File 7.7 - Rebuilt Purpose

One long night passed for Edgar. Sleeping on everything stirring in his head didn’t really help things. He remembered all of the crew in his dreams and watched them die repeatedly in the explosion as he could do nothing to save them. The nightmare played endlessly in different ways as he seemed to be looking for the answer. The answer that he would never find, because it couldn’t be changed.

After he finished in the shower, he flipped open the news streams in his room quickly. “Maybe they found somefin or Fin and tha others…” However, it surprised him to find that they weren’t talking about the attack in Casslin. Rather it was a new attack in Yokatomo City and he found himself staring at the report for longer than he realized. “Dammit, bastards! How many ‘ave tah die?!” Turning it off, he stormed out of his room not needing more bad news.

It was hard to focus on his training with everything happening. Through the halls he heard chatter about the attacks. When he sat behind the monitors of simulated enemies it only made him imagine seeing those Ragnarok bastards shooting down the Niph. He couldn’t escape it anywhere he went.

By lunch, his scores were the worst that they had ever been. He leaned out the simulation chamber with his mind still spinning. ‘Ain’t tha same…’ Ed remarked about the cockpit. It didn’t feel like what he had seen in the hangar.

Not noticing the atmosphere around Ed, Dick bravely marched up to him more pissed off at him than normal. “What the hell was that? Three kills and twenty-seven failed ops.”

Glaring up at Dick, he tossed the helmet behind him into the simulation chamber. “Whacha goin’ do, Dick?”

The direct confrontation took him by surprise. It wasn’t the sort of reaction that he expected from Ed. However, he didn’t put any of that together to actually mean something. He was just being insubordinate. Put on the defensive, Dick returned with equal intensity. “You’re a disgrace to the other elites and this project! You’re doing nothing but wasting everyone’s time by being here!”

Edgar stood up meeting the man eye-to-eye. “That right? Report me!” He then pushed the man out of his way. “Goin’ tah lunch!” He marched out of the room and nearly crashed into two passing soldiers. They gave him some looks and snapped at him, but he ignored them.

A bad day had already started and it didn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. The call to lunch came a bit early for him since he left Dick. Though at the moment, neither was something that was on his mind. He just wanted to be away from all of it. There was nothing that didn’t act as a constant reminder.

More focused than yesterday, he didn’t run around the base lost. Rather he left the facility and walked outside. He came to a stop just outside and looked up at the ceiling of the dome. Artificial lights gave the illusion of daylight, while it was still night beyond the protection. It was at least a different sort of view. Ahead, he could see the edge of the dome only a short kilometer away. The base’s dome was one of the smaller ones not demanding the same sort of height or size for the city.

He walked across the lot to the edge of the base. To his surprise, there was someone else there as well. ‘Su…what’s she doin’ out ‘ere?’ The pink dyed hair she had made spotting her almost too easy. He wasn’t sure if he saw anyone else on the base with any unusual hair color. Eventually, she was going to lose all of it. He already noticed that her black hair was growing out at the roots and he somehow doubted the military was going to allow her to keep dying it pink. The dye itself made him sort of wonder, though it did end up throwing them off in the search.

“No trainin’?” he opened as he approached.

She didn’t turn to meet his entrance. “I finished early.”

“Wow, don’tcha got more trainin’ missions than me? I can barely finish up half!”

“They’re all pretty easy once I got the handle of the controls.”

Edgar set up next to her leaning out the large window. The raised recreation area was part of the observation deck for the dome giving better viewing of the frozen continent. “Man! Ya sure ya ne’er done this before? It’s completely different from tha Niph or ani ship I practiced on before.”

“Maybe because I’ve never done this sort of thing before there isn’t any pre-established ideas of how it should be.”

“Gotta point there, I guess.” Staring at blowing snow was about as boring as he expected. Yet it did take his mind off what he didn’t want to be thinking about. “Why ya out ‘ere staring at tha white wastes?”

“It helps me clear my mind and keep me focused.”

“Focused?” It bothered him the whole situation with Shizuka. He didn’t get her and the change. After everything went down he got some stupid ideas in his mind about running away with her. And he had been certain she would do it. However, the look he saw in her eyes these days made him doubt that very seriously. “Do ya want tah be ‘ere? Yer not wantin’ tah ‘scape?”

