“Grrrgh…” I groaned, slowly rising from my stupor… “Chief… Chief? Moto?”

  No answer – GAH! Fuck… We must’ve hit the barrier at over a hundred kilometers per hour… My neck was on fire…

  “Chief?!” I scrambled to the driver’s seat from my place in the back…

  No…

  No, he was… Wh-where’s the rest of his face?!

  He’s… No… Clyde…

  “Any stations copy?!” I heard shouting from my radio, “Corsac Unit! Anyone?!”

  “Corsac Two?” I muttered, “Mmgh… This is Corsac One…” I guess it’s Corsac Actual now… LT was still back at the hotel, well, some of him…

  “One?! Fuck– Wh-where are you? I’m driving down the highway and–”

  “Three is gone…” I interrupted, “I-I’m, uh… Rally Point Zulu… Second unit went ahead. No word on Corsac Six…” Where are you, Moto…

  I looked behind me to see the door partially open – ah…

  “There you are,” I said to her, propping the door op– oh Jesus…

  “Moto?!” I scrambled out of the car, desperately trying to resuscitate her… Looks like a spinal injury… She isn’t breathing…

  Fuck me, our medical kit is with Ayuzawa in the truck… God dammit…

  Okay… okay… wait, is that Scars?! Oh, thank God…

  The pickup truck pulled up to the crash site, Scars immediately disembarking with her anti-materiel rifle. “Holy shit,” she muttered out-loud, “Check her, Sarge…”

  “I-I… uh…” I stammered… W-what do I do… How do I…

  “Sarge!! Check her!”

  “R-right…” I reached over to her neck – oh God… as soon as I touched it, just a hideous crack… “Looks… uh… looks like a broken neck… Cyberware did most of the work to get her out, but…”

  “Fuck…” Scars hissed, “Look, we got a shit-ton of ‘em about two minutes behind us. Grab whatever you can and get the fuck in here!”

  Moto… I remember when she first joined up. Starry-eyed netrunner with an absolute knack for counter-intrusion. I never really asked her why she signed on with Arasaka, but it was probably no different a story than so many others. The latest and greatest tech, promises of grandeur, honing one’s skills… She didn’t deserve this. She was never meant to be here, fighting on the front lines. Hell, she never even fired a gun before basic training, and I doubt she fired one since…

  “Dammit Tokai, get the shit NOW!” Scars screamed again.

  “Y-yeah…” I finally obeyed, taking her cyberdeck and an extra handgun magazine, “Alright, I’m coming…”

  “So are they, now GET IN!” she yelled, firing off a shot from her 20mm cannon, the blast more closely resembling a frag grenade going off. “Fuck it, that’s three rounds left…”

  “Make it count…” I sneered, “For Moto and Chief.”

  “And ONE for Moto…” Scars fired another round, striking an AV right in the front-left engine, destabilizing it, “And ONE for Chief…” Another round through the engine block of a following Thorton, ripping the front end apart. “Alright, get the fuck inside, go!”

  I climbed into the passenger seat, the lights still shining directly on Moto…

  The poor girl… Clyde, too… He was one of the only other Native Americans I met, aside from Scars… Wonderful guy. He never once yelled or even got mad. He was just a lovely man to be around. Had a pair of twin daughters and a beautiful wife… One of the last Nevada Indie fighters. She’s gone, too… Now it’s just his children. He told me he couldn’t even be there to see them walk. He cried over it… Fuck…

  “Are you injured?!” Scars shouted to me, climbing into the driver’s seat and mashing the throttle, “Are you shot!”

  “N-no…” I muttered, my brain still not fully registering… “W-whiplash, uh… Feels like some broken ribs…”

  “Fuck me, what is wrong with you, woman?! Get your fucking head in the game– FUCK!” A machine gunner opened up on the truck, spraying fire all around us. Neither of us dared look back at the anarchy unfolding on that street… Yet the glow of the fires burning up the city remained alight in the rearview mirrors just fine.

  “Where to?” Scars demanded, “You’re the new commander! Where to?!”

  No… No.

  They deserved better.

  They all did. “Fuck it,” I finally answered, “Ayuzawa’s going to the airport, so we stick to the plan. Take the protein farms route, through the wall.”

