Snippet #1910521

"The life of a soldier isn't about glory," Aster said, glancing over at the corpses being hauled away by their triumphant allies, several still bearing the marks of her own bullets. She sighed. "It's about doing what has to be done. If we don't drive back the A.N.G. here, then innocent people will die, just like they did during Star Maiden. It's either die on the ring or live on the planet above the graves of our dead, and I feel the best way to make a difference is to ensure that the graves we live above in the future aren't those of Stratians. In other words, it's us or them. They started this whole mess, so I'm inclined to choose the latter. Anyone looking for glory should look elsewhere. All you'll find here are the dying and the dead," The sniper continued grimly, reloading her rifle, clicking the safety and slinging the gigantic weapon over her back once more as she strode toward the rendezvous point. She glanced up, noticing Vage looking at her with a concerned expression.

"Are you hurt?" He asked. Well, to say she was fine would be a white lie, but she doubted any of her injuries would be a problem, given she was still standing.

"I took a few grazes, but I'm fine. I guess it all just bounced off me, so I suppose I should be glad," She replied, brushing some dirt off her helmet's visor as she walked, staring into the grim visage of the metallic mask she had worn just a few moments before. She had experienced her first taste of battle that day, and she had realized something. Mindless slaughter of her enemies wouldn't get her anywhere. No, if anything, it made her as bad as them. At the same time, she couldn't be like Vage and let her sympathy get in the way. These men were killers, and wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet into the head of any man, woman, or child foreign to their soil. All Stratians were alike in their eyes, sentenced to exactly the same fate. While she couldn't stoop to their level, she also could not allow them to survive. In any case, it was time for her to put aside her simple-minded and abstract goal of revenge. Thinking in such terms of black and white, as though she were the hero in some child's fantasy tale... such simple idealism was only for the brats those tales were intended for. This battle marked the death of her childish notions: her childhood's end. She was a killer now, someone who was forced to commit the gravest of crimes to prevent the very deaths she caused. This wasn't a tale of black or white. This was a tale of black and white so inexorably mixed together as to paint everything a monochrome shade of gray, and in the freely flowing crimson blood of those who had to die to usher forth a new era. What the true face of that era would be - Stratian or Artomidian - no one could predict.