Shizuka lifted her arm showing off the band that they both wore for their troubles in trying to escape before. Not that really answered all of his questions. And she knew it. She kept her reasons to herself. But she felt ready to tell him. “I’m going to stay and see this through.”

“What?! Why?”

“Because this is wrong.”

“Eh? Yer not makin’ much sense.”

“I guess I’m not.” She absentmindedly touched the hair tie that kept her ponytail up. “Do you agree with what’s going on here? Training teenagers or children to fight, the machines of war, the lies.”

“Well no…they’re right bastards.”

“Exactly. I’m not leaving, because there’s something I have to do.”

He was getting more lost the longer that he listened to her. The way she talked made it very clear how determined she was about her goals. Edgar tried to remember when he noticed the difference. It had been there for a bit. ‘Was it after tha bombin’?’ There was no way he could just ask her about that. He might have been blind and an idiot, but he wasn’t that insensitive.

“I’m going to get to the bottom of all of the lies and secrets. I’m going to expose them and make sure that they can’t do this ever again. They won’t ruin anyone else’s life.”

“…Su…” For the first time since he joined her, he looked straight at her. It took her a moment to notice that he was staring at her. She tilted her head ever so slightly to meet gazes with him. The full impact of her commitment to her purpose came through in her eyes alone. Yet it extended through to her presence. He could feel it such that it turned his hair up on the back of his neck in a chill.

She really wasn’t the same person that he helped kidnap from Welest. The saucy girl with an attitude had almost completely disappeared. Before him was someone else that he barely could recognize as the same girl that he thought he knew. It was more than just her getting serious or going through the motions, like he guessed it to be. She wasn’t doing it because she had no choice. It wasn’t because she was a prisoner on base.

Unlike him, she had done it. She found it. Whether knowingly or in blind ignorant happenstance, she had discovered it. And he could see what that looked like. It wasn’t what he expected. Traveling the world, he had happened upon that before, what she had. Before now he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t even acknowledge it as anything. But he knew it now.

“Ya found yer purpose.”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it. I haven’t really thought hard about putting it into such words.”

Lost in his own thoughts, he continued to stare at Shizuka, though more blank faced. ‘Purpose…to protect… Like tha doc were sayin’…’ The longer that he thought the more he stared. It eventually reached a point that Shizuka became creeped out by it. She took a step back away from him.

By the time that he snapped out of his personal thoughts, Shizuka had disappeared from his sight. “Su?” He turned around checking his flank and didn’t find her there either. Expanding his search, he managed to find her walking back to the facility. It left him a little confused. But as he stared at her back, he became more convinced.

The base disappeared from his view and it was only her standing before him. It was the only thing in his eyes. Shizuka appeared like a giant amongst all of the shadows that clung to her. Yet she could still walk. She walked straight into the fire without hesitation. She was better than him. That much he could see now. She was so different from him.

Fires were around him. Destruction buried everything that he could see. Twisted metal and smoking corpses filled his sights. Everything of his was gone. It was gone. He had nothing left.

Nothing remained. Just like her.

Yet she kept moving forward despite being alone.

The pain, it wouldn’t go away. It gripped his heart, squeezing it ready to burst. Was it the same for her, when she saw them all die? Was this how she felt? He questioned everything seeing her walking away with such confidence. None of it mattered to her other than her goal. She had found it amongst pain and death, she had found it.

Death followed them. He was going to have toface that fact now. Like she did.

He slapped his face, getting himself awake. “’ead on straight, Ed!” Marching back to the building, his resolve started to form. There was some uncertainty about how it compared to what Shizuka had found, but it wasn’t the same thing. Though it felt a little like he stole it from her, as she placed the seed inside him unknowingly. Though it was his now, not her’s. So it was different. It couldn’t be the same thing. They were different people like the doctor said. He had different beliefs, circumstances.

Edgar quickly rushed to the break room and raided the cupboards for a few things. He wrapped his arms around four water bottles, whatever his hand grabbed for protein and energy bars and something sweet. With all that under his arms, he marched back down the hall.

