Bloodstained Rose

The village had been demolished by the heavy artillery and the G.E.I.’s swift action. Rei had tried to withstand the punishment from the battle, but after being locked in a deathmatch with her brother, Jin, she had barely enough stamina to continue. The two had gone headfirst into battle against the powerful A.S.B.—Commander Yulia. She had very easily managed to take them down, leaving Jin and Rei helpless.

The rest of the village had erupted into an inferno while rubble from the few buildings in the settlement had been scattered across the ground. While Rei tried to stand, she watched Vic emerge from the smoke several feet away. Jin’s body had been completely battered, his leg broken, and his weapons separated. As he tried to prop himself up, Vic pressed down on Jin’s broken leg with his foot and drew his side arm.

“I guess I will have to cut your revenge short,” Vic said after examining him. “I take it you’re the son of Hideo-Jin-Ni? Was it his plan to train you to fight me?”

Jin’s battle robe had started to flicker, slowly phasing from black to red as he felt the presence of the onboard AI start to fade. Yulia stepped over towards him, waving her staff between her fingers. The scent of smoke and burning lumber deadened Jin’s senses, leaving him unable to speak.

“Hideo using his children to do his battles, typical.” Yulia said aloud.

“A very sound plan, but there was one thing his plan did not account for,” Vic declared as he hovered the barrel of his sidearm over Jin’s face, finally concluding, “me.”

There was a loud blast from the muzzle, followed by a thud as Jin’s head slammed down to the ground. Rei stood in horror watching her final connection to the world become severed, leaving her alone to do battle with the two. She clenched her black-metal sword in her hands and let out a scream of pain. The tears started to roll down her face while the two turned to face her.

As the fire raged on, she tried to keep on her feet while Yulia and Vic had started to approach. Her robe and its onboard AI had been unable to feed her commands fast enough to retaliate effectively.

“You have to be Mizumi’s child,” Vic called out to her. The uncanny resemblance shocked him as he stared towards her. “This day cannot get any better!”

Rei’s knowledge of her had been lacking. Hideo had only told her one story, just enough to know that she existed. She stared back at Vic, feeling a glimmer of hope thinking of Mizumi being out there.

“She’s still alive, isn’t she?” Rei asked.

“No,” he replied. He shook his head before raising his gun to her once more. “She never had the chance. Just surrender, save yourself the trouble.”

Rei charged forward, taking a chance against the odds. Everybody was gone, and there was nothing left to lose.

You took everything from me, Rei thought to herself while Yulia started to rush towards her. Once she had raised her sword to try and defend, Yulia had already closed the gap between them. Before Rei could even try and attack, she had felt Yulia’s hand strike her cheek. The sudden impact had nearly taken her head from her neck and caused her to collapse to the ground.

“We are everything that makes us unique,” Yulia said clearly, approaching Rei to deliver a follow up strike. Her blue hair and emerald-colored eyes shined in darkness, illuminating her black seifuku once more. She was at least a foot shorter than Rei, but still towering over her in the moment. After pressing her foot into the center of Rei’s back, she continued, “but we have removed everything that makes us weak.”

“Stop, please!” Rei screamed back as she felt the machine’s foot pressing harder. The pressure had caused her ribs to crack. After a few seconds, she could feel blood starting to drip from her mouth. Vic had watched in the distance with a smirk on his face as Yulia continued to torture her.

“We have removed our humanity from the equation. We have ascended,” Yulia lifted her leg and gently guided into Rei’s face, pressing into it as she addressed her. “You helplessly cling to everything that makes you weak. We have evolved past you, past the need to feel, past the fear of death.”

Rei had tried to scream while her face began to tighten up. From behind her, she could hear Vic give Yulia the command to stop. Just as she felt Yulia’s foot lift from her head, she received another kick to the side of her torso. Her body had been ejected from the ground and launched towards the remains of the shrine. After a rough landing, her body barreled into the stairwell beneath it. Each step had struck her on the way down, barely leaving her conscious after she struck the bottom.

Once she had finally landed, she wrestled trying to roll over on her front to try and crawl back up. Everything was falling apart at this point. With the carnage, she had been doubtful that there were any survivors beside herself. She tried to pull herself from the claws of death—anything to ensure the survival of the Hideo-Jin Dynasty. After crawling her way towards the top of the stairs, she had been greeted by Vic. His leather trench coat flapped in the wind as he stood by the edge of the stairs.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Vic asked her before pressing the sole of his boot into her face. With a little push, he had sent her crashing back down to the bottom once more. Her vision blurred; blood continued to trail down her chin while she looked back up to him. The tyrant had shifted his focus from her and towards his pockets.

“Please,” Rei spoke with a whisper as she tried to gasp for her breath. “I don’t want to die.”

Tears rolled down her face as she begged. In this moment, she had barely any strength to move—much less fight back. Vic had lifted his left hand over the stairwell with a small, spherical object clenched between his fingers.

