Smoke chokes what little air is left in my lungs.
The air is arid; filled with the smell of flaming oil and burning flesh.
Some of it's mine.
I groan and struggle to move, but it's no use. The twisted hull of the airship I was assigned to digs into my legs, trapping me from the waist down.
"H...how?" I moan to the scorched battlefield. "This...this wasn't-"
Orange flames crackle across the remains of my comrades. Black smoke rises from the wreckage, mingling with the fumes of burning ships to paint the sky a deathly collage.
"How?" I repeat. My tears do nothing to help my parched lips. "Why?"
The pulsating flames don't yield a reaction.
I close my eyes with a sigh. I guess this is it; where I die. Where we all die. We knew what we were getting into when we volunteered for this. I just thought the day was still a ways off.
Come to think of it, I smile, though tears, it was a hopeless idea. This is war, after all, and-
A lone figure bleeds into focus out of the haze.
I lift my head.
"H-help!" I beg, reaching forward with a feeble hand. "Over here!"
The figure turns toward me. It's face is ash white and pained with an expression of horror.
I know that face.
"...Heihachi!" I cry. "Heihachi! Help!"
He doesn't move from his position. The motion starts slowly, but soon his entire body is trembling.
"It's me!"
My bunkmate doesn't give a reply. He only looks at his hands, shaking all over. One of the lenses of his goggles is cracked.
"Please, man!" I beg, screaming now. "Help! This thing is gonna collapse any moment!"
The hull emits a grinding creak to emphasize my point.
Heihachi still doesn't move. His eyes are wide with horror and...regret?
He was the first to say hi when I walked into the barracks that day. I was completely inexperienced, dragged into war from a farming lifestyle. The "techie squad", as they referred to us, was where they dumped the smart ones deemed unfit for the front lines. We were a tight knit group. Outcasts all of us.
"You're a samurai, Hayashida?" Rokuro demanded one day. His prickly personality made him a disliked figure in the unit, and the fact he was carrying a stolen sword didn't help.
"Uh, yeah!" Heihachi replied. "That's my sword, all right. How'd you find it?"
Rokuro snorted.
"I don't believe it!" he barked, brandishing the weapon by its sheath. "You're too short to be a samurai!"
Heihachi cocked his head and rubbed the back of it with his hand.
"Well, I am a little-"
"And what's with this little thing?" he continued, gripping the head of the smiling weather-charm hanging off the hilt. "You gonna kill the machines with a teru-teru-bozu? Make it rain so they all rust up?"
"Noooo," trailed Heihachi, calmly taking the sword from his grasp.
"Then how, you little coward?" Rokuro demanded, sneering, "Isn't your stupid Bushido against running away?"
An awkward silence filled the room to the top. We all stared at the revealed samurai, waiting for him to speak. Heihachi held his sword with both hands, working the smooth sheath between his fingers.
"...I think..." he began, breaking through the silence, "...that the most powerful battles are fought from inside an engine room."
He looked up to smile at Rokuro, who was staring with his mouth open.
"Don't you?"
After that, Rokuro never bothered Heihachi or any of us again. He was actually quite amiable once Heihachi broke the ice, and we learned to like Rokuro for who he was.
His ship was the first to go down.
"Heihachi-dono!" I try, throwing in the honorific to see if I get a reaction. The groanings from above me are getting louder.
Out of the smoke behind him, a second figure appears. The black-bronze cylinder of an enemy machine.
"Heihachi!" I shriek. "Behind you!"
His head turns in time to see the machine's arm arcing towards him.
My cry chokes in my throat.
Instead of delivering a fatal strike, its tubular hand gives Heihachi a pat on the shoulder.
"Thanks for the tip, kid." it sneers, voice humming with static. "We couldn't have pulled it off without you."
And with that it floats away, back to the smog and the victorious enemy.
"Hei...hachi...?" I ask. My voice is suddenly very weak. "You...helped them?"
He turns away from me, but not before I see the tears cascading down his cheeks.
"You did, didn't you!"
No reaction. Just more tears.
"N-NO!" I scream. "Heihachi! You couldn't!"
"I'm sorry!" he begs, meeting my eyes. "I was weak! I didn't think-"
"Everyone is DEAD because of you!" I roar. "Everyone, okay? You liar! Y-y-you-"
A grinding groan drags through our conversation.
I know what it means.
"You..." I hiss.
The shadows around me deepen as the hull makes its way earthward.
"YOU TRAITOR!"
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Heihachi couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"So of course, you figured the fair thing to do was talk to the bandits in secret and offer up the samurai you hired to save your own lives?"
The kneeling peasants, Manzo and his daughter, turned at the sound of his voice.
He heard that final cry and the crunch that followed it clearly as he glared at the sniveling farmers.
His eyes flashed open.
"Right."
As he strode forward, fingers wrapped around the hilt of his sword, Shichiroji called out.
"Heihachi-dono."
Heihachi turned to the samurai.
"Don't tell me you're actually defending this guy." he spat.
"I'm saying we should let Kambei-sama decide."
"He'll forgive anything and you know it. This is WAR. We can't afford to be soft!"
He returned his scathing gaze to the farmers once more, moving to draw his sword.
"This farmer clearly betrayed us. Once a traitor-"
UNIT 553-terminated
"-always a traitor."