Chapter 3 - Killing a friend is better than letting her suffer
Everything around her was raven darkness. Only a few lights, some smaller, some bigger, were seen by her, most of them many miles away. There also was a very bright but small light exactly where she was standing but it couldn't distract her. The ones interesting to her were on the one hand three mid sized lights that were about as bright as a full moon and on the other hand a small but yet brighter light as the other three, even though its intensity could not be compared to the light that was where she stood.
The smaller light that was behind her and moved towards her at a good speed she recognized as the one she was waiting for. The three lights around six miles away in the direction she was facing weren't moving at all.
Drops started to fall from the sky whose gray color had long suggested that it was about to rain. As the rain grew stronger the cracked soil beneath the black haired warriors feet thankfully absorbed every last drop of rain.
The warriors black hair was combed back and bound into a ponytail whose tip reached down to the woman's lower back. It soon was completely soaked and steady flow of water flew down from the pony tail's tip. Her puppet like face was also completely wet as one drop after another ran down her forehead and her cheeks.
The sound coming from the rain pouring onto her greyish pauldrons could barely be heard due to the far louder patter of the rain onto the soil that had started to become muddy. The silver eyed warrior thought about running through that mud and how she'd look afterwards with loathing.
She got a clearer view of that as she opened her eyes to recognize the roughly two heads smaller warrior that had just arrived. She was completely soaked as well and already had her metal boots and the legs of her skin tight, light gray cloth armor sullied with mud of the plain that reached nearly as far as the eye could see. Because of the rain the normally pale blonde color of her hair had turned much darker.
A wide smile was still on her face that gave the impression of a girl in her early teens despite her being 19 years of age already.
Turning her face to the right to meet with the much taller warrior's eyes she happily greeted her: "Nice to meet again. Sorry for being late!"
"No need to apologize," Jacqueline blankly stated, "I already knew that you would be coming a bit later. Liara, was it?"
Liara enthusiastically nodded. Although she intensely envied Jacqueline for her promotion and even was a bit mad about her having a special ability at hand and thought this was no fair she nevertheless felt excited and very happy to be able to go on a hunt together with such a strong person.
"You can count on me, I will do my very best!"
After a short pause the black haired woman answered: "I appreciate it. We are up against three Awakened Beings here. None of them was Single Digit and their Yoki are nothing out of the ordinary, still handling all three of them would be rather though for me. I have to be able to completely rely on you."
Saluting energetically she called out: "Yes, ma'am!"
Jacqueline closed her eyes yet again and so did Liara.
"Can you sense them from here?" Jacqueline's deep voice asked.
Liara tried her best and soon saw three lights which she thought to roughly be five miles away. "Not as clearly as I'd like to, but yes" she stated.
"Very well," Jacqueline initiated her explanation, "our targets are, from the left to the right, former number 18, former number 31 and former number 20. They awakened during an Awakened Being hunt. They managed to kill their target but afterwards turned against their captain, former number 8, and killed her."
That last sentence got Liara's peculiar attention since Jacqueline had just stated that there most likely was the spot of a Single Digit to fill.
The tall warrior resumed: "Even though their Yokis are at about the same level former number 31 will most likely be the easiest to deal with. She will be the first to fall. Who is going to be second we will decide after we have gotten there. I will deal with restraining their movements as much as possible. Since there are three of them that will be difficult, so you have to finish off former 31 as fast as possible. To ensure that I want you to completely hide your Yoki for now, then follow me around hundred meters behind so they don't notice you on the spot. As soon as I got them distracted you will rise your Yoki as far as possible to go for former number 31's head. After that I can assist you in fighting, if necessary, but I'd rather focus completely on controlling them. Any questions or objections?"
The smaller warrior had wanted to play with the Awakened Beings for a bit, she felt directly aiming for the head was no fun. Be it how it may, Liara heard the earnest tone in Jacqueline's voice as she told her to kill off the first target without delay.
