"86th District," Western Theater

August 1st, Stellar Year 2146

He lays in his bed and stares at the ceiling. His sleep had been fitful and intermittent, pulling him awake and lulling him back down in bursts. But there were no nightmares. He had simply been restless.

Just after the battle, as he stood by the ruin of his Juggernaut, Shin had explained his story to Raiden. He had started almost from the beginning, with his training as a spy - although he omitted that he had been eight when that training first started. He spoke of the expedition to the Republic - he omitted any mention of his brother. He spoke of his undercover insertion behind the Gran Mur - he omitted all mentions of Shiden.

He had not left out these details to maintain his cover. At that point, temporarily, he had stopped caring altogether about cover or secrecy or even the mission itself. He left these out simply because they would hurt to speak about.

And when he had finished, Raiden had looked between his red eyes and his closed hands that held the colored contact lenses, and then up at his dyed silver hair. Raiden had looked at him, shook his head, and laughed.

He looks around. The early-morning sunlight is low but clear. His bunkmates, Daiya and Haruto, are still soundly asleep. Shin looks at them, then down at his hands, and he brings them to his eyes and taps the thin membrane of his contact lenses. He hadn't quite remembered if he still had them or not. There had been a moment yesterday where he nearly threw them away altogether.

"What," Raiden had said. "What are you looking at me like that for? You want me to look more shocked? Well, sorry, man, but I just can't. I mean it's kind of a surprise. Can't say I expected you to be a secret agent from some country I didn't know existed. But we already knew you were more than you said you were, Will."

He paused. "Uh, well, I guess it's Shinei now? Can I call you Shin? I'm going to call you Shin." Raiden took a step back and leaned casually against the leg of his Juggernaut, crossing his arms. "There's a betting pool on it, you know. 'What's Lowell's deal?' Everyone's got their own story for it, and whoever ends up being closest wins the pot."

Raiden laughed again. It was a hearty chuckle resonating from deep within his chest.

"You wanna hear some of the shit they've come up with? It might even get you to smile, you frigid bastard. Kujo swears up and down that you used to be part of a Republic super-soldier program. Says you were made in a lab and got genetically modified or something, and that's why your eyes have red in 'em and you can fight like you've been doing it your whole life. It's also why you wouldn't know how to make a friend if the world depended on it. Then you escaped somehow, and got yourself into Solis Novem so you could see what a normal life was like."

Raiden scratched the back of his head, his smile becoming sheepish. "I guess you could say Kujo's got an, uh, active imagination."

He gets out of bed. He dresses with quick, silent motions. He grabs the Para-RAID off his nightstand as he leaves the room and affixes it to his cheek. Milize will be contacting him soon. Twice per day has become their routine, once in the morning and once at night. Shin thinks he might be looking forward to it. He has a lot of thoughts to sort out after yesterday's events, and Milize is a good listener, on the rare occasion that he has things to say.

"You know, I tried to keep that sort of thing to a minimum at first. The rumors and the betting and all," Raiden had said. "But I mean, c'mon man, you don't exactly make it easy. I mean, of all the cover stories you had to pick for yourself, you went with 'an Alba with red-speckled eyes and a billion scars?' Not exactly incognito.

"But that flashy cover's got nothing on your actions. The whole reason you joined us in the first place was 'cause you got into that scrap for Theo. Then, 'cause once ain't enough I guess, you have a shooting contest with Kurena, our Gunslinger, and you damn near beat her. And then you box Kujo and take him down in four hits."

Raiden laughed again. It was a kind, warm sound. And when it stopped, he became thoughtful, putting a hand on his chin and looking Shin sharply in the eye.

"Was that part of your spy training, Shin? To make so much of a fuss that it keeps people guessing everything about you except the truth?"

Shin said nothing. His hands trembled at his sides. He looked Raiden desperately in the eye, and was amazed at the steady clarity in those green irises, calm and understanding. He couldn't believe how easily he accepted everything. It defied reality. Or at least it defied Shin's reality.

"I think I might actually win the pot," Raiden said. "I guessed that you were from the Empire, like that guy who came before…. you said the Federacy used to be the Empire, didn't you? Close enough.

