Having reached the safety of the protected university grounds, Damon and his two ship girls deliver what weapons they managed to scavenge to the university's weapons lockers in one of the lecture halls north of the university center. Chad had given the three some space to sleep for the night just outside the headquarters office, and Damon, worn out from the night's work, quickly falls asleep, leaving Murakumo and Amatsukaze awkwardly staring up at the tall ceiling of the university center, lying on their backs underneath their scratchy blankets.
"Hey...Murakumo?" Amatsukaze mutters in a low voice so as to not wake up her Admiral.
"What?" Murakumo mumbles back, a touch of irritation still present in her tone.
"Don't be like that, I just wanna ask you something."
"Then what is it?"
Amatsukaze tilts her head over to face Murakumo. "What do you think of the world as it is right now?"
Murakumo also faces Amatsukaze. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you know, according to Admiral, we weren't activated when we were supposed to, which was nearly two decades ago. Never mind the fact that we're still in perfect working order during our...I guess, dormancy?...I don't think this was the kind of world we expected to live in."
"Oh..." Murakumo goes back to gazing up at the ceiling again. "Why should our locale matter? We were constructed specifically to fight, and above all else, obey the person we call 'Admiral'. Even if that's someone who stuck a knife in our heads and hacked our command protocols...there's nothing we can do about it now."
"But I'm talking about this world in general. Everywhere we go, it's nothing like the world we knew before we got shut off for shipping and transport twenty years ago. Even if we were only active for a brief period, the world feels so much more different than it was."
Murakumo bites her lip. "There's no denying that this world now is a lot harsher. I mean...I watched Admiral shoot a baby in the face. Even though I got really mad at him for doing something so cruel, am I really someone who has the experience to tell him that what he did was wrong? Just going off what he told me, it sounds like everyone who survived the apocalypse suffered. This whole time we haven't even seen any of those blue skies that we saw back when we were activated for the first time out of R&D. The whole world...just overall, it feels more icky."
Sighing, Murakumo closes her eyes. "But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the world's like or what we think about it. We follow Admiral's orders, and that's it. What's the point of talking about these things..."
Amatsukaze gives her fellow ship girl an irritated look. "You sound like we're just mindless robots of Admiral's. You know full well that's clearly not the case. We're humans too, you know."
"Humans? Us? That's the most bogus thing I've heard you say so far...pff..."
"What's so funny about that? It's true! We're humans too, you know!"
"Oh, really...do tell..."
"You piece of..." Amatsukaze starts to raise her voice and clench her fist in anger, but Damon stirs and shifts about under his own scratchy blanket, causing Amatsukaze to lower her voice again. "We have human bodies, okay? We think just like a human would! Don't you remember? The people who built us meant for us to be just like humans! Is your main processor, like, malfunctioning already?"
"Your data cores must be the things malfunctioning right now," Murakumo scoffs back. "Just because we have the bodies and tendencies of human beings does not make us human beings. We're too strong, too smart...too inhuman to be human. We're walking computers, do you realize that? Computers in genetically modified human bodies. I really don't think that qualifies us to be human. And besides, what the hell does this whole crap matter anyway? Let me go to sleep..."
"No, screw you. You and I still have thoughts and emotions, don't we? We might be computers, but we're not some desktop that just sits on a desk waiting for someone to punch some keys in. We're a lot more than that, aren't we? You can't deny that!"
"Whatever...I don't really care..." Murakumo rolls over to her side so that her back is facing Amatsukaze. Amatsukaze, knowing that Murakumo is fed up talking with her for the night, sighs heavily and irritably rolls over on her side too, putting her back to Murakumo on the other side of her Admiral.
A minute later, both ship girls, not yet asleep, hear some footsteps shuffling by and entering the office. They can hear Chad's and Dee Jay's voices through the walls.
"C'mon, man, you ain't jus' gon' leave us. These kids see you as their muh'fuckin' leader, man. You ain't jus' gon' leave 'cause yo girl's dead!"
"Bro, you don't understand. Kassia was my girl, man. You know this story already, don't you?"
"Which one?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake...dude, I told you! When I first got my ass dragged here, Kassia was the one who made me realize there's still a reason to keep on living, you feel me? That reason is her! I've been patient this entire time, ridin' on the hope that she's still in that shithole doing just fine. But I'm tellin' you, I know there's a good chance she could also already be dead. And if that's the case, then I'm sorry. You're gonna have to lead these boys for me."
"Aw, fuck no! I ain't half the man you are! I just like shootin' those cocksucka's who holed us up here to begin with! I ain't no leader, they ain't gonna see me the same way they see you, anyway!"
"Listen, Dee Jay. These guys looked to me 'cause I was the first to stand up 'n shank one of those bastards. You knew me before we broke out! I was jus' a dinky scrub not really knowin' what I'd do. We all wanted to get out, fight back, but no one knew how, much less me. But they took away Kassia - my Kassia - and I couldn't take it no more. But it doesn't have to be just me! It coulda been anyone else, dude! It coulda been anyone leadin' us right now, and I'd be somebody different! I just happened to be the perfect guy to lead everyone. And now, I've told everyone already earlier tonight that when we rush 'em tomorrow, whether or not we end up winnin' and kickin' those bastards out, if I don't get my Kassia back, there ain't no point in me stayin' with y'all anymore."
"But, my nigga..." Dee Jay protests, "you my friend!"
An awkward, semi-dramatic pause ensues.
"You mah homie, nigga! Don't you remember? When we broke out 'n took over this place, I was right there next to ya, shootin' 'n shankin' those bitches with ya! I know you dedicated 'n shit to yo' girl, but c'mon, man, this is bullshit! You can't just leave us 'cause yo' girl died! There's plenty 'a peeps who's lost their friends 'n family, but they ain't gone 'n offed 'emselves! You gotta stay strong, man, like you always been! So as yo' friend, I have to tell ya, you can't jus' die 'cause yo girl's dead, it ain't fair to the rest of us!"
