User blog:Baluar/Warbroken

Oh man, I tell ya, there aren't many things left in this world that can match the thrill of feeling an Aragami squirm under your blade, feel how its life fades and how the damn thing stops moving.

Fair's fair, I suppose. We owe them that much, after everything we've been through.

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You what now?

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Stop shitting me. I mean that.

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So what you're trying to tell me is that you don't know about the Great Aragami War? You think you're funny or some shit? Everyone knows what it was, asshat.

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You're not funny. Stop. I'll punch you in the goddamn face if you keep it up. I lost people dear to me. One of them was a warbroken, even.

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Wait... you are serious. Where the actual fuck do you come from? Not a single place on Earth was left unscathed. It was a cleansing wave of Aragami, and we barely held it together.

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You come from another timeline or shit, don't ya? Yeah, it's the only way. That, or space. Dunno which is more believable, honestly. But... I guess I can do worse than explain to you the humongous piece of shit situation we're in.

I'm gonna go ahead and assume you know what an Aragami is. If you don't, it'll take me way too long to explain. Got a mission coming up, can't be assed to go through literally everything.

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So yeah, from what little you said I gather the split in timeline or whatever was around 2080. Yeah, that... makes sense. Well... guess there's no point beating around the bush, then.

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I'm not pausing for dramatic effect, dammit! I'm not that daft. I was-

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I'm not daft at all, dammit! Better watch your stupid mouth or I ain't telling shit. What's it gonna be?

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Yeah, thought as much. Very well. I was just... gathering my thoughts. Figuring out the best way to start. Alright then. So, 2080. Aragami seemed to be driven back, and with the Far East Branch at the helm, it finally looked like we were headed to a final containment of the Aragami threat, if not quite a complete elimination of them.

And then Russia happened. 2082. Weird that one of the closest places to the Far East would be among the last to be contained, but the threat was deemed low until it was too late. After the fact, the irony wasn't lost on anyone. A truly staggering amount of Aragami appeared, seemingly out of thin air, and just proceeded to laugh off any and all attempts of containment like we weren't even trying. Casualties were immense, of course.

An emergency call to God Eaters from all around the world was an obvious first answer.

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Yeah, that was very deliberate. It was not the final answer, not by a long shot. While they did manage to slow down the wave, they died in droves. Wouldn't've managed to keep that up for too long, either, since God Eaters aren't exactly abundant. But I digress. You know that already. Probably. I dunno.

A second wave of hand picked God Eaters, sent to strategic locations, ended up yielding better results. Helps that the hand picked God Eaters were the absolute best of the best. I'm talking Kawashima, the Kom twins, McStron, that kind of God Eater.

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Yeah. When I said best of the best, I meant it. They, along with other top-notch God Eaters, were sent on key missions, disrupting more than outright stopping the creatures. Hit and run kinda missions, you know. Meanwhile, everyone brainstormed a potential solution to the issue. And then the breakthrough happened.

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You didn't even let me start. Well, here's the long and short of it: a new kind of God Arc with massively increased compatibility rates. "Basically everyone's a match" levels of increased.

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It's amazing how a large enough need breeds incredible technological advances, innit? Anyhow, you can picture what happened next. All out war with the Aragami. They spread all around the globe again prior to the breakthrough, of course, but the month or two the big guns all bought was just enough for the magic to happen.

That being said... we did not expect the large amount of psychologists, psychiatrists and assorted mental health specialists we'd need to even the odds. Of course, we expected an increase in demand, but what we got was easily ten times what we expected.

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Yeah, funny how not everyone's ready to fight in a war where you'll see the people beside you be devoured, in the most literal way possible. People were destroyed by what they were forced to experience. The ones with PTSD were the lucky ones. Many were so broken, so beyond repair, that nothing got through to them.

I was very near that point, myself. I kept going, no matter who died, no matter who lived, no matter what happened. But I was too sturdy, it would seem. Always felt like I was looking over the abyss, but never quite fell down.

And that's when Oracle Cells worked their magic.

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Yes, I do have a knack for dramatic. No, I do not think I overdo it. Thanks for your input, thought I find it unnecesary. But whatever. See, I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you how Oracle Cells make weird shit happen, that's common knowledge. Well, deal is, after a long time, one of those that were driven absolutely, balls to the wall insane, unresponsive to basically any stimuli you could think of, he just snapped out of it. He lost all emotion and merely asked for a God Arc to be handed to him. The absolute madman went to face an Aragami horde on his own... and won.

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Well... he did complete his mission, but he also fell dead on the spot, right after the feat was done. The Arc was rendered completely inert as well. Remember the warbroken friend I spoke of? Yeah. That's what I was talking about. And I was there to see her.

They recover some degree of awareness before dropping dead, you know? She knew what was coming. And of all the things she could have done - cry, fly into a rage, give up and accept what was coming like the inevitability she knew it was - she chose to stare me in the eyes and give me the warmest smile you could think of. I'd visited her basically every day, and she knew I had. I could see it in her eyes. She was thankful. She died with a smile on her face.

That fucked me up more than anything else. All the brutal deaths I'd witnessed, all the dismemberments, all the crying in pain I'd ever heard, it was nothing compared to that. I came this close to snapping. It was only the memory of the smile that kept me going. She trusted I'd take care of shit here, and I could not let her down.

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I don't remember saying it was pretty at any point. We have an insane amount of people broken by their experiences out ther, we have a bunch of crazy-ass people fighting like men possessed on the lines and kicking all sorts of ass before quite literally dropping dead. But we survive. As we always did. As we always will.

If nothing else, we owe it to them.