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"What... is this?"
He stared, his eyes unmoving as they followed the trickle of ever expanding red beneath the body. He didn't know them, he had no idea what they looked like given the hypersensor visor worn over their face. But he could tell they were human, he could tell they were female. The same hands, the same feet, the same mouth, the same nose. All human features. The breasts that molded against the thin clothes that made up the IS pilot suits bulged to declare the cadaver's sex. But that was all meaningless. It was dead. It was no longer a human. He stared and it took moments, eternities to process.
Who? What? When? Why? Where?
It was as if the corpse had just fallen from the sky. It was unknown to him what the identity of the cadaver had been prior to hitting the earth before him. It was dead, no longer human. Just a lump of flesh. A macro mass of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen compounds along with other trace elements. It all felt like a big joke. Even though he had seen violence, even though he had come face to face with death so many times that he lost count of him telling himself, "Oh, I'm going to die." while in the midst of being beaten. This was the first time he had seen someone dead.
Even Laura's onslaught against Cecilia and Rin were nothing. That had been merely an act of bullying. One that could have gone too far if not curbed. The victims had suffered broken bones, bruises, cuts and shattered pride. But they were not dead. The aim was not to kill but to send a message. This conflict before him wasn't about a message. It was merely elimination. His mouth dried as his own thoughts coalesced into this one realization.
This is death.
No words were spoken, no taunts, no declarations. Merely the necessary actions required to put your opponent down and make sure they would never get up again. It was a brutality that exceeded even that of the supersoldier he knew. For the first time in his life, Ichika admitted to himself that he was just a highschool boy. Not as a rational being, but an honest and primordial confession. He was powerless. The sheer stench of blood, smoke, and ozone overcoming him in a wave of weakness. This was the battlefield, there was no place for someone like him.
"Go home."
He had been told. Run, run away. This place is not for you to enter. He had an IS, and the enemy had an IS as well. He was the Japanese representative. The best that the country had to offer in the art of piloting. At least that was what he was supposed to be. But here he was, on his butt, watching as women flew overhead slaughtering each other. Shields and absolute defense that boasted perfect safety be damned. Once the machine turned off they would either be caught by the hard earth's embrace, the lance of another beam, or riddled full of holes before either could be achieved. It wasn't human.
Whatever fairytales were woven to create this picture of perfection about IS, how they would enforce a new perfect society was utter bullshit. The cold war was a hoax and everyone who had their fingers hovering over the buttons that triggered sirens of war were actually pressing the silent horn all along. He could see that now. He knew better. But he didn't want to accept it.
"I'm just a highschool boy."
But even as he refutes the reality, before him people are dying. Flames fall from the sky. Corpses continue saturate the very space around him with their rotting bulk. Broken, burned, atomized, All of them were upon him. And before him was still his sister with her back turned to him. The rigidness and cold steel in her posture told him she'd seen this before. This hell in front of him was her everyday. Why was he so sheltered and her so immersed?
"You don't belong here. GO!"
Yes, he was an ordinary highschool boy. there was no place for him here on this battlefield. This place where death could seep into your lungs and imbibe you with the sanity wrecking stench the pervaded the senses. There was no place for someone who knew only the troubles of living when everyone faced the trouble to stay alive. This was not a place where people settled their differences by talking and by beating their beliefs into each other. It was just either kill or be killed.
But in this place that was known as hell. In this place where it was kill or be killed. In this place where no ordinary highschool boy should be. He stood up, and raised his blade. Crossing his sister who would act as his protector.
"This isn't your place. Go back to your world."
"Not without everyone."
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