"Though I gotta say I didn't think you were hiding your race. I thought you were actually an Alba… but since I didn't say that to the croupier, I still win. That's Anju, by the way. She's too much of a sweetheart to participate in the betting, but she was more than happy to keep tabs on it."

The rooftop is often crowded. It's a popular spot on Halberd/Spearhead base, since it's wide-open and gets plenty of sun. But at this time of day at least, it's usually empty. Today it isn't. Raiden is up early too. Shin sees him through the door's glass window. He's sitting with his back to the fence that runs along the roof's border, reading a book. Shin's eyes make out the title. Dante's Inferno. Shin looks at him for a long moment. Then he turns around and walks back down the stairs.

Raiden's steady, amiable stream of conversation had petered out. He looked comfortable in the silence that followed, leaned against Wehrwolf's leg, hands dropped to the thighs of his combat pants, thumbs hooked in the front pockets. He seemed to be waiting for Shin to speak.

And Shin had stood silently in front of his ruined Juggernaut. He had not looked Raiden in the eye. He looked everywhere except there; from left to right, around the shell of the parking garage and the smoking ruins of the Legion drones, corpses like silver spiders overgrown with sharp crystalline tumors. He looked down at his hands, which had throughout their time held 188 shards cut from the machines he'd destroyed - each one a marker of a person he had killed.

He looked back up, and Raiden was still waiting patiently.

"Doesn't it bother you?" Shin asked.

He spoke in tight, harsh tones, the breath grating from his lungs. He glanced cautiously to meet Raiden's steady eye contact again, and when he saw gentle kindness contained within it he tore his eyes away, like a light too bright to look at. He glanced back down and to the right, settling on the corpse of the Grauwolf.

"What do you mean?" Raiden asked.

"I've been lying to you. You call me Will, but that isn't my name. You recognize my face, but it isn't mine. And I let you think that we're friends, but…" His voice trailed. Raiden waited to see if Shin had anything more to add. Shin didn't.

"Aren't we?" Raiden asked calmly. He took a step forward, pushing by his heel off Wehrwolf's leg. "You don't think we're friends? You and me? Didn't we go to that bar together after your boxing match? And didn't we drink way more than the one shot Kujo promised us? And you saved my damn life today after those Grauwolves got behind the platoon. You think we're still not buds after all that?"

"Will is your friend. I'm not him."

Raiden considered this.

"Okay," he said acceptingly. "I guess that's true. You're not Will, you're Shin."

Raiden took another step forward, and then another, until he was within just a few feet of him. For a moment, inexplicably, Shin thought Raiden was going to punch him. But he didn't. He didn't touch him at all, just walked past him to the concrete barrier where Shin's Juggernaut had crashed.

The barrier only went to chest height. Raiden leaned against it with his hands on the concrete lip, and he was tall enough to look out over the city ruins. The wind blew back his hair. He put one hand against it, pushing the bangs out of his eyes.

"You mind turning on your Para-RAID?" he asked without looking at him. "'Cause everyone is going a little bit… uh, fucking crazy on the comms right now. You pulled a pretty big stunt, turning off your Para-RAID and diving into the smoke like that. The entire Squadron's looking for you right now, when what they should be doing is catching a break. Especially fresh off the fight."

"Tell them to stop, then," Shin said numbly.

Raiden glanced back at him over his shoulder. As he turned his head, iron-colored hair whipped past his eyes. He brushed at it again, annoyed.

"Part of being a good leader is only giving orders you know your men will follow. And they wouldn't listen to me on that one. Not unless they knew for sure you were safe and sound."

"Why?" Shin asked dully.

Raiden gave him a strange, long look before shaking his head, chuckling with a tone of sad bemusement.

"Maybe because they care about you, idiot?"

He and Milize both do and don't talk about the day before. Shin doesn't mention it directly. Instead he skirts around the subject with hypotheticals and metaphors. He speaks on behalf of a friend he doesn't have, and Milize seems to understand his hesitance. She acknowledges it without words. She engages him on the slippery, indirect level where he's most comfortable - which is not comfortable at all, but at least is not bitingly painful like anything more straightforward would be.

She tells him, speaking for his supposed friend, that maybe it's OK for people to care about him even if he hasn't done everything exactly the right way. She tells him that maybe his friend's heart has been in the right place the whole time, and he just hasn't realized it.

