86—EIGHTY-SIX, Vol. 11: Dies Passionis

IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE FALL OF THE SPEARHEAD BARRACKS

He realized that, at some point, everything had gone quiet.

There was nothing more to be heard in the frontline base’s hangar. Neither the roars of the Legion’s gunshots and blasts nor the sounds of the maintenance crew fighting back against them.

Rito and the others… Those young Processors somehow managed to get away, he pondered to himself through thoughts made hazy from blood loss.

—Are they going to survive, those kids? At least them, if no one else…

The Spearhead squadron, the Eighty-Sixth Sector’s eastern front’s final disposal site, where after their six-month term, Processors would always be sent to die. May the last Processors of this squad, at least, survive.

Because us at the maintenance crew will die here. Us, who sat back and watched as countless kids were sent by their homeland to be slaughtered by those damn scrap monsters. Our only fate is to die here.

The words once given to him by the Reaper had become his sole salvation.

—There are no Legion calling out for you.

If his dead wife and daughter were, at the very least, not taken away by the Legion, then they were surely waiting for him on the other side. That would be good enough. He would need nothing more.

If his beloved girls weren’t still trapped on the battlefield, then if he went over to the other side… If he finished himself off before these terrible scrap monstrosities took him away, he’d be able to be with them again.

That was all he needed.

Or at least, that’s all he
thought
he needed.

He looked up at the Legion standing before him, while he just barely held up the pistol against his temple.

But suddenly, a thought crossed his mind. His beloved wife and daughter had been cast out to the battlefield as Eighty-Six and died, never becoming Legion. And he and the other maintenance crew finally got the end they deserved for sending those child soldiers to their deaths. But to begin with, this wasn’t a sin they alone ought to bear.

The ones who’d cast his family to the battlefield were the Republic. And the civilians who’d cast the Eighty-Six onto the battlefield were still living on without a care in the world. And if Rito and the others would survive, those civilians might survive as well by clinging to them like parasites.

Not saving the Eighty-Six was a sin, but sending them out to die was just as much of a crime.

And sins should be punished. In other words, the sins of the Republic civilians should be met with retribution.

He must take revenge for his family.

No—

I want to take revenge for them with my own two hands.

The pistol slid from his numb hands. Looking up at the Legion, he whispered. He could finally die, but he wouldn’t go to where his family was. He could finally answer them, but he let it all go to waste.

“—I’m sorry.”