  “Same as the truck, too?” she asked me, “You’re the boss.”

  “I got no locator ping on the truck anymore. We should go see about it.”

  “And drive into an ambush?”

  “As opposed to what?” I questioned her, “It’s the most direct route and you know it. We can’t risk getting caught out in the open, at least we have some cover in the greenhouses.”

  “Fine…” she finally relented, “Let’s do it.”

  We burst through the rubble left behind by the truck, apparently using its mass to simply punch a hole clean through the wall. Smart. Hopefully it’ll be up ahead somewhere… “How long was I out?” I asked Scars.

  “About two minutes, least that’s how long it went dark.”

  “What about Okada?”

  Scars simply looked over at me with this somber expression. I guess there’s a reason why the seat is free… “…No word on Yankee Doyle or Carney.”

  “Same here,” I mulled… More MIA… At least they had another car. Hopefully they’ll be at the airport, we’ll see…

  The Night City protein farms are absolutely not the biggest out there. Nor are they the most distinctive – it’s a terrible tactical location. What will someone say to coordinate with a squad, “Go into the greenhouse?” Yeah, which one? Better yet, which greenhouse will the enemy pop out of?

  And then there’s the airport… the fucking airport… It’s the only place we have left, really. Or, at least, the only place we have anything stored away. I think this’ll be our third or fourth time using it as an FOB, though I can’t say I missed it. The place was a fucking mess. But it was better than nothing, and it provided shelter from the sandstorms and a good lookout position. “How much ammunition you have left?” Scars asked me.

  “Ran out of 5.56, got two handgun mags. What’s in the back?”

  “Last of the RPGs, some rifles. Got about two magazines’ worth of 5.56 left, 15 rounds of 7.62, and one shot of the 20mm.”

  Fuck me… We’re not holding off a battalion with that. Hell, we could barely take a couple of squads with that. At least the corridor here only provides one point of entry. Sadly it also means we’re easily-targeted, but air cover won’t be a problem. All the drones flying around work well to disrupt the targeting systems. If only we could stay here, we’d be fine… But Biotechnica drones would wipe us out in two seconds if we tried.

  Wait… is that the truck?

  No… No, something’s wrong…

  “Why’s the truck facing the other way?” Scars immediately asked.

  “No idea…” I muttered, “Let’s pull up to– Wait, stop!!”

  She slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting one of the poor souls… Looks like… four of them are laying down… “Christ…” I muttered, getting out of the passenger seat and rushing over to check on them. “Hold them off!”

  “Sarge, what the fuck?!” Scars blurted out again, “They’re dead!”

  “We don’t know that!” I sneered back at her, bending over to observe their wounds… Looks like… No, no bullet holes… Broken bones, scorch marks, bleeding from every orifice… “IED blast…”

  “Shit…” Scars grumbled, retrieving the anti-materiel rifle from the cabin and climbing out to meet me, “What do we have?”

  “Looks like they were heading back… Picking us up, probably… Someone must’ve followed them. Set up a device, blew the bottom out…”

  “Fucking hell…” she said gruffly, cradling the weapon and looking back for any enemies, “See any other devices?”

  “No… Doesn’t look like it,” I replied, scanning the walls beyond the accident, “They were in a hurry…” Hm, another AR magazine… Looks half-full. I’ll take it…

  “Yeah, so are we!” Scars shouted, raising the rifle up, “Come on… Breathe…”

  “Why, what’s– FUCK!” The gunshot roared through the fields, the round striking home on an AV overflying our position.

  “Fuck you…” she mumbled, “Fuck your fucking AVs…”

  “Good shot,” I complimented her, “Time for our ground game.”

  “Thought you’d never say so,” she grinned, collecting her sniper rifle from the trunk, “Get the Big Nasty.”

  “You sure? We only have one shot left.”

  “And we won’t get another chance to use it,” she insisted, “Get the fucking launcher.”

  I heard gunshots go off behind me as Scars engaged the infantry one by one, with not a single return shot going anywhere near us. Seems like she’s been working hard on her marksmanship.