Shin had clenched his fists, and the sudden, irrational, red-hot anger that burned in him gave him enough strength to look Raiden in the eye.

"They care about Will," he had stressed.

Raiden, his face unimpressed, turned fully around to face him, sprawling out his arms along the concrete barrier in a relaxed posture.

"Sure. You're Shin, not Will," he said in repetition. "I've never met Shin before today. No one else in the Squadron has either."

A long pause. Shin said nothing.

"But I bet I could tell you a lot about yourself, Shin, even if we haven't really 'met' before today."

He grinned.

"I could tell you you're a hell of a fighter. White hair and eyes might hide your race, but they can't hide your movements, your muscles… your scars. You fight like you've had to your whole life. You fight like one of us.

"I could tell you that you got a face like carved ice, and every time you smile, it takes you off guard. Funny thing about your smile, Shin - it only lasts until you realize it's there. Soon as you do, you kill it. And that's something that's got nothin' to do with dyed hair and color-contacts."

Raiden was the epitome of calm, leaning back against the barrier, arms still sprawled out. He didn't speak with any especial conviction or resolve or sense of charisma. He just spoke the words like they were any other, and somehow that showed his belief in them more clearly than anything else could have.

"You act like you've been putting up a perfect cover this whole time. Like everything you've done has been calculated to a T and you've got us all wrapped around your finger. Well, fuckin' newsflash man, you're a shitty spy and you make bad choices.

"If your goal was to learn about the Republic, then why'd you take the fall for Theo and get yourself thrown out of that cushy spot in the history classes? Are you telling me you're learning much about the workings of our glorious government out here in the shit? Driving shitty mechs that are always five steps from breaking down, fighting drones that move at twice your speed and carry three times the guns?

"If you're supposed to be some cold-blooded spy, then why would you throw yourself into this dark fucking place, one against a dozen on your first battle in a Juggernaut? If your mission is all that ever mattered to you, then why would you care if those drones were two minutes from flanking Kujo's ass?"

Raiden stepped away from the barrier and toward Shin. Shin shrank back. If the distance was to close any further, he would die. He believed that wholly.

Raiden moved heedless of this. He stepped up to Shin and dropped his hands on his shoulders.

"You can't tell me why, can you?" Raiden asked softly.

Shin said nothing. He did nothing. He had frozen up entirely.

"Maybe you don't even know why in the first place. Or maybe you do, in some kind of way. But it's all the same either way. You can't explain it because you don't know the words to say it."

Raiden smiled. He hugged him, putting a hand on Shin's head and pulling him into his shoulder, wrapping his other arm around his upper back, tight and strong and warm.

"But I do," Raiden said.

The day goes on. Shin tracks the Legion's voices as the hours tick by, but they're quiet today. Yesterday's victory over the scouting parties has delayed their advance again. It will be some time before they make another push. Spearhead can't continue this cycle forever. The Legion is like the tide; inexorable. They will push in greater and greater numbers until one of their parties finally succeeds in blazing a trail for the larger force to follow. And when that happens, there will be nothing but total, absolute war.

But today, at least, it's peaceful.

"Goddamn it, Shin, you are a good, person. When it comes down to it, if it's your life or someone else's, you'll choose the other guy. If that means taking the blame for a punch you didn't throw or getting dropped into a war that ain't yours, then you'll damn well do it. And if you have to jump into the belly of hell to keep one of us from going on to the other side, then you'll do that too."

Raiden released the hug and stepped back. He kept one hand on Shin's shoulder, pulling him slightly in, slanting his head forward. He didn't break eye contact.

"One day we're gonna have to talk about that, 'cause that ain't exactly healthy either, but for now, you gotta get it through your head that you're not some kinda inhuman monster, and you're not a cold puppet-master either. Frankly, you're too much of an idiot to be either."

Shin had nearly unclenched his fists. And if he had, the silver contact lenses would have fallen to the floor and been lost amidst the debris and concrete dust. He had nearly cried too, and if he had shed tears, all the memories that had haunted him these past six years would have tumbled out with them in a spewing litany. And he could not have taken them back.

But Shin did not unclench his fists, and he did not cry.

