It's Always So

2

"Another town, one thousand people, has been detected," Aslan spoke, pointing at the map that laid sprawled out on the table. Lance stared at the tip of Aslan's finger, and then to his lips, which continued moving as he explained the plan. "Tomorrow we'll move per usual, and we'll get there around midnight. They'll all be in their homes so we're storming the place."

Aslan had a nice and straight nose, as well as strong but not overly prominent eyebrows, a few shades darker than his blond hair. He looked like a movie's protagonist because of the shade of his eyes, which seemed grey but were revealed to be an icy blue when in good lighting.

Lance felt like the rest of the people in the room were dull, including himself. He just had brown hair, perhaps best described as caramel, and brown eyes to match with it. He was, however, torn away from his inspection of looks when one of his teammates shook her head across from him, a look of uncertainty painting her features. 

God, the rookies always broke during the planning.

"Do we have to do this, general?" she paused, taking in a breath, "Aslan?"

Aslan stopped moving, and Lance could see how his eyes darkened and how the aura in the room changed. The other rookie beside the girl nudged her arm, some sort of sign as if to ask her why she had to ask that now.

"Do you have a problem, Lina?" Aslan asked, and he set his unmoving gaze on the girl, who's hands formed frustrated fists on either side of her body. She was wound up, ready to argue and fight, and that always seemed to be the problem nowadays.

"Why can't we be like the I.S.G?" she began, and Lance saw Aslan's minuscule reaction; eyebrows furrowing. He was definitely angry now. "Why can't we find the people who are the root of this problem, who are ruining these lives—why do we have to clean up the messes in this world when we could be helping it—"

"If not us then who?" Aslan asked, and his words weren't loud, but they were menacing. The girl flinched and she nearly backed up a step, gaze falling somewhere that wasn't Aslan's piercing eyes. "Do you think we have a choice here? Do you think we kill all these millions because we want to? Look at your hands. They'll never be clean again. Don't be a fool, and do your country some good."

"But what if you and your family were the ones who..." she tried, voice dropping in volume, and Lance swore they could hear the drop of a pin in the silence that followed next.

After a while of suffocating silence, Aslan stepped away from the table and started moving, and instead of giving her a swift kick to the gut like he did to the other people that argued, he simply picked up his coat.

"Well, I'm not. I'm lucky," he slipped on his coat and turned to look at them all, catching Lance's gaze for the longest, "We all are, and you should never forget that."