Drawing her claymore she tightly stated that she is going to do how she was told without fail. She took a deep breath, sealed off her Yoki as good as she could and then told her captain that she was ready.
Jacqueline recognized that Liara's Yoki had not lost it's brightness but that it was no bigger than a star in the night's sky. She also drew her sword.
"Here we go!" she said with an honest voice and started rushing towards their targets.
###
"Reporting in!" the completely dressed in black member of the retrieval squad who had just appeared next to Dae, the head of the Organization's retrieval squad.
"I see, I see" he answered. He also was completely dressed in black, but unlike the members of the retrieval squad who wore cloth trousers and tunics that allowed them to be agile Dae had put on a black cloak that covered all but his face and hands.
"So, where is it then?" he said, looking around with his scary face that was missing the skin on nearly the whole left side, exposing his teeth and his left eyeball.
"We encountered a problem" the man honestly said.
"Huh?" Dae answered, making a surprised face.
"A warrior ran into us while we were about to take the corpse. However, by threatening our lives she forced us to retreat and leave it there" he reported.
"I see." For a moment Dae wondered why a warrior would care about the corpse of an Awakened Being but then it came to his mind suddenly.
###
Her three targets extended their fingers to impale Jacqueline with them just like they were spears, but most of them missed completely. However, a few actually missed the tall warrior by a hair. Dealing with three of them really was as though as she had predicted.
While dodging, parrying and jumping around she asked herself what that girl was doing. In exact the same moment she felt a really big, nearly dangerous burst of Yoki and like a flash a feminine figure with pigtails dashed past her, took a jump and literally shot through the chest of former number 31, who, yelling "Shit!" collapsed.
'Finally!' Jacqueline thought shortly before she felt a scratch appear on her cheek. That sudden outburst of Liara's Yoki just then hazed Jacqueline's senses enough to actually let her be glanced by a hit. She didn't think about it much and focused back on her targets.
One of them, however, had decided to go after the "shitty brat" that had just taken out her former comrade.
They were in trouble then. Liara's Yoki outburst had a far worse impact than it seemed at first glance. Jacqueline's field of vision suddenly was ambiguous, she couldn't hear well and her legs were shaky. She could barely even evade her own opponents attacks, not to think about helping out Liara.
Zigzagging around like a hare on the run Liara was able to avoid all her opponents attacks but she nearly fell a few times. She knew exactly that that would be her death, so she had to kill her enemy instantly. That was easier said than done, however. She did a good job on not letting the pig tailed warrior get close.
Then it happened, she slipped and uncontrollably slid towards her opponent. Good for her was, however, that the Awakened One actually was more surprised than herself and so she by chance created an opening for her to take action and while sliding through her puzzled enemy's legs she managed to cut one of its feet off making the monster collapse on one knee.
Without hesitation, after finding a bit of solid ground, she jumped onto the monsters back and impaled her blade from its back through its chest without letting her enemy have a proper chance to react. Making two steps up the Awakened's back she sliced its chest, throat and head into two. The huge body fell into the mud as Liara jumped off its back to aid Jacqueline.
That was not necessary in the end; Jacqueline was completely back to her senses and bit by bit her opponent's body fell apart. However, she offered Liara to take the monster's head who thankfully accepted.
After having finished their job the both of them looked at each other from top to toe: Liara was completely covered in mud and so was the lower half of Jacqueline's body.
"Honestly," Jacqueline sighed while seeing the mess her suit was in, "I have worn that suit for about sixteen months now and didn't even get a scratch. Now I will have to ask for a new one since this one here is ruined."
"Too bad," the short warrior sympathized her, "but," she smiled friendly, "I always will know that you still didn't get scratched!"
Suddenly Jacqueline had to smile faintly, until the scratch on her right cheek popped into her mind and regaining her usual poker face she turned her face right a little so Liara wouldn't note the small wound.
"Scarface," Liara giggled and then broke out in sheer laughter.
