𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐨

release. ( 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐥 )

it was a calm day in the streets of new tarragon. people were still celebrating the end of the war on glacis and the glorious victory against the legion. with that, it appeared that things were beginning to go back to normal. however, the same cannot be said to some.

veterans who have lived to see the end of the war feel as if they are trapped in their own personal hell as they struggled to adjust to civilian life. some manage to conquer their own demons and others are consumed by them and lose themselves. the remaining few are still struggling to this day.

while it was a calming day outside, with gentle flakes of snow covering the streets, skye couldn't help but look outside of her apartment window with a feeling of dread. she can't stand the thought of being in snow anymore, not after glacis. she can't stop fidgeting. but her racing thoughts were interrupted as her mother entered the room. she could understand the nervousness of her daughter regarding the snow, but unfortunately she had to ask her to shop for some groceries since her parents would be needed elsewhere. even though skye hated the snow, she accepted to help regardless.

she found herself outside not soon after, dressed in jeans, some boots, a hoodie and a jacket, where she stuffed her hands in its pockets. she didn't want to show show the world that she was jumpy. but what her parents didn't know is that she was going to make a stop at that coffee shop downtown, not far from the apartment.

you've already met her parents when both of you came home from the war after the ranger victory on glacis, though for about five or six weeks she became a ghost, but still kept in touch with them. you've been with skye through thick and thin, but you were also aware of her developing a somewhat erratic behavior after the war, after nathaniel and olivia told you how she's been. but this morning, you woke up with a message from skye, wanting you to meet up at the coffee shop for the first time after coming back home. of course, you couldn't pass up on this opportunity and told her you'd be there right away.

you found the cafe, and it was a pretty cozy one, with warm lighting and soothing music, a combination of trip hop and hazy synthwave/chillwave that makes the listener think about the warmth of a summer day. you could easily tell that this was the kind of place she would frequent, given the fact that you almost never catch her without a cup of coffee nearby when you two are off-duty. In fact, she told you one time that she wanted to own a coffee shop of her own, somewhere uptown, right by the beach, away from the noisy metropolis. that was before she began to struggle with adapting to civilian life.

you sat down at one of the smaller tables in the corner of the building and checked the time. you arrived ten minutes earlier as you couldn't help but check the time every so often. the agreed upon time came around, but there was no sign of skye. five minutes passed, then ten... and then fifteen. a feeling of dread formed in the back of your mind as you tried to figure out what happened to skye. you knew damn well she wouldn't bail out on you at the last minute, so you had to investigate what happened. you hastily grabbed your belongings and speed-walked outside of the cafe, quickly trying to look around, trying to find the cyanette among the dozens of faces that walked by, but to no avail. you checked the surrounding areas, as well as the alleys that were sprawled around it. just as you were about to leave the area and check the next one, you hear a familiar voice shouting, something you hoped not to hear:

"ENEMY CONTACT!!"

that made you burst into a sprint towards the source of the noise and went inside the alleyway. you saw three people in the distance. you found a duo, a man and a woman, who were attempting to mug skye. the man was carrying a pocket knife, and the woman carried a large metal pipe.

the next thing you saw was skye wrestling the pipe out of the woman hands before giving her a headbutt hard enough to break her nose. that caused the female mugger to stumble back. she didn't even get the change to recover from the previous hit before she was struck in the jaw with that same metal pipe by skye, dropping on the ground, unconscious. this made the man quickly react by attempting to lunge at her with the knife. though the fixer caught on the plan and struck his arm pretty badly, forcing him to drop the blade on the ground. she followed that hit by batting the man in the stomach, forcing him to double over in pain before knocking him down with a downward strike in his back. his body was aching, as he couldn't even get up from those hits.

skye dropped the pipe to the side, as audible clangs could be heard once it met the concrete. with that, she got on top of the man before beginning to punch him relentlessly, and it looked like she wasn't stopping one bit. despite pleas from the man for skye to stop, she couldn't hear anything. it was as if her mind was back in that cursed "icebox" of a planet.

"please... stop... sorry... i'm sorry..." was what you could hear from the man. skye's breathing was shaking, but she couldn't stop, her adrenaline levels went through the roof as the only thing she could think about was survival. if she didn't stop, who knows what might happen.

you had to act fast before she could kill him. even though those robbers deserved the beating of their lifetime, you didn't want your friend (or even more?) to be locked away for something out of her control.

not again.

you...?