  Alright, come on, you big lump of shit… Fucking thing belongs in a museum. That and half our gear. But that’s what you get when you’re desperate for anything that’ll put lead downrange. You scrounge the bottom of the barrel, dredging up whatever the Soviets find in their good graces to give you. At least shaped-charge warheads aren’t exactly archaic. Let’s just hope this one isn’t a dud.

  “Ready,” I told Scars, kneeling down and taking a firing position.

  “Target… APC coming up the corridor. It’s black on the dark background, headlight on the right-hand side,” she said calmly, “You see it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Aim two mils right, one up.”

  “Two right…” I muttered, adjusting my aim to her instructions. I trusted her implicitly, no question, “On target.”

  “Steady on… Fire at will.”

  The backblast from the RPG rocked the pickup truck as the warhead surged out the front, sailing through the air with a deep, menacing growl. A massive fireball engulfed the charging APC less than a second later, blasting straight into the cabin and detonating the ammunition magazines it housed. The truck instantly erupted in a violent explosion, sending a shockwave across the desert and popping my ears. It nearly blasted me off my feet, kicking up sand and dust all around us.

  “Good shit… Let’s get the fuck outta here,” Sarge grinned, tossing her rifle in the back.

  “Taking the tube with us,” I told her, following suit with the expended RPG, “Don’t want them to know we’re out.”

  “Heh, smart,” she smiled as we both climbed back in the truck and shot off into the distance, “You know they’ll come after us, anyway.”

  “I dunno… Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Why would they have to?” I shot back, “Look at where we’re going. You gonna come after a single recon unit? Or are you gonna consolidate on the beachhead?”

  “True… Just… you know how they operate,” she replied morbidly, “How many times’s it been… Go here, do some recon work, get blitzed in the night, go back here, do some more, get overwhelmed, go here…”

  “And we’ll keep doing it until we’re dead,” I grumbled right back, “That’s the mission.”

  “Man, why the fuck are they doing this shit…” her voice was tinged with anger as she smacked her hand on the steering wheel, “Fucking Militech… It’s been their MO since the beginning. Overwhelm the enemy with blitz tactics, push them back, rinse and repeat. And we never learn.”

  “Or we just don’t have the firepower,” I corrected her, “Every single time we’ve been outgunned, every single time.”

  “Oh? Is that supposed to make me feel better or something?!”

  “No, it’s supposed to put it in perspective. We have better, more motivated soldiers and superior positions. If it wasn’t for them stomping us with firepower, we’d easily have the advantage.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Hah, what, they teach you that in samurai school or whatever?” she sharply retorted, “In case you haven’t noticed, this shit’s not some honorable duel or Sun Tzu bullshit. It’s bloody, gruesome death on an industrial scale.”

  “I noticed,” I nodded, “But they always moved towards Night City, not away from it, we know that, at least. So hopefully we’ll be safe in the desert, at least for a little while.”

  “And then what? You wanna try for the dam again?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged, “If Militech holds Santo Domingo, holding the dam puts them in a stranglehold.”

  “You really want to flood half the city over this?”

  “Not particularly. Do you?”

  “Bah!” Scars chuckled, “Is that even a question? Bury the fucks, I say.”

  “Atta girl,” I winked at her, “Let’s get out of here.”

  We climbed back in the truck and took off to the airport, leaving the city in our rearview mirror – I’m not sure if I’ll ever see it again… And I don’t know how I really feel about that. I haven’t told any of the guys this – well, I guess I won’t ever get that chance now. I never told them about my hesitation, my fear. Everyone in the group always saw me as a bit of a shoulder to lean on, someone to go to for help. And I couldn’t help them.

  I couldn’t help them…

  Half our group got wiped out in a single, devastating attack. Half. How could I… How does anyone expect me to deal with this?! It reminds me of stories of my forefathers during the Second World War, how we used to toss lives away like they were nothing more than bags of flesh. My great-grandfather wrote stories of those times… People would dive into the water to escape the great firebombings. Their bodies piled up enough that you could walk across whole rivers on the backs of the dead, resting on one another so densely that it was no different to walking on stone.

  I imagine that the kids they sent to war back then had this grand illusion that battle was something honorable and chivalrous, that we were defending our homeland and our traditions from the evils of Western imperialism. It’s been that way since the Meiji Restoration, this deeply-held belief that our integrity is inexorably tied to our capacity of self-sacrifice in the name of the Emperor.