'Has she seen it?' the black haired warrior thought while blushing a bit. In hectic she laid her right hand onto her cheek to cover the scratch. She used a little Yoki to heal it completely in no time what her comrade of course noticed making her laughter not quieter.
After she eventually was able to get her laughter under control and catch her breath again she assured Jacqueline that she wouldn't tell anyone and honestly meant it. Jacqueline, kind of relieved, thanked her for that and for her being a great help against the three Awakened Beings.
"Without your help I may have died," she truthfully admitted.
After shaking hands both of them left, Liara to the west, Jacqueline to the east, each of them to meet up with their respective handler. The rain was still pouring down.
###
The weather finally had calmed down. Jacqueline was, however, unable to find any dry firewood and hence had to forgo the warmth of a campfire. She had found herself a small cave beneath a small cliff were the rain hadn't gotten into.
Rattling sound as well as blunt ones hollowed in the small cave as the tall warrior was taking of her pauldrons, bracers, boots and her belt to which rhombic steel plates were attached to protect her lower body and just let them fall next to her.
After having impaled her claymore into the sturdy ground she leaned against it as she always did. She never found out the reason why this was the most comfortable position for her to rest, wait and sleep in and from time to time the tall woman wondered about if she was the only one who had that quirk.
The sun had just begun to set and shone directly into the hole that Jacqueline was resting in. She couldn't help but to stare into the sun. She was not aware of the fact that she didn't miss the warmth of a campfire but to stare into it. It was comforting her a lot although she had no idea why.
"He, I may be senile," she chuckled.
After waiting for her handler there for a while she decided to close her eyes for a bit since he hadn't came then. Before she knew she had fallen asleep.
The way she was at that moment, as peacefully as she looked, no one would have ever thought that she was a woman whose sole life purpose was wandering around in order to find and kill the monsters called Yoma, the enemies of humankind.
###
Everything was dark. There was nothing, just a bright light not bigger than a star in the night's sky. Everything else was pitch black. Not even the slightest trace of anything else but the small and bright light was there, all on it's own.
Suddenly other lights began to appear in some distance, one after another popped up. Some brighter, some fainter, some smaller, some larger. That went on for a while until there were more than five-thousand lights to be seen. They roughly had formed a cross.
Five lights caught the former sole light's attention. One of them was small as a star in the night's sky and far brighter than the sun, it seemed as if it was quarreling with another light that was far bigger but couldn't match the luminance of the one it was fighting. Close by there were three other lights that were only slightly more lucid than the moon and also had about it's size. They seemed to be totally fraught.
Without warning the brightest light suddenly grew to half of the size of the biggest one and due to it's beautiful brightness nearly swallowed up the lights around it just to soon return to it's original size.
The big one was stirred up to the core and gave the impression of being about to explode at any second. And then the bright one disappeared completely. The size of the already big one grew by a lot again and for some reason it calmed down to only being a bit wavy.
Then two of the other lights vanished completely in an instant and another one shrunk to the size of a mere dot. It suddenly was so small that even though it was quite bright it could barely be seen anymore. Then the really big light started moving away.
###
The sun had long set as Jacqueline awoke. Her eyes were still closed, but she could hear the crackling and feel the warmth of a fire that had to be close by. She slowly opened her eyes, yawned and stretched herself out.
"Awake already?" a male voice asked as she was scratching her stomach while blinking a few times to get the sleep out of her face. She directed her gaze towards the man who had just spoken up to notice that she had met him before.
From her point of view right of the fire there was sitting a man who wore nothing more than a black cloak with a hood that he had pulled so far over his head that Jacqueline could only see his face due to the fire that was burning inside of the cave. It was angular and seemed to belong to a man in his late twenties or his early thirties.
"Did you make the fire?" Jacqueline asked him scarcely after having found to her usual blank expression again.
Orsay turned his gaze to the fire again, throwing a few sticks into it to keep it burning. "Was quite the task to get wet wood burning," he replied. "Consider it thanks for letting her accompany you today."
