File 8.11 - Myriad Realities

After leaving the command room, Shizuka stewed on what she saw. Her mind tried to reconcile what she saw with her feelings. Hours disappeared as she fell into thought. Eventually, she started to wander the building for a while until suddenly running into Edgar. She started to move past him, when he stopped her. “Heya, ya ‘lright?” He poked his head looking up at her face trying to figure her out.

Shizuka took a step back and then leaned up against the wall. For a moment she pondered if she wanted to say anything to him. It tossed back and forth in her mind. She started walking away looking towards him, still hesitating.

The weirdness coming from Su made him follow her. She didn’t seem to be ignoring him or threatening him, as he thought she might. There appeared some willingness, he just needed to keep pressing. “Some’fin on yer mind?”

Down the hall, she came to a stop at the railing overlooking the hangar where the transports launched. Crews below them hurried about to receive the inbound Skadi and Njord ships. Cars already lined up on the tracks to pull the AESIRs back into the hangars for maintenance once they arrived.

Seeing everyone move about focused left her thinking. She rolled back leaning her back into the rails with her arms supporting her. “Do you think we’re at war?”

“Eh? War?” Ed thought about it for a moment, not really sure where she was going with it. It seemed pretty broad. He doubted there was a wrong answer right now. “I think it’s too small fer this tah be one.”

“Too small? So there is a minimum scale needed for it to be called a war, you think?”

“I guess? Ain’t thought too hard ‘bout it.”

“True, I haven’t either. But what do we call this that we’re doing right now?”

“Ya mean Airhead and Tool?”

Shizuka paused for a moment at his nicknames for them. Then agreed with him. “Yes, Aerona and Ansgar. They’re sent out to kill terrorists, what sort of mission do you call that?”

‘Now I’m confused…’ Ed leaned up against the railing next to Su. He hoped for something more from her to explain what sort of answer she wanted. She knew what they were doing as well as him. Which meant that she looked for something different than the obvious answer. He just didn’t know what she was searching around for between the words.

As he thought to himself, the transports for the Skadi and Njord arrived. Warning sirens blared through the hangar at their arrival. Work teams rushed around as the transports slowly entered into their docks for unloading.

Once they came to a complete stop the bay doors on the transports opened. Cars moved around linking with the AESIR car to pull them out. Out of the side of the ship, the pilots stepped out to roaring applause. Everyone on Base already knew of the success. Though Ragarnok wasn’t dead fully like Ed would have liked, one more was killed in the battle and they suffered heavy damage. Everyone treated it like a victory. He wasn’t the only one in the Base with a loss. It was a sign for everyone of a positive direction towards finally ending the terror of Ragnarok. Though part of him was glad it turned out that way, he had yet to avenge them and sitting and doing nothing didn’t sit well with him.

Then Shizuka spoke up, breaking their silence. “I saw it in the Command Room. They’re just like this.”

“Whatcha mean?”

“Cheering and handing out praise.”

“That bad? They kill’d a terrorist. Been nothin’ but trouble tah e’ryone.”

She rested her head on the railing looking closely at the two being surrounded by work crews. “Yes, but they’re still killing people.”

“They deserve it! None of those Ragnarok bastards should be alive!”

“And we just have the right to kill them?”

“They’ll kill more if we dun stop ‘em!”

“You’re saying we’ve got the right to judge them? Just kill them?”

“Yes!” he yelled, interrupting even those below them. Attention turned to them, as people tried to figure out what happened. All of the eyes on him made him pull away from the railing. ‘How can she not understand? They nearly kill’d ‘er. Doesn’t she feel a bit of hate against ‘em?!’ The more he stared at Su the more it confused him. He couldn’t find the same emotions that boiled inside him like he expected. She didn’t seethe with rage. Different things focused and refined them. He wasn’t going to find the same thing from her.

Edgar left Shizuka in silence with nothing more for her to go on. She stared at him as he walked away with any hope of an outside opinion. Below the crews started to get back to work as the celebration ended with Ansgar sneaking away.

She stared at the two machines being pulled out of the transports. Crews jumped onto the Skadi examining the damage from the fight. Nothing from her view could be made out, but she still stared. ‘Edgar wants to kill them all. Does he also cheer for when they die?’ It wasn’t as though she didn’t understand the anger people felt towards Ragnarok. That much she understood easily. She just didn’t know why they looked so happy and felt thrilled by it. Someone was dead. They killed someone. ‘Why would you feel happy about killing someone? Especially someone you don’t even know. They didn’t even see the face. It’s probably not even the same person that they blame for whatever act of terrorism caused.’

Looking back at her exchange with Edgar, she realized some missteps. ‘He probably thought that I felt they shouldn’t die. Though I don’t know myself. They should be punished. It just feels strange being happy about it. I don’t get it…’

Down in the hall beneath her, Ansgar kept a steady pace to get him out of the area of all the cheering. He pulled up the news feed to see what they were reporting. “HOPE halts Ragnarok terror wave…” he read from the headline. Scrolling through the text and videos pop outs, he put together a quick image of the scene. ‘They don’t have anything about the AESIR. Even the video of the battle doesn’t even show us. The only part of the battle shown was the one machine that Air destroyed. This is some very heavy information control. I guess being a secret project they’re not willing to reveal us to the world yet, but sending us out will only mean being discovered eventually.’

However, the news still painted an image of terrorist attacks and innocents dying. They showed several buildings destroyed in the attack and people without homes now. Yet, he knew they were all being careful in the fight not to actually risk any of Torton. Even the enemy didn’t do that. ‘So what’s going on here? Why are they inflating the actual attack? What’s the point of this?’ Ansgar closed the feed and leaned up against the wall.

Things only continued to be more confusing for him the longer that he thought about it. As a soldier following orders, he knew that he should not be questioning what his superiors did. But things just did not sit right with him. There was a point to all of it and he couldn’t understand it. Something bigger was happening that he couldn’t see. ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I will find out the truth…’