Chapter 1: Beginning (or something like it)
He remembers, when freedom was the taste,
Of wildflowers on his tongue.
Curled in fleeting colours against the thin skin of his ankles.
But the bars are closing in around him
And that meadow is just beyond his fingertips.
The falcon hood pulled over his eyes
And the taste of earth fading from his mouth.
His heart beating in tandem with his thoughts.
Let-me-out-Let-me-out.
Atsushi is seven when he kills his father. A moderately wealthy man who regularly beat his wife and child. He's raising a broken glass bottle over his head, ready to tear its jagged edges through his wife's skin in a blow that would surely be her death when Atsushi transforms.
It's his first time and as a human he'd never been strong enough to fight back, as a tiger it's too easy to tear his father apart. Sometimes he thinks the crack he heard as he bit down on his father's neck was the sound of his mother's mind breaking. Sanity leaking past the wound like his father's blood down Atsushi's throat.
By morning he's moved the body out of the house and washed the blood from the carpets.
By morning his mother doesn't recognize him.
She takes him to the orphanage where he'll stay for six years. You'll be fine, she murmurs at the steps, you seem the sort to land on your feet. He'll hate every minute of it, the headmaster even more so. It's only redeeming feature is the meadow filled with fragrant flowers.
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Atsushi is seven when he discovers all the love in the world would not save you. He is seven when he discovers that you could love someone with everything you are and it still would not save them.
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He's nine when the war breaks out.
Trapped in the cages of chores and punishment and the cycle of the moon he could care less about the outside world. Later, when food gets scarcer and people meaner he thinks it might have been better if he'd paid a little more attention.
He'll be fine, is the only thing he tells himself. He's capable of landing on his feet.
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Six months in and his country knew it was losing. They had always been poor and when the famine had pushed them into desperation it was only their misfortune that they happened to invade the neighbor that had recently made a pact with someone far stronger than Atsushi's homeland.
With a constant influx of fresh supplies, soldiers and weaponry, they didn't stand a chance.
When a treaty was attempted, their neighbor's ally refused. Wanting to create a base to dig for oil, they set out to invade Atsushi's country instead.
So something drastic was done. Anyone fifteen and older was drafted into the army. Anyone younger could sign up.
Of course in times like those no one ever looked too closely at the consent forms and people being trafficked into the army for a sum was common.
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Atsushi was not yet thirteen and the war had been going on for three years. He was sleeping when he was taken. They must have had a caretaker's help because they knew to come on the new moon, the one day that was least likely to end with their throats ripped out by jagged teeth, and armed with enough tranquilizers to kill an elephant.
Despite their best attempts he wakes up, but the drugs in his veins and his fear of the caretakers ensure his compliance.
"Work hard for the army and maybe your wretched life will be worth something one day" are the parting words Atsushi is gifted with when he leaves the orphanage for good.
He'll never quite know whether going to the army was worse than staying at the orphanage. He'll never quite forgive his mother for leaving him to this.
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It takes hours to get to the training camp. Money changes hands when they arrive and a forged document with his name on it is handed to the instructor. He looks down at Atsushi with something vaguely resembling pity and says he's much too small but at least he'll be good at landing on his feet.
Atsushi has a natural aptitude for survival and two months in he can shoot decently. He's best at hand-to-hand combat but could never lead a battle and was never confident enough in his strategies to use them. They decide it's good enough and he's sent to an outpost called Kerenza. No one ever tells him why someone thought it was a good idea to send a thirteen-year-old to the front lines. Although his inspector tells him, "you'll be fine, kid. You know how to land on your feet."
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He is crammed into an old truck filled with other barely trained thirteen-year-old's when the bullet bursts through the front tire. The cramped un-air-conditioned truck veers to the side and hits a landmine. Atsushi is the only one who survives. He comes to, buried under people his own age and enough blood on his clothes to think he's dying. It doesn't get better from there.
He wiggles out from beneath the bodies and tries not to think about the number of detached limbs he may or may not have touched as he looks for the familiar colours that tell him he's among allies. Thankfully, and he nearly laughs when someone tells him this, his truck was the only one hit and quick actions from the older soldiers had ensured the quick death of the sniper that shot the tires, so they'll continue on to Kerenza. Hurrah.