"Bro..." Chad sighs deeply. "There ain't no such thing as fair. Hell, if there's anything this shithole of a world's taught us, it's that! Fuckin' A, this pile 'a dead coons ain't got nothin' to show us that anythin's fair! You stronger? You better armed? You got power? Fuckin' great, yo, you got the whole world in yo' motherfuckin' hands, baby! Who the fuck cares 'bout a buncha kid slaves down South, huh? Ain't no one's problem 'cept ours, so only we gotta deal with it! What'cha talkin' 'bout 'fair' to me, huh? You been a damn slave just like me up 'til not even a month ago, and you still fuckin' insist on makin' shit fair? I was chill with bein' the leader dude of all of us, 'cause no one else really felt like it. But Kassia's a higher priority than anythin' else. I'm sorry, bro. I know you my friend. I know you're one 'a my best buds, and I really don't wanna leave y'all if I don't have to. But Kassia's the reason why I was able ta lead y'all to this position in the first place. If she's dead after everythin's said and done, I'd feel like I'm just slappin' her in the face if I keep on livin'."
"C'mon, nigga - "
"Dee Jay, shut the hell up! I ain't yo 'nigga', I'm fuckin' more cracker than all the saltines you could put togetha from this end 'a shit-town Georgia to big dick Mississippi! This my decision, bro. I'm tired 'a this world. Kassia's the only reason why I decided to extend my own life a bit longer, in the hope that she's still alive 'n kickin'. If I wanna take my own life, then I fuckin' will."
"All I'm tryin' ta say, my man, 's that you jus' takin' the easy way out. The rest 'a us - we out here. We out here doin' work! We showin' the world we ain't no bitch-ass slaves bendin' over fo' some nasty muh'fucka up in Atlanta. No way, no how, son! You kill yoself, you know what, you a coward. A coward! You ain't gonna tough it out, and all 'cause yo' girl's dead. You can find anotha, bro! I know we out here in some apocalyptic shitstorm, but still man, there's gotta be someone else out there too!"
"Another Kassia? Ain't gonna happen. It jus' ain't. And I'm fine with bein' a fuckin' coward, man. You ain't gotta tell me it's a punk-ass thing to do, offin' myself over my girl, I know. But it's what I made my mind up on, and no one gonna stop me, not even you, Dee Jay. And you think you a badass muthafucka, callin' me out on bein' a bitch coward? Bro, you callin' me a coward? If I'm a coward, those shit-tongued pile 'a fuckwads up in Atlanta must be like the biggest twats I ever heard of. Find someone else to find to call 'em a coward, bro. You're just wastin' it on a dude who's already half dead. Now get the hell outta my room, I'm goin' to sleep. We still got a fight to finish at the very least."
A few minutes of silence pass before the headquarters office door opens and shuts, a bit louder than it normally sounds. Dee Jay, still muttering profanity to himself, shuffles away into the darkness of the university center. The light goes out in the office, and Amatsukaze and Murakumo can hear Chad settle under the covers of his own blanket and go to sleep.
"...you heard everything, right?" Amatsukaze whispers, the two ship girls' backs still facing one another.
"...so what?"
"...no, just asking..."
"Whatever..."
The night concludes to day.
A few minutes before noon, Chad's entire army of about two hundred teenagers, most of whom are scantily armed with nothing more than knives or pistols, approach the bridge on Highway 80. Because Damon and his shipgirls had caused such a ruckus the night before, they had unwittingly sent the patrol groups in the area into a panic and patrol the town through the night, so the three bridges' defenses are severely understaffed, allowing the teen army to easily capture the town up to the Ocmulgee River, overtaking whatever few patrol groups unfortunate enough to be assigned to patrol the town for the morning and stealing their weapons. Damon, sitting in his driver's seat and smoking the last bit of his lemon cigarette with his hand out the driver's seat window, waits for Chad's call through the walkie-talkie Damon had been given. Murakumo and Amatsukaze are both hiding behind the driver's and shotgun seats in the back seats, under their Admiral's orders and out of sight, with their weapons ready.
"Hey, Admiral," Amatsukaze calls out from behind the shotgun seat.
"Yeah?"
"...um...last night, we...we overheard a conversation between Chad and his friend Dee Jay."
"...and?"
"Chad's going to commit suicide if his girlfriend isn't alive after all this..."
Damon blows out a breath full of citrus-y lemon scent. "And?"
"...Admiral, Chad's going to die! Can't you stop him?"
"But like, why should I? If he really doesn't want to live anymore, who am I to say that he shouldn't take his own life?"
"But Dee Jay said that Chad shouldn't kill himself just because his girlfriend's dead, because he'd be leaving behind everyone who sees him as a leader! I don't think that's fair to everyone!"
"So you agree with Dee Jay, in other words."
"Well...yeah! Yeah, I do! Because it's like if you died, what're we going to do? It's not like we'll find someone like you who's able to reprogram our command protocols for a third time or whatever, right?"
"...maybe not. But as much as I think Chad's a damn pussy for dying over a girlfriend, he can do what he wants. He used to be a slave in the hands of those bandit dudes working for the slobjobs up in Atlanta, but he ain't a slave anymore. He's able to make the choice for himself whether he wants to continue living or not - that has nothing to do with me." Damon inhales another breath from his cigarette. "And...maybe you girls won't understand this, but...if he loves his girlfriend that much to the point where he feels like he can't live on without her, then either he's just downright blinded by his own delusions or just straight up stupid, which I hope isn't the case, or he's just a dedicated guy. I guess that's one of the things that you girls will have the hardest of times getting to understand."
A brief pause before Amatsukaze asks again, "Love?"
