So hey guys, slow chapter up ahead, but I fully intend on making up for that, with the next chapter being awesome, choreographed (Sorta) action and fighting, but for now, be patient, even if this chapter is a bit boring. Also, I'm having trouble figuring out more voids, so if you have any suggestions or ideas, be sure to submit them! Anyway, that's all I had to say, enjoy this new chap!

~End~

Chapter 4: Dire Circumstances

The wind whipped past the girl dressed in red, hair billowing out magnificently behind her, she plummeted, gaining more speed with every second, until she hit terminal velocity, at about 20 metres in the air. That was when her large sniper-rifle appeared back into her hands with a wave of black smoke. Kinaver flipped once in the air, and shot a bullet straight at the ground in front of her, and as the bullet impacted the ground, a strange, orange bubble was formed, throbbing and hissing with malice.

It was this bubble that the redheaded girl fell into, with an immediate slowing of the speed she'd been falling with. When her feet hit the ground, there was no sudden explosion of flesh, no smashing of legs, no Kinaver-pancake. In fact, the girl came out, completely unscathed, running a hand through her substantial amount of hair, with the other grasping the heavy-looking sniper with what seemed to be no effort at all.

Meanwhile Valka popped in behind her, void in her hand from teleporting into the ground, negating any, and all fall damage completely. Kinaver didn't even bother to look back at the girl, and instead climbed up a ladder onto the roof of a nearby house. She crouched behind the air-conditioning units, and looked through her scope, aiming towards the approaching trucks, and then at the middle of the bridge, where'd she have the best vantage point to pick them off.

"Alright Valka, you see that elevated section of the bridge? I want you to teleport into there, and start tearing shit up. They won't have anywhere to run, and your urumi will probably be very useful in that area, cos' it's so open. Meanwhile, I'll be over here, providing long-range support, so don't worry if the poor bastard you were just fighting turns into a pile of ash."

"Don't fuck this up, yeah? You fuck up, I'm not gonna be able to help your sorry ass. You should know what Mananites do with their prisoners; after all, you were one, back in the war, and even after, weren't you?"

Sensing the obvious hostility, Valka turned back, and said a single string of sentences, quietly, coldly, aiming to give off the impression of complete apathy,

"I'm not like them. Not anymore. This person is a new Valka. This person is the start of a new life, one without my old sins, one without anything I've done holding me back."

"Sure it is Valka, sure it-"

"I doubt that you've never done a single bad thing in your life, so shut up, and let me do what you want me to do."

To this, Kinaver did indeed shut up, and looked back through her scope, crouching behind the unit, refusing to talk, a deadpan expression on her face. Conversation was over, and Valka knew it.

One second, the girl wearing a gothic dress was right next to Kinaver, in the next, she had disappeared in a puff of cold mist.

~Time skip~

The Mananites driving the vehicle were terrified, they were a pair of grunts, and had been hired only a couple of weeks earlier. By this time, they had barely been shown the ropes of the hierarchy, and hadn't even been able to fully train with their voids. Long story short, they had no chance against the Genesis sniper, who put a bullet straight into the boy's skull. Funny thing was, his head didn't explode like an engorged grape. Instead, he simply slumped forward, onto the steering wheel, lifeless eyes staring at the girl next to him, who screamed in terror.

Then the strangest thing happened, the side of the boy's head started to glow red-hot. All the girl could do as the truck swerved and screeched across the road. At the exact same moment when the vehicle smashed into the curb, metal bending and twisting unnaturally, a small flash of orange fire came out from the boy's dead body, and struck the girl straight in the skull. She died just as quick as the other three sitting in the back.

The hummer in front of the transport braked to a stop, and people poured out. A pair died immediately, as one bullet struck the guy on the left, the person to his right was too slow to dodge the fragment, and the front of his shirt blew apart with a spray of blood. The other two had the sense to dodge out of the way, and the fragments missed them.

Those two took to the sky, pulling out their voids, and taking off with incredible speed. It took another one of them to die before they realised where Kinaver was hiding. The single remaining enemy was on a large hoverboard, and grinned, flashing a confident, cocky smile at Kinaver, who returned the expression behind her scope. She fired a bullet, and in the other moment, the person wasn't there anymore.

Her sniper hissed, and the red outlines faded, making Kinaver swear as it slowly started to recharge. The one downside of having a weapon with two separate abilities was that, if she missed, it took a veritable age to use again. To make it worse, the person had appeared again, and the bottom of the hoverboard void had opened, dropping out flat, metallic discs. Whenever one landed on the roof, it rotated, and sprouted legs, along with a menacing, red, glowing eye and a pair of large machine-guns.

