It's Always So

5

It had been a while since Lance had seen the colour green.

Not the green of a dry weed in the desert, but the green of a full and blooming tree; the green of a well-kept front yard where producers would film their opening scenes, with families happily laughing.

He used to see it all the time, but after he was required to go over the sea to get to the quarantined areas, everything was neutral and muted. Most of the land was dried down by the toxic air, colours died off if they ever even appeared, and the only sound other than the whistling wind was the marching of boots or the sounds of massacre.

Lance supposed that maybe, he was like the colour green. He used to be so different, thought about everything so positively, but he let the land poison him like it had poisoned all the crops.

He remembered the first time he handled a gun. He had just failed his attempt at joining the I.S.G—wasn't smart enough, apparently—and he was sent to be apart of a different group. The "A.S", or the Annihilation Squad. Supposedly, it was the one group he needed to avoid (according to his mother and her wild rumours) but he had landed a spot right on his first day.

And the general, who he soon learned was Aslan, asked him how much of a white-picket-fenced boy he'd have to be to not know how to hold a gun.

On that same day, he learned about what the A.S did, about the hundreds of people they killed weekly; how they did it, why they did it...

He learned how to hold a gun, but he fumbled often, and his body gave random jerks, and overall, he moved too much.

He could never hit anything on target.

He thought he'd be kicked out—and with some relief, too, after hearing about what he'd have to do.

But Aslan only gave Lance one look at the end of his first day, and he had said to him and to the rest of the group: "He'll work for us not today, but tomorrow, during his first mission."

Aslan was right.

(When was he wrong?)

At the sight of his supposed allies, killing innocent people without batting an eyelid, Lance was still. He was mortified, by the screams and the fact that his to-be general had heartlessly killed so many.

When Aslan, the same man who had just murdered countless people, grabbed his gun and forcefully pointed it at a crawling and crying figure, saying: "Aim, and pull the trigger," Lance did.

No fumbling, no random jerks.

He was spot-on.

He would eventually become their best shooter.