The young reploid was breathing at a steady pace as he cleaned his knife. His eyes wandered, looking for more people to kill. Killing was his occupation in life. It had been for more than eighty years. It wasn't always this . . . Some might call it cold-hearted. He would've called it that in days passed. Now, a death was a death. A death by his hands was murder. A murder was glory.
Grabbing two longswords which his capsule had ejected from its confines, he tied them to his sash. There were no nearby living people. The scanner that he had programmed into him told him that much. It could show him the location of bodies all around him and, grabbing information on blood loss, oxygen levels, etc., it could calculate an estimate of how much life they had left. Of course, it wasn't completely accurate, especially with humans, but it was better than nothing. It at least let him know when something was still moving.
Like right now.
He turned to face another capsule, its opening alerted him both through his ears and his radar. It was the closest to his container and held the body of Azumi, a melee fighter, but also the mother of the team, as they referred to her.
As the mother of the team, he thought. He walked to her side as she slowly sat up, it's only proper that we conduct ourselves with respect. He held her gently by the hand and helped her out of the opened capsule. She giggled, then, with her hands behind her head, swivelled from side to side.
"Feeling chivalrous today, Shouru?" Azumi said. It was common for her to call him Shouru, a condensing of his full first name which was Shourukasai, but very few of the team called him that anymore. In fact, Azumi didn't even go by her proper name, Arumiko. She had changed it, as had Karayuki, the mission expert. Karayuki now called himself Kazuki.
"Maybe a little," Shourukasai said. Chivalry wasn't a concern of his. He just felt that Arumiko should be treated better than others. One of the reasons being he actually liked her, and the second...
He turned away. There is no second reason. He liked her, and that was it. His feelings for her had dulled somewhat, the murders of many people having reduced his emotions to almost bare minimum.
"Heh," he chuckled briefly. "You still call me Shouru?"
"Yes." She smiled lightly and stood by his side. Her hand reached for his, and he let her hold it. Although he held less feeling for her now, old feelings die hard. He couldn't let her go completely. "After all, Shouji doesn't sound at all like Shourukasai."
He chuckled lightly. Unlike in days passed, he wasn't one to laugh. Those days had gone by since he was young. Now he was older and had seen the world fall apart around him. "Shouji is a condensation of part of my full name. You know it's Shourukasai Kamaji Nyami Rauc. You take the Shou from Shourukasai, then the ji from Kamaji, and stick it together. Shouji."
"Oh."
He nodded. It wasn't elegant, but neither was he. Inventive was how he would describe it.
He took a deep breath and slowly let it out as his eyes wandered around the room. It was an ordinary-looking lab like all of the others that every other reploids machinist had. A side room was off to the side, most likely the machinists' chambers.
Without saying anything to Azumi, he walked over to the door and pressed his hand on it. Azumi was by his side as it opened.
The sight didn't startle him, but Azumi shrieked and hid behind him. He had seen death and decay. He had seen people with flesh ripped from their bones. This was no different.
"Looks like they worked themselves as much as they could, then probably tried to keep watch over us," he said, looking over the skeletons of the machinists in specialized chairs.
The chairs were developed long ago by Dr. Cain before the Sigma Wars. These chairs, outfitted with tanks of chemicals, were designed to prolong the life of the individual that used them, but even constant usage would not save the individual from death. From the looks of it, the poor bastards had tried to extend it as long as possible, then died one-by-one in their chairs, too weak from the presence of death to notice the other's death.
The young female reploid gripped his shoulder. He looked over his shoulder at her and patted her hand reassuringly, then investigated the corpses.
Closely investigating the facial structures of some of the corpses, he was able to identify the genders, basic facial features, and approximate age of death. All of them had exceeded one hundred years of age, but none had survived past one hundred-forty. However, there was one individual missing. The man responsible for Shourukasai's creation.
Master Thomas...
Walking towards the back of the room, he pushed through the other dead machinists that he had not inspected. There were too many of them to look through them all. Finally, he found what he wanted to see.
The late Master Thomas sat on his own regenerative chair. The reasons he stood out from the others was due to his chair seeming more like a throne and elevated above the ground. Also, there were faint traces of the Trinity robe still left behind.
