act28side

Didn't want to. What about you? Why didn't <i>you</i> go back?

I'm a mercenary. Laterano has no place for me. So why didn't you want to go?

Hah...

Ain't nothing so unpleasant it can't be forgotten in Laterano.

But most of the POWs died in that camp. Hardly anyone still remembers. But someone's gotta.

Yet here you are, living the kind of peaceful life you say you reject. Day after day, year after year.

But I ain't never forgot. I still remember them, to this day.

I've always known there would come a day when you came settle the score.

I just never thought it would take so long.

We've surrounded the target. Repeat, we've surrounded the target.

Drop your weapon, Miss Brynley... weapons. This is the end of the road.

Look around you. There's nowhere to run. This charade is over. The snowstorm is only going to get stronger... Dammit, I was supposed to get off work early today, and catch up on my beauty sleep.

...I do want to apologize to everybody again, but after everything I've said today... it would probably come across as disingenuous.

Don't worry, you'll be fine. The company's making a huge ruckus out of this, but everyone here knows that nothing's going to happen to you.

I heard about you not long after I joined the company, Miss Brynley. Everyone warned me not to get on your bad side, because your family has more lawyers than we've got mercs here today.

...Probably even more than you're thinking.

See? You even realize it yourself. Worst case, you'll get maybe a year or two of jail time. Then you'll be released, and get to live the kinda life you want to again.

Could you put down the amplifier? It's unnecessary at this distance.

What, after I brought it all this way?

I'm begging you. Shut up.

Sure, if you've got a better idea for how to persuade her.

It's fine, Liskarm. You don't need to defend me. I know how everyone sees me.

Right. It seems like ever since I was a kid, I've never thought about the consequences before I did anything. Because no matter what, my family would take care of the mess. That's probably why I come off as selfish.

But that's not how it's supposed to go. There's always a price. And when you make a hasty, rash decision, you have to bear the consequences.

Jessica... You said you'd thought this all through when you asked to leave the team.

No. I'm not talking about tonight. I'm talking about when I arrived at Fort Barron seven years ago. When I first walked through those huge doors.

At first, I only wanted to be a tester at the Equipment and Applied Technology Department. I never imagined that one day I'd be standing on a real battlefield, pointing my weapon at a real person.

Right, that's where the root of the problem lies. We often pick up our weapons without considering the price that needs to be paid.

Take this little handgun for example. I can hold it up with just two hands. I can pull the trigger with just one finger. I learned how to use it in less than a month.

What's even more scary is that... I'd need only a second to take somebody's life with it.

But it would take me a lifetime to forget that one second.

See? That's how foolish I was. Before I picked it up, I never even considered who I would point it at in the future.

...But I'd already fired my first shot. Not fully thinking this through would be unforgivable.

Have you thought it through, then?

Because you've been holding your gun up this whole time. Hell, you haven't lowered it for even a second.

How arrogant. When did I ever say I came to settle a score with you?

You think I brought this bullet here for <i>revenge</i>?

Are you telling me you're not stuck in the past?

No. You're the one who's stuck.

You lived to your nineties as a merc. Can you really adjust to any kinda life outside the battlefield?

Woody. The reason I'm still unwilling to leave the battlefield is because war never ends.

Columbia's war ended a long time ago.

It did, but then Bolívar's war began right on its heels. Victoria's war may have calmed down for the moment, but there's no stopping the fallout it's started.

War is always here. It merely takes a break every now and then, before erupting somewhere else.

Then why stay on the battlefield? To be continually baptized by the flames of war?

Because if I can never end war, I have to settle for the next best thing. To hold its on-off switch in my hands.

That's why I started Blacksteel.

But can you really control it?

I've tried plenty of times, and I paid a dear price. But I did it in the end.

Was it worth it?

Even if all I can manage is to put it on pause for a few seconds, that's more than enough time for countless people like you to pick up their brushes again.

Then why can't you put what you're doing here on pause too?

I'm sure a few seconds to breathe would be plenty for folks like me, gasping for air. Sure beats getting pathetically run off to the frontier.

Because Davistown is no battlefield.

I can't put it down, because... this is the only thing I have left that still has power.

All these years, I've thought of myself as something like a blank white symbol...

The wealth, family, and influence it represents... mean nothing. They have no use in the face of the problems I want to solve.

But with this in my hand... at least I accomplished something.

With this in my hand, at least I'm not a completely useless symbol.

Nonsense.

Captain...?

Jessica, it's been five years. In these five years, have you ever once thought about why I picked you as my assistant?

This is Blacksteel we're talking about... There are all kinds of amazing people here. But I still chose <i>you</i>. And not because of that gun you're holding, but because of your tears.

Tears... but tears of weakness can't protect the people behind me.

Tears don't imply weakness. The work we do at B.P.R.S is dirty, tiresome, and dangerous. No one does this kind of work just for the money.

Only someone who's able to empathize with the pain of others can throw herself into a cause for a group of strangers, or a place she barely knows.

Captain... Just when I thought I was completely useless, you brought me into your team.

That was the first time in my life I ever felt appreciated, and I still remember that feeling.

To repay your trust, I would willingly brave hell and high water.

But you shouldn't... You shouldn't walk that path. No one's journey should be to earn someone's else's recognition.

Do whatever it is that you yourself really want to do. Do what truly makes you happy. You don't need anybody's recognition except your own, deep in your heart.

Captain... I... I really want to cry right now...

Then cry. Let your tears flow. No need to hold back.

Woody, your halo is flashing.

You're goddamn right it is. I want to kill you.

You keep saying that war never ends, that all you can do is control it.

But you're wrong. War <i>can</i> be ended. Just not by you.

War is ended by countless ordinary folks. Folks who've been encroached on by it, but like weeds try their hardest to survive.

Everywhere that's ever burned down in the flames of war has always been fixed up by untold numbers of normal folks, trying their best to get back the lives they used to live. Even in the most dire of circumstances.

You should've died on the battlefield. Would've been a much better fate than becoming the war-obsessed madman you are now.

At first, I just wanted to return the bullet to you. But now, I really wanna kill you.

A strong gale lifts up the old man's hat and tosses it into the air.

But he neither looks up nor moves to grab it.

His eyes, not blinking for even a moment, are fixed on the man standing opposite him. All his muscles, from his cheek to his neck, are as tense as can be.

And above his head, his halo is flashing rapidly.

The man opposite him keeps silent for a time, then gradually takes a deep breath. As though it is only through the sound of the roaring winds that he can understand the old man's words.

Well then. Do you know who it is you're going to kill?

Your nemesis? Your friend who betrayed you? Or a complete madman?

None of the above. It's an arrogant dick who looks down on everything.

In his eyes, everything can be weighed on scales. And to achieve his goals, he's capable of sacrificing anything.

...What about you, then? What kind of man will shoot me with that bullet?

An ordinary man.

A ordinary man who lost everything except his anger when you looked down on him.

Very good.

What's so funny?

That finger of yours always yearned to hold a brush, but in the end, you'll use it to pull the trigger. My hands yearned to hold scriptures, but in the end, they'll be drenched in blood.

It's just funny how fate makes fools of us all.

The wind lifts Cliff's coat, revealing both the firearm on his waist and the hand reaching for it.

Through the flurry of snow, he sees Woodrow doing the same.

He suddenly remembers how, all those years ago in Laterano, on the way back to the dorm, a gust of wind blew Woodrow's hat away and carried it into the sky. And for a very long time, it stayed up there.