There was a subtle, unsettling feeling looming around. It was menacing and oppressive. Like a chain slowly inching away towards his ankles, trying to steal away his freedom. Like a fog slowly engulfing him with its cold ghastly air, chilling his body to the core while slowly distorting his vision and thoughts until a single sight was laid bare.
The image of a young child weeping helplessly as the things he thought important to him were being taken away.
It shouldn't have been this way. Not again.
Maybe there was an error in the report. It was a chaotic situation. No one knew clearly what was happening, after all.
Or maybe this was part of an elaborate plan. She wasn't dumb. A T-doll like her wouldn't make foolish decisions on a whim, especially not her.
Not ST AR-15 of all T-dolls.
But he couldn't fool himself any longer. He knew deep inside that despite all his years of experience, nothing had changed.
He was still that child, grovelling on the dirt unable to protect what he held dear.
The cold grip of the dark haze that surrounded his vision thickened as a pit was formed in his stomach. A vast emptiness that was slowly engulfing him from his core while the icy chains wrapped around his torso tightly as it kept crawling up.
A chain he thought he had been free of for years. A chain he thought he could easily break off the next time around.
The chain of fate that he simply ran away from had him in its grasp once again.
The dark haze made it hard to breathe as the chains slowly encroached his throat. He couldn't do anything, not even think properly.
ST AR-15 was a capable T-doll, an elite. She wasn't one to go down easily. It meant that she had been pushed to the edge. It may have been seen as her own weakness but he was the one in charge of overseeing her.
Did he really miss the signs?
Was it really that impossible to stop?
Had he been more attentive, would things have changed?
Why couldn't he protect even one single promise from a scared little girl?
The frigidly numbing links of the chain had reached his throat and was slowly making its way around it. His head had become light and all the sounds from the chaos and commotion had dulled into a hush.
At that moment, amidst the thick icy miasma and the frosty steel bindings, in that space where outside noise had lost all of its influence, he wouldn't have minded fading into its obscurity.
But that would just be running away.
If he wanted to show that he had changed, that he had gotten stronger, he couldn't just turn his back this time. Time couldn't be reversed but he could prevent further disaster.
A tower had already fallen, hitting others on its way down. If he didn't do anything, everything might cascade into a rain of dust and debris.
But could he do it?
Could he do anything?
He, who had failed in the past and in the present?
He, who did not see the warning signs before the disaster?
What right did he have to think that he could save them?
The bindings that gripped his throat constricted it. As if squeezing the life out of him. But, as much as he'd like to get absorbed in the atmosphere of hopelessness, he had to resist. He had to fight back despite the cold freezing his skin and the helpless pit engulfing his very being.
The stakes were far too grand for him to be overwhelmed by his imaginary shackles.
He wasn't the protagonist in this story, though. If he was, he'd have been able to do something aside from watching over the combat grid map while thinking in circles.
But regardless, he needed to think. He could kick himself all he wanted but that wouldn't change anything. If he really wanted to believe that he wasn't the same child that could only cry and weep, he needed to prove it.
He needed to prove that the past wasn't repeating itself, even if he had no idea what to even do.
It wasn't logical. It didn't make any sense but humans, much more so than T-dolls, are rarely logical creatures.
That was a fact that he learned early on in life; from the most mundane question a child could ever ask.
Arrogant, that was his first impression of her. Hungry for glory and achievements; eager for praise and distinguishment. It was as if her striking pink long hair and side ponytail was a show of defiance amidst the battlefield of drab black and brown; the purple streak seeming like a sign of her own individuality.
It wasn't the first time he'd seen personalities like that. Some of them became heroes; most of them died namelessly. All of them still got swept in the bowels of history.
She looked like she was no different from those delusional protagonists who let their hubris get the better of them.
"Commander, the perimeter has been swept. All that's left is a small contingency of sangvis concentrated in this small area," a voice echoed through the hollow room as a young girl walked towards him, her bright pink hair swaying with her movements.
She pointed to a spot on the interior layout on his hands; the interior layout of the building they had been sieging for a while now. It was at the center of the layout, enclosed in a small rectangular area with one small gap to indicate the room's entrance point.
"Well done, AR15," he replied to the T-doll who looked all too much like a human. The only suggestive detail that she wasn't would be the silver and black weapon in her hands; a weapon she was named after.
He shifted his gaze from AR15's visage of a casual attire of bright colors so unfit for a tactical operations unit to the map in his hands. The area she had pointed to was a large storeroom located in an underground area of the rundown high-rise they were in.
