*I do not own the characters, they're owned by Yana Toboso/Square Enix.*

Most of what I remember is cold. Getting up early before sunrise, eating a bowl of wheat for breakfast and joining the other recruits in the warehouse. For the daily workout we had one trainer, for the individual workouts we each had a different mentor.

I never knew my mentor's name. I was to call him 'Sir'. But he called me Mey Rin. That was my new name and I was respond only to that when spoken to. He said it was special, though the origins of it I don't know, and never cared.

I remember once upon a time my name was Mary. It was not a nice place, the orphanage. But I had one friend.

Johnny. At least that was his name then. He would comfort me when I was pushed around, give me his last piece of bread when I was still hungry, and even punch the boys who called me names. 'Idiot', is what they said. Johnny was the only one who did not believe I was, even I started to believe it at times.

Then she came along. Mrs. Durless. She and her husband adopted me, on paper. They took me away from the bad place, but they also took me away from Johnny. I thought I was going to have a mother and father, but few things could have been further from the truth. Mrs. Durless said I had a gift that was too special to waste away in an orphanage, too special to waste on raising me to be a lady and somebody's wife. I would never be a lady, she said, I would never wear a skirt. I would never have a husband. I owed it to the world to utilize this gift of mine and bring justice to it, and I owed it to her, as the person who discovered me.

I have no memories of my first years with Mrs. Durless. It was only after two years with her that I met my Mentor. A tall and mysterious figure, who I was never to look at in the eye unless he ordered me to. He was carefully chosen for the job Mrs. Durless said, and he was one of the best so I should be grateful. He took me away from Mrs. Durless into what felt like another orphanage. I shared a large room with three other girls. We wore the same gray clothing, a shirt and pants, like men did. Our trainer said our gender did not matter. We were all the same. Boy or girl, short or tall, we each had our own gift to offer, and he was going to tear it from us, he was going to polish it, and when we were ready we would know just how to use it, and we would make the world a little better by doing so.

My roommates and I were not allowed to speak loudly, or speak at all. Nobody was allowed to befriend anybody. We are not here to make friends, our Trainer would say, we are here to become warriors.

I was eight when I saw my first crime. It was a year since I'd arrived at the warehouse, since I'd met my Mentor. He took me to the woods and we walked, and walked and walked until my feet were hurting and I could barely stand. He had a shotgun on his back.

He understood, he said, he knew I was scared, and it was natural. I was about to have my naivete ripped from me, if it had not already happened at the orphanage, he said, and being afraid was a perfectly human reaction. He walked behind a tree and motioned me to join him. He stepped back and asked me to move some branches aside in the bush that blocked my view and to look as far as I could, and watch.

Far in the distance, too far for either of us to be seen, I saw a girl, could not have been much older than me. She was tied to a tree, and a man stood above her, his fist coming down onto her face. Soon I saw on the other side of the tree she was tied to, there was a boy as well. They were both tied to the tree. Small children. The memory is a nightmare I would rather forget. The man, large and wide, bald, sweating and disgusting, wobbled as he walked away from them back to a sack a couple yards away from the children, and took out a set of matches.

He's going to burn them, my Mentor said. I felt panic, afraid, I wanted to do something but we were so far away. I felt tears in my eyes and I tried to hide them from my mentor.

Don't, he ordered me to. Mey Rin, look at me. That was an order. I could tell by the tone of his voice, I'd learned to differentiate between orders and statements. Slowly I raised my eyes up to his level, almost afraid of looking at him. That was the first time my eyes met his blue ones. Sure, he was blurry, from both my vision and my tears, but I saw him. He was stoic, and if I dare say very fatherly. He must have seen something, or I must have said something that he wanted me to, because he smiled and patted my head, and he said, 'You're a good human being Mey Rin. Watch,' and he pointed to the man in the distance, who was having trouble lighting the matches. The children were crying.

My Mentor raised his shotgun and took aim, and with a single shot the man dropped to the ground. A second shot to the knot on the rope liberated the children, and they ran. And I wanted to run too, into my Mentor's arms, and embrace him because I felt safe, because in that single action he'd become a hero.

There is evil in this world Mey Rin, he said. You are going to learn to do what I just did, and one day you are going to replace me. You are going to bring justice to the world. With tears in my eyes I nodded. Those children were alive, and free because of my Mentor. I was motivated. I wanted to be like him, I wanted to be somebody's saviour. I remember that he smiled and set a hand on my back, leading me back to the carriage, and back to the warehouse.

Seven years later my Mentor disappeared. I did not find out what happened, it was not my place to ask. One day he just did not show, and the Trainer walked up to me and told me I was ready to go into the field, and that I didn't need a Mentor anymore. I never saw him again, but I repeated my Mentor's mantra over and over in my head during that first assignment. I repeated it as I aimed at the man below, as I stood at the top of the tower at night. I repeated it in my head as I wavered, seeing his wife and children surround him, and worried that my shot might miss and I might accidentally hit one of them. I flinched.

Looking back, I think that the moment I heard his voice behind me, it replaced my Mentor's entirely.

"I'd like to offer you a position."

He was frightening, fast, and wore a butler's outfit. I never did find out how he got on that tower without me noticing.

And I said yes to Sebastian Michaelis.