"Giuseppe? My name is Rolito. I want to help you and your sister."

"What do you mean?"

"Giuseppe-kun. How would you like to work with me?"


Life Goes On


Disclaimer: Gunslinger Girl, Noir, Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid and Metal Slug are owned by their respective owners. I 'own' my original characters Giuseppe, Elena and Rolito.


Chronology: This story is set after the first season of Gunslinger Girl, several years after Noir, and somewhere in the Full Metal Panic TSR timeline.


Eleven

Fratello (Brother)


Giuseppe followed the same routine every six in the morning. Fix his bed. Wash his face. Do essentials. Check and tend his weapons and harness. Bathe thoroughly. Put on a fresh change of clothes and his equipment. Meet with Elena, this last being the most important. Even having a bad nightmare wouldn't change that, though he did linger at the mirror.

Not much had changed. A few scars here and there, mostly careless training accidents that didn't need real repairs, unavoidable. Mostly he looked older despite his cybernetics. Killing people tended to hasten maturity and dampen enthusiasm. But the naïveté of that kind Southern boy from Matera still remained in his blue eyes and pleasant smile. The girls, his sensei once joked, will still fall head over heels for you.

Not bad. Now, to find Elena…

His sister practiced archery in the firing range. Rolito-sensei recommended the sport, said would help her get used to her new body. "And to protect herself, too." The ten year old girl proved a quick study. Just two months into the regimen, Elena already managed headshots with human target silhouettes ninety meters away.

The senior assassin himself supervised. Nothing like William Tell, Rolito did know a lot about archery. He cut a reserved kind of stylish in his black woolen sweater, matching black pants, old leather shoes, and rather battered corrective eyeglasses. His premature grey hair and kindly eyes only accented the image of the kindly college professor.

"Let's take a break, Elena-tan." Rolito smiled. "We haven't eaten breakfast yet, and you'll probably get nervous with an empty stomach and your brother watching you."

"Thank you, sensei!" Elena was smaller than her brother, taking more after their mother, a bustling bee of happiness. With the white tee-shirt and gym shorts was archery gear: quiver belted to her thin waist, arm bracer on her right arm and protective leather tab on her drawing hand. Her long brown hair was tied into a ponytail instead of her usual twin braids to keep it out of her eyes. Her brown eyes danced. She was cute and knew it.

Her weapon was a horse archer's traditional bow, custom made in Mongolia by an ancient artisan who still practiced his ancestors' ways. Good wood reinforced by ivory. It could quickly turn a target into a pincushion over a surprising distance with less noise pattern and the same deadliness of a silenced rifle– and all off the back of a galloping horse. And it never jammed.

"Good morning, big brother," she greeted Giuseppe brightly.

"Morning, Elena. Good morning, sensei."

"Mornin', Giuseppe. What's for breakfast?"

He revealed sandwiches and orange juice. Rolito grumbled something obscure about rice being a staple in meals, but wolfed down the food at hand with gusto. In comparison, Giuseppe ate neatly while Elena nibbled with ladylike demureness.

"The Mongols really knew their bows," commented Rolito after his second cup of juice. "Compact, powerful, accurate and reliable. The best of its kind in the world, I'd say."

Yet another history lesson. Their sensei always held that the past held the answers to the present. His mannerism was almost professorial, and he liberally sprinkled his lectures with quaint bits of history. His only explanation was being well-read. Maybe he really taught history once, Giuseppe mused. "What about the English longbows?"

"They're in a different class and highly overrated. A longbow couldn't pierce plate armor and shields, even with that 'armor-piercing' Bodkin arrowhead. They've tried it in experiments. The only advantage longbows offered was en masse, like artillery, and only against lightly armored troops."

"But the Battle of Agincourt?"

"Was during bad weather in a muddy field . Which was the weather for most of the Hundred Years War. Not to mention the Continent. The French knights charged, only to trip and fall flat on their faces. Couldn't stand up or move quickly because of their heavy armor. The mud was like quicksand. The English simply fired off a swarm of arrows, then ran in and stabbed at the French's unarmored parts. Rinse and repeat. End of story."

Giuseppe conceded the infantry battle, but then took up the archery side of it. "But a crossbow couldn't match other bows' rate of fire."

