I do not own Sekirei in any way shape or form. Sadly.

Chapter 1

Pain.

Pvt. Nathan Young's mind raced as he came back to a state of consciousness. Disoriented, he takes a moment to look over himself. The most obvious injury he could notice was that his left leg was in enormous amounts of pain and was more than likely broken. He cursed his luck, but otherwise was quite relieved that his other wounds that he found seemed to be nothing more than just scrapes and small cuts here and there.

As his eyes wondered away from himself, his jaw dropped at what he saw. The ground around him was, to put it lightly, a disaster zone. With the earth jagged and seemingly strewn about, it was as if the area was just hit by a massive earthquake. "Where the hell am I?" he murmurs aloud to himself. Racking his brain for any detail, he recalls a name.

'What was it the captain said? Kami...kura? Right...Kamikura Island.' He recalled as his brain thought back to the briefing he was at just a couple days prior.


~Two Days Prior~

"Alright! Listen up!"

Young snaps awake from his sleepy daze. It wasn't but 20 minutes ago that he was finally falling into some sort of state of sleep on this damnable ship he was on. 'I'm not sure how those damn navy guys can do it,' he had consistently thought to himself as time passed by on the ship. 'That rocking... that endless rocking...' he felt queasy as his mind thought more and more upon the subject.

His squad leader continues, "We have just gotten a mission from Washington everyone. One that I have been informed is of up most importance." He pauses for a second to scan the room and look at the groups varied looks at the news. Young himself raised an eyebrow as he heard this. 'What this now?'

One of Nathan's fellow squad mates eventually speaks up. "Sir, what exactly are we heading into, if I may ask?" The captain lowers his brow, "I was getting to that private. Don't interrupt me again!" His outburst caused whatever sleepiness that Young and anyone else in the room still had disappear. Their captain was usually a much more laid back kind of guy. For him to shout like this was a clear indication that this is no time for bullshit.

Clearing his throat, he continues. "As I was saying," he presses the button in his hand, turning on the projector at the center of the room. An image of a man slowly comes into focus.

The first feature that stood out to Young was the man's white, spiky hair that looked as if it truly came out of one of those old Japanese anime he saw years back. After a moment of amusement at this assessment, he then took in that the man also wore a pair of glasses that hid his eyes from the glare that had shown off as the picture was taken no doubt. The man also had one of the biggest shit eating grins he had ever seen. 'Guy must have charisma coming out the ass if I had to guess,' Young mused to himself.

"The man you see before you here is Minaka Hiroto. Some of you may already know of him as the president of that big time company Mid Bio Informatics or M.B.I. for short." Several images pop up alongside his face, one being the logo and the other being the company headquarters. "His company seemingly came out of nowhere years ago, coming onto the market with incredible technology that was many deemed by many as being years ahead of anything else on the market at the time. This still holds true to this day, what with their secrets being so heavily guarded. It has been noted that not even the best hackers at the pentagon's disposal could break through whatever sort of firewall they have set up."

"Our mission involves one such secret..." With a click, the image fades out and is replaced by a pixilated image of what appeared to Nathan as some sort of small rocky island. "The island that you're seeing here is known as Kamikura Island. This strange little island was discovered by none other than Minaka himself back sometime in 1999, if intelligence is to be believed. It wasn't long after that he started up his company and at the same time made Kamikura Island an extraterritoriality, removing the island from any and all maps and is somehow preventing our satellites from getting any decent images of it too. This means we have virtually no intelligence on what could now be on the island for the last decade."

This news was met with nervous murmurs amongst the men, Young included. 'Completely removing an island from the maps and is somehow preventing anyone from getting an image of the island? I can see where this is going, but..."

Young decides that the question must be asked. "Sir?" he calls to his captain.

"Pvt. Young." The captain nods to him, inferring he now has the floor.

"Well sir, I believe I know where this is heading towards."

"And that is, Pvt. Young?" his brow raising.

"Well, I assume we're being sent in to find out, correct?"

The captain nods his head, "While you simplified it to the most basic idea, that's pretty much the gist of it."

Young waits for a second before asking what he was really going after. "Sir... If this really is the case and he has been under suspicion like this for a long time," he lowers his brow before continuing, "Why now do we act? Shouldn't somebody have done something sooner?" Several others amongst them nodded with his question, since they in turn were thinking along the same lines.

The captain lets out a sigh and shrugs his shoulders. "Political bullshit, what else is new?" Loud groaning could be heard from nearly everyone in the room. "But that does not matter anymore as we ARE going to do something now, eh?"

All the soldiers burst out a loud "Sir, yes sir!" to the captain.

"Good to hear it," giving them a grin. "I expected nothing less from all of you here. Now, lets get back to our plan of attack..."


*Present Time*

Young, using the surrounding rocks as leverage, slowly pulls himself up into a standing position. He winces as the pain in his injured leg shoots through his body, nearly forcing him to fall back down. He forces the pain aside with a grunt however, and slowly makes his way out of the rocky mess.

He regrets leaving that spot near instantaneously.

Carnage. Absolute carnage was what awaited him as he emerged from the rocks. 'Holy...WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!' Young stomach lurched and he had to force back the bile that rose in his throat. The first thing that got to him was the sight of it all. Mangled about on that rocky island were broken tanks, mangled helicopters, sinking ships off the coast, and the corpses of the soldiers. Soldiers that he recalled talking with and fighting alongside of not too long ago, before the earth had fallen around him. And at this time, as he scanned the entire area, a saddening thought crept into his mind.

He was likely the only one still alive.

Their entire force, down to every man it seemed, was slain at the hands of those people. 'No...There was no way those were people. Not with whatever power they were using. They were more like damn demons if anything!'

With fear and pain running through him, one thought kept repeating in his mind. He had to leave. He had to escape from this hell on earth. He didn't know how he was going to do it, but he knew that those who had done this could most likely still be around somewhere in the area. So, even with his body screaming at him to stop and rest some more, his mind pushed him onwards, inching closer and closer to the edge of his limit.

'If I can just make it to the beach,' Young thought to himself, 'I might find one of the landing craft still intact and get out of here. They couldn't have destroyed all of them...right?' Though with each wobbly step, he could tell that the odds of there being one were slipping further and further towards zero.

As his pace fell nearly to a crawl, he started to notice something. It sounded as if he was still walking at the pace he started, but he knew that certainly was not the case. In testing this, he came to a complete stop. The sounds of footsteps still continued.

'Aww hell.' That was all Young could think of at that moment. As much as he wanted to hope it was someone else that survived this failure of an invasion, after seeing how thoroughly every corpse you passed was sliced or pulverized, you knew there was near absolute zero chance that that was the case.

The footsteps behind him came to a stop not too far behind him. Looking down, he could make out a shadow that had fell alongside his feet. And if the wafting clothing the shadow gave off was any indicator, it certianly confirmed that it didn't belong to any of the other soldiers that had landed with him.

Nathan craned his neck, wanting to take a look upon the one who had come for him. But before he could even gather more than the person behind him was some woman he had never seen before, his body finally reached its limit. His vision began to grow dark as he felt his legs give out from beneath him and he began to fall backwards towards the ground. As Nathan mind slipped into an unconscious state, he was able to notice one last little thing.

He had expected to hit the tough ground and had already (to the best of his very limited ability at the time) braced for it, but the impact never came to his back.

In fact, he could have sworn that it felt as though he was being caught in a pair of comforting arms.