You're lucky, someone had the gall to tell him, you've landed on your feet.
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It's later, in another (identical) truck with people only half a decade older than him that he'll think back and wonder. About the open view from the back of the truck, the dry air that had come in along with the sand and the sun, about the nervous, anxious, scared, determined, angry child soldiers next to him and across from him and wonder what allowed him to survive. Was it position? Skill? Luck? What made him more worthy to live than Kristi next to him, or Kevin across from him? What made him worthy to live at all?
He doesn't realize he's shaking until the man, still a boy but at the moment five years older seems like a lifetime away, puts an arm around him. The dog tag says Dan, and Dan holds Atsushi like he's about to shatter in his grasp, like he's something precious. It eases something in him, the last time he was held like that was before he broke his mother.
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Atsushi hits fourteen and has been at this godforsaken post nearly a year when he truly learns to hate himself. He's seen enough death to know he'll always recognize the stench on his nose or the taste on his tongue. He's yet to kill anyone though, surprisingly. He's mostly used as a messenger running up and down the lines carrying information. This is how he learns just how badly screwed they are, that their supplies have been cut off and the enemies planes are coming. These planes supposedly hold roughly a thousand tonnes of TNT.
He runs when the bombs start falling, it goes against every training exercise he was made to go through but he runs away from the bomb shelter. It turns out to be the right choice when the damn thing blows up from the inside, he doesn't bother to find out why.
None of this has anything to do with hating himself, not until Dan finds him huddled in a ditch in dead man's land. The older boy steps on a landmine trying to get to him. Dan had only been worried, he'd also been an idiot. None of this stops Atsushi's self-loathing. Not when Dan's blood looks so accusing strewn across his hands.
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Atsushi is barely fifteen when the outpost is taken over. After the bombing incident over half their forces were killed, a third of the remaining severely injured and supply lines still cut off. When the enemies start charging he knows they're dead so he hides in a chest when the battle starts. He knows it's cowardly but he can't quite bring himself to care, he never signed up for this anyway.
When the noises stop he thinks it's over. So he gets out of the trunk and walks towards the door, for one glorious moment he thinks it's over. But then he reaches the doorway.
He'll never know how many rounds they fire into him, only that the rat-a-tat-tat of the guns seemed endless. He doesn't remember much after that, only the scent of blood and the taste of flesh on his tongue. And that at the end his comrades were dead but so were his enemies. He wonders what it is that made him worthy of being the only one of them to make it out alive (because he's starting to think it's a curse).
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It's three days later and they've finally broken through the blockade. They come to Kerenza and find Atsushi on one of the few hills that survived. He's surrounded by wildflowers. It's a stunning juxtapose to the battlefield only a few yards away.
The commanding officer asks him what happened and Atsushi can't stop the tears from falling. The cruel grip around his jaw is startling, the harsh words that follow painful. "This is war, soldier. You don't have time to cry, you don't have the right". It only cements his belief that abandoned children are not allowed to cry.
The commanding officer is looking down at him with disdain and thinly disguised fear and Atsushi wonders what is so wrong with him, that makes every adult hate him. And later, much later, he will wonder what about him kills everyone around him. (He knows what it is, it's hard not to miss the claw marks on the bodies, the teeth marks and that awful roaring that echoes in his ears).
He is given orders to stay with the commander. In one of the squads there is a man that reminds Atsushi of Dan.
He makes sure to stay far away from him.
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He doesn't stay there long. When headquarters finds out what he did, how many he's killed they make him a part of a special task force. It consists of twenty-two people and all of them have abilities. His own doesn't surprise him; he's been dreaming of him since he was seven.
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The Headmaster comes to see him once, he stares at Atsushi for a bit before asking, "tell me boy, do you still hate yourself?". Atsushi's eyes are flinty when he responds with, "I'm a little too tired to hate anything at the moment." And if it was an outright lie there was no one left to tattle on him anyway.
"Good." The Headmaster smiles. "Good, I made the right decision then." It takes eight people to keep Atsushi from tearing his throat out.