"Do you think we should go attack it now?" he asked her as he mulled over certain scenarios in his head.
"No, we've probably overstepped our boundaries already. We should let the ones from sector 7 finish this," she replied firmly with a pause before continuing her response. "Besides, there's no need for unnecessary injuries. We've been going at it for hours now. I'm sure the others would like to catch their breath for a bit."
"Agreed," he responded, giving her a look of approval.
Her logic was sound and he also didn't want to push beyond what they were hired to do.
They were only contractors in the situation. Their losses were theirs while the responsibility hung over their necks. There was no need to risk anything else.
He instinctively reached out to his left chest area but didn't find his communication module. The commander in charge of sector 7, in her paranoia of the enemy tapping into their lines, required them to perform the operation without it. He had to command the field the old fashioned way.
"Okay AR15, tell your team to keep boxing them in until our client decides to swoop in and steal the credit," he sarcastically remarked, his voice showing the massive stretch of the area he stood on by echoing out his command in repeat.
"Yes sir!" she replied as she ran back out to where her teammates were, the sound of her footsteps reverberating throughout the entire silence of the room.
The T-doll, who would persistently ask him when her turn was during operations, wasn't all guts and glory. In actuality, she was very considerate of her teammates and had a strong sense of responsibility. She knew when to restrain herself, a trait most hero aspirants never get to learn.
Those qualities weren't something you'd understand from a single glance.
He took his eyes off the back of the young woman whose pink hair swayed with her movements to survey his surroundings. It was a wide expanse for a structure; one with multiple small support beams and high ceilings. The dilapidation was visually obvious with certain segments of the ceiling full of holes and craters showing the next floor, or even the clear sky.
Yet despite so, the building stood firm enough to handle a firefight. Its structural integrity didn't seem to have diminished throughout the years of wear and war. Granted they made sure to avoid the use of explosions but the fact that despite its decrepit state, it still firmly held its ground.
He walked forward, noticing the concrete floor's haphazard cracks and disrepair. Some slabs of stone were sticking out askew, showing the massive thickness of the material used. Some of them had cracks ranging from thin lines running from one end to another to massive splits forming a fissure on the ground. Some of the fissures were sunken enough that a small man could easily fit inside.
He kept moving slowly, his small footsteps making a droning, almost hypnotizing, rhythm as he eyed the ground's puddles of light streaming from above.
His vision was drawn to a particularly big circle of light illuminating a large area on the ground. His eyes traced the beam up to the high ceiling to see a huge hole peeking out to the sky. From where he stood, he could easily see the parts of the dark concrete building that still crept towards the sky, albeit now being askew instead of straight.
The view brought his memories back to the past.
When he was a kid he didn't understand why people made buildings tall. From his childish perspective, he thought it was dumb and dangerous. After all, the higher you are the harder the fall.
Looking back at it now, he couldn't fault himself for thinking that. It was a lesson almost anyone learns eventually. Humans aren't made to fly. They're not like other animals who can land from high places with little to no injury too.
A child quickly learns what hurts them and will equate that experience to danger so to avoid it. That's how common sense is developed.
With that in mind, seeing large stone structures that try to touch the clouds felt all the more foolish to his young self.
All the adults told him technical reasons like economics and land maximization. He understood them now but back then they seemed to be more like excuses than actual reasons.
There was someone, though, who told him something different.
Something that stayed in his mind even if his memory of the person has been muddied by his own guilt and regret.
"Commander, I'm back," a familiar sharp voice broke his reverie as a pink haired girl appeared in front of him.
She arrived so abruptly that he was unable to change his expression to greet her and instead gave her a look that she most likely interpreted as disconcerting.
"Wh-what is it? Commander, what are you looking at? Please don't tell me it's my trademark and clothes again!"
She spoke so flusteredly that, despite how she obviously controlled her exclaim, the room echoed her frustration as if it was its own thoughts as well.
With her remark, he was able to snap out of his thoughts.
Seeing the pink haired girl, who would normally put up a strong proud front, looking embarrassed while talking about her clothes and trademark in the middle of a combat operation felt so surreal that he couldn't help but laugh.
"Wha- Commander!" she responded irately as his reaction didn't help clear the misunderstanding.
"No, it's not that," he calmly told her after finishing his laughter. "I just remembered something and was thinking about it just now."
The pink haired girl diverted his thoughts away for a moment but having to explain what happened made his memory resurface again.
