Spring Upon the Solstice

Prologue

"I said, get the hell up, One."

A woman's voice crackles through the girl's earpiece, sharp like a thorn and delicate as a spider. Under any other condition, it would be sweet like sugar, if not twice as saccharine. It would be smooth as silk, fabricating in the girl the strangest emotions. It would grant her the anger—the impulsiveness—the bold taste of indomitable victory, trapped between wild fantasy and saturated reality alike. It would be captivatingly mysterious, and she would like it.

But here, in this very moment, she hates it.

"Stand up."

"I'm here," the girl groans, brushing the bangs from her face, an acute pain inside her abdomen. Stab wound? No. More like a spear impaled her right through her pancreas.

It's loud, too loud to think. Red light dances across her cheeks. Red...red like roses, like blood.

"Stand up!"

"I know," she swallows down the bile, shuddering at the bitterness of its taste. "Don't treat me like I'm some second-rate reject pilot."

"You have a job to do, so don't you dare think about failure. I'm sure you can guess what the consequences will be."

"Is that all you wanted to say, virgin-girl?"

"Personally, I hope you suffer."

"Well, hold on now, I'm the one out here taking orders, killing things. You should be thankful for my contributions."

"Tools don't talk back to their owners. And all you are is a tool by which we defeat the Harbingers."

"What a shame, because whether or not you like it, you're also a tool. It's just that we have different masters."

"...Farewell, One. Enjoy yourself while you can."

The line cuts with finality, and the girl named One is thrust back into the mayhem. Having run out of things to say, she attempts to raise her left arm; it doesn't respond. Writing down her mission report after this will be impossible.

"Ugh, you've got to be kidding me," she grunts, latching back onto the right handle of the controls. Its counterpart on the opposite side still lies lukewarm from her intense grip. "Computer, give me a damage report!"

Alert, the onboard computer system rattles off, oxygen levels at five percent. Akuma functionality dropping below twenty percent, all systems critical. Reactor temperature exceeding four hundred degrees Celsius. Shutdown sequence will initiate in sixty seconds.

"Abort! Access code: Romeo—4—Victor—November—0—5," she shouts back, unwilling to give up the fight. As if prompting her to surrender, her visor screen flickers with distortions, cutting up the battlefield with static. Half the cameras outside are either short-circuited or outright torn off.

In the distance, a bestial screech fills the air, reminding the girl that this isn't any routine exercise. It's war—the war that tore away countless lives along the coastline of the waterfront before her.

She thinks to herself, "If you had told me, ten years ago on this exact day, that I would be fighting as a soldier on the wrong side, I wouldn't have ever believed you."

But of course, she ended up on the wrong side anyways, no matter what she did.

Affirmative. Aborting shutdown sequence.