  Part of me wants to call all of that out for being a bunch of garbage spat out by the previous generation to make us go to war for them. Part of me wants to say I’m better than that. But, evidently, I’m not. I’m here. Doing exactly what they want.

  –

  “Alright, let’s see…” I said through a soured mouth, “We have, what, a magazine’s worth of ammunition left. Ayuzawa?”

  “Good on food – well, as long as you like beans.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, found a shipping container full of ‘em. Get used to beans.” Well that’s just great…

  “Doyle?” I called out to the woman leaning on the corner of the container in question.

  “We have water through one of the old sewage lines,” she reported, “Looks like a pipe going out into a spring, runoff from the dam. Working on a siphon now.”

  “Alright, then that’s food and water sorted… Any reports of movement, Scars?”

  “No, ma’am,” she called out over the radio, still sitting up on her perch. I swear, she’s been up there for, what, two days now? I can’t believe she’s not come down yet. “Saw some weapons shipments come in, got shot down almost immediately. I estimate Militech’s got around two or three AA batteries stationed around Serenisands.”

  “So we’re cut off… mmh…” I grumbled, “We don’t have the firepower for the dam hit just yet, either.”

  “Then what’s the plan, Sarge?” she said with a bit of strain – I guess she was coming down after all…

  “This isn’t something we’re equipped to deal with. We’ve got at least two divisions’ worth stationed on our south, the dam on our east, and the Serenisands group hold a superior position to our north. We can’t escape…” I thought briefly about what to say next, “…But we don’t have to.”

  “Oh? How do you mean?” Ayuzawa asked, “We lost half our troop. Respectfully, what the fuck are you talking about?!”

  “Militech holds a superior tactical position to the north, but committing to an attack to the south to consolidate the forces will only escalate it further. They have a foothold in the city – giving that up would only return it to Arasaka, then they’ll be forced to hammer the anvil to get back in.” I glanced down and noticed all the blood on my arms… Fuck…

  “So wouldn’t they just press from the south, try and bring more troops up to the Wall?” chimed in Yamada, a new kid – well, another new kid. Poor girl was transferred to our unit just before the attack hit. Intel here was terrifically bad. She was originally partnered up with this guy named Shiro, supposedly some sort of counterintel hotshot. Or, well, the guy was until the truck exploded and everyone along with it. Fucking hell…

  “No, they couldn’t afford that, either,” I explained to her, “We still have automated defensive grids along the border crossing. They could try to overfly our position, but we have batteries in the desert, the same as them. They’ve made two islands, and we’re the water between.”

  “Do we have batteries, though?” Ayuzawa asked me skeptically.

  I simply shrugged. “Heck if I know. But I’m betting they’re not ready to commit to finding out. They already did the surprise air attack. You don’t do the same gag twice, you move on to the next gag.”

  ‘’What’re you thinking that’ll be?” Scars asked, walking back in through the broken hangar doors, “Hm? Anyone?”

  I really didn’t have time for her fucking attitude… It's been such a hard day for us all. But I don’t think I had the emotional stamina to tell her off. “Well… What would we do if we wanted to move materials around without being noticed by the enemy?”

  “We can’t go air,” Yamada thought out-loud, “Underground…?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, too,” I nodded to her, “First thing’s first. Take a couple others with you, see what you can find to our north. There’s plenty of rocky outcrops – I’m willing to bet that at least one of them leads outside the Wall. They’d want to do recon of their own but they’d also need to stay mobile, so expect maybe a couple of squads’ worth of resistance.”

  “And if that’s what we find?” she said with a furrowed brow.

  “Then you either hide or run like the wind,” I replied with a frown, “We can’t exactly commit ammunition for this. Unless you can bring back weapons, don’t bother engaging the enemy. You’ll just get killed.”

  “Some fucking speech…” Scars interjected, “You sure know how to inspire, don’t you?”

  “Oh, and what am I supposed to say?!” I shot back at her, “Look around, we got less than a dozen left. What, you want to take on everyone at once with just a single magazine between us?!”