The blurry face of the woman who took care of him appeared. They were looking at a tall concrete structure that he thought was completely foolish.
"Say, AR15," he addressed the pink haired girl who had just grasped the misunderstanding. "Why do you think humans build tall buildings?"
AR15 opened her mouth to respond but before she could even let out a single word, a loud noise rang out, followed by a shockwave strong enough to knock both of them down to their knees.
Panic makes haste. Haste creates mistakes. Mistakes lead to regrets. It was a cycle he was familiar with already and something he would be doing again if he didn't think things through.
Even if the entire world felt like it was burning down, he still had to make sure he didn't destroy what remained while putting out the fire.
Or at least made sure whatever remains doesn't collapse on him.
He had to take back control of himself; he had to calm his emotions.
It would've been more convenient if he could've let go of them but that was a fragment of his humanity he refused to part with.
He took a breath, letting the air flow smoothly through his tired lungs, as he surveyed his surroundings. He wasn't in a battlefield. He wasn't surrounded by bodies. He wasn't even bound by chains or inside a black miasma of hopelessness. He was inside closed walls of steel and wires, much like an iron cage he couldn't break through. In front of him was a holographic terminal which showed the aftermath of an area where an entire building just toppled over.
It felt like a familiar scene; one where he could've easily been looking from inside out.
And maybe if he made different decisions leading up to this point, it would've been.
Struggling amidst the pile of rubble that was his own hubris and overconfidence.
He took another deep breath.
This and that were completely different.
Yet he felt a similarity. In a way, both situations were due to his own carelessness.
It was like a curse; his curse.
People are all cursed from birth in a way, whether by situation or by virtue. There are some things that will always haunt people; some things that will always hold them back.
Whether they try to crawl and struggle through despite that is what makes the difference.
Or so he'd like to believe.
Such childish thoughts normally would've been far removed from him already.
After all the battles he'd been through, he understood well enough that there is no war where somebody wins. Only a side that loses less.
But he chose to keep holding on to such childish virtues, such virtues that could potentially become another curse.
Yet he still wanted to keep it.
Even though the world was threatening to crush him underfoot.
The flash of white that blinded his eyes turned into a sudden darkness. The loud passing noise became a low dull lingering hum until it disappeared entirely. The wave of hot air that rammed through him dispersed into a chilling cold enveloping his body inside and out, numbing it throughout.
In a fraction of a second, his body had become a marionette with its strings cut.
But that wasn't the end of it.
Despite his helpless state amidst an empty darkness, there was still one sensation that reminded him he had to do something. A sensation that felt like a hailstorm pelting him relentlessly. Like a siren noisily warning him that the worst has yet to come.
His heart was still beating.
That meant blood was still coursing through his body.
He was still alive.
Like a conditioned reaction, he started to work his mind without a moment's notice. Time seemed to slow like a crawl in his heightened state of panic.
One second passed.
He worked in analyzing what had happened. Images from his memory quickly flashed in rapid succession; most being completely useless. He had to focus and filter in only the vital information. A loud explosion followed by a strong burning force of air that knocked him down. An explosion had occurred.
Two seconds.
The explosion wasn't spontaneous. The building had been rundown and devoid of any unstable elements for years before they started their operation. There was no electricity and gas lines active to cause it. Only three external factors were involved. The sector commander had no logical reason to use an explosive of that magnitude and he hadn't given such an order to his team. It all pointed to their enemy, Sangvis Ferri.
Three seconds.
Solving the "what" wasn't as important as the "how". Sangvis had a wide variety of units at their disposal, none he knew could cause an explosion that strong. Yet it still happened. It could've been an enemy type he hadn't seen yet. Sangvis could've brought in some explosive material and stashed it in the room they shrank into. It would be a stretch but it was possible. Occam's razor. The explosion had already occurred. Instead of speculating that special means were carried out, it would be simpler to use what they had in-hand. It wasn't that Sangvis units couldn't create an explosion. Just not to that degree. That degree was making things far too complicated. He needed to think simpler.
Four seconds.
Explosions weren't that hard to create. Bombs had been used by both his and the enemy's side already. The issue was the scale. A bomb's blast radius depended on the amount of fuel it used up. Fuel was an additive factor. More fuel meant larger explosion; regardless if they came from the same source or not. Sangvis didn't need one bomb with a massive payload. They just had to use multiple smaller ones that they could chain together. Their model Jaguars were vehicular mortars equipped with explosive rockets. They were also a mass reproduced unit that wasn't uncommon to see in engagements. They were the most likely cause but there was something wrong; something that didn't make sense.