Suddenly Jacqueline noticed a package to her left. She palpated it for a brief moment and then, after turning to Orsay again, asked: "How did you know?"
"Humph," he huffed, "she told me of course. Look at you! It's disgraceful for every warrior."
What he said was true: the legs and lower part of her suit were covered in mud. In addition to that the clothing still was wet and even though warriors like her were very unlikely to get ill it still was uncomfortable wearing wet clothes, so Jacqueline decided to change.
Kneeling, since the hollow wasn't high enough for her to stand, she unzipped the upper part of her body suit and was about to slip out of the sleeves, having her chest and belly completely exposed, as she noticed the Man in Black's gaze.
"You mind?" she asked, feeling a bit guilty for not doing so before starting to change.
"You mind?" he scarcely replied.
After having completely undressed she pulled out her claymore of the ground just to impale it into it again, a meter away from the fire that Orsay had made beforehand. Nude as she was she leaned against her loyal blade again. She was still wet and therefore decided to use the campfire's warmth to get dry.
Like this some time passed by after Jacqueline, staring into the fire as usual, spoke up again: "Have you just come her to give me a new set of clothes or is there something else?"
Gazing into the fire, too, he answered: "Well, yes. Actually there are two more things. At first, Rubel is on urgent business and therefore sends his regrets, but there is another job waiting for you."
"And that job might be?"
"It is about number 11, Hitomi. She is, for a reason unknown to me, keeping the retrieval squad from obtaining a certain sample of a fallen Awakened Being. You are to stop her from doing so. Use force, if necessary you may even kill her."
'Killing a fellow warrior, huh?' were her thoughts. She had always thought that she would never want to do something like that but at that moment, as she finally was ordered to do so, if necessary, she didn't feel the least bit concerned about it.
"I understand," she confirmed having received and understood her orders. "And the other thing would be?"
The man in Black pulled a black envelope out of his cloak that abruptly had the woman's attention. He handed it over to her and she, with faint signs of amazement took the black card. She opened it just to see a familiar symbol that made her stop short.
"She?" Jacqueline asked more herself than Orsay in surprise, "why should she want to die by my hands? We've only met once..."
The man shrugged his shoulders: "Who knows. You don't need to hurry, however. She ensured me that she is not close to awakening or anything."
That puzzled Jacqueline even more: "Why would she send out her Black Card in the first place, then?"
Orsay did not know the answer, either. He just told her that she was waiting about twenty miles east of the town of Arnea, on a wide grassland called the Green Sea by the people living around there. He also told her that her target, Hitomi, was five miles south of Arnea.
That brought back memories of the day when she defeated Emily. If she recalled it correctly it was around there.
"Protecting the grave of a dead comrade, huh..." she flimsily whispered to herself while having a kind of sad smile on her face.
The Man in Black heard her whispering something but he couldn't understand it. "Something the matter?" he asked, even though he didn't really care.
"Nah" was the answer he got.
Having put up her poker face again she decided, since she finally was dry, to slip into her new set of clothes. While she did so Orsay asked her how Liara had done during the Awakened Being hunt.
"To be honest," she honestly stated, after she had finished dressing, "it was good to have her around. Not only did she teach me something about myself, she also kind of saved me." Giggling a bit she added: "And since you were nearly begging me to take her, some of the credits also go to you."
A faint but visible smile was on his face for a short moment. "You, our great invincible super talent got your ass saved by a mere number 23?" he said, trying to spur her a bit.
"My sarcasm detector is knocking out," she said with a monotone voice while giving him a look. "However," she continued, "my plan had a little flaw. Said flaw was Liara having a pretty big Yoki slumbering inside of her. I sorely noticed that when she got to fifty percent as I had told her and suddenly all my senses hazed. However, she then took good care of former number 31 and former number 18. The other one I cut down my self and let her decapitate it, as thanks, you could say."