Other spherical things also came out, but didn't fall to the ground, and instead extended wings, flying and hovering above the ground, focusing directly on Kinaver, who stood completely outnumbered. TO which she only sighed, recalling her sniper rifle, and bringing out her dual-UMPs, glaring at the scuttling and humming robots with annoyance.

"Come on then, take a pop if you think you're hard enough!"

Meanwhile, Valka had climbed up to the bridge, and had covered her mouth, attempting to block out the haze of dust and smoke out from her mouth with vain. In front of her was the truck, with the front mangled and scrunched up, like it had eaten a lemon. She wondered dimly how anything could still even be salvageable from that wreck, but it wasn't her job. All she had to do was sweep for survivors, of which there seemed to be many, gathering from the panicked and rising voices.

"Oh God! Oh God! Ix, Ix, wake up! Please don't go…!'

"Leave her, she's gone, all we can do, is not end up with her fate, now come on! We don't have much time, our captain told us to go back, and that's what we're gonna do!"

Their voices were full of something Valka wasn't prepared for, emotions, empathy, and humanity. There was no thirst for blood in their speech, no psychotic tones, only the soft, scared, and panicked whimpering that a terrified being sent out. It shook her to her core, she had never really seen any of the new recruits, or heard them talking. As Genesis, she was valued more highly above them and it showed in almost everything, respect, speech, titles, and living quarters. To know that they were arguably more sincere, and less 'evil' than her filled her heart with doubt, she couldn't have the heart to kill them.

So she walked out, hands above her head, and got out a single sentence,

"Hey! I'm coming out! Don't shoot!"

No sooner than the last words had come out of her mouth, did the tougher sounding girl climb up onto the machine-gun of the humvee, and start spraying at her, yelling all while hot death spewed out of the weapon at 450 rounds per minute. Valka would have been reduced to nothing more than fleshy chunks, had she been standing unprepared.

She was never unprepared.

The moment she heard the movement and scrambling movement of the grunt, she had pulled her void out, and had teleported, leaving the bullets to strike at empty air. Then she stood up, behind the gunner, who looked around nervously, and at her teammate, who stood by a dead body with a peculiar round hole in her skull.

"Did…did we get her?"

"We…we just killed another person. Oh fuck! Oh fuck! What if it was a civvie!? What if she just came looking for medicine!? We just killed a daughter, a wife, a mother, or someone a person loved! Fuck!"

The girl looked at her hands, stained and covered with blood.

"Is…is this what war is like? I…I don't like this, it wasn't what Yuu said it would be like!"

"This isn't even war, you haven't goddamned seen war, it's worse than you could possibly ever imagine! Just stand behind me rookie, you'll be saf-"

Crack

That was the sound her skull made when Valka hit her in the back of the head, the person fell over, out like a light, but still breathing. When the rookie saw Valka standing right behind her officer's limp body, her eyes widened, and her mouth opened, about to scream. But she didn't get a chance, as she was smacked against the cold, hard metal of the fuel-guzzling, military vehicle, out exactly like the person she'd been talking to.

Valka looked around, and inside the humvee, finding nothing but more, limp, dead corpses, slumped against the doors, with red splats and lines drawing down to their limp corpses. But besides that, her job was done, she'd cleared the ground troops out, and now the supplies belonged to them, and others who use them better than the Mananites ever would.

With a jolt, she realised her choice of wording, them, not her, not myself, them. She was thinking about others, instead of selfishly withholding anything. She could already imagine what she would have been doing, had she still been a Mananite, gathering supplies, hoarding them, and trading for other things, food, clean water, a warm, shower, and intel. It was just life for her back then.

Everything had a price, nothing was for free, and nothing was taken for granted. Sharing with others was considered as a weakness, and something to be taken advantage of. Foolish, in other words, she learned this the hard way after offering medicine and drugs to a boy who had been badly sick. After recovering, he had pretended to still be sick, and she'd given him more, in the hope that she'd find companionship. Instead, all she got was a smirk, and a sideways comment. No thank you, no appreciation, only cold and mocking derision.

She'd stopped helping others after that.

And now, she felt an emotion that she'd thought she'd lost forever. Happiness. It bloomed inside her like a flower in spring, it warmed her cold bones, and she just let the happiness that she still could hold emotions flow. It was mixed along with the beautiful knowledge that a part of her humanity was left, even after coming out a Genesis, and facing such compassionless people.

And then she saw the guy on a hoverboard. Kinaver had stood up, and was facing a veritable army of robots alone. It didn't matter how strong she was, she'd be killed against such an overwhelming amount of enemies. She wouldn't allow that to happen. Not now. Not when she was so close…

She pulled out her void, and teleported, hoping that she'd make it in time to help her newfound acquaintance, and not have to carry her back in a body-bag.