"Yeah...humans all have their different views of what love is and what they interpret it to be. In Chad's case, his love for his girlfriend...I think she was called Kassia, if I remember correctly...or Kasey, I dunno, I didn't pay attention...is enough for him to off himself if he can't have her in his life. Unfortunately for guys like him, that kinda love's only in fairy tales and books now. It's really hard to have a nice life like that. I'd wish him the best, but I've seen plenty of people who had their loved ones die before they did. He's just another guy like the rest of 'em."
"But Chad's different! Who can lead those kids if he's gone?"
"Someone'll step up," Damon nonchalantly shrugs.
"Dee Jay will," Murakumo mutters, unwilling to enter the conversation fully herself. "You know that too, Amatsukaze."
"Yeah, but...well...he said he didn't want to be one, didn't he?"
"Then whatever, it isn't our problem." Murakumo does not say anything further, but when Amatsukaze looks at Murakumo, the former notices the latter with a complicated face. Before Amatsukaze can comment on it aloud, a loud, obnoxious screech is emitted from Damon's walkie-talkie.
"Hey, Damon, bro, we're all good to go! We're all waitin' just outside the bridge, so bring the truck 'n get 'em!" Chad's voice bleeds through painfully into the old walkie-talkie, and Damon turns on his truck, which was waiting on the intersection of Walnut Street and Highway 80.
"Alright, girls, we're gonna free these kids. You want Chad to live, shoot every bastard you see," Damon says darkly as he revs the engine.
The truck is quickly skidded to a stop in front of the bridge's barricades. Before the guards there can react in time, two mighty explosions rock the earth. The teen soldiers, having set up closely around the Highway 80 bridge, and the guards of the bridge both watch the other two bridges lose structural integrity with the I.E.D.'s that Damon had planted last night and quickly break apart and collapse into the dirty river below. As the bridges are crumbling, Murakumo and Amatsukaze lean out of the rolled-down windows of the back seats of the utility truck and begin to fire, Murakumo with the MK-14 Rogue Chassis and Amatsukaze with the AK-47. The three guards distracted by the explosions all go down immediately, and the teen soldiers cheer wildly and begin storming across the only bridge that grants access to the other half of Macon City. Damon revs the truck engine again and smashes through the initial barricade successfully, albeit being peppered by wood splinters and other small debris in the process. As according to plan, Chad's selected comrades, all armed with the few assault rifles and weapons that Damon and crew had managed to scavenge from the previous night and had distributed, run up to the truck and climb onto it. Some of them simply hang on to the side of the truck or on the doors, some hop into the truck bed and hang out there, and the rest are boosted up to the top of the truck.
"Hang on!" Damon roars, and he guns the engine of the truck again and zooms across the bridge.
"Admiral, there's a large group of unknown contacts just up ahead!" Murakumo yells.
"Then light 'em the fuck up!"
Murakumo pats Amatsukaze on the shoulder. "Duck, I'm shooting over you!"
As the truck passes a checkpoint with guards guarding the outpost, the truck's occupants simultaneously open fire. The sheer volume of fire negates any inaccuracy issues any one shooter might have and kills all the guards in quick succession, and Damon does not bother slowing the truck down and instead heads straight towards the Coliseum Medical Center. Once they reach a distance of three hundred meters away, Damon stops the truck, but right as he cuts off the engine, a sniper bullet rings out and catches one of the riders on top in the chest.
"Get off the truck and get behind it!" Damon bellows as another sniper bullet, this time missing, snaps over their heads, and everyone obeys without a word. Another boy drags the wounded guy off with him as Damon grabs his bullpup marksman rifle from Murakumo, leans out from the truck, acquires his target, zeroes accordingly, and double-taps. Missing his first shot, Damon scores the second on the sniper's lower abdomen, causing the enemy sniper to clutch at the bullet wound and topple off the roof of one of the buildings in the compound.
"Hey, can you keep fighting?" Damon asks the teenager who was just shot in the chest, looking at the wound.
"Yeah, dude, this ain't shit! I can't even feel it!" he yells back, popping a pained smile. Noticing that the wound is only a .22 like his own wound, Damon nods.
"Then everyone, get back on the truck and we'll get down to the park! Let's go, let's go!"
Once everyone is back on the truck, Damon drives off the highway down to ground zero. As soon as he gets off the off-ramp from the highway, Amatsukaze shouts out, "Admiral, there's a convoy of three urals off to our right!" Damon snaps his attention towards his right, and he spies the convoy reaching the end of the street, about to take a hard right, presumably to reach the entrance of the medical compound. Rolling down the front passenger window, Damon stops the truck and aims his bullpup marksman rifle, firing two shots. Both shots strike the back tires of the ural in the back of the convoy, and the ural skids about and slams into a dead tree trunk on the side of the street with its side. Damon pulls up his own truck near it, hops out without bothering to turn off the engine, pulls out his Glock 37, and blasts the driver with a single shot when the latter hobbles out of the driver's seat in a daze from the crash. The other boys, following suit, quickly surround the crashed ural and dispatch of anyone that they find. Damon peers inside the bed of the ural and calls out to the others.
"There's a whole shit-ton 'a AK's and ammo in here! Everyone grab one and a couple mags if you don't have a better gun! Murakumo, shut off the engine for me, we're on foot from here!"
The young men cheer and eagerly hop into the bed of the ural. One of them stays inside, throwing out AK-47's to the rest of his buddies one by one. Another boy brings out a big box of ammunition for everyone to take, and Amatsukaze and Murakumo both take a few magazines themselves. Murakumo takes another rifle entirely, just in case.
"Where to now, sir?" One of the boys asks.
"Follow me! Murakumo, Amy, take point! Head east, then north 'til we get to Hospital Drive, and we'll start attacking!" Damon pulls out his walkie-talkie and pushes the push-to-talk button. "Hey, Chad, we're at the compound and about to start puttin' fire down on them! Where are you?"
A loud, scratchy feed greets Damon first before Chad's voice. "Our fastest guys'll get there in like, ten minutes! Either wait for them to group up with you or do whatever you can to soften 'em up!"