“I didn’t want to make this personal, but I’m making it personal.” His words had barely been audible as he pressed his thumb against a switch over the top of the device. As it began to glow red, he gently released the weapon towards her before turning to run away from the stairs.

Rei had locked her eyes in a hollow stare as the explosive began to descend. The weapon seemed to fall in slow motion while the crimson glow of its body began to caress the walls of the stairwell. She felt everything start to slip away as the device drew near.

Evade, door, there was a series of commands and phrases repeating in her head. Her eyes began to droop with the rest of her body.

Reina.

“Shugo,” Rei muttered, immediately returning to life as the familiar voice called out.

Evade, door, the voice repeated. This time, she had turned to the opening to her right to see that blast door from fallout shelter wide open for her. With her last burst of strength, she had kicked her foot out to get enough momentum to push herself out of the way and behind the large metal hatch. As soon as she had managed to get to the other side, the stairs behind her had erupted with a loud boom, consuming the area around her with smoke and debris.

Vic and Yulia watched from the outside as the opening ignited into a pillar of fire. The two had hardly braced themselves while the rest of the village continued to burn to its last embers. A cascade of dead bodies from the those who had failed to make a stand lay around them.

“Yulia, call for the night crew,” Vic said to her while surveying the destruction. “Melora will definitely be upset with the casualties, but we need to make all of this disappear.”

“Affirmative.”

Megumi had been on the ground for just over an hour now. She stared at the smoldering rubble of what was once Rei’s village, horrified at what she had just oversaw. While the day crew had gone to their quarters, she had been stuck as acting operator while Vic and Yulia leveled the area. Barely a week into her first deployment and already she had seen her first corpse. As the sun rose over the village, she had gotten a glimpse of the mass grave that had been carved out. The light had finally shined over the pit before her, revealing the dozens of bodies lying lifeless before her.

“You are a little green around the gills.” Vic said as he stepped over to her.

“I’m sorry, father, sir.” Megumi stuttered as she tried to remember the formalities and his rank. She knew she was not back home anymore.

“I did not expect them to have you come out here.”

“They don’t play favorites.”

“They don’t.” Vic replied as he stepped away from her. From a pile of rubble to their right, there was a faint sound of groaning beginning to come from beneath. Megumi stared on as the other troops gathered around and began to clear through the debris. She felt another chill as the rubble slowly began to be peeled away to reveal a battered, but still breathing person beneath it.

“Help him, please.” she muttered. Her voice had begun to crack after seeing the man beneath.

It was Noa, who had barely been able to open his eyes. Blood streamed down his face and from beneath his clothes from where the rocks had smashed through his limbs. Upon looking down towards his legs, she had noticed one of them had been previously severed. The sight made her wonder about the many struggles the people of this village had experienced prior to their encounter, and ever more so why her father would order such an attack.

“Please, help me.” Noa said, barely able to move his mouth. Blood had covered his face, his eyes had bruised shut. A few of the men had grabbed a hold of him and pulled him free with little resistance.

“What are we supposed to do with him?” Megumi asked Vic, who had already drawn his side arm.

“Wait, ple-” Noa had not been able to finish.

Vic’s side arm exploded, firing a shot point-blank into Noa’s face and ending the struggle. The loud blast of the muzzle roared through the village and the valley, bringing Megumi to tears as she watched the helpless man get gunned down. The impact had left a bloody crater in place of his face, burning the image into Megumi’s head. Until this moment, she had been on auto pilot. The heroic façade of the many war stories her father had told her had been blown away.

Was every story really this horrible? She started to feel tears breaking up in her eyes while she watched her father step over towards the mass grave. Inside of it, she could see some slight movement as a few of the villagers had started to come back to consciousness. She felt some bile starting to make its way up towards her mouth. From there, she began to stumble over towards the shrine before feeling her stomach drop. All at once, she had let out a loud cough before feeling vomit exit her mouth. Behind her, a few of the troops had begun to chuckle while she dropped to her knees.

“Keep it focused, we have a job.” Vic spoke up, causing the men before him to snap back to focus.

Megumi curled her fingers over her mouth to try and swipe away at the excess saliva. The constant sound of crashing and groaning began to fill the area. She looked back to Vic only to feel disgust at his indifference to the massive slaughter. Her thoughts of being a part of a Global Initiative and creating many weapons for the battle only made her question her morals. She could only wonder how many people just like Noa had been cut down in cold blood.

There was another explosion from a gun barrel in the distance as another one of the troops had fired into a pile of rubble. Every survivor would eventually meet the same fate. As her eyes began to become blood shot, her heart filled with rage seeing her father’s cold gaze. The thought of being among her people had been replaced with the terror of being alone among the wicked. Kashmir was so far away, but by now the shadow of doubt had consumed her.

The words from Vic had repeated in her head, you will understand what makes us different.