Life Goes On


Disclaimer:Gunslinger Girl, Noir, Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, Metal Slug and Saikano are owned by their respective owners. Meir is owned by Nachtsider. I 'own' Giuseppe, Elena and Rolito. New Amalgam side character mentioned (not an OC, but adapted for my own use)!


Revamped Chronology: This story happens past Volume Six of Gunslinger Girl, several years after Noir, sometime after Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid and five years or so before the events of Saikano (manga).


Sixteen

Pezzo

Pieces

"After three tension-filled days, the Mirasol crisis has finally been resolved. At 2:00 A.M this morning, the Italian government announced that a composite Special Forces assault team has retaken the oil tanker Mirasol from the terrorist Covenant Reformation Group…"

"…a belated victory... All terrorist hijackers from the Covenant Reformation Group have been killed or captured. Six bombs were found and defused. No commando casualties reported…"

"These brave soldiers had just saved Trieste, Italy, the Mediterranean and Europe from a tremendous danger…"

"The identities of the commandos involved were kept secret to protect their families against possible retaliation by the CRG…"

"The CRG's spokespersons have not yet issued any official statement regarding their failed attempt to sow terror by threatening to destroy the Mirasol…"

"At least one civilian witness claims to have seen an Arm Slave of unknown make during the operation… this may explain the heavy Army presence, including heavy-lifter AS squads from the nearby NATO/Italian Army base..."

"A confidential source states that the CRG sent at least one child soldier to fight against the military commandos…"

"We do not approve, and completely condone, the use of children in combat…"

"…the volatile Balkans is quieting down… military forces poised at disputed borders are standing down and returning to their barracks…"

"Peace is returning to Trieste. Police and local government units begin restoration efforts even as civilian evacuees trickle back to the important port city…"

"All that is left to do is pick up the pieces of our disrupted lives…"


The very first thing Henrietta did upon getting back to headquarters was lock up in her room. Nothing, not even Mireille's fervent pleading, proved to be the magic word that could open her fortress of solitude.

"Etta! Please open up! We need to have Doctor Bianchi look at your wounds!"

There wasn't even a weak whimper protesting that. Just silence.

Mireille was halfway through a sigh when Triela pointedly asked if Henrietta was really moving back into her old room, the one she shared with Rico before her reconditioning.

"Well, yes, but why do you–"

A powerful sidekick tore the door off its hinges to noisily topple into the room. Mireille stared at the sudden wreckage.

"How uncouth," Hilshire muttered to himself a bit too loudly.

Shooting him a brief glare, Triela stomped inside. A brief argument unfolded, then sounds of minor scuffling and Henrietta's pathetic wailing.

Hilshire held back the worried Mireille despite his earlier disapproval. "Trust me. Triela means well. And you don't want to get caught in the middle of it."

A huffy Triela emerge the victor a few minutes later. She dragged the spoils of war a.k.a Henrietta out of the room by the collar of the smaller girl's tattered blouse. "Henrietta, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," Triela grumbled. "Here your handler worries herself into her dotage for you, but you don't pay her any attention or respect due her!"

Henrietta whimpered like the kicked puppy she currently resembled.

"You didn't have to bully her, Triela," Mireille scolded, seeing her ward an even sorrier sight after the impromptu wrestling match.

"She can be pretty spoiled if you let her be. You need a firm hand at times. Spare the rod, spoil the child, goes the old saying."

"That's a very enlightening lesson," Hilshire dryly commented. The man's tone was amazingly neutral. "I think I'll keep it in mind."

"Keep talking, Hilshire, keep talking…"

"What were you doing inside your room, Etta?" Mireille asked.

"It's– nothing, Miss Mireille…"

"She was holding a notebook." Not for the first time, Triela's period got the better of her diplomacy and common sense. "It looked to me like a diary."

Henrietta turned a bright tomato red. Hilshire shook his head at his junior partner. But Mireille only smiled.

"I see. You want to write about your mission in your diary before treatment? I understand. Don't worry. Go ahead and write it. After you're done, I'll keep it for you. I promise I won't look at it or let anyone else touch it."

"Really?" Henrietta immediately brightened. "Thank you, Miss Mireille!"

