Author Note:

Alright, this chapter contains violence and swearing so for all of you guys who don't like it sorry but I ain't changing it, so this is a heads up.

Apart from that I hope you enjoy this chapter, you've no idea how hard it was to write but I'll explain the AFTER you read it :)

Also in this flashback there will be a POV from ARCADIA(Yuzuki) and LEYTE :D

Chapter Nine: Into The West Where The Sun Sets

*Flashback*

ARCADIA POV

Five months have passed since we left GALAHAD. Everyday is a struggle for survival, soldiers and agents sent to eliminate us. It hurts, having to kill those who were once on your side. But we wanted to live, we wanted to be free and if that meant killing. We were more than ready to do it. Under the clear blue sky, we never stopped walking unless it was to rest. But even then it was brief, fugitives like us don't have the luxury of time.

SABER marched on ahead of me, I quickly chase after him cursing him for leaving me behind.

"Well you should stop daydreaming then." He chuckles. "If GALAHAD agents appeared I don't know if I'd be able to help." Smacking him on the arm I pout.

"I thought we're supposed to look out for each other? Or did you forget about that?" I smirk. He puts a hand through his hair and sighs.

"Don't worry ARCADIA, I'll always stand by your side, just as you will for me." He says. Pumping my fist into the air, I jump around around a little.

"Damn fucking straight I'll stand by you. You and me... we're brothers in arms, partners in crime. There ain't no way you're getting rid of me." I proclaim, shouting it to the world. As long as we had each other, the world could rot for all we cared.

Hours pass and the sun soon starts to set. Climbing up the trees, we tie ourselves to a branch so we don't fall off while we slept. Opening my canteen I take a sip of water, then pass it to SABER who mumbles a thanks. I rummage through my pack and grab two protein bars, tossing one to SABER and start eating. While we can go weeks without eating, we do it anyway. Some speculated back at HQ that the reason we stayed alive so long compared to other GE soldiers was because we ate, giving the body nutrients to quickly repair any damage we sustained in combat.

Leaning my head against the tree I watch the sun sink behind the horizon. SABER shuffles next to me.

"I'll take watch tonight. You go to sleep." He says. I almost slap him.

"Hell no! I'll take watch tonight and don't you dare argue with me. You've done it for the past four days, it's time you get some sleep." He shuts up, unsure of what to say. Rolling my eyes I pull him down onto my shoulder.

"You've been too nice to me, it's time I pay you back so just sleep okay." Nodding he closes his eyes and instantly falls into a deep sleep.

Sighing, I look down at his delicate features. For a guy he was rather effeminate, even with his lean build.

'SABER, why do you always push yourself so much? We're in this together remember? You don't need to carry it all on your shoulders.'

He mumbles in his sleep, face twisted in anger and pain. Knowing all too well what was happening I rub circles on his back and he starts to relax.

'I know SABER, I have them too. I know how you feel.'

While the scientists may not have know it, we stopped taking the drugs they gave us. The fake memories fading away and the real ones taking their place. We wanted to know the truth and all we found was pain, born in a test tube and altered so to become weapons. Our bodies remembering that pain.

SABER and I may look seventeen, have the physical body of seventeen year olds. We're actually only fourteen years old, having developed faster and our growth rate stopped before they took us out, to prevent us from dying of old age, to the point where we don't age at all. We'd been in service for over a decade and never once changed bar the scars that accumulated on our bodies of the years.

Gazing up into the night sky, a full moon rises to where the sun had once been. SABER always said that he liked the moon, something about it reminding him of me. When I asked him why he said it was because the moon was always changing, just like me. Going from shining brightly to disappearing completely, only to return and start all over again. At the time I had laughed, saying that if I was the moon, then he was the sun. The sun always being there to bring light to the earth, SABER was always there to brighten my life.

'Our lives have always revolved around each other. Always chasing after each other, just like the sun and moon in the sky. Forever following the other.'

The moon creeps across the starry sky, the sounds of the wind rustle through the trees. Everything was peaceful, but somehow too peaceful. Scanning the area for any kind of intruder, my eyes lock on to distant targets a few kilometres away from our position.

'One thing those scientists got right was eye sight. If I didn't have the enhanced sight I would never have seen them coming until they were right underneath us.'

I gently shake SABER awake, eyes groggy with sleep.

"Hmmm, what is it? Did you... *yawn*... see something." He asks sleepily, trying to get his bearings and would've fallen of the branch if it wasn't for the rope. I hold him steady as he tries to wake up.

