year.” Surprisingly, he got a reply. When Ethan looked at him with eyes full of wonder, Aiden smiled.

“I learned to understand… the language.” He said slowly, in a thick Indian accent but nothing that Ethan couldn’t understand. “Felt like it was necessary to know here. I wanted… to know what the… curses I heard meant.”

Somehow, that made Ethan chuckle.

“I’m Ethan, Ethan George. What’s your name?”

He said, feeling a bit better after a long time, but Aiden didn’t reply. Instead, he suddenly pushed him down off the bench.

“What are you–”

Ethan tried to speak, but his words never left his throat when he saw two soldiers that were standing in front of the bench fall down, with blood leaking out from their stomachs.

“Run!”

Aiden simply said that, having got a glimpse of an enemy German soldier in a building. He pulled up Ethan from the ground, and they both quickly ran to a nearby alley.

The scene ended there, and the distinct shout of the director came out.

“Cut!”

***

“You did a good job today.”

Leo said after the end of the shooting for the day. Aiden had just come out from the makeup room after removing the makeup and changing into his normal clothes, rather than a vintage army uniform.

“Thanks.”

He said simply, happy for any appreciation he was getting. He liked acting, but anyone rarely appreciated him for it.

“You did better than I thought. All the takes were nice. Normally, newbies are too nervous even to say their lines.”

“I did make mistakes. They just weren’t big enough for Aaron to punch me in frustration.”

Leo chuckled at that joke, but it was true. There was a scene in which Aiden had fallen down, so they needed to do another take and one more where Lincoln felt like his emotions weren’t in the right place.

But these things were very normal during shooting.

The best thing for him was that it had not taken more than four tries for him to give a satisfactory performance. This was truly a rare thing for newbies.

‘I wonder when I will make a breakthrough.’

Aiden thought, opening up the system notifications.

[You have given your first performance in front of a camera. Congratulations on taking a major step towards stardom!]

[You have gained experience. You are close to breaking into Basic Grade 10.]

His system said he was close to breaking into Basic Grade 10, but he didn’t know how long it would take.

If he could, he wanted to really get at least one of his skills to Intermediate Grade 1. But, unfortunately, even his singing skill was stuck at Basic Grade.

‘Let’s hope many people liking my songs will help me breakthrough.’

Aiden thought about his singing skills, and at that moment, his eyes suddenly landed on Aaron Hart and a group of supporting actors walking towards his car.

One of his hands was on the back of a pretty assistant director, and they looked weirdly close.

“That’s just Aaron scoring another girl tonight.”

“What?”

At Leo’s remark, Aiden made an intrigued expression.

“Aaron is famous for going after young and pretty girls. That entourage of actors will party for a bit before some of them would find random Australian girls for themselves. Aaron would surely enjoy the night.”

“Isn’t he married?” Aiden was sure of this as he researched the actors involved with the movie a bit.

“He is. But he doesn’t care. His wife isn’t here, and to be extremely honest, she probably knows about it. She just doesn’t care at this point. With his money, she has all the luxury items she wants and servants. So why would she care about her husband sleeping with someone else for a night?”

Hearing that, Aiden didn’t feel like it was something out of the ordinary. After all, it was Hollywood.

People come here to get famous and make money. But, along the way, they become more and more materialistic as they climb the stairs of success.

“Don’t you know the female assistant?” He asked as they walked.

“I do.” Leo nodded. “Lincoln likes to get a lot of assistants to help him around. She’s pretty much extra because she’s the daughter of someone Lincoln knows. Dreams to be an actress, so she’s trying to make some ‘connections’ with popular actors.” 

Leo particularly focused on the word connections with a smirk on his face. Not really caring about it, Aiden said.

“Does that even work?”

“Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. Some of these girls even call the paparazzi themselves after landing themselves a big actor or director so that they could be on the cover page of some tabloid. Unfortunately, though, they are mostly instructed by their agents.”

Leo left after that, saying that he had the stuff to work on, and as Aiden didn’t have anything else to do either, he also went to his hotel room.

As most of the shooting had happened in LA and the UK, and only the final part was to be shot in Australia, Aiden had never gotten time to connect with the cast.

Even when he tried to talk to them, it ended as a greeting at best. So, he was pretty much a loner on the set.

Since he wasn’t sleeping, he just thought about the talk with Leo as it kept roaming around in his mind.

‘That was pretty much an eye-opener.’

Until now, he had just heard of these things happening in Hollywood, but it was the first time he was seeing it. 

After all, seeing and hearing were pretty different, so the impacts were different.

It made him think more about what kind of actor he wanted to be. Someone like Aaron with a lot of fame who sleeps with young girls every night or something more, something better.

The answer was in his choices.