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The damn birds were making a racket.
Why now? Shut up. I just want silence.
One thing I appreciated about the TRC was that at nighttime, it was quiet. There was no sound. Everything just stopped, and everyone went to sleep. No noisy animals, no wind rustling, nothing.
Oh wait. I've never been to the TRC. I have no idea if that's what the TRC is really like. It was the TRC in my tank dreams that was silent. One I imagined while I was pumped full of research chemicals, growing in a life support pod until I became a bioweapon ready to rain destruction and death down on an alien planet. The silent TRC was a comforting lie I told myself to distract from the fact that the only reason I exist is to kill.
I couldn't save them, because saving them isn't the reason I'm alive. That's right, the reason I'm alive is so that I can kill. Kill everything and everyone on this planet. Kill, raze, destroy, ruin, and be thrown in the trash like a broken action figure when I'm done. Going back in time to save Nozomi was a joke. It was never going to be possible for me to save them. All I did was draw new balls from the death lottery.
Those names stared back at me coldly and silently. The words didn't judge or excuse, they just reminded me what I did. They signposted that yes, this was definitely hell.
AMEMIYA MAGADORI OOSUZUKI DARUMI KYOSHIKA KURARA EVA
Four names. Four people that I sent marching to their deaths. All four of them are crumpled, dried up corpses rotting in the ground of a foreign planet, and it's my fault. My friends, they never knew what we really were or why we came here. They died believing they had done something right. What would Kyoshika think if she knew we were nothing more than living weapons, born for genocide? Without a doubt she would threaten to split her stomach open and spill her alien guts in repentance. Would she actually do it? Or what if Kurara learned that there was no Oosuzuki family, and she was as disposable and forgotten as the rest of us? She didn't belong at the peak of society. She didn't belong in society at all, because none of us were worth anything.
And Eva, she didn't ask for this. She didn't want to be a warrior, she didn't want to fight us. Killing her would have been a mercy, but instead we stole her humanity, tortured her, forced her to kill her allies. We're truly monsters. We were born inhuman, and it shows.
The birds still wouldn't shut up.
I just want to sink into the ground and vanish. Bury me on Futurum. Don't bother killing me first. Make it slow and painful. It's what I deserve. Shut up, birds.
"Takumi."
Hiruko's voice stabbed my brain like an ice axe in my skull. She sat down next to me. I didn't want to hear whatever it was she had to say, so I didn't turn my head.
"You weren't at breakfast."
Of course I wasn't at breakfast, Hiruko, I said in my head, still not moving my mouth or acknowledging her. Why would I eat? What have I done to deserve to eat? How could I eat when these four are dead and buried for nothing?
"So you're just going to sit here then? You're just going to mope by yourself."
Yeah, I am, I still didn't say.
"Since you're not objecting, I'm going to mope with you, then." She settled back into the grass. As long as she didn't make any noise, there was no point in getting up and leaving. Not like I could tear myself away from their four names if I wanted to, anyway. The unblinking eyes of the headstones paralyzed me with their stare.
We sat there for a long time. She didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. We just sat. The birds moved on eventually, and all that was left was the wind rustling. That wasn't so bad, at least.
I had a thought. One that wanted to come out. I told myself I shouldn't say it, but I kept thinking it. It kept bubbling up in my throat like bile. I had to let it out eventually.
"Hiruko," I began, "if I asked you to kill me, would you do it?"
She looked at me, slowly, calmly, pausing for a moment before answering. "Your stupidity never ceases to amaze me."
"I suppose that's a no, then."
"We've fought for 70 days to stay alive. We've escaped death countless times. So no, Takumi, I will not kill you."
"What, don't you want to end this war? We're not fighting for survival or safety, all we're fighting for is genocide and destruction. We're weapons. Monsters. We should be killed."
Instead of a response, I felt a sharp sting on my face, and my vision turned white for a split second. A loud smack rang out, chasing away the rustle of the wind. I heard a few birds suddenly fly away in fear. Soon after, my cheek was burning from Hiruko's forceful slap.