"Yeah, there's a squad of around 20 heading this way. We better get moving so hurry up and wake up." He groans, but starts to untie the rope securing us to the tree. Grabbing our things, we jump through the trees instead of walking on the ground. Doing that would just leave tracks for them to follow so this was the best option.

Even if they were informed of how we operate they still wouldn't think to look in the trees for clues. That and they're generally lazy which is a good thing for us. After an hour of running we stop, checking behind us to see if anyone could have followed us, if they could keep up with our speed.

"I think we lost them." I say, turning to SABER. He stays quiet for a bit before shaking his head.

"I don't know about that. They're finding us way too quickly. It used to be that they'd only find us every few weeks but now it's every few days." He says. He does have a point, they have been finding us more often, even though we take precautions to cover out tracks. There's no way a bunch of infantrymen could spot our trail, but...

"You don't think someone from project CAPRI is on that team do you?" I ask.

"It's very likely. They'd be the only people to spot out tracks, even after covering it. It's part of their training, same as ours. GALAHAD is probably getting tired of this and wants to wrap things up quickly so they're sending out GE soldiers to find us." As if it wasn't hard enough to run from them, now we had to deal with other GE soldiers too. Why couldn't they just let us go? SABER cracks his neck and starts to move.

"Come on, lets go before they really do find us."

LEYTE POV

The soldiers groggily march on, weaving their way through the forest. Quiet complaints about not having the same 'stamina' as GE soldiers, believed they were being worked too hard.

"Shut up! You call yourselves soldiers? More like fucking pussies if ask me. Harden the fuck up and keep moving!" A voice shrieks at them, scaring the absolute piss out of them.

"How about you shut up DULUTH. You want them to fucking hear you?" I growl at her. Damn she can be such fucking idiot sometimes.

"Make me asshole!" She counters.

"I am not going through this shit with you again. Just shut up and keep an eye out." She stops arguing but not without giving me the finger before disappearing.

'Why did I have to get stuck with her as a partner? She's useless. Why couldn't I get someone like ARCADIA, at least she listens.'

As I muse over my last thought my mind wanders back to our first meeting. ARCADIA was so nice when we met, SABER too. In fact the two of them didn't even look they could kill anyone, they were just too... beautiful. Everything about them was perfect, not a single flaw in both looks and personality.

It pained me so much when we received orders to hunt them down and execute them. It almost made me want to leave too, but I didn't have anyone to go with. DULUTH would never do it, she enjoys this too much, thinks it's all a game. She's always hated them, especially ARCADIA, because she was favoured by everyone in the organisation, including me. So when she discovered that they had unauthorised knowledge on GALAHAD's projects, she quickly jumped on it and told the higher ups. All to gain their favour.

"Oi I found a trail!" I look up to see DULUTH up in a tree, giggling like a spoilt brat who just got candy. "It's still pretty new, I betcha we can catch them before the sun rises."

"Where have they headed to?" I ask and she points to the left.

"They headed west about an hour ago." She jumps out of the tree. "Well come on! Let's go get these bastards." She starts heading west, ordering the soldiers to follow. I stand there a moment before moving to follow them.

'West huh? How ironic. I remember the story you once told me ARCADIA. How you were the moon and SABER was the sun.

I don't know if you'll live to see the sun rise again.'

ARCADIA POV

"Oh shit they're onto us." I hiss to SABER. He looks at me in surprise.

"So they do have GE soldiers with them. Did you see who they were?" He asks.

"Yeah. It's fucking LEYTE and DULUTH following us." SABER starts to laugh, despite the situation.

"How befitting they send our replacements. The copies come to kill the originals. It's almost ironic." He says dryly.

Moving through the trees we suddenly come to a large clearing, a cliff at the edge of it.

'Now what do we do, we can't go back and there's mountains on either side of forest that'll take too long to cross.'

"I guess we have to jump."SABER says quietly. "There's a river that's running over the edge. We could land in the water to break our fall." Looking over at the river, I muse over his plan.

'Either we stay here and probably die or we could jump and possibly break our necks... tough choices SABER.'

As I turn to answer SABER, a knife suddenly whizzes past my face, just barely missing it's intended target.

"I FOUND YOU!" An evil, cackling voice screeches out of the forest behind us.

"Fuck, not DULUTH." I hiss, drawing my blades and readying for combat. SABER doing the same, stands beside me with blades held in a defensive stance.

"Ready partner?" He asks, lips drawn into a smirk.

"Always."

Shots are immediately fired at us from the infantrymen. Using our blades, we deflect the incoming bullets with ease. As they come closer they spread out in an attempt to corner us, SABER dashes forward, slicing an arm off an infantrymen. The ones nearby direct their fire towards him but he jumps out of the way and the infantrymen end up shooting each other.