"Not with a guy who reloads for you. The way to go is a two man team with two, three crossbows. A shooter and a dedicated reloader can put up as many arrows as a longbow. The crossbow team has more endurance than the solo bowman, and their shots will go through armor. That's how Richard the Lionheart countered Saladin's horse archers."

Elena looked lost. She responded energetically to show-and-tell sessions but couldn't stand lectures. The girl was only twelve years old compared to Giuseppe's fourteen and Rolito's thirty-forty-something (the man never really put a specific age to himself). So their sensei shifted the discussion to a more interesting –and personal– subject matter.

"Have I ever told you about the time I took on two dozen swordsmen by myself?" He hadn't. Both his wards were eyes and ears. "It was back in my days as an assassin for the Philippine government– yes, the Philippine government had assassins, and no, we weren't responsible for all the murders of local media men, only some of them…"


They watched Elena put her fourth consecutive arrow into the head of her third target.

"She's a quick study." Rolito took a brief swig out of a small metal flask Giuseppe once wondered if it contained alcohol. It turned out to be mineral water.

"Quicker than me?"

"Much." A solid thud announced a fifth arrow joining its brethren. A short burst of applause from her audience. "I supposed I could have gotten her one of those new space-age composite material bows. They're real easy to use. Then again, they're also a hassle to assemble and hide, not to mention firing on the run."

"Why don't you just admit you're too stingy to withdraw out of your bank account and too lazy to buy her a proper weapon?" Giuseppe slyly poked.

"Stingy, yes. Lazy, no. You're not the one still wanted in North China." Once upon a time, Rolito killed a Deputy Minister of Defense in the People's Liberation Committee. The Chinese had a long memory for those kinds of things. Mongolia was just a stone's throw north of them. Not to mention immediately south of the Russians, the latter with their own reasons for wanting Rolito's head. Both countries had well-documented histories of border violations and having agents in the unlikeliest of places.

Of course he went there. He had to.

The artisan I commissioned just had to be a royal pain in the neck, too, Rolito thought Wanted me to be there in person before even beginning work on the damn thing. Kept ranting about my spiritual worth or something to that effect. He took forever with it, too. Nearly got my ass caught several times. And to top it all off, the damn thing was expensive for something made out of wood and bone. Crazy old man…

But for all the pain and effort and danger he endured, the bow was a masterpiece of a weapon, perfect for the girl he was turning into a killing machine.

Elena switched to a new target. Just as smoothly, Giuseppe switched topics.

"Sensei? Do you still remember when we first met?"


"Giuseppe?"

He looked up from his bedridden sister, to the brown-skinned foreigner framed by the door. "Yes? Who are you?"

"My name is Rolito."

Not much taller than Giuseppe, the man did look far older, with graying hair and tired old eyes that had seen the world a dozen times over. But the easy movements and ramrod stance suggested iron discipline backed by a well of worldly experience. Like Giuseppe's father the soldier, dead and buried in foreign soil, killed in the service of his nation. And, strangely, sincerity and compassion in those black eyes, like that of his dead mother.

Giuseppe himself was a mostly average Italian provincial, a bit tall for his thirteen years, tousled dark hair and black eyes his only paternal inheritance, young but strong, youthful vigor tempered by eight years of working on the street. He had never left Italy, more so his hometown of Matera in the Basilicata Region in the agricultural South. Born into a poor family in a poor province, he knew hardship and toil. But he also knew the closeness of a loving family, of a mother, two fathers and a younger sister.

His sister. Elena. Not my stepsister. My sister. My beloved sister.

He gripped her small hand tight. She was so small. Her soft nut brown hair and pixie face made her seem much smaller, all the more frail and helpless. But she was stronger than she looked. She survived the fiery conflagration that killed her father– my second father, not my stepfather– and their mother. Now, more than a third of her body crushed or scorched, her head shaved, Elena remained a pitiable sight, swaying between life and death, slipping away minute by minute even as her brother possessively held her hand.

She was dying, and there was nothing Giuseppe could do about it.

He had been lucky. Not that he felt so, but he was. He should have been home that deadly night but for his boss at the factory demanding overtime. That saved his life.