  “Hell, why not?” she barked, “Get ‘em in a confined space, take ‘em all out, take their guns and ammunition, run for the hills, rinse and repeat…”

  Hm… Actually that’s not a bad idea. “So… Wait, just leave and never look back?”

  “Well what the fuck, why would we stay here? Just wait to get bombed, or?”

  “Mmh…” I muttered, “At the same time, we can’t just drive out. We barely made it here to begin with. We have food and water. If we’re going to leave, we need a place we can commit a solid attack.”

  “Then what’s the plan?” Ayuzawa asked worriedly.

  “Well… We’re a recon unit, right? So let’s recon something,” I grinned, “Yamada, we stick to the plan for now. All we need is a speculative probe from an enemy squad into the caves to the north by the dam. We find that, we’ll commit, rush to the caves, break out to the east. Head down to the southern grids behind the Wall.”

  “Pincer ‘em the same way they pincered us?” asked Yamada.

  “They’re likely using Yucca as a staging ground,” I explained, “It has a radio tower on the outskirts. If we disable that, we can cut off comms to Serenisands, run harassment attacks from Point San Luis. From there, it’s a straight shot down into the LA Metroplex.”

  “Mm, go deeper behind enemy lines to escape the lines?” Scars raised an eyebrow, “Interesting.”

  “It’s an idea,” I shrugged, “They’ll expect us to head up to the dam, try and get back to the city somehow. We have to deviate, otherwise Militech would just gun us down from the protein farms.”

  “Mrgh…” Scars grumbled dismissively, “I guess it’s better than nothing.”

  “Right, Yamada, prep them,” I directed her, “You’re now callsign Corsac Ten.”

  “Oh? Really?” she exclaimed a little.

  “Consider this your baptism of fire,” I said without breaking my blank stare down at the table, “Now go. Don’t forget a radio.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  –

  June… At least I’m pretty sure it’s June. I have no fucking idea anymore, who cares.

  Still no word on Yamada’s third expedition. It’s been her third. We’ve all had at least three turns at this point… I wonder how much longer we’ll even last. If we can even last… What does it really matter, though? We’re down to only a few rounds of ammunition. All we’ve eaten for the past two weeks has been beans. If I disliked beans before, I despise them now.

  Five of us remain… I guess we have at least one bullet each, if it comes to that. I hope it doesn’t. The summer is nearly upon us – another day, another heat wave. We’re fooling ourselves into thinking this is just another stop in our campaign, that we’ve all been through worse. That may be true for some of us, Scars especially. But as a unit? I doubt that we’ll survive this war, certainly not with our sanity intact. I only hope the war ends before we’re praying for those bullets.

  We found ourselves this watering hole about five or six months ago, just some runoff from the city that leads into this little canyon. We set up a small filtration unit – thanks for the knowledge, Dad – got everything up and running relatively simply.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?” Scars asked me, coming over and peering over my shoulder while I waited for the water to fill up.

  “Mm, just jotting down some notes in a journal,” I said with a frown, “Might be the last shred of evidence to prove we mattered, I guess.”

  “P-eh… As if any of this matters,” she rolled her eyes and sat down next to me, “None of this crap will bring my family back. But maybe it’ll give me an excuse to meet them again.”

  “Tell me about them,” I said with a definitiveness which surprised me, “Your family.”

  I seemed to have caught her off-guard… She stammered a bit and took a long pause. “The last time I saw my mother, she had bought me this braindance, not realizing that I didn’t have anything to watch it on… I remember her beaming smile and thought to myself, ‘Fuck, now I gotta accept this gift.’ So I did, not telling her it was worthless to me. I went to go throw it in the garbage down the street, then, well…”

  “The firebombing.”

  Scars’ face glazed over as she stared off into the distance, clearly in her own little world. It took her a few moments to formulate a sentence again. “Very few people know the smell of burning flesh, Val… Fewer still know what your flesh smells like when it’s burning.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”

  “No, you did,” here we go again… “But that’s okay. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “You’re right, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I sighed.

  “D-do you get it?” she lashed out again, “Imagine for a second, the feeling of trying to crawl away a few feet, and looking back and realizing that your fucking legs stayed in the same goddamn place… The doctor carving you up like a fucking stray dog, tossing organs in the pile while shouting that these are useless… And look, I know it’s a lot to handle. Just don’t patronize me.”