"Just don't take too long. I want to have your injuries checked and tended to as soon as possible."

"I won't!" She scurried back into her room.

Triela grumbled. "All that effort on my part, unappreciated and gone to waste…"

Hilshire wisely chose not to comment. Mireille, however, had no such inhibitions.

"In a bad mood today, aren't you, Triela-chan?"

"Please. And what's with the –chan thing you're attaching to my name?"

"An affectation I caught from a good friend of mine. She's a bad influence at times."


Halfway across the world, Yuumura Kirika sneezed.


Bravely blinking back tears, her left hand clumsily substituting for her injured right arm, Henrietta finished her entry.


I met a boy yesterday. His name is Giuseppe. He was a mechanical body like me. We fought. He spared my life. I let him go.


The worried Elena was all over Giuseppe like a clucking mother hen. "Big brother! What happened? How horrid! Who did this to you?"

"Now, now, Elena-tan." Rolito gently but firmly took the worried girl aside. "Let's not trouble Giuseppe-kun too much. He's tired and hurt. Let him be. Okay?"

She pouted but acquiesced.

"Giuseppe? Go get yourself looked over by Doctor Mizuno. I'll take care of Elena-tan."

"Yes, sensei."

The battered boy limped off to the nearby cyborg lab. Rolito grimaced.

Now what could have happened to that boy?


Bianchi was grim. "I won't lie to you, Mireille. None of our girls have ever taken this much damage before."

"How bad is it, Doctor?"

"Her right arm has been seriously damaged. I'll need to completely replace it. She also has several concussions and a large number of bruises on her face and body. What concerns me is that I'll need to use a lot of conditioning as anesthetic during the operation. You already know that excessive amounts of the drug– even the new one we're using– will shorten Henrietta's already limited lifespan and cause her to lose memories."

So that was why she wanted to write it down. She didn't want to forget whatever it was she saw and felt.

Is it that powerful? That memory you so want to keep? What happened to you, Etta? What is it you can't tell me? Why can't you tell me?

Am I not worthy of your trust?

Her hands tightened upon the leather-bound diary. Now, all too familiar with Section One's dark secrets and deeply committed to her new partner, Mireille knew she could never escape the organization. Not without abandoning Henrietta.

I won't leave her.

"Do what you can, Doctor. I believe in you."

I'll make sure that this never happens again. The next time, Etta will be ready. And I'll be there to protect her.


"Well," Mizuno Ami, Amalgam Rome's resident cyborg specialist and all-around doctor, reported, "The good news is that Giuseppe's damage isn't as bad as it looks."

Not to say it was minor. Bruises covered the boy's face, torso and arms. Bullet impacts accounted for most of those; his Ballistic Protection Suit had stopped all but six. Those last half dozen did puncture his skin but caused no damage to his internal organs. The fistfight accounted for the rest of the contusions, a minor concussion and a groin injury.

And each item of injury made Rolito wince. Especially that last.

No one had ever inflicted that much damage on Giuseppe before. In fact, no one had ever managed to even begin to match him. Not those simple-minded but abominably strong Astral robots, not phenomenally skilled and experienced fighting instructors, never Elena, not even Rolito himself on a good day. The toughest combat drills only resulted into a few scratches and a sheepish grin.

But this– and in melee, too: hand-to-hand, Giuseppe's specialty. The boy was lucky to get out of the fight alive and most in one piece.

I hope we won't be running into that particular cyborg again any time soon...

"Anyway, he won't need serious surgery," the good doctor finished, "Though we'll need to replace a lot of skin. Don't worry. He'll be all right soon enough."

"You can say that, Ami, but Giuseppe still looks to me like someone ran over his favorite pet puppy– and then backed over the dog just to make sure it was dead."

Indeed the boy morosely sat in the nearby waiting room without a word or action to the contrary. He ignored Elena's concerned attention, head bowed, eyes and thoughts on something invisible and distant, and often sighed deeply.

I've been through that phase before. It's not fun.

"I'm theorizing post-battle stress syndrome," Ami persisted. "Giuseppe fought enemy cyborgs equal to or stronger than him for the first time. While he did escape, he also failed his mission. Considering his previously perfect record, he must feel very disappointed with himself."