His mother and father, as well as almost everyone living in that cramped communal apartment, instantly died when a faulty gas line exploded, incinerated where they stood and lived. Elena survived only because she was outside the building, waiting for her brother to come home. But she sustained massive burns to over thirty percent of her body and her legs had been crushed by the flying rubble. Even if she recovered– and the doctors said the odds were 10 to 1 against it–, her health would never be the same. She would be a cripple for life.

Giuseppe was desperate. He had no money to pay the hospital bills, no family and friends to ask for help. And Elena was dying.

"I want to help you and your sister." The man spoke unaccented Italian, the kind learned in formal language schools, stiff and proper.

"What do you mean?"

"Giuseppe-kun." Rolito's smile was kind. "How would you like to work with me?"

He distrusted. Wisely. What was this -kun business? Was this man a pedophile or a Mafia roller? He didn't know.

But he also hoped. So a total stranger offered to help? It was not like he had any choice. Desperate men clung to desperate measures. And he would sell his body and soul to save Elena.

Giuseppe nodded.


"She doesn't seem to have any regrets. At least," Rolito mulled over, "None she's told me about." None about being turned into a weapon and a potential murderer.

"Elena was dying. The doctors couldn't save her. But you found us. You brought us to Amalgam. They gave my sister a new body. You gave us new lives. You saved us, sensei."

So could the Social Welfare Agency if they'd got to you first. Different organization, same sorry sack of shit. The man did not bother suppressing his cynicism, though he did keep quiet. Your childhood is gone. Your life as an adult is gone. You're a killer now, a weapon, a tool for Amalgam to use and discard as they please. You and Elena.

Just like me.

Giuseppe seemed to have read his teacher's mind. "At least this way, we're together." He fondly gazed at his laboring sister. "Here, I can watch over Elena. And I'm happy enough for what I have."

"That's good. How about yourself, then? Any sins of commission or doubts?"

"I had a nightmare about the commandos I killed a week ago."

"That guy who named you?"


The commando's decapitated head hung in mid-air as if suspended by an invisible line. Those mournful eyes full of regret and disbelief at the face their youthful killer bore. Dead, bloodless lips repeated his name over and over again.

Giuseppe. Giuseppe.

However much he hacked at it, the head would not shut up. He tried running away, but it always overtook him. All it did was bleed and call him by name, accusing him with his own name, breathing it as if a curse.

Giuseppe. Giuseppe. GIUSEPPE.


"Yes." He looked up to his sensei and said, "It was the most frightening thing for me: to think I was someone else."

"I see." Rolito pondered it over. "Well, it's actually good to hear you're having nightmares. I still have my own nightmares from way back. We all do. And I would think you're crazy if you claimed you didn't feel bad in killing people." Like that Altena bitch or those hot but crazy Chinese twins or– God grant he's dead for real at last, but I wouldn't bet on it– Gauron.

Seeing Giuseppe still morose, he elaborated. "It's okay to be frightened or feel guilty about killing. In fact, you should. Only psychos don't feel bad about killing. Your dreams and feelings prove you're well-grounded in reality. You feel you are responsible for the lives of the people you killed. You are.

"Guns kill at a distance. Shooters often don't get to see the face of their victim. The act is mechanistic, efficient and distant. But we swordsmen do our dirty work up close and personal. We see the faces of the people we kill. We see all the despair and anger and hate in their eyes. We remember them and maybe cry for them when we can.

"But most of all, we do what we have to do. We kill when we need to. We should be content we are alive to angst about it. Because more probably than not, the person you killed, if he or she was in your place, wouldn't give a damn if you were dead.

"So don't take it too hard on your part. You're a good boy. This is not just for your own sake, but for Elena's. Remember that. If nothing else, you kill to protect your sister. And if protecting Elena isn't worthy..."

"You're right, sensei. Thank you." Giuseppe's relief was palpable. Bring Elena into the discussion, and everything automatically righted itself in his world. His sister really was the moral balance he lived or died by.

Like me back in the old days. Rolito remembered a little girl not too unlike his younger ward. A skinny brown girl from a life so long ago who shared his eyes and ears but thankfully not his nose, her smile brightening his days, her laughter making his nights merry, her hug warming him like no fire could. "I love you, Kuya," she told him.