Orsay was visibly pleased with what he had heard. He was close to sure that elder Rimuto would approve of a promotion the way things went. He felt happy inside for his favorite warrior.
That way they kept sitting there for a while, occasionally exchanging a few words about all the world and his wife.
###
As she left the forest a hilly land of grass came into sight. Dark clouds, brought by the adipose wind that made every last blade of grass bent, were threateningly hanging in the sky, ready to burst at any moment. The bending grass looked like waves on the green grassland.
"The Green Sea, huh?" she whispered, admiring the beauty before her. For a moment she was just standing there, watched the waving grass and let the wind play with her ponytail. But then, however, her duty there came to her mind.
She could already sense the warrior who had requested to be killed by her. The closer she came, the more her feelings started to mix up. At first she wasn't the least bit concerned about killing a warrior, even though she had always thought that she could never do something like that. But at that moment she had that queasy feeling in her stomach and her heart was beating irregularly.
What would she say? What would she say? The black haired warrior didn't want to do it. But what else choice did she have?
Then a warrior, about one head shorter than Jacqueline, with hair so short you could have called it fluff was standing in the midst of the field. Her claymore was impaled into the ground and her left hand rested on its hilt.
Their eyes had already met when Jacqueline still was around fifty meters away from her comrade. As she got closer she could see the melancholic face of the short haired woman. Whatever her reason for sending out the Black Card was, Jacqueline was sure to find that out very soon.
She stopped just a few meters in front of her as she could finally see the condition her comrade was in: she had lost kind of some weight, to call her skinny would have been a litotes. The black haired warrior could also see tear marks beneath her doleful eyes. Her suit was covered in blood and had many cuts all over it. Even her sword had marks of dried blood on it. It was red.
'Don't tell me...' Jacqueline started to think but was interrupted by Maria:
"Ah, you are finally here. It took you some time, what kept you?"
"Most likely the fact that I didn't want to come here in the first place" she truthfully answered. She pulled out the black envelope and, holding it before Maria's face, asked: "What is the meaning of this?"
Maria took it and watched it for a bit. Then she tore it to pieces, startling the taller woman.
"You already know what I want you to do, so we don't need it anymore, do we?" she asked.
Jacqueline hesitated, feeling the neither avoidable nor acceptable coming closer. She mustered the woman standing in front of her closely. Most of her wounds seemed to have been inflicted to her by Yoma, but there were also cuts of a blade, especially on her lower arms. That woman absolutely wanted to die but couldn't bring herself to end it herself. That was the truth that Jacqueline didn't want to be true.
"Why are you hesitating? Please, I don't want it any..."
She got cut of by a strong fist hitting her face. The impact knocked her onto the ground. She neither complained about the pain nor did she show any sings of it. She plainly got back up and asked if this was to bring her back to her senses.
A sole tear was slowly rolling down Jacqueline's blank face, as she, having faint signs of sniveling in her voice, asked: "But why? Why don't you want to live anymore?"
"Since Emily has died... the pain it caused drained my life force away. It took my ability to be joyful, to curse and to laugh, to sleep and to eat or to just think of something to distract me from all my negative thoughts. Whenever I think about the short time I had been grated to spend with her, I start to cry. I may have acted though on the outside and like nothing could ever touch me, but her death is something I just can't cope with, no matter how hard I try."
Maria directed her view towards Jacqueline to expose a face that made her feel cut to the quick. Not only was it overrun by tears but also the melancholy was gone. It had been replaced by a pain so great that even she could feel it.
"So please..." Maria sobbed, "please, just kill me! I can't take it anymore!"
With those last words she fell to her knees and heavily started to cry while digging her face into her hands.
Jacqueline felt so hurt inside by her fellow warriors despair and could well imagine that it had to be far worse for herself. She eventually started to cry, too. She tried to comfort her comrade but all efforts were in vain. So in the end she had to do what she had to do.
