First Kill

Written By Illuminet

Disclaimer: The characters from the Guilty Gear series are the rightful property of Arc System Works.

:xXx:

He froze. In those few moments it could have cost him his life. He stared with one visible eye wide with shock. The man he had just downed had his neck turned at an impossible angle, blood running from his gaping maw and glazed eyes.

"Fucking kid! You killed him!" A gun, a piece of Blacktech, was aimed at the lad with dulled golden hair and strange eye patch. He could only stare.

"Boy! Don't freeze up!" The youth's mentor said as he fought off another armed gunman with nothing but a sword to deflect the bullets. He finally closed in and slashed the man's throat cleanly. His keen ears heard the pulling of the trigger. With expert reflexes honed from his experiences in the Crusades, he threw the sword with the utmost precision. It went deep into the gunman's back and straight through to his front, spurting blood all over. His trigger finger squeezed just as he fell over, the bullet leaving a burning graze on the boy's cheek. It was the youth's expression that aggravated the man the most.

"Boy. Hey! Sin. Sin! Snap out of it!" A slap of the massive gloved hand brought the kid's eye back to focus on the physical world.

"O...old...man...he's...their not...moving..." He gagged as he saw his mentor pull his blade free from the gunman. The boy hurled what was left of his breakfast.

"Don't look away from this, boy. You've injured and killed wild beasts and animals out in the wilderness. Why is this any different? Your a Bounty Hunter now. Just like I am. That guy was your first kill. Your first killing of someone who has intelligence over instinct." Sol knew well how Sin felt. Everyone who is first born is innocent to such things. Sin wanted to know how to fight, and Sol taught him, for his own self defense. When Sin wanted to be a Bounty Hunter as well, Sol told him that killing could be involved for the targets. The boy thought it would be the same as with an animal, but when he fought the man and killed him in the process of subduing he realized what happened.

"Old man...he told me he...was doing this for his family...that he needed to sell those things..." The boy felt cold and empty. Animals and beasts can't talk back in a way to make one understand, so therefore there was no guilt anymore.

"So what then? You'd have let him live? In the end, man is still man, underneath just a wild animal if not worse." Sol said simply.

"But...!" Sin was interrupted with another slap.

"So what then? You've taken a child's father away. Taken a woman's husband away. A son from a mother and father. In this fucked up world it's you or them. Your resilient then most but your still young. You've not gained the toughness of body yet that I have. That gun shot would have been fatal." Sol took a cigarette from his pocket and placed it in his mouth, lighting it with fire magic from the tip of his finger.

"I..." Sin felt somewhere in his core that this was still wrong to some degree. Had he chosen to become a Bounty Hunter without the proper reasons? He was so confused.

"I'll let you off easy, boy. Remember that the first kill is always the hardest, but you can't freeze up ever again. I've told you the reasons plenty of times already. Go back to the inn and rest." Sol gathered the two bodies, ready to turn them in and get the bounty money for these men. Sin had his moments of insight, this being one of them, but they were sadly few and far between to almost nonexistent most days.

"Old man...I'll take the one I got. I have to." His small voice became a bit stronger with his determination. His eye shined, his facial expression reminding Sol of another man he knew who had once been constantly opposing him.

"Get used to it then." The body was laid on the boy's shoulders and he dragged him along as Sol got the other body of the man he himself got first during the chase. After collecting their pay they rested at the inn, Sin seeming more subdued than usual but later on he became more like his old self. Sol was still dour, though, a bit more than usual. He left Sin at the inn and walked along the streets, not really noting much of the changes that had been going on within Zepp. To him it was still a floating rock that housed Blacktech.

'That stupid look...fucking Frederick...couldn't just deal with it yourself could you?' He bit harder into his cigarette. He hated how these damn memories slipped in, usually at the worse of times.

"Shit." He groaned. They had come more clearly than before lately, but that didn't mean he liked them or wanted any part of them. But as they were in his head he could not be parted from them either, making them one of his greatest of annoyances.

"Freddie...your...please stop..." Her delicate throat is covered by his large hands. He only clenches down tighter, not stopping even as the blood flowed. He can feel the stinging prick from all the needles injected in him, connected to several tubes. Everything started to burn around them.

"Frederick! Stop! Don't you remember her?! She's pregnant with your own child!!" The silver haired man came to his line of vision, and everything went red.

"Fuck!" He found himself in a back alley away from the crowd. Luckily he didn't just start making a jackass out of himself by starting a commotion. His fist nearly blew the bricks away, but he held back enough to just leave several cracks in the wall.

"Don't show me this shit...Aria...I couldn't control my body yet...I..." His other fist almost connected but he caught himself. Breathing heavily, he walked deeper in.