He reflected, instead, on how warm it had felt when Raiden hugged him, and on the firmness of the hand still on his shoulder. The faith that showed in those iron-colored Eisen eyes, green in the dim light. Green like Kette's had been.

She would have understood. Maybe he will too.

You don't deserve that. You're a piece of shit.

You can tell him.

You can't.

"I've killed people, Raiden."

"I know."

"Not in self defense. Not out of anger. In cold blood."

Raiden nodded.

"None of us are saints out here, Shin. We're 86. The Republic treated us like animals, and that's exactly what we became. If your hands are dirty, well, ours ain't exactly clean either."

Raiden looked down, a ghost of a smile lingering on his face.

"And mine? Filthy, man. Fucking filthy."

There are boxes of .44 magnum bullets stashed around Shiden's room. Shin grabs one before leaving. He closes the door softly. Shiden's name is still written, in messy chicken-scratch print, on a mini-whiteboard hanging from the frame. Most of the other names on the other doors have been erased - the squadron found it a little creepy to be constantly walking past the names of dead Processors - but Shiden's has been untouched. Shin's not sure why. He doesn't know why he hasn't erased the name himself either. He thinks he should, but he can't bring himself to do it.

Raiden pulled his hand off Shin's shoulder. He tapped the Para-RAID on his cheek.

"Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. Meanwhile, you still haven't let everyone else know you're still kicking. They're getting, uh… frantic. So you should do that."

Shin realized the weight and cold metal texture of the device against his cheek. He had forgotten it was there. Numbly, he reached up and tapped it, and even though he'd been working with these devices since he was a child, the controls felt newly alien to him. Everything did. Nothing felt right. An uncanny sense of unfamiliarity had settled over him, and his every movement felt hollowly mechanical.

In some cold and rational quadrant of his brain, he realized he was in a state of shock. It took him nearly ten seconds to remember how to turn on the device.

".:Spearhead-Eleven, checking in. Status, green:."

A very brief quiet.

Pandemonium followed.

".:WILL YOU MOTHERFUCKER:." "Oh, shit, he's alive!:." ".:What the fuck was that, asshole?:." "I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU PULL ANOTHER-:." ".:Thank goodness…:." ".:My heart was about to explode, dude!:." ".:You're actually a dick, you know that?:." ".:I'm! So! Glad!:." ".:If you had actually died I would have fucking killed you:."

It went on for awhile.

And after the hailstorm of voices, accusations, sighs of relief had faded, Raiden, with his Para-RAID casting a soft blue glow over his sharp scarred face, looked at Shin with a slightly smug smile. He asked him in a soft voice,

"You ready to go home, brother?"

—

Shin enjoyed the weight of the gun. For a long-barreled .44 it was surprisingly light. 'Surprisingly light' for a .44 still meant a gun that tired the arm if you held it out for too long, but Shin enjoyed it all the same. It was comfortably solid in his hands. He loaded the bullets two-by-two, slotting them in the cylinder with small, satisfying metal sniks! He swung the cylinder closed and took aim at a distant steel target. 20 yards or so. Long enough to mean something, but not enough to be a challenge. Not for him, anyway.

He thumbed down the hammer. He settled his finger on the trigger. He pulled.

A crash of thunder. A fireball off the muzzle big enough to blind. Recoil driving sharply back and up into his hands, flipping the barrel up two inches before it settled. The steel circle gave a metal ping as the round struck it, signaling an accurate hit. Shin fired again with one crisp snap of the trigger. Another ping. And again, and again until the gun clicked dry and he was empty. Shin swung out the cylinder and dumped the casings, shuttled rounds from his pockets and loaded the gun a second time.

Those next six rounds each struck a different steel circle at 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, and 60 yards - the last so small a target it could barely be seen with the naked eye. And after he lowered the gun, smoke rising off the muzzle, Shin became aware that someone behind him was clapping. He turned over his shoulder, and Kurena was there. The short Gunslinger with chestnut hair and yellow eyes and a rounded, childish face.

She gave him a cheerful smile and a thumbs-up.

"Hey, that looks like fun! Mind if I join you?"

"Sure."

Kurena beamed as if he'd thrown his arms wide-open in invitation. She hurried over and stood unconcernedly close to him, leaning around his shoulder - his middle arm, really, she only reached about that high to him - to look at the gun in his hands.