"Maybe." Privately, Rolito was unconvinced. It's something else. But what can it be?


"Don't worry, Henrietta." Bianchi smiled at his patient through his surgical mask. The hypodermic needle hovered over a vein in her mangled right arm. "This won't hurt."

"Doctor Bianchi?"

"Yes?"

"Will I lose all my memories?"

The needle stopped short of skin. She looked so pale and weak. Like an ordinary little girl and not a near-unstoppable killing machine. And she looked to him for nonexistent salvation.

"One day," the good doctor sighed, unable to lie to such a plaintive face, "You will." We all do.

"Claes told me that if you want something to be remembered, you should write it down into a book."

"That's very good advice. You should listen to Claes. She knows a lot."

"I know. She gets angry if I tell her that, though. She says I need work on my humor." That got Bianchi to laugh.

"Well, she isn't perfect. And don't worry. The new conditioning is far less damaging to your memories. You'll be all right."

Henrietta shivered. She began to weep.

"I… I don't want to forget! I don't want to forget any of you– to lose you... I don't want to die. I want to live!"


Behind the glass screen of the observing room, Mireille could no longer bear to look at her partner's suffering. "Can we," she softly asked, averting her eyes from the sorry spectacle, "Still see them as tools this way? Can you?"

His hand reassuringly clasped her bare shoulder. It was the first time after a long and bloody while that she let a man touch her. She needed it. Needed the comforting reassurance that the presence of another person. Kirika was not here.

"No," Jean quietly admitted, watching the girl his brother named after a mutually cherished loved one undergo the knife for one too many times. "Not anymore."

It was the closest Mireille came to crying in front of other people.


"And that's that." Ami stepped back to peel her gloves off her hands. "Good job, people. Keep him sedated for a few more hours. Then we can slowly bring him awake."

"Yes, Doctor."

Letting her assistants handle the rest of the minor details, she briskly walked out of the operating room to flash her anxious supplicants a quick smile. "Giuseppe is going to be fine," Ami told them.

Elena broke into a joyous cheer. Rolito did one better: he hugged Ami.

"Thanks, Ami. I owe you huge."

"He'll need time to get used to the repairs," the nonplussed Ami continued, though she did return the embrace. "And don't let him take a bath for a few days. His new skin will be tender."

"I hear you, ma'am."

"When can we visit big brother?" Elena eagerly asked.

"Tomorrow. Let him sleep for a while. He needs all the rest he can get."

Her light brown braids bobbed alongside her beaming face. Big brother… Get well quickly, okay?


The girl woke up to find the ceiling very familiar and the room a déjà vu kind of bland.

I've been here before.

A blonde woman partially sprawled upon the right side of her bed. She watched me while I slept. She was waiting for me to wake up. Smiling at the kindness shown her, the girl let her guardian drowse some more. She looks younger when she's asleep. Much kinder than she already is.

Sitting up, she experimentally fingered the woman's golden hair. She secretly envied of that luxuriously soft mane. Abruptly a memory of herself with long hair, longer than her partner's and almost as long as– Angie, right? Angelica–, intruded on her reverie.

When was that? Another one of the memories with him that I have forgotten?

The object of her adoration stirred. The girl smiled at her groggy, just-waking partner.

"Miss Mireille? Did I disturb you?"

She received a powerful hug for her question. "Thank God, Henrietta," Mireille whispered, pulling the girl to her all the more. "Thank God you're all right."

Henrietta felt tears weigh her eyes. She did not hold them back. "Yes, Mireille," she wept. "I'm all right."

In her mind's eye, she could see him still: the boy with the kind eyes and sad face, named after the man she loved so much, the enemy she felt for despite knowing better.

Giuseppe. I still remember you.


"You know, Elena, Sensei," joked Giuseppe, confined to bed for the time being, "This is actually funny. For once, I'm the one in the hospital and Elena's the one worrying over me."

The vise-like grip on his arm tightened (thankfully not around his still-sore skin). Elena hadn't released him since Ami allowed visitations yesterday. "Dummy," she sorely reproached. "You shouldn't joke about things like this…"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Humor is the best medicine, Elena-tan," Rolito diplomatically pointed out. "It's been scientifically proven to help people get better much quicker."

