To the soldier who looked in the air, and felt the envelop of the whole blue sky – he loved the normalcy of his station. Soldiers were, after all, well-aware of their station as fodder for the cosmos. Everything within a soldier is built for the specific purpose of being one step ahead in the war of attrition.

Yes – even despite development in new generation technology – despite the idea that war could be fought with hard tactics rather than blind sacrifice, in the end there was still that core aspect.

The abstract aim of war was destruction of the enemy.

The abstract aim of war was complete elimination.

A certain military theorist came up with that formulation in the past. War, as absolute destruction. Goals and the stuff of reality were separate from that key form. Whenever anyone participated in war, no matter what goal or political objective they had, the abstract geist of war was still hanging over them, laughing like a phantom smyler in the dark with knife in hand.

Such were the cause of those myriad of massacres and crimes perpetuated by soldiers in states of war. They were returning to the embrace of that absolute form.

To the soldier, whose reality was always on the brink of that collapse into the pure nothingness of absolute war – the blue sky provided reprieve.

The longing blue.

The infinite blue.

Shall we escape our suffering one day?

Shall we be clouds within that sky?

After the Second Impact – such hopes were shattered into the dust. Mankind returned to the state of paranoia and constant suffering.

The soldier held one hand up to the sky, to shade himself from the rays of the sun.

It was not merely war. It was a war without a discernible enemy. A forever war that went beyond any proper human conceptions.

The war against the Angels.

Enemies beyond our reach. The stuff of mythology and mysticism. Beasts of an otherworldly nature.

In the face of such a notion, the soldier was all too aware of his status as human detritus in the greater span of eternity.

He was human, painfully so.

What could he do within the short span of his life?

Perish.

Go mad.

Insulate himself from the suffering with ignorance and self-pity.

They had been given the signal. There was an Angel approaching. Fear sloughed in his boots.

His family was safely hidden. The city was deserted. They were evacuated to the shelters.

He thought about the empty city. Wind drifting. Newspapers blowing in the breeze. Human activity put to a standstill by the presence of a thing beyond all knowledge. The rhythm of daily life upheaved.

What they were assigned to protect was a city of shadows.

The memories that whisked through those empty buildings. That gave it meaning.

The soldier looked at the blue of the sky, and then looked down. The sky was reflected in the water.

The sky shimmered.

The sky in the water shimmered.

The fake sky shimmered.

And a beam of light shot out from that mirror, decimating the soldier, the legions behind him, his friends, allies, their weaponry – the entirety of human life that was so, so, insignificantly small.