Must be why I picked you, Giuseppe. You don't try too hard to change things outside your world view. What you focus on is the immediate: the space surrounding you, the people around you. Elena. And you fight like a hellion to keep that little world the way it is.

For your sister, you'd fight the world.

And you'll make it, Giuseppe. You'll do better than me. I can promise you that much.

"Now, what do you say to some sparring with me? I'm rusty, so go easy on me, 'kay?" The man patted the katana that magically materialized at his side. The boy grinned.

"Sure, sensei."


Leonard Testarossa didn't like to drink alone. Nor did he like to drink. But the one man he'd like– and trusted enough– to share a drink with preferred to hang out with robotic hit-kids. His only other reliable companions were his Plan 1211 Astral human-sized Arm Slave bodyguards, a pair flanking the only entrance to the room, others patrolling the premises. They didn't drink on the job or ever.

So here he sat at a candlelit table, sipping his third glass of expensive wine and picking at the food out of sheer boredom. Not that he was drunk. His brilliant Whispered faculties peaked. Or perhaps that feeling was only a flawed perception of his alcohol-addled brain. Maybe he was drunk. Whatever, his senses seemed heightened, his mental processes operating faster and clearer. Every possible path of thought blossomed open for him, revealing their secrets, empowering him.

Yet he was not omniscient. He wondered, for one, what Tessa was up to. Mithril's Intelligence Division had recently cleaned up its act with alarming alacrity. All but one of his spies had been captured or killed. And that one last agent might have been compromised all along. The dearth of good information galled him. He dearly wanted to know what nefarious traps his dear little sister had laid for him.

And say what you will, but Tessa's learned the ropes of this dirty business much too quickly for my comfort. She grew up and became more professional, more ruthless.

Death did that, of course. The death of someone you know and love, of someone you vowed to protect– and then failed to live up on that promise. It hurt in so many ways. It made one want to be as invincible as possible, to never experience such pain ever again.

But that was impossible. Not for Tessa or that SRT sergeant she doted on. Not even for Leonard himself.

He raised his glass to the chair across his table in a halfhearted salute. His smile and heart were as empty as the furniture.

To you, Kaname. Much that I wish you were here with me right now as my guest, voluntary or not, still you are in a better place now, or so say all the religious nuts. At least I saw your funeral through real-time satellite link. I suppose that Mithril sergeant was always the better man in your eyes. Well, we're both deprived of your appreciation and company now. So there. Life won't be the same for us again, ever.

Yes. Life would never be the same.

"Sir? Incoming virtual call. It's the US Undersecretary of Defense."

The electronic voice was artificial, cold and robotic. Yet another sterling work of my hands. Like my bodyguards. Like myself. "Put him on Line One."

"Understood."

For now he set aside Chidori. Now what can my dear customer want from me?


"We have a new mission."

They celebrated Elena's completion of basic archery that night. The reward was ice cream: chocolate chips on chocolate for Rolito (who would not be left out) and vanilla for his wards, with sprinkles decorating Elena's and a thick serving of hot fudge slowly melting Giuseppe's.

Once finished, Rolito made the announcement. "One of the customers wants to know how we'd fare against people who could fight back. Specifically, other cyborgs."

"Section Two," Giuseppe immediately suggested. The Social Welfare Agency was the only local organization with equivalent equipment.

"Or Childville, though their representatives just pulled out of the country. At least, Intel says they've pulled out." Rolito despised Amalgam's Intelligence Section. He regularly accused the intel weenies of "false advertising"; mainly, adding the word "intelligence" to their title when there wasn't a shred present in their collective heads– or reports.

Then again, he claims the same for every intelligence agency in the world, Giuseppe thought. Well, sensei is very experienced in such matters…

"Anyway, the customer in question reminded the other buyers that we aren't the only people around with cyborg operatives. He also popped the big issue: who's better?" To which he and his students instantly agreed: us. "We all know the customer is right, right?

"So to settle the matter, we've going to prove our worth. We will goad Section Two into dispatching their 'mechanical body' operatives. We will then engage and destroy them."

Elena nervously chewed on one of her braids. Only now entering the immediate loop of combat operations, she was rightly concerned, mostly for her brother and also for their sometimes mercurial caretaker.

