Marco sat on the roof of his apartment building,on the edge.His mother-Visser One,he reminded himself coldly, lay splated on the road twenty stories below him.His knees were to his chest,his elbows on his knees,his hands clasped together.He looked out at the gray,polluted sky of a planet of worthless beings he'd nearly given his life to save.He could just fly away until he forgot.Just fly and fly and think about nothing else.But he couldn't, because when he demorphed,he'd still have killed his parents.
Jake slowly walked away from the smoking ruins of his home toward Tobias's meadow.His parents and Tom were gone,and he felt nothing.Tom was gone,and he felt nothing. Tobias always helped him sort these things out.Would he again?
Rachel was cooly eyeballing the controllers in the room with her.They were all quivering and cowering,none even dared speak.She took a dracon beam from the table and fired at each one.A slow,painful death.Befitting. And she didn't care.
Tobias looked out at his old meadow.Ax had been begging for death and received it.Tobias morphed himself,a young, scared teen.He waited for two hours.Then he walked into the woods.Now,he truly was alone.
Amber thought for a moment,and scrawled the words on a piece of paper:
Just because the warrior fights the war does not mean he does not feel it.I have fought.I know.I fought the hardest,longest,most brutal battle the world ever knew. I have seen my enemies slain. Now I wonder if the pathetic things I saved were worth it. Look at me,man,and see me as me.See me as a human.I cry, I bleed red blood,I thirst for comfort and water,I beg for bread as I beg for forgivness.Absolution I have none, nor acceptance of myself.War?You do not know the meaning of it.You have not fought for,bled for,died for what you believed in.You have not looked in a mirror once it's all over and seen what you have become.I have.War kills, slaughters,and slays.Only the strong live.But are the strong really strong?Are the hungry hungry,the weak weak, are the living truly alive and are the dead the wiser for it?Do you have to shed blood to say you've stood up for your beliefs?Look at me,man.And see me as me.I have bled and fought the same battles you have.I am not a god, a beggar,I am not a hero.I am a human.I make mistakes,I hurt feelings,I hunger for bread and thirst for water,I bleed red blood.I am just lucky.Or so you see it.Live my life,man.Then call me lucky.For I never have been.
She made a paper airplane out of the paper,then threw it. And the winds carried it.It landed in a meadow where Tobias, Jake,Marco,and Rachel had gathered.It bore Amber's signature. And it spoke the truth.