"Wow! That's a really neat revolver!"

Shin thought it was too. He nodded to show he agreed.

"Double-action, right? Gotta be. I'm pretty sure they stopped making singles like a hundred years ago… Except those cute little target revolvers I guess, and the historical reproductions. Those are fun. You ever shot one?"

"No." Shin's response wasn't particularly curt or tense, just short. Some people disliked that. Most were at least put off by it. Kurena wasn't.

"Oh, that's too bad. They're real fun. Single-action revolvers are really satisfying, you know? They're a little inconvenient I guess, 'cause you can't just pull the trigger, you have to drop the hammer first. But when you do that, and it makes that cool clicking sound, and then the trigger is just like… Snap! It's so crisp, it feels awesome." She seemed to realize she was rambling, and chuckled sheepishly. "Sorry, sorry, sometimes I talk a little too much. Or a lot too much. Raiden says it's cute, though?"

The upward lilt in her voice suggested, as Shin had eventually come to learn during his academy days, an invitation for a compliment.

"It is," Shin agreed, more to be polite than anything. Although he wasn't lying. He did think it was cute, in a precocious little sister kind of way.

Kurena beamed again, cheeks dusting faintly pink. "That's good then," she said, and giggled. "Hey, so, can I try shooting her?"

A faint smile, small and slight, but genuine, crossed Shin's face.

"So that was your angle, then?" he said.

"Huh?"

"Chatting me up so you could shoot my gun. Oldest trick in the book."

The slight confusion in Kurena's eyes gave way to a look of naked amazement. "Woah," she said, and grinned. "Woah! You're teasing me! Mister icy-eyes is actually having fun!"

Shin's smile immediately died. He looked away.

"Hehehe, clam up all you want, Will, but I know what I heard! Now c'mon, give it here!"

As much to escape the conversation as anything, Shin handed her the gun and dropped six rounds on the table.

"Huh. She's pretty light, isn't she? For a magnum." She angled the revolver in her hands to catch the light, examining it from all angles. She checked that the cylinder was empty - it was - and dry-fired down the lane, trigger clicking smoothly. "Feels good. It's a nice gun! Does she have a name?"

Shin, who had not even thought to name the gun in the first place, said without thinking, "Cyclops."

"Like those giants from the ancient Roman legends, right?"

"Greek, but yes."

"Greek, Roman, they're all dead old guys anyway right? So whuzzit matter?"

Shin couldn't really argue with that. He shrugged to show his agreement.

Kurena loaded the gun one bullet at a time. She closed the cylinder and patted it affectionately. "Thanks for letting me hold you, Cyclops. Let's do good work together, OK?"

She shot steel plates at the same distances he had, all the way out to sixty yards. Very long shots for a handgun, impossible for most, but Kurena's accuracy was as unerring as always. Each blast of thunder was followed by a resonant ping of lead-striking-steel. The gun bucked a lot more in her small hands than it had in Shin's, but she controlled the recoil expertly and finished smiling.

"Wow! Yeah. She's awesome - you are awesome," she told the gun admiringly, then turned back to him. "Where'd you find her?"

Shin had not told anyone else his secret. Only Raiden knew his true identity, and he didn't give Shin any particular order to change that. 'Tell it on your own time,' he had said, after a long consideration. 'It's not like knowing the truth can change anything for us, right? Not like your guys can come bail us out or anything if they're all undercover. So… yeah. Keep it a secret if you want, I won't force you. But I don't think telling the others will go as badly as you think it will.'

So Shin had kept his identity under wraps. But, almost as if his mind was trying to counterbalance for the keeping of that secret, it had loosened its hold on many others. He found himself talking when before he'd have stayed silent.

"I found it here on base," he said.

"In the armory?"

"In someone's room."

"Oh," Kurena said quietly. She set the gun down on the table. "So um, then you took it from one of the guys who were here before?"

It was an unspoken taboo among their Squadron to take what belonged to the dead. There were enough rooms on the base for everyone to claim a space, without having to enter the ones where Halberd's soldiers had lived. And if they did not have to disturb these places and their owners' belongings, it was considered basic respect to leave them as they were.