  “I’m not trying to patronize anyone–” Fuck, a call… “Shit, hang on.”

  “What is it?”

  “The emergency broadcast channel…” No, this better not be the attack… We’re completely unprepared. It’ll be an absolute slaughter. “This is Corsac Actual, responding to your hail.” Scars got back up beside me to listen into the radio call.

  It’s automated… What the fuck?! “This is Admiral Ozuru calling all command channels. The New United States and Free State forces have entered into peace negotiations of a ceasefire. All units must stand down until further notice to avoid disturbing the temporary truce. Thank you for your sacrifice, long live the Emperor–”

  I immediately tuned out of the frequency and scrolled down, selecting our battalion commander and hailing him instead. “Schoolyard, this is Corsac Actual, anyone copy?”

  “Corsac Actual, this is Headmaster,” Colonel Okano acknowledged, “Go for traffic.”

  “Sir, I… Did we hear that right?!”

  “That’s affirmative, you are to immediately cease offensive operations,” he said blankly, “Please confirm.”

  “…I confirm,” I said through bared teeth… A ceasefire… a ceasefire?! I looked back to see Scars simply slumped over, her head buried in her hand. I couldn’t blame her one bit. Tuning into my unit was the hardest thing I’d done in a while. “All Corsac units, this is Actual… Command has ordered a ceasefire. Peace talks are underway…”

  The channel erupted into a combination of fury, desperation, and melancholy. I felt like my insides had just been demolished by battery acid… I leaned over the side and vomited right into the pit, barely maintaining my composure…

  “…Fuck…” Scars mumbled under her breath, “…Fuck…”

  I got back onto the command channel, unable to fully parse this. “Sir, with respect, we’ve been stuck behind enemy lines for two months, how could you possibly expect us to cease fire?! What can we–”

  “That’s not my problem, sergeant,” he sharply retorted, “Bring your soldiers in, or remain there. That’s an order.”

  “FUCK!” I shouted with the button clicked off, practically throwing my phone across the bridge. Instead, I just shattered the thing on the ground. Fuck it.

  “Showed some restraint there, I see,” Scars muttered, keeping her head firmly tucked in between her legs.

  “Yeah…” I grumbled, squatting down beside her. I couldn’t say anything more… What could I say… To her? To me?

  I remained fixed there all morning, contemplating the ramifications of this shit. Seeing the fucking monorails go by, probably filled with Militech goons from that stupid fucking invasion…

  And to think that we spent this whole time doing what, just retreating, dying, retreating, then dying some more?! What the fuck kind of a war is that?! And here I am, facing an enemy that effectively handed us a pity-win for all I know. ‘We know you did your best, good job!’ Giving us a fucking gold star or something. Like that makes up for the hundreds of thousands of corpses we were practically tripping over on our way here. We busted our asses for this, and we can’t even get a ride out of this hellhole…

  For the longest time, my group just huddled around and talked about what we would do once it was all over… Now that it’s actually here, I feel nothing… It’s like I’m in shock. I can’t form a single tear. I can’t feel anything. I can’t even make myself feel anything. Part of me just wished I was dead, lying buried next to the rest of the soldiers who fell. And to think that only five of us survived the war. Five. I feel like I should be thankful for being among the living. Instead, all I feel is this deep, profound disillusionment… I can’t help but shake the feeling that this was all some fucking distraction, or some publicity stunt or something… Something that people in Japan saw as, ‘Oh, just that thing going on way over there.’ And we were dying by the thousands for it. For nothing.

  “I… I need a walk,” I told Scars, glancing up to the morning sun and wishing it had never come. The squadmate’s footfalls betrayed her as she came up behind me.

  “Fuck…” she mumbled again.

  “Yeah…” I said quietly, biting my upper lip, “I never really stopped to ask myself what I’d do after it all, you know? Now that it’s right here, I’m just…”

  “Yeah, I get it,” she pondered openly, “It’s not like I have the most transferable skill-set. And we never really had the best opportunities outside of the military, us Natives. Let alone mixed ones.”

  “Or me… What jobs are there for a disowned samurai? I don’t know… Maybe I should just go back to Japan.”