"Well, I'm much better than any medicine or nurse."

"Of course," both men immediately agreed.

Apples and fruit juice were at hand. Elena skillfully peeled and cut one up. She offered the bite-size pieces for her brother's dining pleasure. Rolito didn't know whether to laugh or grimace.

In Japanese culture, the girl peels and slices fruits for the boy she romantically liked.

He fondly remembered an extended hospital stay of his own courtesy a severe allergic reaction to an antidote against poison gas. (Poisoned by the antidote. How ironic.) The bewitching Japanese beauty who peeled him fresh fruits– with the very knife she skinned people with. (Well, Masakari did wash the thing before she used it on that apple.) And the little girl who lovingly clung to him as much as Elena did to Giuseppe now.

Those were the good old days…

"I have to report to our boss." Rolito stood up. "Elena, I leave Giuseppe in your capable hands."

"No!" Giuseppe feigned horror. "Sensei! Don't abandon me in her vile clutches!"

Elena playfully bopped him on the head. "Good luck, sensei," she bid.

"Thanks. Take good care of your brother. I'll see you two later. Ciao."

The door closed.

"Say, 'Ah'," Elena sweetly ordered.

Giuseppe obediently ate the offered slice.


Hearing the knock, Rico looked up from the framed photograph of the boy she revered. "Who is it?"

"Rico? It's me. Henrietta. Miss Mireille and Triela and Hilshire are with me. Can we come in?"

"Sure."

Henrietta and Mireille carried several bags. Behind them, a slightly puffy Hilshire lugged a much bigger box. Triela rolled her eyes at her handler's unnecessary macho assist even as she herself toted a couple of bags.

"I'm back," Henrietta brightly announced.

"Welcome back," Rico replied just as happily.

In the blonde girl's hands, the smiling Meir waved in greeting.


"Good to see you again, Rolito."

"The pleasure is all mine, sir."

"Give me your personal report on your latest mission."

"Yes, sir. Our mission at the Mirasol failed both strategic and tactical goals. Tactically we failed to fulfill our limited objective of destroying at least two cyborgs. We did not even destroy a single unit. In addition, Giuseppe– Unit Zero One– was outnumbered and outgunned. He was damaged."

"Strategically, we've revealed our cyborg program to Section Two. While they have already suspected our involvement, encountering Unit Zero One gives them solid proof of Project Child's existence. They may inform Mithril and they may attack us in the future. This requires heightened security measures and preparedness on the Rome Division.

"I may have also alienated the Covenant Reformation Group." Rolito briefly explained the circumstances concerning the late Patricio. "Though if my cover story holds, other agents may still use them in the future. I suggest a stricter implementation of psyche profile checks to avoid the kind of trouble I've encountered.

"That is the extent of my report, sir."

Now comes the hard part: waiting.

Leonard Testarossa's photoelectric doppelganger regarded him with piercing eyes.

"What can you say for Project Child, then?"

"Speaking for myself, sir, I ask you to proceed– no; I urge you to accelerate the project's mass implementation. Our cyborg has proven its effectiveness in combat. Unit Zero One has defeated superior numbers of conventional human commandos and survived battle against enemy cyborgs. This operation validates the primacy of the cyborg trooper in today's combat environment. To stay on the cutting edge of weapons technology, we must incorporate the cyborg into our own programs."

"Noted. Is there anything else you have on your mind?"

"Yes, sir. There is one thing."


"We express our deepest gratitude to these brave men and women who risked their lives to save the Mirasol and protect the Italian people…"

"He needs a better speechwriter," Jean observed while turning off the TV.

Chief Lorenzo smiled at his right hand man's practicality. "His speechwriter is his favorite nephew. His brother might be offended."

"Well, this is still good for us. Fermi sent us the thank-you notes from higher-up."

"Gracious of him. I understand the commander he dispatched proved tenable?"

"We got along well." Leopardi had thrown a huge drinking spree for both his own men and the Section Two handlers after the mission. Cheers to the death and burial of intra-service rivalry in the SWA.

"On a less pleasant note, the Army sent us a bill for the destroyed command trailer."

