Found Obsession

Chapter 139: Battle II

Rose saw Raven standing before her, a fleeting smile on his lips before his essence faded into the air. She stepped through him, landing on the tank behind her father.

"Rose, do you really expect me to believe you'll go through with this?" Her father mocked. "I don't think you've ever killed anyone with your own hands."

She leaned in behind him, her voice a whisper against the chaos. "How red should I stain my uniform for you to accomplish your word?"

Her father froze.

His gaze swept across the battlefield, unreadable.

Yes. Rose felt it deep inside—perhaps she had always known, unconsciously, that today would be the day and that is why even after war had been won she had kept the enemy in there and her father suspected much.

"You wouldn't," he said, but for the first time, his voice wavered. For the first time, he sounded afraid.

Her lips curled into a wicked smile.

"Rose?"

Voices called her name—Jonathan, Riley, Teresa, Wyatt, Levi, and Lucas.

Footsteps pounded behind her, but Rose moved first. She leapt into the darkness, dust rising in her wake, her father's sharp tsk barely audible beneath the storm of war.

"There's nothing left for me!" she screamed. "Now watch me become the monster you always wanted me to be."

"Get back here!" he bellowed.

But Rose retreated further into the abyss.

"Are you going to take that away too?" she shouted over her shoulder. "The choice of how I decide to destroy or repair myself?"

The wind thickened, suffocating.

Then she saw her—her seventeen-year-old self standing in her path, eyes pleading.

Give justice one last chance.

But Rose didn't stop. She ran straight toward the enemy.

"There is no justice," she whispered.

Oh, please. Her younger self sighed. You worked through it alone before. You can do it again.

"To fail?" Rose snapped.

"I have nothing." Rose clenched her fists, fury burning through her veins.

She reached the enemy line, slashing through them—cuts on shoulders, arms, legs—watching them fall, unable to rise. Her seventeen-year-old self looked down at her hands. They were fading.

Blood splattered across Rose's uniform. Bullets. Screams. The word monster rang out through the battlefield. Thunder cracked overhead.

Pain flared against her skin—bullets grazing, blades slicing—but anger consumed her, making her faster. She was a ghost, a force of wrath.

The spear, the sword—they became extensions of her fury.

Slash.
Slash.
Slash.

If you don't believe in justice, in goodness, in you, why haven't you killed anyone?

Her younger self, barely clinging to existence, pursued her. If good and evil mean really don't mean anything to you, then why?

Rose fought harder, but no matter how many fell before her, she couldn't kill them.

Men dropped, wounded, unconscious—but alive.

"Monster! Monster!"

She met their terrified gazes, her crimson eyes reflecting in theirs. The screaming only grew louder. She laughed.