Even the great people fall, sooner or later, Shourukasai thought, touching the decayed hand bones of his master and god. It was unfortunate that Master Thomas didn't live long enough to see his creation rise from the capsule. He didn't even live long enough to see him in training. Shourukasai's mind reflected back on this great sage's words.
"If you're hearing this message, it's because I wasn't able to live long enough to see you completed. I prepared you for a special purpose."
"Shouru?" Azumi said, her voice tender as she lay her hand on his shoulder. He exchanged her tenderness with a tender look. "The others are coming out." He nodded and followed her. His mind didn't stop thinking about all that Master Thomas had told him, however.
"Of course, this purpose isn't about honor. No, it is far from that. If it was about honor, this purpose would not exist."
He watched as his team rose out of their capsules. Hakashi and Haya, the weapons experts,
" Shourukasai for the power of the fire,..."
Kurai and Kaneko, masters of the ways of Ninjutsu, dressed in their customary Shinobi gear,
"Kamaji for the wind of a typhoon,..."
Ryuu, Genku, and Miyaki, the swordsmen in their battle armor,
"Nyami for the hiding power of the dark,..."
and Kazuki, diplomat, tactician, and warrior.
"Lastly, Rauc, another way of saying Roc, which was a mythical giant bird that had several forms. One of these was the phoenix, a bird made entirely of flame, able to revive itself even after it was killed."
Shourukasai fingered the two piercings in his left ear, his fingers feeling their intricate details. He could tell their shape partially from touch, but mostly from memory. Memories of when he was still in training. It was almost like...
They knew what I would want...
The machinists had created him perfectly. He was exactly the same as in the training program. The piercings, the ponytail, the hair spiked backwards, the hair left dangling over his two-tailed bandana. Was he destined to become like this? Was it part of his natural programming?
He hated the concept of destiny. It was confining. If he wanted to do something, it wasn't because "destiny" required it. It was because he felt like it.
"Be strong, my son. Someday, you will achieve your purpose. You will succeed, my creation...
My Shouji Rauc..."
"Hmm..."
Maybe it was time for him to drop calling himself Shourukasai. The name was lengthy, and the rest of the team had condensed it to Shouru anyway.
Looking over his group, he acknowledged that he was leading them again. He remembered when he couldn't guide them because he was too weak and too young.
"Leaders are made, not born, Shouru. I didn't get this way naturally, you know this. That machine made me analyze all sorts of situations and find the best way out of them." Those words were what Kazuki had told him many years ago while they were in training. He had been frustrated with how poorly he had been doing as the leader of the team. That's when Kazuki had told him that, and he had received new strength and new resolve.
He owed all of his success to the reploids standing in front of him and the one standing by his side. Azumi was notable for getting him through the hard times, Kazuki for helping him achieve his goal.
"I believe you can be that leader, Shouru. The problem is, do you believe you can be? A man, no matter how much others believe in him, will fail at his task unless he believes in himself. The belief of the people can motivate him to believe in himself, but, in the end, it is the man facing the challenge that must believe that he can accomplish his task."
Shouji exhaled. Now that they were out and about in the real world,... "What do we do now?"
Kazuki laughed and pulled out a datapad. "Well, my suggestion would be to try to 'integrate' into society. We can learn about a society's structure just by associating with it. Thomas said that,"
Shouji interrupted. "Master Thomas. Not just Thomas. He's our maker, not our buddy."
"Right. Sorry. Master Thomas said that we were constructed in the likeness of regular humans without the usual modifications that are made to humans of this day. He didn't specify why, but I assume there's a reason for it."
Shouji grunted and muttered under his breath. "There's always a reason." Then, speaking louder, "Master Thomas most likely want us to seem like a group of rebellious teenagers. Is it a law where we have to get robotic parts?"
"As..." Kazuki flipped through his datapad, "far as I know..." Flip. "It..." Flip. "Here we go." He gazed down at the stream of data in front of his eyes. "Yes, it's a law. It had gone lax a few years before the Sage Trinity came, then they reenforced it. No human is allowed to go out into the world without these prosthetics."