"Tell them to start hitting the compound from the west, we have the east side covered!" Damon snaps the device back onto his belt as they reach Hospital Drive, the entrance of which is cut off by a thin but large metal gate.
"Murakumo, Amy, find a way to breach this gate!" Damon orders, prepping his L.S.A.T. machine gun.
"Breach? Heh, that's easy!" Murakumo grins condescendingly. She and Amatsukaze start punching the gate, alternating punches, until the gate gives way and allows them to bore a large hole in the gate. However, as soon as they make such a hole, a bullet whizzes on through and hits Murakumo in the upper right leg, bouncing off and rolling along the ground because of the ship girls' Smartsteel construct.
"Everyone get behind me!" Murakumo advises as she immediately pops her Ice Shield. "Amatsukaze, finish breaking down the gate for me!"
Amatsukaze steps in front of Murakumo and primes her Ignition Glove to finish punching their way through the gate. With the additional firepower that Amatsukaze's flaming Ignition glove provides, the intense and focused heat does not diminish the potency of Murakumo's shielding but instead only chews away at the metal gate, and soon there is a big enough hole for three people to enter through at once. Amatsukaze hops in first, out of the protection of Murakumo's Ice Shield, and is hit by a couple more bullets ringing out from all over the compound before driving her fist into the ground. A long wall of flame erupts spontaneously from the ground in front of her, generating a light but intense smokescreen and visibility distortion to provide cover for everyone else.
"Don't just stand there 'n gawk, c'mon, run through!" Damon yells at the baffled boys still trying to figure out what the hell those girls are doing. Snapping out of their confusion, the boys follow Damon through with Murakumo guarding the gate, bullets pinging off her shield instead of hitting anyone else as they scatter about to their left and right behind buildings for cover. Once Damon, too, rolls to cover behind a short storage building, he yells for his ship girls to follow him, and they break their defenses and dive for cover, the wall of flame fizzing away.
"Chad, Dee Jay! We got our guys inside the medical center place! We're under fire, but we're gonna try 'n make something work! Do you know where those guys're bein held? The prisoner people or whatever?" Damon barks loudly into his walkie-talkie so that he can be heard over the constant cracks of gunfire. The wounded boy is standing next to him, clutching at his chest and breathing more and more stagnantly. Amatsukaze walks up to him, noticing his wound, and murmurs to him,
"This is gonna hurt, but it'll save your life."
She presses the palm of her Ignition Glove against the bullet wound and activates it. The teen drops his AK-47, choking at the sudden surge of blazing pain, but Amatsukaze presses even harder against his chest before ripping her hand away, leaving behind a charred handmark on his bloody shirt and a cauterized bullet wound.
"I wasn't plannin' on gettin' outta here alive, ma'am, but thanks for givin' me some hope," he grins, picking his weapon back up.
"We ain't got a clue, man, you gotta find out yourself! We're 'bout to hit the place to the northwest instead, there's a couple buildings there we can use as cover as we move in! Do whateva the fuck you need to to find Kassia! Oh shi - "
Damon hears the chill-inducing and ever-cliched but still ever-frightening scream of "RPG! ! ! !" over the mic and a consequent explosion.
"Chad!? Chad, come in!"
Chad responds promptly, coughing and wheezing. "Y-Yeah, I'm good, someone just shot a mothafuckin' rocket at us, good thing he didn't know jack shit how to fire it! Listen, Damon, just focus on your shit, we know what we doin'!"
Damon barely has time to put away his walkie-talkie when Murakumo yells out, "Contacts, flanking our left! Six hostiles!"
About half of the boys react quickly and professionally, hurrying over to the left side of the building among the grove of oak trees with Murakumo leading. Two of the boys lay prone on the ground, while the rest peek out with Murakumo, their AK-47's ready to fire. Soon, the six men wearing makeshift turbans with old shirts hurry into view with AK-47's of their own.
"Get 'em!"
Murakumo needs only utter the first word to have a great volley of 7.62x39mm rounds punch a couple holes through that group of six enemies, dropping three instantly and causing another to stumble from a shot to the ankle, crippling him. Murakumo headshots him for the kill, and the other two men dive behind a derelict car wreck and fight back by blindfiring their rifles over the car hood. One of those bullets fired blindly strikes the boy on the left laying prone, and he slumps, dead, just like that.
"Shit!" the teen on the right swears, thanking his lucky stars that he wasn't the one shot dead on the spot, and gets up to drag the body of his dead comrade away behind the building so he can strip him of his ammunition as much as he can carry.
"Yo, in here!" Damon calls, kicking down what should have been a locked door to gain access to the building. He and his comrades pour in and find to their disgust that a horrible stench greets them.
"Holy fuck, they be keepin' bodies here or what?!" one of the boys yells out sarcastically. "This shit's like a garbage dump or a pisspool, I don't even wanna start tryin' to tell the difference!"
Damon peers out in the front lobby of the building, and there lies the answer: heaps upon heaps of random sizes of plastic bags, filled to the brim and overflowing with trash that appear to be days, possibly weeks old and spawning all sorts of flies and insects, sit about. "Think this might give you your answer," Damon mutters disgustedly, pointing over to the front lobby, and the boys exclaim their profane enlightenment.
"Alright, listen up!" Damon yells out again to get everyone's attention. "Me 'n these girls here - " Damon drags Murakumo and Amatsukaze next to him - "will snipe off anyone we can from upstairs! I want everyone else to lock down this floor so we don't get invaded or some shit. That clear?"
"Yeah!"
With the rest of the boys' cooperation, Damon climbs the stairs with his two ship girls and simply kicks open the locked door to the roof again. Immediately, Damon spots four armed men straddling the rooftops of the buildings surrounding theirs, and his rooftop has no viable cover.
"Murakumo, cover us!" Damon orders, and she activates her Waterfall Shield once again just in time to prevent another sniper bullet from striking Damon in the right kneecap.