"How dare you, Takumi."
Her voice wasn't tinted with her usual sharp and acerbic tone. Instead, there was real malice behind her words. True anger, but sadness as well.
"How dare you give up now."
When I turned to see her face, the raw pressure of her gaze broke right through me. It was more than rage, more than sorrow, more even than offense. She was disappointed. I was letting her down. We locked eyes for a moment, and I started to cry.
"Hiruko...I let them all down. I came back to save Nozomi, and I sacrificed all of them. Darumi, Kyoshika, Kurara...they all survived last time, and now they're gone. Because of me. I believed I was doing the right thing, but this whole time everything we've done has been the slaughter of innocents. Even my belief that I was fighting to be reunited with my family in the TRC...with Karua...it was all a lie. Nothing we lived or fought or died for ever had any purpose. It was just killing."
Hiruko just sat there, letting me cry. She didn't try to comfort me, but she didn't excoriate me any further. There was nothing she could have said to make me feel better anyway, because those things I said were true. Our reasons for fighting really were all lies. Mine and hers both.
"You know, Takumi," she said after a long silence, "I had a strange dream last night. Can I tell you about it?"
"Sure, I guess," I sniffled.
"I dreamed it was day 1 again. We had all just arrived here at the academy. Sirei didn't explain what was going on, and you, me, Takemaru, and Darumi were the only ones who were willing to fight. And before Sirei could explain what happened, he disappeared. We found him dissected in a trash can in the wasteland. And then I took over. I tried to force the other students to fight by denying them food. On day 15 I went to bed, and then I awoke to the feeling of Eito's scythe buried in my chest. Then my dream ended."
I just sat there in stunned silence. How...?
"That's what happened to me in your first timeline, isn't it?"
I didn't even know how to answer, but I nodded slowly. Could I have brought a piece of Hiruko's consciousness back with me?
"I don't know how this happened. But I had a feeling that somehow, your memories, or maybe my memories, from that timeline had somehow come back to me. That I had really done the things in that dream once. Do you know how that makes me feel?"
I said nothing.
"Disgusted."
She let the word fall out of her mouth slowly, amply seasoned with hatred. It was like she threw it up.
"I treated my friends like the weapons they were made to be. I denied them their humanity. I took away the one and only thing that they could have that could break them away from the horrific project responsible for their birth. I'm just as bad as Sirei."
She took a deep sigh. It sounded like she was trying to hold back tears, too. Mine had dried by now, but I still felt like I was holding my breath, though my heart kept beating and my lungs kept pumping.
"I can't believe in myself anymore. Everything I thought I stood for, everything I thought I was fighting for, it was all wrong. But I still have one thing I believe in, even if just a little bit."
That got me interested. How could she possibly believe in something still? After all this?
"I still believe in you, Team Leader."
I turned to look at her. Even with tears welling up in her eyes, she looked determined.
"Why would you believe in me? Look at what I've done, Hiruko. Look at those four gravestones. Not to mention all the death and destruction we've rained down on this planet. What about me is worth believing in?"
"You misunderstand, Takumi," she said. "I'm choosing to believe in you because there's nothing else I can do."
I tilted my head, puzzled. Why not give up on me?
"Everything I thought I knew and believed in was ripped out from under me. I have no foundation anymore. But that left me with an opportunity to create a new one. Having no beliefs left meant I could decide to choose new beliefs. So I picked the only ones I could that would leave me with a reason to keep going every morning. I chose to believe that we still have humanity. That no matter what we were made to do, we deserve to survive too, and that the choices we made–that you made–to help us all live were the right ones."
"Looking at their graves fills me with despair as much as it does you. I never, ever wanted this. Losing even one person is too many. But the blame for their deaths go so far beyond you...we were literally born to die. The fact that you've pulled any of us out of the abyss we were thrown into is a miracle."