Shouji's fisted hand rested on his lips. No human is allowed... then why make us with these ordinary human features?
"Maybe..." Azumi spoke up, but her words still had yet to come together. She was shy and often spoke with half-finished ideas, but her ideas were usually good ones. "Maybe he doesn't want us to integrate too much?" He noticed that she was biting her lip between her pauses.
She wants to integrate...
He knew Azumi. He knew that she didn't like the task at hand. She had never really wanted to fight before. She did so reluctantly. Ironically, she was willing in the very beginning, but then started to... soften. She had gone the opposite direction of Shouji.
"Or maybe, he wants us to integrate a little bit, but then as soon as we're caught, to start with our plans?" She sounded uncertain, but it was an idea, and one that everyone at least acknowledged as it could be possible. Even Shouji acknowledged it, but that was no surprise. He had come to trust Azumi and her ideas.
"We need a plan, then. One that we can modify as necessary," Shouji said. "If we knew the geographics of the place, we could probably form a plan more easily."
"Why would geo-whatchya-ma-call-its help?" Haya, the more ignorant and bloodthirsty of the team, asked. Haya wasn't known for planning. She had to rely on Shouji and Kazuki heavily for that. If she didn't, she would have died a long time ago, most likely. However, she was useful since she was the other tank of the team besides Hakashi. At least she could follow orders.
"Haya, don't you remember anything about what we did inside those capsules?" Kurai said. Kurai was the male part of the ninja class, Kaneko being the female of it. On missions, they were inseparable. They were always together to accomplish their goals. "We had to make plans in order to succeed, but to make those plans, we needed to know the locations of vital capture points, whether it was in a building or whether it was around a city."
"Oh yeah..."
Shouji groaned and ran a hand through his spiked hair. It's gonna be a long day...
Calmly walking out of the room to the stairs that led up to the level they were on, he pulled out a tarot card. Imprinted on the tarot card was a blade-tipped "S". Behind the "S" was a skull with two gun holes on one side of it's head, and a hole thin enough for a sword on the other side. The skull's canines were oddly pronounced, giving it a vampiric quality.
This card was given to him by an unknown person. It was given to him secretly. The person never exposed her identity, and he never met her again. She had said that this was to be his symbol, however. It was supposed to show to the world that he was what they had to fear. The only issue was that she only gave one, so he couldn't leave it on the ground to mark that he had been there. Maybe it's to remind me who I am..., he thought, spinning the card around in his hands.
He looked out one of the large windows into the night sky of the city. It was a peaceful night. He had expected there to be plenty of vehicles at this time, but he was wrong. There was hardly anything out there under the black sky. Not even very many of the stars dared to show their light. Only the full moon.
Although he had never explored the corridors and rooms of Legion before, he felt a familiarity with it as he ran towards the shattered window in the meeting room. It was because of Master Thomas, his creator.
He leapt out the window, tossing out a claw attached to a flexible cable. He flung another one out as soon as the first latched onto the edge of the window. The jolt from the catching claw hurt his elbow, but he didn't mind. He had become used to it. He prepared for the next jolt that would come from him falling a few yards. Fortunately, the jolt would be distributed between his legs instead of one arm.
Twisting to the side, he managed to absorb some of the impact with a little more efficiency than if he hit the frame head-on. He chuckled. I've still got the skill, even in this world. Letting go of the claws, he gripped the frame with claws by his palms. These claws were attached to multi-use gadgets on his forearms. The gadget used to only be able to perform one function, but he had modified it while he had been training. How it had been modified in the real world, he did not know. The only other possibility was that the machinists had, once again, already known he would modify it, just as they had known what he would look like. It still freaked him out.
The climb was much easier than if he had to use his hands, but it would be manageable even without the claws. Soon, he arrived on the top of Legion, the claws retracting back towards the gadget as he stood onto his feet. He walked to the edge that was facing the full moon. He looked to the moon, then to the large expanse of the city. He closed his eyes.
"Death is inevitable, Shouru. You know that as well as I," Kurai had told him when he had still been young and frightened by the spraying blood of humans and reploids. Now those days made him chuckle. He had been so naive and sensitive. "We kill to speed up the dying process."