"You...it...was...you...!! What have you...?! What's happening to me?!?! My body...I can't..." All he could do was scream and howl, everything burning around him. He clenched his former best friend, ready to break his spine into pieces. He didn't want this though. He wanted to get them out of this burning mess. He felt the prickling of a needle in his neck, realizing one of the other scientists got in here without his sense picking up on them, befuddled as he was.

"My friend, don't you see? This is the next step in evolution for the Human race. The only step to prevent an apocalypse upon us. You are the first Human to undergo it! To become the missing link we've sought! You will be the savior for us all!" The grip he had loosened.

"You can't...be serious...you killed me...for this...?!" The darkness took him, the last thing he was trying to reach for was Aria herself, but he couldn't. Her glazed eyes showed no emotion. He didn't want to believe it but somehow he did. She was dead.

His breathing was heavy. Somehow he tripped over a trash can, making it spill it's contents all over. No one was around to see him do it though. He let it be as he kept walking. He wanted to go back to the inn and rest, but he did not feel like being around others when memories of Frederick, Aria, and That Man took hold. He didn't need Sin to see him all in a mess over the past. The youth was most likely the problem for this memory creeping up.

'Damn it all...' He had one more cigarette left. He thought about smoking it to, but decided not to. Even when Frederick was the one in control, this had become a habit: to even have the familiar taste of the cancer stick to his lips was enough to ease him. If only for a moment. He let out a haggard breath, trying to calm his nerves.

"Don't show me...!" He growled, hand pressed so firmly to his face that it seemed he was trying to clench his fist down enough to crush his own skull. He didn't even realize he bent his cigarette.

"Freddie, can you hear me...?" The voice caused his eyes to open. His body was pumped so full of drugs that he didn't even have enough energy to be angry at the man who just killed him and turned his body to a Gear. With the conversion, it felt like more and more things were becoming harder to remember, like his very humanity was being eatened away slowly and inevitably.

"That glazed look in your eyes, and the readings on the charts...it seems with this first conversion from Human to Gear...your mind is regressing, or perhaps that isn't the right way to say...all I know is that soon you won't remember anything..." His vision of the man who was his best friend was blurry, and it was getting harder and harder to understand his words. To remember exactly who he was or what relationship was between them.

"But I believe you will pull through this...for even with this setback, the power of Humans is amazing...I'm sure it is just a phase which you will surpass for Humans wield intelligence, the very thing that separates us from animals." His eyes could barely stay opened as they focused as best they could as the man walked away, towards another liquid filled capsule.

"The only thing that saddens me is that this...branching point for us three. We've done a lot together as both colleagues at work and as friends outside of work. I hope you will both feel the same way, that we might meet again on a singular path once more..." He looked to the tank, seeing the pale woman in much the same state as himself. His last sane thoughts told him she was just like him now. A Gear.

"It doesn't matter in the end...I killed them both...my wife and my child...the first of many sins...and I would end up killing her again, when she became the messiah..." He stared at his hands, knowing that even with the conversion, these hands were still stained with the blood of them. And several others had followed. The feral and instinctive will of the Dragon allowed him to be as unfeeling and ruthless a killer he would need to be to end the war between Humans and Gears. Frederick had only made it worse to try and tame it with the suppression device. Now it was more thirsty for destruction than ever once it awoke, though it had remained detached from the persona that was now Sol Badguy, the savior of Humans and the sinner of Gears, though only a handful knew of his true self.

'With Sin around...it seems I'm reminded more vividly of Frederick's past than ever before. Is it because of his Gear cells that allow me to feel his moods and emotions? Or is there something I'm suppose to be shown from all this bullshit of the past from someone else?' He was as unsure as when he had first come into existence in this body. Always was he left in the dark to claw his way out to find his answers, yet they nearly always eluded him. Was he really the kind of person That Man pinned his hopes and dreams on? He who was such a mess of a man? Someone torn from two opposing forces and wielded no true control? Sin always thought of Sol as a fairly cool headed person, but he in truth knew very little about the man who was like his adoptive father. About the maelstrom that was his mind at most times, boiling under his unmoving facade.

"When Sin is able to take care of himself once and for all, I'll send him on his way...and I'll find you...and show you the growth of the Prototype Gear's power since the last time. We'll see if this is the missing link you were looking for and sought all your life for!" He growled feral and deeply, head bowed low. In the dark of night, no one could explain the maddening roar or the burst of fiery light that shot through the sky. No one was able to realize that it was a dragonic figure with massive crimson scales soaring on wings of fire, the giant mark of a Gear that made up it's eyes flaring in the dark.

Fin...

Author note- Not even really sure what brought this fic on, but was craving to do something GG being one of my favorite series and all. Hopefully it came out okay.