From that day on there was another small hill in the grassland that was called the Green Sea. A sword was impaled into the ground next to the small hill. For a long time a sole black haired warrior came to visit that place once a year around June 17th, the day that Maria had lost her life.
###
While walking the road South from Arnea Jacqueline was still thinking about what happened on the Green Sea. She felt guilty for not having been able to help the broken soul there. She couldn't help herself but thinking, that it was her fault. If she would have killed Emily herself, then Maybe Maria wouldn't have had that much remorse. She may even have focused her hate onto Jacqueline and not herself.
'Also,' she thought, 'what she told me about that Liara woman...'
Her emotions were stirred up like never before. 'Sad but true,' she thought, while sadly smiling, 'I'm the same as her. I always act cold and like nothing could ever touch me... and now, I have to look totally wretched. Even the people in that town... they weren't scared like usual. They pitied me.'
That was not the only thing in her mind, however. There was still her actual job and she pleaded inwardly to be able to solve that matter with words rather than having to kill another warrior.
###
It was silent as always, only two people could be heard, speaking alternately. One of them was Orsay, giving a report about The Awakened Being hunt Liara and Jacqueline attended together and the other one was elder Rimuto, mostly listening and posing a question every now and then.
"So in the end," the man who had pulled his black hood deep into his face, finished his report: "Liara has taken out one Awakened Being with Jacqueline's assistance and one entirely on her own. The other one was killed by Blankface herself. She claimed, that, without Liara's assistance, she may have died. Therefore I think it is appropriate to reward Liara for her effort and success."
"I see," the Organization's chief answered, "and do you think this will ally her thirst for being promoted for a while?"
Orsay found his view some empty space to think about how to answer that question best and then fund Rimuto's view again to reply: "I would not bet on that. She's aiming for number three after all and still has a far way to go to get there. I propound to send her on jobs with escalating difficulty and risk. Then there are mainly two things that can happen: She does great and reaches her rank or she screws up and dies."
After a short pause Rimuto answered on his part: "For you to say that so calmly... well, however. Judging from what she was able to accomplish I think it is save to promote her to Rank 13. You are dismissed."
Not saying another word Orsay turned around and left the hall, a rather casual smile on his angular face. While leaving the hall he was passed by a small warrior, a trainee, as he had figured, with straight blonde hair, having two braids in front to frame her face and two braids in the back that were engulfed into a ponytail. She was accompanied by a man in black who wore black cloth trousers and a black cloth waistcoat as well as a black headscarf that covered his left eye. Some shriveled fleshed peered beneath the headscarf so he most likely wore it to hide a scar.
The both of them entered the hall and walked towards its center, stopping there.
Rimuto as well as the other Men in Black mustered the girl who seemed to be around thirteen of age closely. She didn't look anything special in her greyish trainees uniform and the sword on her back looked kinda out of place since it was nearly as long as she was tall.
Then Rimuto directed his eyes towards the man who had brought the girl in and asked: "So she is the only one who passed the test this time, Marco? What a pity, we need warriors so badly..."
Before the man who brought the little warrior into the hall could say anything, the girl herself chimed in: "It's their own fault for being dead now! I told them over and over that this is no 5 vs 5 but a 1 vs 10 battle, but did anyone listen to me? No, they kept ignoring me, so I didn't help them as the Yoma attacked."
All the Men in Black were gobsmacked, even Rimuto didn't know what to say for a moment. Marco gave the warrior a rap on the head for being cheeky. She rubbed her aching head and told him that he's a meanie.
That moment had a bit of awkwardness to it, but Rimuto broke it: "He, pretty big mouth that you have got there, little miss. What is your name?"
The former trainee enthusiastically shouted: "I am Hysteria, at your service!"
"Ah, I see" Rimuto answered. "I've been waiting for you to finish your training. We need promising people like you badly. From today on you are our Number eight, even though I doubt that it will take you long to climb higher."
The girl saluted and plainly stated: "I will do my best and more!"