"Rather petty of them"

"Yes. They lost twenty elite troopers and then had to watch us save the day."

"Should we expect any trouble from them?"


"Unfortunately," Sergeant Major Fio Germi told Jean and Mireille before her departure for the Sparrows' HQ in Britain, "My bosses are often this stupid. But don't worry overmuch. They'll get over it soon enough."

Then, with her trademark humor: "Hey, Jean, if they fire me, can I join your outfit?"

"Of course."

And if the Army dares to move against you– or us, Jean didn't say aloud to his friend, we'll be waiting for them.


"There are other important issues to consider. We have now confirmed the existence of at least one Amalgam cyborg, a boy. He ambushed Henrietta, Triela and Claes. They repelled and pursued him. Henrietta briefly caught up and fought him before he made good his escape."

Jean passed a sheaf of sketches to Lorenzo. Henrietta's sketches of the boy she fought. The boy was tall and dusky-skinned like Triela. His rather long hair was curly. His facial features bore a definitely hostile edge.

"According to Henrietta, he had black eyes and black hair. She confirmed a kukri and several throwing knives recovered from the tanker as his. No fingerprints were recovered; the boy wore gloves. His handler is very good."

Colonel Daren– if that is his real name– ighty be more dangerous than his cyborg.

Lorenzo intently perused the sketches. Henrietta's skill was evident in the subtlest stroke and gentlest shade. Her subject seemed to have been frozen in time, yet looked very much alive.

Jean allowed himself a brief smile. The small things in life I've forgotten about.

"There are three items that concern me. First, Liesel encountered two men in the deck beneath the bridge. She killed one of them. The fatality was a confirmed rabid CRG footman. This man's hands were tied behind his back. He had a wound on his right wrist. The coroner says the wound was inflicted by a bladed weapon.

"The other man she encountered managed to escape. Liesel describes him as Asian, wearing all black. He was carrying a duffel bag. "Jean passed Lorenzo another set of sketches.

"Our girls are quite the artists, aren't they?"

"Yes, Chief, they are. Continuing, our prisoners identified this man as a Taiwanese weapons dealer named Colonel Daren. He is the enemy cyborg's handler. I assume he is from the organization called Amalgam. He left behind a bag of defused explosives."

That got him the reaction he wanted. "Defused, you say?" Lorenzo asked.

"Yes. They were defused. Liesel discovered a still-active time bomb nearby, which she defused. Next, one of our clean-up teams discovered three corpses stuffed inside steel lockers in the lower deck of the Mirasol. All three men were CRG."

The coroner's written report had all the gory details. Two had been killed by penetrating trauma through ocular opening (military medical speak for "thrown knife to the eye"). The third's stomach had been gutted open by an extremely sharp blade. His heart had been stabbed through and then sliced in half.

"Finally, there is that call that pointed us to the location of the last bomb. Its honesty is undeniable. Otherwise, our teams would all be dead, the Mirasol destroyed, Trieste reduced to a cinder and possibly war in the Balkans.

"Mireille and I went over these facts several times. We both have only one conclusion that makes sense. The Amalgam agent on board never planned to destroy the Mirasol. When he learned that the CRG was planning to truly destroy the oil tanker, he turned on his allies, killed them and defused most of the bombs. When we had unknowingly cut him off from those last two bombs, he contacted us and directed us to the last bomb."

Jean prepared to deliver the last blow as gently as possible to the extremely pale Lorenzo.

"In other words, Chief, we only succeeded at the Mirasol because Amalgam let us win."


"Giuseppe-kun?"

The boy and his sister looked up. Their sensei's grin was infectious and admittedly wicked, identical to the one that accompanied his earlier brainstorm for the Mirasol Op.

Giuseppe and Elena's dismayed groans were cut short by his announcement.

"How would you like to be an Arm Slave pilot, Giuseppe?" Rolito airily asked.


Eight o'clock PM. Jean stood up. "If you will excuse me, Chief, I have to go."

"You look to be in a hurry, Jean."

"I have a date," He said with all seriousness.


The door locked behind her. Claes let her breath out slowly.

She didn't need to browse through her notebooks anymore. Her head and heart now held everything important. Conditioning was no longer enough to destroy memories. Henrietta was living proof of that.

