User blog:Seieireppa/God Eater ∑::After, chapter 1: Departure

Freedom.

As the woman walked onwards, she could feel naught but the wind in her hair, the sun on her face, and the sounds of nature around her, damaged by the ravages of the Aragami yet still alive, still thriving around her in ways both large and small.

Humanity was much the same, she mused. Decimated by the Aragami, yet still life went on. It was the same when she had stopped the Gehenna seven years ago alongside Sigma, and it was the same one year ago when she had thwarted the designs of Rachel Claudius and her attempts to devour the world itself in a Singularity. Each time, humanity had proven itself superior to adversity, and each time, life went on, just as it had before and just as it would forevermore.

Thus did Nanako Kawashima, now in her twenty-second year, affirm to herself as she walked onwards, departing the Glasgow Branch where she had spent much of her childhood, and to which she had returned after stopping Rachel to say her final goodbyes. From here, she would depart to places unknown, doing what she could to help those around her wherever she traveled.

With her she carried two God Arcs — one her own, a massive black scythe, and the other Sigma’s, an imposing crimson-and-black blade, bequeathed to her at the Glasgow Branch and which she carried across her back. She wondered if she would ever see Sigma again — the man who, entering into her life seven years ago, had brought with him tidings of a changing world and had affected Nanako’s own life in ways she would never, and could never, forget. He had stood by her side as the two rid the world of the greatest threat it had ever known and would ever know — and, in another world, he had become one with her and stood by her side as she led humanity into a new tomorrow in a world without hope, but that is a story for another day, another time.

For now, however, Nanako knew that her struggles were far from over. Rachel may have been defeated and the threat of the Devouring Apocalypse averted, but the Aragami were not gone, and there were still people in need. For this reason, Nanako resolved, she would travel ever onwards until she had rid the world of Aragami by her own hands.

Sigma, too, she knew, would be happy this way.

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TO BE CONTINUED