"This isn't safe out here, Admiral!" Murakumo says, watching the bullet slide off her shield. "Plus, you can't shoot out from here!"
"But what if you do this?" Damon puts down his L.S.A.T. and equips his DSR-50 sniper rifle instead. Setting the muzzle brake just outside the shield so that only a small tip of the barrel pokes out from the shield, Damon acquires one of his targets, dumbfounded by the scene they are making, and fires. The easy shot scores a spectacular headshot, and blood, brain, and bone implode from what used to be a human head and sends the victim wobbling about for a moment before toppling off the rooftop and crashing down to the ground some forty feet below. "That worked, so keep holding it like that until I kill everyone."
"It's gonna drain a lot of my battery, you know!" Murakumo yells as Damon continues to fire his sniper rifle. Bullets shot at them fro the other rooftops ping off the shield harmlessly all the while. "Isn't there a more efficient way of doing this?!"
"If you can think of a better plan, I'd be more 'n happy to hear it!" Damon replies without breaking his fire, working the bolt for a fourth time and firing the last bullet in his chamber. As he reloads, the amount of fire they have been taking subsides considerably, as the other enemy snipers saw what had happened to their comrades and decided they did not wish to die in such horrible manners and thus retreated.
"They're running away. What should we do now?" Amatsukaze asks.
"I'm gonna scan everything I can from here, when I've got a vantage point...somewhat," Damon says, pointing the barrel of his sniper rifle to each of the buildings' interiors, using the scope as a sort of makeshift binoculars. He sees enemy movement through the windows, as many men are hurrying to head towards the northwest. And as if on cue, Damon's walkie-talkie screams out again with static.
"Damon, Damon! We got a...a whole fuckton 'a guys layin' down on us! There any way you can help? We're fuckin' losin' guys left 'n right!" Chad can be heard yelling over gunfire so intense that they may as well be shot at by a machine gun.
"I'm sendin' my girls over to you to help, a'ight? Hold out 'til then!" Damon looks at his two ship girls. "You heard me. Get over to them and kill anyone you see who isn't a friendly or a prisoner, in case you find Kassia or anyone else who's being held captive. I'll lead the boys over somehow."
Murakumo and Amatsukaze nod and fearlessly leap off the rooftop of the garbage disposal building down to the parking lot and street below, and Damon hurries back inside to avoid getting hit without the protection of Murakumo's Waterfall Shield. Just as they hit the ground, the group of masked men that Damon saw through the windows of the Coliseum Medical Center building bursts out from the front entrance in order to make their way over to the northwest of the compound to fight off Chad's army. They immediately spot Murakumo and Amatsukaze rolling to a stop and recognize them as the enemies who breached through the west from earlier and open fire. Both ship girls are struck with rifle cartridges as they, too, return fire, unfazed. Murakumo tosses aside her empty magazine as she and Amatsukaze run past the bodies of the men they have just killed. Then, more bullets strike the ground around their feet, and Amatsukaze drags Murakumo just in time away from a volley of more AK-47 and M4-A1 fire behind a dead tree.
"There's more people up in that middle building just ahead!" Amatsukaze yells, pointing out the second floor windows where soldiers are lined up and firing at them. The bullets are chewing away mercilessly at the dead and decayed bark, and one of the bullets hits a particularly soft spot on the tree and raps Amatsukaze right on her smokestack hat. "I'm going to burn those bastards out, okay? Go ahead of me and hit those guys from behind!" she says, readjusting the smokestack hat back onto her head. "Wait for me to do that, then go!"
"Then get on it!" Murakumo yells back, and Amatsukaze leaps out and dashes with superhuman speed towards the building. Holding her AK-47 with her left hand, Amatsukaze leaps up to the nearest window,weathering the bulletstorm that comes her way to stop her, her Ignition Glove practically set ablaze with all the fire energy she has packed into her hand. She plunges her right fist through the window, and as soon as the glass shatters to give way to her glove, the entire second floor erupts and belches out one giant wave of fire the temperature of the surface of the sun, shattering the rest of the windows on the second floor and partially melting the windows on either floor above and below it. Some of the men inside who were closer to the windows end up stumbling their way off the second floor and crash to the ground, either crippling themselves or otherwise injuring themselves as they slowly roast to death, and the rest of the men inside who were not near the windows instead become blinded by the fire and gases that burned their eyes out and are cooked to death as well. Upon seeing the effects, Murakumo emerges from the tree she was using as cover and crosses the parking lot with minimal resistance as she can hear more fireballs pluming inside the building on the other floors. Amatsukaze must really dislike taking prisoners...either that, or she must really enjoy setting people on fire.
As she heads further northwest, she soon approaches a skybridge that connects one of the laboratory facilities to the main central building of the medical compound, on top of which stand a row of masked bandits firing down upon some roads that Murakumo cannot see from her current position. She is about to switch weapons to Damon's MK-14 Rogue Chassis when suddenly the men begin to reel over, one by one, until they are all dead and bleeding or have fallen off the skybridge to their deaths below. She can hear the yells and cheers of teenage soldiers and hurries to round the street corner, and when she does so, she is immediately met by a large group of boys and girls who have captured what appears to be a truckyard and are in the process of looting them for weapons and supplies. One of the girls spots Murakumo and waves out to her, recognizing the ship girl's light blue hair.
"Hey, you, you're that super-girl, aren't'cha? C'mon, Chad's here! Come get some stuff!"
Murakumo hurries over as the girl calls for Chad, and Chad, flanked closely by his friend and second-in-command Dee Jay, quickly meets with Murakumo.
"Okay, so lemme fill you in on what happened so far. We overran this position just with sheer numbers alone - they can't've had more 'n a couple dozen guys posted in this area. We lost some guys, but a lot less than I thought we would. Now these trucks are all ours - we just need to find the keys to these damn things and we can all get the hell outta here, supplies 'n all."