They would need to truly kill her to destroy her knowledge.

Even so, she just might come back to life.

She now possessed the last clue to the mystery. He, the man who made her who she was, his written self hidden in his books, took his time to distil his suspicions and voice out a suspect.

But now she had a name. Now she knew her enemy.

Jean. It seems you owe me greatly.

Rico. Mireille. I sincerely apologize for what I must do. I hope you understand what I will do, especially after Henrietta taught us that lesson anew not so long ago. But this is something I must do.

Claes hoped and prayed that her muse, her inspiration and father and teacher, felt better now wherever he was.

Wait a little longer, Sir Raballo. Wait a little longer. Then– then we can go fishing all we want…


"This is probably a first," Mireille noted as she and her date toasted wine glasses over plates of exquisite seafood pasta.

"Oh?"

"I mean a dinner. For the both of us, too, I'd say."

"Agreed, Mireille." He actually smiled. It made him look rather charming.

They ate in politely friendly silence. "The pasta is exquisite," Mireille approved.

"That was what I told my brother when he brought Henrietta here for the first time."

"So you're a food connoisseur as well, Jean?"

"It's one of my lesser talents."

"I would say it's a greater talent, not lesser."

"I would argue the point."

The evening went by perfectly.


It was late when she reverently hid the sketchbook beneath her pillow and herself upon her bed. Her eyes traced patterns into the smooth white-painted surface of the still-familiar ceiling in the manner of a pencil drawing upon blank paper, stenciled the image she kept into her brain over and over again.

If you want to keep something alive, work on it, keep thinking of it, write it down or draw it. Claes told her that. Henrietta was a good student.

Within the white pages of her notebook and the ethereal landscape of her mind, her latest sketch– the real face of the boy she met, fought and cared for– stayed safe and unseen by none save her.


Giuseppe finished packing the last of his clothes. A separate bag held his weapons, including a brand-new kukri. Rolito had endlessly teased him for losing his original blade. "The samurai's soul is his sword– which is why you should be thankful that you're an assassin."

He would gain another new weapon soon enough.

Arm Slave pilot training in Helmajistan, huh? Sensei must really have a lot of confidence in me despite my failing the Mirasol mission.

I won't let him down again. I'll do my best this time.

At least she won't be there. Otherwise– I don't know what I would do if we had to fight again…

He remembered her words, her question and condemnation. "Can't enemies feel for one another when they can?"

Giuseppe shook his head clear of the confusing thoughts she engendered in his head. Where was Helmajistan again? He thought back to one of the maps he studied earlier. North Asia. I'm actually leaving Italy and going to a foreign country for the first time in my life. And I'm going to pilot a giant robot, too.

If it wasn't so dangerous, I might think this is fun.

Elena sat on the foot of his bed. She behaved for once. Didn't even indulge in childishly kicking her heels about, something she did whenever displeased or impatient. He thought her compliance strange but accepted blessings whenever he could get them.

"I wish you wouldn't go," she murmured.

"I'd like to stay here, too, Elena. But Sensei says I have to go. He's got a lot of trust in me. And it's my job, after all. I have to do it."

Giuseppe grimaced. His arguments sounded so cliché. Even worse, like a soldier or policeman telling his wife or lover about duty and all before he went off to get himself killed. Just like in the movies.

Stop using such bad metaphors. And with Elena, too, of all people. Sensei ought to skin me alive.

Elena's eyes brimmed with tears. She practically leapt off the bed to hug him.

She had always been emotional. But the desperate strength of her embrace, the near-ferocity with which she buried her small face into his chest, startled him.

"Take care, big brother."

"I will."

"Make sure you always wear clean underwear."

He grimaced. Sometimes Elena sounded just like their mother. "Yes, Mother."

"And," her hug tightened even more, "And don't go around chasing after strange girls…"

"Elena?"

She sobbed. "Just promise me, Giuseppe. Please."

"All right, Elena." He hugged her back. "I promise you."


And I'm sorry. I've already broken that promise even before I made it.

Henrietta…


"They called themselves the Handsome Men."

Next on Life Goes On:Handsome Men.