Five seconds.
His thoughts were momentarily disrupted as he felt the coarse air recklessly pass through his nose. There was a scent of paltry dirt and dried out concrete with faint traces of burned gas. The subconscious rise and fall of his chest became slightly noticeable as the rough air pushed through. It was weak but he could feel a connection. Like fragile threads that could snap if too much force was exerted, he carefully held on to it.
Six seconds.
He shifted his focus to his extremities, ignoring the low drumming and incoherent noise slowly filling his ears. Anything from his lower body felt nonexistent. There was no reaction. His upper body, though, was different. The subtle rush of blood through his fingers, the numbed throbbing pain on his shoulders, and the vaguely cool hard sensation on his face. They were minute sensations that he would've missed out had he not put his attention to it.
Seven seconds.
He had the ability to get back up. He could've opened his eyes to check his situation; to get a better overview of the aftermath of the explosion. But that wouldn't have helped in understanding what went wrong. Getting out of this dark sanctuary that his mind had created would overload his senses and might lead him to overlook certain facts. And so, with the reassurance that his body was still working and and relatively fine, he let go of the threads and sunk back into the dark depths of his mind.
Eight seconds.
Sangvis worked as a hivemind; it was information he had learned a while back after retrieving documentation about them from his superior. As such, self preservation wasn't part of their program. As long as it served to further their cause, they won't hesitate in throwing a horde of units towards their enemy. It wouldn't be out of their character to blow themselves up if it was to protect sensitive information but in most cases they'd fight it to the end. That's the reason he found this move odd. They already lost this round. Whatever units they had left were rounded up and bottled into a single room. His command was safely out of reach if any retaliation would arrive. There was no reason to destroy whatever forces they had left when they could've tried to mount a counterattack. Nothing made sense until he remembered one piece of information. It was something he should have foreseen yet didn't. Such a detail would normally not matter but against an enemy AI without self preservation into their code, it was an important note. The enemy Sangvis retreated to that specific position by themselves.
Nine seconds.
His mind was racing. He had overlooked a mistake. It might look like a small problem but he wasn't naive enough to dismiss it as such. Sangvis might work as a hive mind but their AI was still running within logical reasoning. They wouldn't completely annihilate their forces for no reason and, more importantly, they wouldn't tactically disadvantage themselves by bottlenecking their forces into one area with no escape. He went with that lead and rummaged through his memories leading up to this situation. The map he had been looking on appeared in a ghastly holographic sight. The big red X mark on it, indicating where the remaining Sangvis forces held in, glowed eerily. He had missed one important detail on the layout. There was a circle inside the rectangular area.
He had been too careless.
Ten seconds.
The imaginary stopwatch ticked one last time in a belligerent manner as he grasped the threads to his body.
He rose up despite the rush of burning and stinging pain spiking from the ends of his extremities and opened his eyes; the sensations immediately overpowering him with blinding light and incoherent noise.
He forcibly moved his right arm to his chest area, the pain making it feel like a lifting a ton, as he felt for his communication module while his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness but it wasn't there.
The incongruous sounds slowly mellowed into a low rumble and crackle of stone and his eyes laid to the worried pink haired T-doll frantically trying to remove the huge stack of concrete rubble that was on top of his already numbed legs.
"Commander, are you okay?" her words grated at his calibrating ears but the fact that he wasn't alone as his perceived world was fell apart by his own carelessness made him feel relieved.
He took a moment to process his surroundings. His legs were buried by thick concrete slabs, likely pieces of the floor above that fell due to the explosion's impact. The ground he laid on was uneven, something his sore back could easily attest to. He had noticed it already earlier but the fissures on the ground were big enough to act as a small trench.
It was likely that the impact of the explosion caused him to fall into the fissure and the protruding slabs of concrete acted as a buffer, shielding him from the large debris that fell from up top. It also ended up acting as a coffin which enclosed him throughout.
For a moment, he focused on moving his legs. They were weighed down by a lot of broken debris and was deeply buried. It took effort for him to even move it but it was still a miracle that it wasn't crushed.
"Don't worry, I'm about to get you out soon," she continued as she tirelessly kept pulling apart some loose debris on the top of the stack. He noticed that there was a pile of rubble strewn haphazardly behind her. It was about as much as the pile that was still on top of him.