"That's great, Hiruko, but it's going to be very hard for me to accept all that," I interjected.
"It's hard for me to accept too, Takumi. I didn't just wake up one morning and believe all this with all my heart. I still mostly don't believe it, to be honest. But I will force myself to believe it, because there simply is no other choice."
No other choice.
"So I need you to believe in your decisions. Because if you can't believe in those, if those decisions are wrong...then I have nothing. Then I truly will be cut loose into the void."
I felt her hand rest on top of mine, and I looked over at her face. There were tears running down her face, even though her voice was steady. Her eyes, usually so terrifying and strong, looked weak and fragile. She was truly afraid. Hiruko Shizuhara, our most fearsome and bloodthirsty warrior, may truly be unable to rouse herself from her sick bed if she has nothing to stand on. Achilles without Patroclus, wasting away in her tent, weeping into the urn of her once-steadfast resolve. But Patroclus was right there, still hanging on, if only barely. Wounded by countless Trojan spears and arrows, but alive.
"How are we supposed to carry on now, Hiruko?"
"I have no idea," she sighed. "I truly don't. The only thing I believe with confidence is that we must find a way to retain our humanity. We were born weapons, but we've still been humans this whole time. If we let our humanity fall away, and become weapons body and soul, there really won't be any hope for us."
Could I really keep going? I didn't want to see Hiruko lost, no matter how lost I felt. And it felt like my humanity had been taken from me, with no chance for me to claim it for myself. How could I continue forward? How could a weapon become a person? Was I ever a person to begin with? I don't know.
AMEMIYA DARUMI
Darumi felt like a person. Nobody would design a weapon to act like that. Her bizarre and irreverent attitude couldn't possibly have made for a worse soldier. But I liked her. When I thought about her, I had warm feelings in my heart of friendship and laughter. Even when she freaked me out, I liked having her around. Weapons didn't feel things like that, did they?
MAGADORI KYOSHIKA
Do weapons have their own beliefs about justice? Weapons don't choose to defend the weak and helpless, they simply are used however they're used. And weapons don't get drunk and laugh and cry and hug their friends. Maybe a weapon would offer to sacrifice herself, sure, but would she make her friends promise to think of her and find a way to bridge their differences? If I lost my sword, I wouldn't still think of it every time I walked into the gym, imagining its shout of Lo, Sir Takumi! ringing across the cavernous space.
OOSUZUKI KURARA
Kurara's pride was not a warrior's pride. And her courage wasn't a warrior's courage, either. She fought on a mental battlefield that none of us could truly understand. For such a small girl, she wielded incredible power holding up the weight of the fake expectations placed on her by her fake family. Weapons hold no sentiments, they don't anger or forgive, they just do. They don't lock horns with their own emotions every day in a neverending internal war.
EVA
Everyone is a victim of this war. We fought and killed countless "invaders", and now we discover we are victims of horrifying lies. Eva fought and killed humans, and she is a victim too. Long before we captured her, she was a victim. We don't deserve forgiveness for what we did to Eva. I still wake up in the night vomiting when I dream of her sitting in that nightmarish machine, spinning a wheel like some kind of sick game to pick how exactly I would erase her humanity. But a weapon doesn't throw up when they torture the enemy. A weapon doesn't care. A weapon is immune to suffering, and I am not.
"Hiruko, I'm hungry."
"That's because you skipped breakfast."
"I think I'd like to eat some lunch. Will you come sit with me? I'd like someone to talk with." Her hand was still on top of mine. I had just been sitting there, still paralyzed by the ferocious stare of the headstones. But they blinked, and I was free. I squeezed her hand back a little bit, running my thumb over her knuckles.
"Yeah. I think that's a good idea. Skip any more meals and you'll look even more like a scrawny rat than you already do."
I didn't laugh at her jab, but I appreciated it. It wasn't something a weapon would say.
We stood up and retreated to the cafeteria. As we walked inside, I couldn't help but notice that the birds were back. They sounded nice.