He remembered where they had been. They were in Kurai's special garden where he and Kaneko had been taking care of their Cherry Blossom, or Sakura, trees. In that training world, the trees were in whichever season Kurai or Kaneko desired. They had decided for it to be spring, right before the flowers were to bloom.
"Look at these trees. They're born, they live, they die. But death doesn't come all at once. Look at the elderly. They slowly begin to lose control over aspects of their life, such as their sanity and functionality. I would make a proposition, though. Each heartbeat, each thump of it, is one beat closer to death. I believe that we have a certain number of heartbeats, Shouru." Here, he had plucked a budding flower and given it to Shouru. "My theory, Shourukasai, is that each heartbeat we make is one step towards death. In essence, we are all dying. What you," he had laid a hand on Shourukasai's shoulder, "me, Arumiko, and the rest of the team do isn't murder. It is glory. We glorify others by bringing them to rest before they become crippled with old age."
His eyes opened again. Kurai had changed his way of thinking about death that day. It took a few months to fully adjust, but he had finally lost the apprehension of killing that he had before.
"Why do you always choose the hardest places to reach, Shouru?"
Shouji turned towards his female companion as she laid a hand on the edge of the roof, another hand followed soon after. He chuckled and grabbed Azumi's hand, then pulled her up to the top. He wiped the sweat from her forehead with his cloak.
"Sorry. You know that I liked separating myself from others." He grinned and wrapped his arm around her waist. She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. Gently, he pulled her close to the edge where he had stood before. "At least, sometimes. At those times when I want to be alone."
"And yet you always make room for me." She said this not accusingly, but in a somewhat smug way.
He chuckled. Ah, Arumiko... "You're different from the others."
He continued to call her Arumiko because that's what he was used to for so long. It was a fonder name than Azumi was. Azumi was... foreign. The name made him nervous and feel awkward.
Her body shivered. He frowned slightly, then took his cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders. She smiled appreciatively. He grinned in return, then looked back up to the moon.
He couldn't explain it, being an assassin, one meant for death and destruction, but he enjoyed these moments where he could be alone or with Arumiko on top of a tall building under the night sky. There was something relaxing about it. Here, he was at home. Perhaps it was associated with his affinity to staying in the shadows.
He and Azumi stood there for a period, Azumi gazing over the city with worried eyes, Shouji looking firmly up at the moon. Eventually, Azumi's eyelids drooped until they closed. Shouji looked down and smiled, the most natural smile he had given in a while. Only she was able to make him smile normally. All of the others felt like they had a sadistic tint to them.
Slowly, he laid her down, took the edges of the cloak, and wrapped her all the way to keep her from getting cold. Then he took his shirt and made it into a makeshift pillow, then set it under her head. He smiled as she pulled the cloak tighter around herself. His attention focused on the moon again.
A soft breeze was blowing. It made the tips of his ponytail and spiked hair sway back and forth. His hands lay on his hips, his gauntlets and the gadgets attached to them exposed completely to the night air. The tattoos on his shoulders were also exposed. They were designed after the fashion of tribal tattoos, involving swirling wisps of black and red ink. They extended down his shoulder blades and to his waist, ending in a curving point.
"What are those for?" Azumi said, muttering her words. Shouji turned his head towards her, smiled, then turned back.
"Just for show. They don't mean anything."
"Hmm. . ." She pulled the cloak tighter. "That's boring. . ."
Shouji chuckled. He crouched beside her and slowly stroked her hair, causing her to smile.
"Sing me the song?" she asked, referring to an old song he used to sing. He chuckled again.
"Of course." She was referring to the song "Sooner or Later" by Lord of the Lost, a song almost forgotten. Somehow, he had managed to get a hold of it and memorize it.
Sitting down beside her, he began. "Sooner or later, I'll be a traitor. Sooner or later, I will betray, but even a traitor, sooner or later, is learning that love is finding a way. . ."
It was moments like these that sparked something in him. Unlike before, however, unlike when he was young, he knew what this feeling was.
Love. . .