Her words and actions were reassuring, especially in a chaotic situation such as this, but he had to stop her by agonizingly raising his heavy right right.
They had no time and there was something more important to do.
"AR15," his throat ached as dry air passed through while he spoke. "You need to go back and tell everyone to evacuate the building. Right now."
"But what about you, commander?" she asked back, looking at the still high pile of rubble on top of him.
"But we're running out of time. You need to start the evacuation now. The rest of Anti-Rain and sector 7 were stationed just outside of the room. You need to make sure they're fine and they get out quickly. The area Sangvis blew up was one of the few remaining support pillars of this building."
He took a quick look at AR15's expression to see if she understood the gravity of the situation.
"They plan to bury us alive," she listlessly spoke, reaffirming his own conclusion.
Her words were lifeless; as lifeless as they'd all be of they didn't move now.
"Now, go!" he spurred her on as he gave her a strong look.
There was a slight hesitation as she turned around but she still ran out quickly, leaving him alone to listen at the disappearing rhythm of boots hitting concrete.
His body was already sore and tired; his head, about to burst. His legs felt like lead and his arms like burning needles were stabbing it millions on end. He gathered his strength and tried to pull himself out but, as he moved, small fragments of rubble shifted and caused the pile to sink deeper on his feet.
He gave another push but it was futile. The collapsed debris had locked him in.
There was a massive shake. Some more parts of the floor from above shook loose and dropped near him with a massive thud. The ground's rumbling was becoming more noticeable.
He tried to pull himself up again, his muscles screaming and burning with every fiber.
It didn't budge.
The shaking grew a bit more violent. Some of the loose pillars started to collapse and fall on the floor, shattering in the wake and spreading dust and concrete particles in the air.
He was running out of time.
He tried another pull. His head felt like it would break apart in half. His blood felt like acid wreaking havoc through his veins.
He took a deep breath. His chest sank as a cold grip enclosed it.
This was the result of his mistake.
His vision started to darken as his hearing started to weaken. The burning and throbbing pain from his body started to become muted.
He had regarded AR15 as arrogant when it was his arrogance that got them all in this mess.
If this was the result of his mistake, at the very least he was able to make it right.
He had no idea how AR15 was handling the evacuation but he trusted her to know she'd fulfill her mission through and through.
It was a reassuring idea; enough to cradle his tired body to sleep as his hands loosened their grip on the threads connecting him to reality.
He exhaled deeply as he let the final strands of memory fade back into the past where it belonged. He wasn't in a battlefield, nor was wrapped around chains of steel. He was inside a dingy room with synthetic radio chatter reverberating loud while multiple glowing monitors displayed a battle that had finished.
Beside him was the normally bubbly logistics officer looking grimly at a monitor that replayed a scene of a building that collapsed. Her orange hair seemed to contrast her dark expression even though it had been hours since already.
This wasn't a matter that just affected him. Nor was he the most affected.
He wasn't the protagonist. He might not even be a knight for the protagonist.
But he was still part of the cast in this story.
If he wanted to keep his childish virtues, he needed to think of a way to help.
That might've been what pushed the normally calm and rational T-doll to do what she had. To keep her own virtues, she thought this the only way.
The weight on his shoulders that dangled at this moment was quite heavy.
Heavy enough to outweigh the cold chains of his fears.
Heavy enough to remind him of the debris on that day.
He never did hear what her answer to that question was. When he woke up after passing out from exhaustion, he was already outside and the evacuation had already finished. He heard that AR15 immediately ran back to rescue him after telling the rest of her team about the situation. She didn't disobey his command but she definitely went beyond what he had expected.
It wasn't a stretch for him to think he should've been dead by now. That said, if things had been just a little bit different, he would not be the one standing in this position in the first place.
It wasn't the time to think about alternative realities though.
Whether that was partly his fault was something he had to think for another time. All his faults and mistakes will have their own time.
But he couldn't help be reminded of a certain childish question with a simple answer. An answer he had to exemplify.
An answer, he believed, AR15 would've likely agreed on.
Why did humans build their structures towards the heavens despite the danger and impossibility?
It did feel irrational to him as a child.
But the answer he was given was rather simple. Simple enough even a small powerless child could accept.
It was to show that they can.
And in a way, T-dolls are so similar to humans that he believed they could hold the same belief.
At the very least, AR15 could.
After all, whether it was naivety, childishness, or even his own form of defiance, he refused to believe that this was the end of her story.