Moving closer to my targets, I kick one in the stomach, earning a grunt of pain. Spinning on my heel, I decapitate one with my blade, slicing another target with my second blade in the chest. Blood sprays everywhere and soon we were drenched in it, cutting open the pathetic excuses they call soldiers. Eventually they start to back away, too afraid to come near us.

As if on cue, both LEYTE and DULUTH soon appear, attacking us with all their might. Fighting them was different to infantrymen, they could match both our speed and strength, meaning our wits were the only thing keeping us alive. Glancing at SABER, he throws LEYTE into a tree, surging forward to finish him.

"Stupid bitch! You should be watching me, not him!" DULUTH spits at me, increasing the rate of her attacks. Stepping back to put more room between us, I easily block her attacks. They pack quite a bit of power, but it's useless to her if she can't land a direct hit. Kicking her in the chest, she stumbles back, tripping over the vegetation. I jump forward and attack, cutting her arms and chest, her howls of pain filling the cool night air.

Seeing SABER, I move in to help him. Surprising LEYTE from behind I punch him square in the face, sending him flying across the grass. He quickly gets up, looking at me with what seemed to be regret in his eyes. Gunshots fill the air again and SABER get hit in the arm, blood pouring from the wound. As I go to take out the infantrymen DULUTH appears again, her blade whistling in the air as she misses me.

Our fight drags on, the infantrymen slowly been cut down by either myself or SABER, until it was only the four of us. Panting a little we pause and catch our breaths, LEYTE and DULUTH looking rather worn out.

'They may be newer versions of GE soldiers but they haven't got anywhere near the same amount of experience we have.'

"GRRR! Why won't you just fucking die?! Damn I hate you!" DULUTH yells. She jumps towards me, swinging her blade around like a madwomen. Blocking her attacks I step around her, stabbing her in the back. Just as I thought things were okay, a new group of people emerge from the forest. All wearing the CAPRI project uniform.

I turn to SABER, telling him to run. We move across the clearing towards the cliff before I hear a cry of pain. Spinning around, a CAPRI soldier managed to catch SABER, blade piecing his chest. As they pull it out he falls to his knees.

"SABER!" I go to help him but was blocked. Fighting my way through them, cutting them down out of rage, SABER stands and starts to fight again but barely. Before my eyes I see him shredded by the others, becoming a bloody mess and falling back to the ground.

"GET OUT MY FUCKING WAY!" I scream. Letting out all my anger and hatred, I rip through them, dirt turning into a crimson brown. I make it over to SABER and protect him, hacking through any one who dared to try and touch him. Once again, it goes back to being the four of us, bodies litter the once soft, green grass. My rage at its maximum, I wait for them to move.

DULUTH throws a few knives at me and I swiftly knock them away but failed to see her coming. She strikes me with her blade, cutting my left cheek just under the eye, down to my jaw. Looking back at her with my bloodied face I attack, each of us slowly hacking away at each other, neither of us backing down. Eventually I see an opening, I promptly raise my leg and kick her in the jaw, feeling it break on contact.

Falling to the ground, she coughs up blood. I walk over to her, my bloodied and torn appearance striking fear into. Paralysed by this, I smirk as she had become such easy prey and lift my blade to deal the killing blow.

'This is why you should never send a copy to kill an original.'

My blade comes down, aimed for the kill.

*CLANG!*

Metal clashes with metal, looking up I see LEYTE blocking my attack. I flick my wrist, sending his blade soaring across the field, raising it to his throat. He eases his hands up in defeat.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He says calmly. "Let me take DULUTH back. You can take SABER away from here and I promise I won't follow." Hearing this makes me press my blade harder on his throat.

"Why should I trust you?" I growl. He was just trying to kill us and now he says he'll let us go? I don't buy it.

"I'm not saying you have to trust me, but SABER's in a really bad shape. You need to get him out of here, just like I need to get DULUTH out of here. As much as I hate her, she's still my partner." Understanding what LEYTE meant I stepped away and ran to SABER. He was still breathing but it was strained. Picking him up I go to leave but stopped before I did.

"Know this LEYTE. If we ever meet again, I may let you live... but I can't say the same for DULUTH. Next time I see her, I wont hesitate to cut head off." I spit, venom and hatred dripping from my words.

"I know ARCADIA. When you make a promise, you always keep it." With our final words said, we head in opposite directions, LEYTE and DULUTH to the east, myself and SABER to the west.

I run as fast as my legs could carry me, trying hard not to hurt SABER. I make it the river at the bottom of the cliff and stop next to it and placing him on the rocks. Checking SABER, I assess the damage he'd sustained in our fight. He coughs up a huge amount blood, choking on it a little.

