Review; Reboot

Major Vincent was discussing logistics with two of his subordinates when a young boy that looked to be about ten years old cracked open the door. The boy shyly and awkwardly stepped in and looked at Major Vincent with the questioning eyes of a puppy.

“You guys, clear the room.”

The officers’ faces betrayed their feelings of surprise, but when they saw who was at the door, they hurriedly picked up their paperwork and left the room.

Simply put, to Vincent this boy was much more important than whatever those officers could have in their reports. Even if this boy was just messing around, Vincent wouldn’t regret his decision. The boy had an unstable mental state, to say the least, so Vincent put extra effort into making sure the boy didn’t self destruct on his own. Even so, the boy was more than worth the effort it took to keep him stable.

Seeing that the boy didn’t seem to want to speak, Vincent went first:

“Good job on your last assignment Pax.”

“Aha, yeah… sorry about that…”

Vincent raised an eyebrow at Pax’s response. It was completely different to how Pax had been acting for the past few months. Smiling subtly, Vincent realized what had happened:

“Welcome back, Pax.”

The boy standing in front of Vincent frowned slightly in response and sat down in the chair opposite Vincent’s large oak wood desk.

“Right, it’s good to be back.”

“I’m guessing that now that you’re back, you’ll want to be assigned a different role from what you were doing before. Don’t worry, we’ll be heading out soon anyways, so it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Heading out? You mean all of us? Where are we going?”

“Yeah, I’ve gotten orders to assemble the squad and head up north. It looks like they’re planning to retake Spire Port. It’s goanna be a huge operation, so they need the best of the best there.”

Vincent smiled proudly when he said that.

“I see, but don’t you think that we should come up with a better name than ‘the squad’?”

Vincent’s smile grew strained when memories of all the previous times they had tried to come up with a name resurfaced in his mind. It wasn’t that he liked calling their team ‘the squad’, it was just that whenever they tried to come up with a name, every member would come up with their own uniquely terrible name and argue until blood was shed.

Eris would come up with names like the ‘Super Sexy Squad’, or the ‘Richards’; Ivy would come up with names like ‘Team Moe Moe Kyun Kyun’, or the ‘Kittens’; Sakura would always try to name the team after random flowers, but didn’t actually care that much; and, lastly, Djyn hated calling the team anything other than the ‘Prolific Murderers’ or something else of that nature.

Pax had been the only one who didn’t seem to give a single shit about the name of the team, which was likely why he didn’t even remember these discussions. Vincent could do nothing but keep calling their team vague names so that no one revolted.

“Sigh, if you come up with an idea Pax, run it by the other members. If they agree, we’ll go with it.”

Vincent told Pax that while knowing how futile it would be. Well, It wasn’t like there was no chance that Pax would succeed –considering that Pax was by far the strongest in a direct confrontation, he could simply force the other members to comply. But Vincent didn’t think that the current Pax had it in him to do that, so the problem would most likely remain unresolved.

The fact that they couldn’t come up with an acceptable name was, indeed, a problem. There hadn’t been many missions where all of them were needed at once, but it was definitely become more frequent now that the war seemed to be entering its later stages. Other soldiers were beginning to simply call them ‘Lunatics’ or ‘Psychos’, and at this rate, the higher ups would end up forcefully naming them ‘Vincent’s Squad’ or some other horrible name. If things came to that, Vincent didn’t even know if any of his ‘champions’ would remain by his side.

“...Alright, that was all I wanted to say. See you later Captain.” With a halfhearted salute, Pax turned his back and began leaving. He made it all the way to the door before Vincent realized that there were still a few things he needed to tell this brat.

Vincent stood up and barked, “Hey! Don’t go disappearing anywhere because when everyone comes back, we’ll have a mission briefing! Also, thank Sakura for saving your ass!.... And I’m a goddam Major!”

Whether or not Pax had heard that last bit was unknown because the boy had already disappeared by then. Vincent plopped back in his chair and rubbed his temples. He was already starting to get a headache, and the entire squad had yet to be assembled.

- - - - - - -

A piece of paper fluttered down majestically, before landing gracefully upon a young maiden’s laps. Said maiden had been happily enjoying her lunch in the mess hall before this interruption, so she was slightly annoyed by this mysterious piece of paper, but decided to unfold it anyways.

Dear Sakura,

T, ha~nks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yOu    re,ELy   Sav,D  my   A~SS!!!

                               wuv,

                                    Pax   :)

The letter was written in an exaggeratedly childish way, with careful yet crude handwriting that was comically large. There was an equally ugly smiley face crudely drawn next to the message, just to truly seal the deal. Of course, the letter had actually been penned by a five-year-old, but said five-year-old could have easily wrote normally if he had wanted.

Sakura chuckled lightly at the stupid gesture and spun her head around to look for the culprit. She managed to spot a shadow as it left the mess hall’s exit.

She probably would have gotten annoyed by the lack of sincerity in Pax’s thank you, if not for the fact that she hadn’t even expected Pax to do this much. Then when she thought about it more, she realized that it had taken Pax more effort to both learn how to write in such an ugly way and deliver the letter this way than it would have to just come up to her and say, ‘thanks’.

Upon this realization, Sakura couldn’t possibly be mad at Pax, so she carefully folded the letter and put it into her pocket.

- - - - - - -

“You done over there?”

From outside the tent, the man’s comrade shouted out to him.

“One sec…” Turning his head away from where his comrade’s voice was coming from, he turned back to the task on hand.

In front of him, a frightened soldier was pathetically crawling away from him.

“Don’t–” The soldier on the ground shouted in fear, but was interrupted when his neck was cleanly severed by the man’s black blade.

“...You could say that I’m probably done now.”

With that, he walked out of the tent. He was greeted by the sight of his comrade, Derrick, covered in blood with a pigeon standing on his arm. Derrick put a tiny piece of paper in a small pouch attached to the pigeon’s leg, and the bird set off. Not waiting for Djyn to ask, Derrick spoke:

“Major Vincent says that we are to come back to Norwood Castle.”

With a subtle nod from Djyn, the two began walking off. Behind them, the ruins of the enemy camp burned brightly.