"We beat the shit outta one dude we found still alive," Dee Jay adds quickly. "He knew the place where Kassia 'n the otha's're bein' held. They should be inside this buildin' here." He points to the tall building right in front of them.
"Amatsukaze, the other girl who was with us, should be inside," Murakumo tells them. "She's already killing as many of the enemies as she can."
"That's fuckin' awesome, means it'll be safer for us." Chad nods. "Hey, whoever's got good gear, follow me, we gotta find our friends! We ain't leavin' anyone who's still alive in this shithole!"
The boys and girls cheer. Dee Jay, having scavenged a Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun from an enemy, walks up to one of the few service doors on the side of the central building and shoots off the lock. Chad kicks open the door, and Murakumo leads the way in with her AK-47 ready to fire. When she sees the coast clear, she beckons to everyone else to follow, and everyone surges in.
"They'll be on the third floor, in one of the rooms!" Dee Jay hollers. "Yo, you guys comin' in after us, secure the first floor 'n tell those niggas still out there bein' picky ta hurry the fuck up 'n pick 'n shoot somethin'!"
Finding the first floor relatively empty on their way to the stairs, one of the girls escorting Chad and Dee Jay and Murakumo opens the door to the stairs. Immediately, an improvised homemade explosive using a box of rusty, unused four-inch nails as shrapnel goes off, peppering the nails all over her face and shoulders. Screaming horribly, she falls to the ground, dropping her Glock 20 and clutching at her face and shoulders, pulling off the nails wherever she can. Murakumo, looking down at her in horror, then realizes that the reason why the injured girl is taking so long to remove the nails from her body is that a few of the nails sliced down into her eyeballs, almost disconnecting the lens away from the rest of her eyes.
"Ow, ow! I-I-I'm done for here, just leave me! Do what we all came here to do, Chad!" she screams as she painfully rips out the nails from her right eye. Chad, with an extremely complicated look on his face, swallows his emotions and pushes the rest forward.
"Up the stairs! C'mon!"
Chad, Dee Jay, Murakumo, and their escort of the remaining four boys and girls climb the stairs to the second floor, the door to which is visibly red, presumably from all the heat that Amatsukaze is throwing around in the second floor. They ignore it and continue up the stairs, and Chad barges his shoulder into the door to the third floor and points his Uzi down the hall. Two men with pistols turn around to see who has entered through the stairs, and Chad guns both of them down before they can retaliate. Murakumo and Dee Jay also enter the hall, but by this point more men, hearing the commotion and gunshots, also step out into the hallway to engage. A furious exchange of bullets ensues, and Chad is struck in the back, just above his right hip.
"Ey, yo dude, yer hurt!" Dee Jay yells after all the men are dead, kneeling by Chad, who is gripping his side as blood drips down through his fingers.
"Kkhhh...whatever, this shit's not important!" Chad yells it off and stands again, though with a bit of difficulty from the pain. "It's down the hall, that way! C'mon, we're almost there!" The boys and girls begin to rush towards the last room on the right in Murakumo's side of the corridor, but then the door to the room swings open, and a man with an M-14 battle rifle suddenly peeks out and fires a single bullet. The shot barely misses Murakumo's right cheek and instead rips through the neck of one of the boys with an assault rifle just behind her, and he topples over with a gaping hole in the back of his neck that reveals a severed spine and sprawling tissue. After taking the shot, the man retreats back into the door again as the other boys and girls return fire. Once they reach the door, Dee Jay simply gives a shrill yell of anger, sticks the muzzle of his Mossberg right up against the door, and pulls the trigger before Chad can order him not to do that. The Mossberg belches a shell full of buckshot, and the sound of a body flumping onto the ground on the other side of the door is enough to cause Dee Jay to kick open the door. Sure enough, the man with the M-14 is lying dead on the floor, his whole upper body and face gauged out with the fury of sixteen buckshot pellets. Everyone else piles in to check up on the prisoners, six more boys and seven more girls who are all tied up. Chad quickly removes the blindfolds and checks the faces, but soon he exclaims,
"Kassia ain't fuckin' here! Where the fuck is she!? Huh!?"
One of the prisoners, as soon as Dee Jay rips off the piece of tape over his mouth, gasps out, "Th-They took her up to the roof! If you're fast enough she should still be there!"
Chad immediately rushes back out the door. Dee Jay orders the teens who escorted them to help the prisoners out, and he and Murakumo quickly follow Chad back to the stairs and up to the roof. Chad, finding the door locked, bangs his fist in frustration, screaming, "Open this shit up, for the love of Bloody Jesus Christ! Open the fuck up! ! ! !" Murakumo pushes Chad out of the way and simply kicks the door off its hinges with her raw strength, and Chad is the first to burst through.
A few men, shirtless and only barely having put on their jeans, stare dumbfounded at the three bloodied, war-worn combatants. In one moment of time, Chad's eyes flicker from each of the three men, then down to the girl they are standing around, whom he recognizes to be Kassia.
It is obvious what they had been doing to Kassia. They had only just finished.
Chad simply raises his Uzi. The men try to raise their arms and cry out for their lives, but Chad is having none of it. He walks towards them quickly, while saying loudly but eerily calmly, "Hands behind your heads. Get to the edge of the roof. And kneel."
They do as he orders, but one of them screams, "D-don't kill us! We have family back home in Atlanta we gotta take care of!"
"Family?"Chad finally snaps, roaring. "YOU TALK OF FAMILY AND BEG FOR YOUR WORTHLESS FUCKING LIVES, AND YOU'RE SAYIN' THAT TO THE FACE OF THE GUY WHOSE GIRLFRIEND Y'ALL JUST RAPED? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ! ? ! ! ? FUCK YOU! FUCK ALL OF YOU! FUCK THIS WORLD, AND TELL SATAN TO FUCK OFF TOO FOR CREATING FUCKWADS LIKE THE WHOLE FUCKIN' LOT'A YOU! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !"
