"Are you sure we don't have to head back to the mine, first?" asked Hope.
We were heading straight to the army's base that was located at the far north of the town.
I cast my eyes to our surroundings as Hope drove the military jeep along the road.
"I didn't know you could drive, Hope?"
My fingers brushed over Alice's red jacket that I wore. A sigh of relief escaped my mouth when I'd confirmed it was unscathed. It would be bad if it had since I needed to return it back to Luca. However, my pink dress was tattered.
"Inghild has been teaching me a lot of things. Driving is still hard, though. If it's on a normal day, I wouldn't even dare to drive," he replied.
'On a normal day,' I thought.
Deep in my heart, I wished we could return to being normal after that. "I don't think we need to go back to the mine yet. We have to check the base for Mommy and Daddy."
"Hmm, the Freya group should have an easy time right now, attacking the base, since most of the army's forces were dispersed and lost during the fight back this morning."
The memories of people being murdered by the soldiers, and my scythe going on a rampage were vivid in my head. I had been thinking about it after we had left the villa.
"How about your cheek, Hope?" I asked.
"It's just a graze. I had applied a band-aid, so should be fine. No blood coming out of it. I think if Caesar was serious, he could kill me right then and there."
"I think I remembered he said Aegis crystals cannot reform itself when made in contact with another different one, and this only applies to Aegis Users."
"Hmm. I wonder why Caesar act the way he does. He must be insane in the head. Ah, yes. I remembered he also said that same thing you said. A clash between Aegis Users, huh."
The wind blew at the right side of my face. I could not felt any sensation at all from the other. And my left eye was still unusable after all that. I kept being reminded of my dark eyes whenever I glanced at the jeep's side mirror.
"Ava, why do you think Caesar killed the town chief?" asked Hope.
I looked at him with my right eye. "Isn't it because the town chief was corrupt?"
"That may be the case. But I think the town chief somewhat angered the Great Corporate United in one way or another. This island was not part of that nation, yet they attacked now after all these years."
I rubbed my hands and blew some warm air against them. The air during that night was especially cold. "Maybe they changed their plan and decided to just take over the island. Why don't they come to this island peacefully?"
Hope took a sharp turn to the right and the huge army's base was in sight. "You said the general wanted to unite the world as one, right? I think the supreme leader tried to negotiate with the town chief and he refused to be a part of the Great Corporate United. Maybe that's why they resorted to violence."
My eyes caught sight of a few survivors of the bombing a few hundreds of meters away. '
'Is violence the only alternative?' I thought.
My heart kept tugging at the memories of when I, myself had taken the violence route for too many times.
===|
We arrived at the base's rear entrance soon after.
The large hole that I'd made in the wall was still there. There were shooting among the soldiers and the Freya members but I didn't see grandpa.
"Let's go. The security should be quite lax since the resistance is there at the front entrance," said Hope.
There were a few soldiers standing near the gaping hole and I smashed them to the side with a large, crimson hammer from my arm.
"You don't kill them, do you?" asked Hope nervously. His eyes darted between the front and rear entrances.
"I think I broke a few of their bones. But they're not dead, I'm sure."
We rushed inside through the front without looking back at the soldiers. Once we got in, we were greeted with a straight, narrow hallway with a large elevator at the end.
Hope went behind me as soldiers started to pour out of the few corners here and there. Seeing them approaching, I ran straight ahead.
"Get away! You must be holding Mommy and Daddy inside the base!" I shouted. A crimson square block formed from my back separated the soldiers from me, and I wished it to move towards the elevator.
"Ugh!"
Their bodies were squashed between the block and the elevator's door and they fell unconscious.
"Your parents must be important if they're holding them here," said Hope.
He folded my red jacket and put it inside the school bag he carried with him.
"I don't think so. They're just regular people."
We ignored the soldiers on the white floor and went inside the elevator.
"Wait, what should we press?" I asked Hope.
"Maybe, they're in a prison somewhere. They should be on the lowest floor logically."
"But there's no more floor at the bottom other than the ground floor." I pointed at the buttons lining up at the right side of the lift.
"They don't have any basements? Strange. No dungeons, or something like that."