"AH! No SABER don't do that, please don't do that you're gonna give me fucking heart attack!" I quickly snatch the bag I had dropped to the ground, searching for our med kit. I hear SABER coughing again and quickly run back to him. Using the bandages, I wrap up as many of the wounds as I could, putting pressure on the wound on his chest.

"AR...CADIA... don't... bother." I hear him quietly say amongst the bloody coughs.

"What the fuck are talking about? Of course I'm going to. What kind of partner would I be if I didn't?" I smirk back to him.

"There's... no point... I..." I put a finger to his lips to stop him from speaking.

"Don't speak, you'll have plenty of time to do that when you get better." I say soothingly, my vision starting to blur from the tears threatening to fall.

He lifts his hand up and strokes the cut on my face.

"You don't... have... to lie." He says slowly, voice so quiet I barely hear him. "I... know I'm not... going to make it." He coughs violently, blood going everywhere.

"Don't say such stupid things. You'll make it, just you watch. We'll go to school and do all the things teenagers do. We'll go eat things like chocolate cake and go ice skating and dancing." I blabber on, unable to control myself. "We said we'd go do those things... so you can't die here, not now."

He chuckles a little. "I'm sorry... I would've liked... to do those things with you." He takes a deep breath,

his blood slowly trickles down the rocks and into the river. "I... really want... to stay with you... but I can't now. You... have to move on... without me."

"No! I'm not leaving you, we promised, you can't go. Not now." Tears start streaming down my face, I watch as his blood slowly trickles down the rocks and into the river.

"I don't want to go on with out you... you're the only things I have." I choke out, trying to hold back the tears that were already falling.

I didn't want to live in a world without SABER. I knew that if people found out what we really were they'd turn their backs on us. If SABER left, I'd be all alone.

"ARCADIA, listen... from the very beginning... you had... always been different. I never... thought that you should... be in this kind of life. I... need you to promise me... that you'll move on without me." I stare at him unable to speak. I couldn't do it, I couldn't say something like that. But it's his last wish, I have to say yes, for him. I have to do this one last thing for him.

I hold the hand he'd placed on my cut cheek, tears falling uncontrollably.

"I promise SABER. I'll move on without you... even though it kills me to say it, I'll do it for you." I pull him closer to me, resting his head on my lap.

He looks up to me with a smile.

"I love you ARACADIA... so please... don't ever forget that... I'll always be with you... no matter what." His voice fades away with every word, I watch as his eyes close, pulse coming to a stop.

"SABER?" There's no response. "SABER?! No, please, don't go! I need you, so please, please. DON'T GO!" I scream out, my voice strangled. I sit there and cry, so hard that all the emotional barriers I put up so long ago come crashing down. Everything pours put all at once, the pain, sadness, anger, hatred, regret. I couldn't hold it in any more, losing SABER felt like a part of me was ripped off.

"SABER!" Screaming out to the sky, wanting it to give him back. I sit there, cradling him, not wanting to let him go.

Eventually I move, making a grave for him, using the surrounding stones to bury him. Not once did the tears stop falling. When I finish, I look into the sky to find the sun rising. Standing up I grab my things and walk away, never looking back. I couldn't bring myself to, if I did I'd never leave.

Instead I continue west. We planned to go to a school in that direction. A place called Sweet Amoris High. I hope I'll fit in there, so I can keep my promise to SABER. To move on without him, like he wanted. I tenderly touch my cut cheek, knowing that it'll scar. Forever reminding me of that promise.

*Flashback End*

Yuzuki POV

Tossing and turning, I move around in my sleep. The memories come flooding back. The sight of SABER's blood staining my hands. I could feel the tears falling again, the same pain as before. I'm used to crying like this, quietly in my sleep.

But for some reason, I could feel someone else with me.

'Why do I feel someone else next to me? I don't live with anyone and no one's been to my house.'

I feel them gently shake me, trying to wake me up. I crack an eye open, my vision blurred by tears. Blinking my eyes to rid myself of the tears I notice that I'm not in my house.

'Where... am I?'

My vision is filled with the shadowy outline of someone's face.

"Are you okay?"

I freeze at the sound of their voice, the sight of their face.

'It can't be... you're dead.'

I start to scream.

Author Note:

Ahhhhh oh my God! This chapter was so hard to write. Mainly because I ended up crying while writing it and couldn't see the keyboard from the tears :'(

I'm not too sure if it's weird to cry at something that came from your own mind but oh well.

Reviews would be very nice guys. I'd like to know if you guys ended up crying as much as I did, that way I won't feel so weird :P