Beside himself with the wrath of three hundred Spartans, Chad kicks each of the men in the back of the head, one by one, and listens to their bodies smack against the broken roads below. He has little time to savor his revenge, however, as the engines and rotor blades of a helicopter come beating in from behind them from the west, and an MH-6 Little Bird, its minigun turrets replaced instead with M16-A4 assault rifles instead, flies over the roof and hovers in place with its guns pointed straight at Chad. Chad simply raises his Uzi, not giving another damn in the world anymore, and is about to pull the trigger when a loud boom goes off. Murakumo, Chad, and Dee Jay see a huge shower of sparks fly off the main rotor assembly, and just before the Little Bird is about to swivel out of the pilot's control, a blur zooms up from below the rooftop's edge and latches onto the helicopter. Amatsukaze grabs the side passenger, grabs his neck, and throws him out of the air, and pulling out a sawn-off shotgun from her back that she looted off one of the many enemies she had burned to death today, Amatsukaze literally shoves it into the right side of the pilot and pulls the trigger all the way, unleashing both barrels and then kicking the pilot where she's just shot him out of the helicopter in a mist of thick red gore. Flinging her spent sawn-off shotgun away, Amatsukaze deftly swings out of the passenger's side and plants both her feet on the front window of the now-out of control helicopter and kicks off as hard as she can, kicking the MH-6, which slowly but surely spins and spins its way to the ground and crashes and explodes in yet another spectacular fireball. Amatsukaze lands next to Chad as Damon, shouldering his smoking DSR-50 sniper rifle, walks forward slowly to stand next to Dee Jay and Murakumo from the roof access door, inspecting the scene.
"The compound's screwed over, Chad. We've kicked 'em out, and you've found your prisoners," Damon says, eyeing the limp body of Kassia. "Though...it seems you have one last task to do."
Chad, Uzi still in hand, turns back to Kassia and kneels down next to her side. Putting his hand on her scratched and raw neck, Chad tries to search for a pulse, but gets none.
"...is she dead?" Amatsukaze murmurs to Damon and Murakumo as they and Dee Jay watch from afar, not daring to interrupt Chad. Damon closes his eyes and sighs lightly.
"...from the looks of things, I'd say she is," Damon murmurs back. "She didn't look like she was breathing when I came in just now. That, and look at the blood on the ground behind her head. Bastards bashed her head in I don't know how many times, but probably enough to get her in an induced coma. By now, that's probably become death."
Chad, determining that the body of his girlfriend is lifeless, gazes at the violated corpse. Sighing for one last time, he leans over her body, puts his Uzi on the roof floor, and slides it towards the feet of his friend, Dee Jay, and takes Kassia's left hand in his own.
"Ch-Chad, y-ya know I can't, man, ya know I can't do it," Dee Jay stutters, shaking his head. He is on the verge of tears.
"If you ain't gonna do it, I know someone else who will," Chad raises his empty eyes at his friend. His eyes are the eyes of a man who has lost all hope in a world he never desired to live in. "Or, if I really fucking have to, I'll do it myself. Now hurry up...I don't wanna keep starin' at this ugly-ass world anymore."
"I told you, man, I ain't gon' do it!" Dee Jay bellows, wiping his eyes. Damon knows what he must do and draws his Glock 37, lining up his sights at Chad's head.
"A-Admiral! ! !" both Murakumo and Amatsukaze shriek out when they realize Damon is about to euthanize Chad and jump in the way.
"You two, step aside," Damon says calmly. "Murakumo, you've seen me do this once before, and while I don't expect you to understand, I do expect you to follow my orders. That goes for you too, Amy. Now step aside, we don't have much time - we need to get out of here before reinforcements arrive and manage to track us."
"Let him do it, you girls," Chad raises his voice. "This is what I want. You may not understand, but...I vowed to find Kassia alive after all of this, and if I found her dead or not at all, I'd off myself."
"B-But - !" Amatsukaze protests. "You can't just kill yourself just because someone died! All these other people are here for you, aren't they?!"
"Yeah! You're these guys' leader, right? What the hell are they supposed to do without you? You're seriously just going to leave them alone and have someone kill you? What's wrong with you, man!?" Murakumo screams at Chad. "What makes a girl like her so special that if she's dead, you have to die as well when you don't even have to?!"
A tense pause follows Murakumo's last words. Chad is biting his lip so hard that thick globs of blood dribbles down his chin and onto the ground, onto Kassia's limp left hand.
"I don't know who the fuck you girls are, okay? All this time I kept my mouth shut after seein' you girls do all that crazy shit like takin' bullets like it's nothing and settin' random people on fire, 'k? But when you start questionin' the decisions that I make as a man - " Chad throws his finger emphatically at the two ship girls - "I am NOTgonna take your shit! Do you hear me!? I AIN'T GONNA TAKE YOUR SHIT! I AIN'T GONNA TAKE NO ONE'S SHIT! NOT YOU, NOT ANYONE'S, NOT EVEN THE WORLD'S! I BEEN TAKIN' WAY TOO MUCH SHIT AND I BENT OVER 'N TOOK IT LIKE A MAN! BUT AT SOME POINT I CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH, AND IF I FEEL LIKE I'VE TAKEN TOO MUCH, THAT'S THAT! I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU GIRLS ARE, NOR THAT GUY YOU KEEP CALLIN' 'ADMIRAL' 'N BOGUS SHIT LIKE THAT, BUT I DON'T FUCKIN' CARE! LET YOUR 'ADMIRAL' FUCKIN' SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD ALREADY! YOU'RE FUCKIN' WASTIN' YOUR TIME AND MINE! EVERYONE'S FUCKIN' TIME!"
A whole minute passes before Murakumo and Amatsukaze slowly step away, and Damon gets a clear shot again.