"Oh, don't worry, Elena-tan," Rolito cheerily reassured her. "We're going to keep it as safe and fair as possible."

Now that was something. Giuseppe could feel trouble brewing. Sensei always said that combat wasn't fair.

"I know, Giuseppe, I know. Combat isn't an Olympic sport and all that. Well, you're going to take on just a few of their mechanical bodies. Maybe just one or two at a time. Not even the handler, if we're lucky. And their guns aren't going to be much of a factor, either."

A rather tall order of promises, and when asked how he would do that, Rolito grinned boyishly. "I have a plan. It's brilliant."

Giuseppe groaned. Elena, not having been professionally acquainted with their teacher long enough yet, didn't understand. But her brother knew better. Rolito was scariest whenever he acted so incorrigibly cheerful. It was like he became a completely different– and infinitely more dangerous– person.

"Leave everything to me, Giuseppe-kun."

Yep, the boy gloomily thought,sensei's off his rockers again…

"So when are we going out?" the now-eager Elena asked. Rolito instantly sobered.

"You're staying behind, Elena."

"But, sensei!"

"No buts. You're not cleared for combat. You're the prototype. The lab weenies reconfigured you for frontline combat only three months ago. You've been doing basic archery for just two. You haven't begun basic combat training yet. It's not enough for me to take you on even a routine surveillance mission."

"But I want to go with big brother!" The girl hovered on the verge of tears. "And you promised I could!"

"Elena," Giuseppe tried. A quick gesture from Rolito stopped him.

"Okay. Let's compromise, Elena. I'm going to give you an order. If you can do it, we're bringing you along. All right?"

"Okay!" She looked so happy to risk her life, to kill people, just to be with her brother. "What is it?"

"Kill Giuseppe."

Elena froze. Giuseppe started.

"You heard me. Shoot him in the eye while it's open," Rolito advised off-handedly. "Otherwise, you won't be able to even slow him down. Here." He found half a dozen arrows, tossed them into her hands. "Careful there. They're tipped with ricin. That's a very potent neurotoxin that kills almost immediately. You might be a cyborg, but you still have blood and a nervous system. A nick in the wrong place can still kill you."

"This," Elena stammered, "This is a joke, right? A bad joke. Right, sensei?"

"I meant every word I said." To the protesting Giuseppe: "Stow it."

She stared. "I thought you wanted to go on this mission," Rolito coldly asked. "I'm ordering you to kill Giuseppe. That's an order. If you can't follow orders, you shouldn't be out in the battlefield. Now, kill him."

"No…"

"Sensei!"

"I said, kill your brother."

"No!" Bow and arrows clattered to the floor. Elena buried her face in her small hands. "I can't do it! I can't! He's my brother! I don't want to kill him!"

Rolito knelt down and hugged the weeping girl very warmly. "This is why you shouldn't go. Not yet." Never. Not if I can help it. "And I'm sorry."


They tucked Elena into bed. It took a glass of milk and five cookies, Giuseppe holding her hand all the while, but she slept like a baby. Not a sound or shiver. Come morning she would have mostly forgotten what happened last night and be her sweet self again.

When do we adults lose the capability to sleep like that? The ability to wake up fresh and innocent and happy? Rolito honestly wanted to know. But he focused on the mission.

"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. The jammers might not work. The enemy might have six hundred mechanical bodies instead of six. Who knows? So expect the unexpected. Being prepared is half the battle. But don't over-plan. Be versatile, flexible. Flow with the situation. Oh, and always cheat. All's fair in love and war."

He produced a folder marked Top Secret: Project "Justice Bodies" Mechanical Bodies Roster, Section Two, Social Welfare Agency, courtesy their late Section One connection. To you, Draghi, you backstabbing bastard. I hope Hell isn't too hot for you– or for me, when I get there on my own time.

"Here're the files on our targets. Take a good look at them. You might even want to keep a picture or two at your pillow side. If nothing else, they're cute as buttons. Shame you'd have to kill them."

Giuseppe read the name beneath the first mechanical body featured, a shy-looking girl he would need to kill.

"Henrietta…"


In war, information is ammunition. The news, then, is perhaps the Holy Grail of intelligence. Next on Life Goes On: Notizie (News).