The only buttons available other than the ground floor were the second, third, and fourth floors. Hope pressed the button leading to the second floor and the elevator moved up. It took only a few moments before the door opened with a 'ding' sound.
Hope gaped. There were a lot of soldiers in black gears lying on the floor.
"Someone is here. Probably grandpa," I said.
Both of us walked cautiously across the corridor. The metal doors were opened somehow and we peered inside one by one. There were only employees, that were shot dead. In just a few minutes, we came to the end of the corridor.
"The people who came here before us had left," said Hope.
"Should we go up?"
"Yeah, I think we should. Your arm's okay?"
I waved at Hope with my crystallized left arm. "I can't get it back to normal. Caesar must have trained himself to control the Aegis better. I think I need time."
"I suppose."
We went back and moved up to the third floor.
Just as the door slid open, a yellow shard darted towards us. I managed to block it with my crimson shield but the shard was stuck there, so I cast away a large portion of the shield and the remaining parts of it were absorbed back into my body.
My eyes took a grasp of the third floor. It was a large, well-lit room, with a gigantic monitor plastered on the wall at the end. The light that the monitor radiated shone on two silhouettes.
"B-Beatrice?!" I exclaimed.
Beatrice was holding on to her stomach, blood was coming out of it. Her Teria suit was in bad shape. She coughed and blood splattered on the floor, her eyes settled on the person next to her.
"What did you do to her?!" I ran to Beatrice's side.
"OH, young MISS AVA. Is she your friend? She attacks me for no reason, and I just had to do what should be done." Caesar raised his arms in submission. He had that yellow soldier mask on him, with the same black robe and boots. "This mask protected me from her bullet. It's made from my Aegis after all."
"Beatrice, are you okay?" I asked her.
"W-Why are you here?! And you still look like that." Beatrice coughed and I proceeded to grab hold of her arm as she dropped to her knee. Hope rushed to us and crouched.
Caesar shook her head. "I'm just doing my business, you know."
He pointed at someone leaning at the white wall underneath the gigantic monitor. It was the general, and his right arm was missing.
"I'll leave him to you, whether you want to end him, or not," Caesar said.
"W-What do you mean?" I asked.
"Hm? It's exactly how I said it. The general is a dog. Wait, no, that's too kind of me. He's a slave to his own nation."
Caesar walked toward the elevator. "He valued the orders he'd received above human lives. Yet he forgets, he is also a human. How cruel the world has become." Caesar stepped into the elevator, and turned around, facing me. "In the end, we humans do whatever we want, in order to be praised by another individual for what we've done. That's nothing but only self-gratification. How sad."
The elevator's door closed and it moved downwards to the ground floor.
"Self-gratification," I said under my breath. I looked at the general and he whimpered at my sight.
"We came here to find your parents, remember," said Hope.
"Yes. Then, should we go to the fourth floor?" I analyzed Beatrice's condition. She was heavily injured, bruises covered her face. "Beatrice, can you stand?"
She glared at me. "Why do you look at me like that?! I don't need your pity. You're nothing but a monster!"
Hope slapped Beatrice in the face hard and I yelped.
I didn't expect that.
"Ava's trying to help you, and you treat her like that. No wonder I hate your guts, stupid woman," Hope said.
"Damn you, Hopeless!" yelled Beatrice. Her plain blue hat dropped beside her when she tried to stand up. But she gritted her teeth and caressed her side.
"Let's just go, Ava," said Hope.
"You traitor! How dare you side with this monster!" growled Beatrice.
Hope immediately grabbed Beatrice's head, and pulled her green hair up. His eyes were menacing. "I don't care if you insult me or anything like that. But, do not call Ava a monster and don't you even try to hurt her. I'll kill you."
My body shuddered.
It was the first time Hope had tried to attack Beatrice and succeeded. The words he spoke words were cutting through me like a knife. I felt a murderous aura radiating from Hope.
Beatrice struggled from his grasp and Hope let her go. "I SWEAR, I'M GONNA FREAKING KILL YOU AFTER THIS, HOPELESS!" She grimaced and held her stomach with both hands.
Hope and I took a few steps away from her before a rectangular section of the white wall disappeared.
"Huh?"
I looked at it and spotted two familiar silhouettes. Immediately, my tears fell.
They were Mommy and Daddy.