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The task force, SAAF, is a desperate gamble. HQ throws them at the enemy with vigor neither caring if they lived or died, only that they succeed. In two months they're down to twelve and Atsushi is their strongest. But there's a problem with him, he can't control his power. He's either a human with a healing factor that knows how to use a gun or he's tiger that destroys everything in sight.
For the first two months, his battles are consistent. He is given a ride as close to the battlefield as he can get, he'll do as much as he can while human but inevitably his ability takes over. Mostly it's after he's been hurt, the third shot usually does it. He tries not to remember the time he had a grenade launched at his head.
But soon enough it gets too much even for him. When the tiger runs away after taking too many hits he gains three partners.
Kazimir who can control flames so long as they are three meters from his body. He is fifteen like Atsushi and the only thing he really cares about is fighting, and if he's having a good day, the rest of his team.
Natasha, able to create crystal clear barriers and smart enough to be a competent medic even at fourteen she is with them mostly as an assurance. They want their strongest weapons capable of fighting after all.
And Lyosha, his handler. Eighteen and capable of making unbreakable chains from his body he stops the tigers rampages when the only ones left to kill are his "allies". Atsushi thanks him every time; because for all that he hates this army he doesn't want to kill anymore people than he has to.
For the next ten months they fight together. They fit easily, for all of Atsushi's timidness and Kazimir's ego clash, Natasha balances them both well and Lyosha keeps them under control. They make a good team; they kill more people than either care to count.
They might have been friends even family if their situation was different. But it wasn't and at best they become people who trusts the other with their lives but not much else.
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Ten months of non-stop fighting and Atsushi is sixteen when suddenly they're given the order to come back. They're all surprised, because of Atsushi's healing factor he can last far longer than other squads so his team is rarely off the battlefield. His teammates were really only there to ensure he couldn't escape.
Regardless, it's not their place to ask questions so they head on back. They really should have though, it might not have turned out so bad if they had.
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After five years of war the three countries had come to an agreement. Officially Atsushi's homeland would let the invaders set up one base to dig for oil and the invaders would stop attacking as well as send in relief supplies to the starving country.
Unofficially in return for the supplies the entire SAAF members would be handed over for prosecution as they had done the most damage and the invaders wanted to ensure they wouldn't have to face them again.
Of course none of the SAAF members knew that part.
They were led to a small town near the border and told to wait in the main square. Some of them were smart enough to figure it out before. And some, like Atsushi, only knew what was happening when soldiers in friendly colours took their positions on the rooftops and started to fire.
New ability users had joined and there were hundreds of non-ability users as support in SAAF. Later it would be called the Last Battle, but that was wrong. Because a battle implied that the two sides each had a chance at victory. With two thousand people crowded in a confined space, adults on one side and children on the other, they were shot down like cattles.
It wasn't a battle.
It was a bloodbath.
A Massacre.
Enemy ability users closed off the pathways. The information on the SAAF members' abilities must have been given because they are prepared for everything SAAF throws at them. Except for Atsushi.
Separated from his team in the chaos, Atsushi doesn't bother sticking around. He lets him take control and he tore through their ranks like paper. He picks up passengers along the way, other children sensing safety in him jump onto his back.
He's carrying them, but the soldiers are focusing their fire on him now and while he has iron for skin the children only have their feeble flesh and they fall. They fall and he can't go back for them, not when the small hands of those still holding on grip at his fur. It kills a little bit of him but he needs to keep moving and more are jumping on.
Ten
then eighteen
then twelve
fifteen
nine
Blue-eyed Alexander, eight and only a trainee.
Ten-year-old Elise who hurled a truck at her brother's killer.
Lyra capable of stepping out of her body.
Jamie, Fredrick, Rosette, Angelica, Bryn, Achim—
Nothing stops the bullets that rip through their flesh and tear them from his back, they push each other off in their haste and it's a melee.
He leaves bodies in his wake like footsteps through the snow of his homeland. Only a few of them are his own kills.
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He heads towards the mountains that act as a border, knowing the only safety to be found would be where men dare not tread. He'll spend the next two years traveling (running) until he saves the life of an odd man on the riverbank of Yokohama.