Ahead of him, the door slid open softly granting him access. It was lunch so he wasn’t really sure if Dick was going to be around, but he didn’t really care. Off in the corner by the terminal was unoccupied. Edgar dropped off all of the things in the cockpit and went over to stare at the terminal that Dick ran all of the simulations from. He tapped a few things to get into the menus, the genius left it unlocked. Unfortunately, he didn’t know where he was going.

Ripping open the foil of the energy bar he grabbed, he tore off a chunk with his teeth to begin staring at it. “…more complicated than tha Niph fer sure…this? Or this?” He got some beeps in reaction out of the terminal leaving him a little uncertain what that meant. The text described a mission, but it was formatted in a way that wasn’t plain English.

At that moment, the door slid open and the surprised Dick yelled at him. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Oh Dick! Yer back!” He tossed his second bar over to an empty handed Dick. “Eat up, we’re workin’ through lunch today.”

“Eh?” An understandably confused Dick froze, not really sure what to make of Ed’s actions. The door lost its patience for him though and closed behind him pushing him completely into the room.

Edgar walked over to the cockpit and cleaned off the seat. His snacks went to the floor while he searched around for the helmet he misplaced. “Hey, get tha trainin’ back up! Ain’t make heads ‘r tails of that thing!”

Still lost about the change of heart, but not one to question it for too long, Dick rushed over to the terminal. He stared down at the work that Ed had done before he came in. “You put in a space simulation on the highest difficulty setting.”

“Said I couldn’t figure it out! There ya are!” The helmet surfaced for him finally. He threw the rest of the bar into his mouth and chucked the foil behind him. Inside the cockpit the initial boot sequences began. Despite him not fully paying attention to them, the mission looked familiar to him just from the rendering already shown.

Leaning out of the spherical chamber, he locked onto Dick. “Before that, load up tha movement test!”

“What? But you already cleared that.”

“Yeah, I know, but we’re goin’ back tah tha basics!” He got some doubt from Dick about what he had in mind. Motioning with his hand, he tried to dismiss the uncertainty. “Trust me. We’re doin’ this proper like!”

“We still have the rest of the day’s schedule to complete.”

“Ya got a hot date or somefin?”

Dick immediately got flustered and turned a little red. “What?! No! What are you saying?” His fingers slipped off the terminal while accidentally clearing out the input. He frantically tried to fix his mistake, still trying to comprehend Edgar’s motives.

Ed smirked a little, though it faded away quickly as his mind didn’t stop him from forgetting. “Ya got to loosen up a little, Dick! We’re goin’ be ‘ere fer a while tonight!”

“R-Right!” It was all still very confusing for the man. Everything seemed to turn on its head. But he could tell the seriousness that Edgar suddenly seemed to have. While the simulation started up he looked over at the top of the terminal. His personal computer pad rested there still with a document open.

Pulling up the device, he looked over it while Edgar began the simulation. He stared down at the internal cameras monitoring Ed. The subject line of the document read “Request for Termination”. As the movement test went along the performance data came across the terminal. Dick stared at it for a while, still hovering over the written document.

Edgar finished up the simulation with a personal best and already motioned for the next. Granting his request, Dick looked over the letter one last time. His finger hovered over to the delete button. A quick confirmation destroyed the letter. “Let’s see how long this energy lasts.”

At the end of the day it had already become a new day. Edgar dropped out of the pod glancing over at Dick. His head was pretty much glued to the terminal with his finger pressed against the pane in a vain attempt to appear like he still functioned. Sweat soaked his flight suit and helmet with a horrible smell in it that even offended Edgar. He dropped the helmet to the floor next to the pile of empty water bottles and foil wrappers.

Startled awake by the noise, Dick leaned his head up to look over at Ed. He had it in his eyes begging to have it end. Ed gave him the thumbs up first to break it to him. “Good job, man! See ya bright an’ early!” Leaning down, he picked up all of his trash and started out of the room. Then he paused and looked back. “Oh, need a new helmet, thing reeks! And ya don’t look so good, get some sleep, man!” The door closed behind Ed leaving Dick alone and collapsing to the floor.