"Yo, Damon..." Chad mumbles for the last time. "You helped me and my friends out a whole bunch. So for everyone's behalf, I wanna thank you man. At the very least, with your help, I found out what happened to my girl...that I was late by just a day or somethin'. Thanks a lot, man. I know I can't ever pay you back, but even though we didn't even know each other for very long, I know you ain't a bad dude. Not like the rest of the assholes that walk this earth. You a good guy, a'ight? People like you need to keep livin'...not shitbags and weaklings like me. Thanks a lot, bro."
Damon adjusts his grip on his pistol.
"No problem, man. But you're not a bad person either, Chad. People might think that you having someone else kill you is all cowardly 'n all, but I don't care. You made a decision that you promised to fulfill to the very end, and you're sticking with it. I haven't met a whole lotta people who've had the balls to do that so far. You ain't weak, bro. You're a good guy too."
Chad breaks a small smile. "Maybe, man. If God says so too, then I guess I ain't so bad."
Damon pulls the trigger. The bullet casing hits the ground, almost perfectly synchronized with the back of Chad's head laying to rest on the roof floor.
"We can't stay here long," Damon says, putting away his sidearm. "The boys captured a few boxes of C-4 from these fucks, and they're setting the C-4 packs all over the compound - we ain't leavin' a bit of it standing once we leave. Dee Jay, get everyone into the trucks in the parking lots behind us. We need to evacuate asap."
Dee Jay nods, wiping tears away with the back of his hand. Picking up the Uzi at his feet, he walks over to the dead bodies of his friend and his girlfriend and arranges the bodies so that Chad is lying beside Kassia, their hands intertwined. Chad's other hand now holds the Uzi.
"We ain't never gonna have another guy like you, Chad," Dee Jay says through hiccups and a quick salute. "I ain't half the man you were, and you knew it, my nigga. What the hell're we all supposed ta do now...?"
Half an hour later, a large convoy of trucks, with Damon's utility truck in the lead, rolls away from the city of Macon, eastbound. Once they are a good three hundred meters away, Dee Jay and Damon simultaneously flip the switches of their remote detonators, and the resulting combination of explosions from all the packs of C-4 thrown around the compound and the buildings of the medical facility rock the ground, followed by the massive screeches of buildings collapsing to their deaths.
"Ey yo, man, my nigga, been good meetin' y'all," Dee Jay's voice bleeds through Damon's walkie-talkie. "You helped out my people real good, ya hear? I know we lost a good guy, and we lost a lot more, but we all free now. You stay free too, aight? Don't eva let anythin' tell ya that ya gotta die for whatever reason. Keep livin', it's the best kinna revenge ya can ever get in this kinna world."
Damon grins. "I can't agree more, man. I'll see you 'round, bro. Take care."
Damon swerves his truck onto Highway 23 out of Macon City. The truck drives for around half an hour in silence as Damon wears a pair of shades to ward against the wind flapping against him through the glassless front window, a lemon cigarette lit in between his teeth.
"...he didn't have to die..."
Damon glances to his right, and Murakumo, sitting in the front passenger seat, is staring down at her feet.
"He didn't have to die like that...he could've kept living, he was a good kid..." she mutters miserably.
Damon pulls out his cigarette to talk. "You ought to remember that for the rest of your lives. That ain't gonna be the first time you'll see good people die in such a retarded way. The first time is always the hardest - and the more they happen, the more you get used to it."
"Admiral," Amatsukaze speaks up, "you mentioned that it's because of love that Chad died back there. What is that, exactly? We don't understand why someone would be so stubborn to die like that. That's against all logic and reasoning. I don't get it. And I agree with Murakumo, too. I don't think Chad needed to die back there. His death was a waste..."
Slowly exhaling a breathful of lemon, Damon puts his cigarette back in between his teeth as he navigates the truck onto another on-ramp.
"Emotions are things that all - no, I shouldn't say all, most - people have. Things like being happy, angry, sad, stuff like that. Feelings that people have that, according to logic and reasoning, shouldn't exist because most of the time, emotions simply get in the way of logic and reasoning. Emotions cause you to perform things worse if you let them go out of control and let them take over your train of thought...or they can help you do things better by strengthening your resolve. Love is one of those emotions...one of the strongest, actually, if not the strongest emotion that humans know."
"You should explain what it is, then," Murakumo snaps. "That doesn't tell us anything."
"Love?" Damon twists his lips. "I'm not qualified to tell anyone what love is. I've lived my life almost exclusively selfishly. I have no right to tell anyone, not even my own ship girls, what love is or isn't. So with that disclaimer said and done, personally...I think the basic definition of love is the desire to be with a particular someone or a group of people. If you love someone, you'd want to be with them. You would never mind spending any amount of time with them. Depending on how much you love someone or some people, you might not ever want to spend a single day or hour or minute without them."
The sun can be seen starting its downwards journey across the bright and hazy sky as the truck rolls along the broken highway.
"But, if I might add," Damon continues, "in Chad's case, as much as he was a good guy, I personally think that his love for Kassia wasn't necessarily true love. I think that part of his feelings were most definitely obsession - the obsession of wanting to be with the one he believed that he loved to the point where he felt as though he couldn't live without her and made up his mind from the very beginning to off himself once he found out she was dead. So I'll take the liberty of adding a corollary to my own definition of love: if you truly love someone, you need to be prepared to let them go when the time comes."
Both Murakumo and Amatsukaze are silent.
"For you girls, it'll probably be really difficult to understand. You're computers in human bodies. You're innately programmed to understand the world around you in a logical and reasonable fashion. But you also need to come to understand what human emotions are - including your own. You have them too, as far as I can tell. There might come a day when you might directly disobey my order because of your own emotions. And while that might not be in my own interest, it will at least prove that you are, in my eyes, most definitely human beings - not just simply some ships that I use as weapons."
Damon gazes off into the horizon. He knew that the trip would be a quite the experience for him if he was so lucky to come out of it alive at the end, but he had least expected to be teaching others of his beliefs...especially because of the fact that Damon Polchow, like Murakumo and Amatsukaze, is not exactly a true human being.