They all knew the situation could change, and the 86 were well-adapted to taking what they needed off those who could not use it anymore. If supplies from the Republic were to stop coming in, there was no doubt they would do what was necessary. But for now, they tried to leave the old rooms untouched.

"I knew the girl who owned it," Shin said.

A cold, rational voice in the back of his head said it was a bad idea to tell her. Admitting that he knew Shiden, or any 86 outside the wall, would put a hole in his story big enough to fly a plane through. But that voice spoke too late and too quietly, well after Shin had finished the sentence. And shortly after he did, he realized he didn't care nearly as much anymore about how well his story held together.

Maybe he even wanted them to know it had all been a lie. But if that was the case, whatever momentum had moved him to take that step with Raiden was thoroughly gone by now, and he could not bring himself to tell them directly.

Kurena was quiet for awhile. She looked at the gun again, and then at Shin with a wondering expression, between his red-speckled eyes and the line of his mouth. He glanced levelly back to meet her gaze and she looked away, red-faced.

"You knew one of the Processors from Halberd Squadron?" she asked softly.

"Yeah. She was… a good friend."

"And we only got here a couple days after they went to fight…" she said, her voice trailing. "That's cruel, Will. That's so cruel." She shook her head, and Shin saw tears welling in her Topaz eyes.

"You guys came so close to meeting again. You could have…!" Words seemed to fail her. She gestured frantically at the gun. "Like we just were! You could have shot the gun with her, and you could have eaten together, and, and-"

She closed her mouth sharply, so quickly Shin heard her teeth click together. She swallowed back a lump in her throat. "I'm such a baby, aren't I? I don't even know your friend, and I'm crying over her. Gosh, I'm so sorry, I don't mean to make it about me, it's just…" She seemed to think for awhile about what she wanted to say. Then she shook her head sharply, and tears flung out into the air, catching the late-morning sunlight.

"Why is the world so cruel, Will?"

Shin looked down at the revolver in his hands. He stuck it in his jacket. He didn't really feel like shooting anymore.

"I don't know. I miss her," he said simply, facing forward, hands on the table. He stared forlornly at the array of steel circles downrange, and at the faint, pale halos in their centers where bullets had struck them.

Shin grunted as a warm mass collided against his back and two small arms encircled his chest from behind.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I- I'm sorry, Will, it's just… it's so sad!" she bawled, burying her face in the back of his jacket. Shin felt the wet warmth of tears slowly sinking into the cloth. "Everyone deserves a hug when they're sad. It's a human right!"

Shin seemed to be getting a lot of hugs lately. Granted, it was just two, but that was two in less than twenty-four hours, and he couldn't remember getting a single one before that for at least a year. Concerningly, he seemed not to be as bothered by it as much as he would have before. So he allowed Kurena to glomp herself on him for a little while longer, until the worst of her tears had settled and her sobs reduced to quiet sniffling.

"Feeling better?" he asked, after she pulled herself away.

"Mhm. Well… actually I feel kinda bad."

"Bad?"

"I mean… I feel like you were comforting me, when it should have been the other way around. She was your friend, not mine. I just cry easy, I guess. I'm sorry."

Shin shook his head. "No, it's okay. And it… wasn't bad."

She gave a small nod.

"Alright." She cleared her throat loudly. "Are you hungry? I think it's lunchtime right now."

Shin nodded back. They left the range, him walking ahead and her a few steps behind. Neither of them said anything. The silence was comfortable enough.

He wondered what kind of person she had to be, to be able to cry so sincerely over someone else's pain. He wondered what she might have been through as an 86, and how it was that those experiences had not broken or frozen her heart as it had so many others. As it had his own. There was a moment where he thought to ask. The question formed, perfectly worded in his mind - 'how can you still cry for other people, Kurena? Haven't you seen so much already?'

But in the end, he left it unspoken. That was still a bridge too far for him.

SORRY I'M LATE!

I had an, uh, intense Friday night. It involved remote wilderness, a gorgeous night sky, guitar playing, psychedelic drugs, and intensely loud music. It was a wild time and I woke up the next day feeling ten years older on both a physical and emotional level. I think when I woke up, buck-ass naked in the middle of the woods with no recollection of how or why that happened, it completely slipped my mind that it was Saturday. But better late than never, right?