What they did didn't matter, did it? Akira could always picture her father standing over a long operation table, pulling on those gloves, stretching them over his skin, flexing his fingers and standing over the patient with a small discreet smile.
Father helps people.
That smile meant everything. Everything will be all right. You will feel no pain. It will all be over in a minute.
Father makes things easier for them.
She could picture the scalpel inside the gaping wound, soft mechanical sounds. Her father would stand, his black eyes deep and endless and the patient would look curiously at the operation.
Father takes away all their pain.
Even when the bright lights were dim and the room was not white but dingy, and the patient bubbled and frothed in a tube of green liquid as the barrage of power grew and grew and grew.
All their pain. Even when it is too much.
An image, searing into her brain. Father's guts lay splattered over the street, everywhere but inside him. His glasses, crooked on his nose, bloody. His body looked like it had been taken apart to be put together and someone, somewhere, had forgotten.
I want to help people too.