  “Hell, is that so bad? At least you have a home to go back to.”

  “True, I’m sorry,” I frowned, “Alright, what’ll you do?”

  Scars shook her head dismissively. “Fuck knows. Stay in the military, nomad life, maybe become a badge. They’re always lookin’ to recruit vets… What about you, gonna stay in ‘Saka?”

  “Probably,” I conceded, “I mean, I ran away from my home to be here… My life is Arasaka at this point, you know?”

  “Mm…” she muttered, “Tell me about your mother now.”

  “What?” I looked at her incredulously.

  “Your mother,” she replied insistently, “Tell me about her.”

  Great, now she caught me off-guard… “Uh… Why do you ask?”

  “Unless you have a beer and cigarette on you, I could use the distraction.”

  “Mmh…” I groaned, glancing off to the cityscape in the distance. I guess that’s fair enough – I could use the distraction, myself. “My mother… Hm. My mother was… strict,” I thought back with a sigh.

  –

  “And why do you want to go to Arasaka?” My mother asked me.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I shrugged with a grin, “What, you think I’m going to waste all my time in the military? It’s not the same as when you served. Everyone knows the Self-Defense Forces have nothing going for them anymore.”

  Mom simply grunted and remained otherwise silent, peering off in the distance outside the window in the living room. Her gaze spoke more words than she ever needed to say out loud. It was deafening.

  I was so sick of her hypocrisy. Judging me for going with Arasaka… As if she didn’t enjoy the privileges of wealth and influence, too. Maybe I wouldn’t have to join them if she would share those privileges with me every once in a while. Sure, I get food and a roof, but at what cost? Respect? Self-worth? Pride? Ambition?

  All I wanted was to do right by her… Yet nothing seems to get through.

  I tried my absolute best at swordplay. She grunts in acknowledgement, never so much as cracking a smile at me.

  I tried going to Arasaka Academy for a more formal education. She said no and left it at that.

  I tried breaking free from the regimen she had me on. I got accosted for being the child of a privileged home who could never make it on her own.

  I tried joining forces to fight for my country. I thought she’d be proud of me, that I was doing something productive with my life. All we do is argue.

  No… Just no. Enough of this…

  –

  “She sounds like a real hard-ass,” Scars said bluntly, “But it seems like you two were close.”

  “Not as close as I’d like.”

  Scars mulled over my recollections for a little while. “And she’s a samurai, too, no? So she must be a good fighter, herself.”

  “It’s a social class in Japan, has nothing to do with fighting…” I said longingly, “But yes, she is a good fighter.”

  “Hm…” she kicked a bit of dirt up in front of her, “I wonder what she’d think of all this. You going to war and shit.”

  “Hah, she never had a strong opinion of it. In fact I’d never seen her so angry as the day I said I was joining the Arasaka military. And that was coming off the back of years of bickering.”

  “Aw, she does care,” Scars chuckled sarcastically, “How long’s it been since you spoke to her?”

  “About, uhm… seven years, I think,” I replied after a brief pause.

  “Shit…” she mumbled, “Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t sit on that crap. Last thing you want is to leave behind nothing more than arguments and regrets.”

  “Oh, you got it all wrong, I don’t regret it at all,” I corrected her.

  “Bull. I see the tears in your heart. You’ve been beating yourself up over it every day,” she sharply replied, “Did she even give you that sword like you said? Or did you take it for yourself?”

  I shot her a glance that said she was treading on some mighty thin ice.

  “Great, well, you keep being silent and broody over there. I’m gonna go find myself a glass of something strong before I blow my brains out over this pointless fucking war,” she grumbled, walking over to the truck.

  I do wonder what my mother would think of all this. Hell, I wonder if she would even care. For all I know, she’d probably say something like, ‘You reap what you sow’ or whatever. As if I haven’t beaten myself up over this enough. I guess it’s better than Dad, who probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone. Wait, why the hell am I even thinking about this? What I should be thinking about is getting wasted with Jackie. At least until Arasaka calls me back in for the next pointless war they want me in.

  “Hey, you coming?” Scars asked me from beside the driver’s seat, “Or are you gonna catch the next bus or whatever? Cause I’m pretty sure they stopped running services out here. Fuckin’ idiot…”