User blog:Seieireppa/God Eater ∑: The Maxim of Possibility, chapter 5.5

The click of a cigarette lighter rang out in the desolate hall of a small church in Carlisle, a sound all too familiar to those who called it home. A flame ignited, and the click sounded again, as the lighter’s owner pocketed the worn piece of clamshelled metal and took a long drag on his cigarette.

When Nanako Kawashima had contacted him not more than an hour ago, he could hardly believe what he heard – that Operation Downfall, the combined final assault on the hive to eradicate the Gehenna, was so close on the horizon. He had been awaiting this day for years, longer than he could count and certainly for longer than people stopped bothering to keep track of the date. He remembered with no small amount of regret the day the Gehenna had awoken to ravage the planet, and he had suffered and struggled against the Neo Aragami that had sprung up in the Gehenna’s wake ever since then… but now, now was different. Humanity had gotten back on its feet to take back their world from the Neo Aragami, and now, now the time was at hand to eliminate the source, the originator of their hated foes, the cause of this waking nightmare that had plagued humanity all this time.

By his hands, he vowed, he would awaken humanity from this nightmare and bring them into a new day, the dawn of a new age.

“Sir Baluar,” a voice called out, interrupting his thoughts. A young woman, appearing no older than nineteen years of age, climbed out of a small hole in the ground, a ladder which led to the base proper, for which the abandoned church was merely an entranceway. “Preparations for your departure have been completed,” the young woman spoke, addressing the man before her. “We can leave at any time.”

“No need,” came Baluar’s reply, as he tossed his cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. “I’ll be making this journey on my own.”

“But sir, the Neo Aragami…” the woman remonstrated, only to be silenced by Baluar as he approached her and put a finger to his own lips.

“You know very well that a Neo Aragami or two won’t pose me any sort of threat,” he spoke. “And besides, we can’t afford to spare even a single God Eater from this base. I need all able God Eaters to remain here and protect the base in my absence. If I die, you all will go on living, but if anything happened to even a single one of you, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

The woman would have none of this. “And how do you suppose the rest of us feel, huh?!” she exclaimed, her voice tinged with anger and sadness. “You’re the light of all of our lives, Baluar… sir. It’s thanks to you that all of us are even alive today. So please… don’t go alone.”

Baluar took a finger to his head, scratching at his scalp in puzzlement. “Okay, fine… you win,” he bemoaned. “I’ll take a team with me. Could you go and tell the rest that I’ll be departing in around an hour?”

The woman nodded, eagerly making an about-face and heading towards the base entrance –

– before Baluar delivered a swift chop to the back of her neck, laying her out.

“I’m sorry, I truly am,” he spoke, catching the woman as she fell and gently laying her on the ground, “but this is something I need to do alone, without endangering the rest of you."

As he lit up one more cigarette and inhaled deeply, he contemplated the distance he’d come to arrive here, the hardships he had endured and the comrades sacrificed in the name of combating the Neo Aragami. But no more, he resolved. No more would human life be lost in vain, for now the time of humanity’s awakening was at hand.

And with that, the man called Baluar turned and exited the church, heading north, to rendezvous with the ones with whose aid he would bring this world to revolution.