The Valkyria of the past managed to break through the enemies that pursued them into the forest so that she could return her commander to the rest of the crew. When she reached them, the remaining crew raised their weapons and were ready to open fire on the strange woman… until they saw who she was carrying.

“Eliza!” one of the girls cried out, rushing up to Valkyria to take the commander from her.

One of the other girls, the driver nicknamed Marmar by the others, almost immediately recognized the woman before her after that. “You… you’re… how is this even possible?”

“Good,” Valkyria replied, “I was going to be offended if my obsessed driver couldn’t recognize me.”

“After—after all the tune ups I’ve done on you… there’s no way I wouldn’t recognize you.”

“But you did just draw a weapon on me.”

“It was reflexes!”

Valkyria let out a small laugh before shaking her head and saying, “As much as I would love to spend more time with the rest of you, there is a war to be fought and our allies to save. Please, take the commander and return to safety. Stay away from the battlefield. If you keep heading in this direction, I believe you should run into one of the local villages, and they should be willing to help you.”

“Yeah, there’s a village that way, but… what about you? Why—why don’t you come with us?”

“I will push the enemy back so they never have a chance of chasing you. They are aware of just how valuable you are to propaganda. If they catch you… I dare not think of what may be done to you. That is why I will make sure that none may follow you.”

“You… after everything you’ve done for us… you’re going to leave us like this? We’ve always fought together! At least—at least let me stay with you and—”

“Absolutely unacceptable,” Valkyria interrupted. “No amount of gunfire may bring me down, but a single, stray bullet may kill one of you. That is why you will get to safety and why I will use this body of mine to ensure it.”

Even though it looked like the girls didn’t like Valkyria’s plan, they also looked like they knew it was probably the best one.

The driver, Marmar, ran up to Valkyria and hugged her.

At the same time, Eliza opened her eyes again and said, “Val… once this is over… we’ll come back for you, alright? That’s… a promise.”

“Worry not, commander. I will be right behind you once I have dealt with the enemy.” The smile on Valkyria’s face could have convinced anybody she was telling the truth. “Now, we do not have much time, so please.”

Marmar, breaking off the hug, looked up at Valkyria and said, “We’ll come back! With reinforcements! I promise! And I promise to never get into another tank for the rest of my life! You’re the only one for me!”

“Ever the odd one, my obsessive driver.” Valkyria gave the top of Marmar’s head a couple of pats before taking a step back. “I will head off now. Please see to it that the commander is taken care of as immediately as possible.”

The current Valkyria then spoke up next to me to say, “I didn’t want to leave them, but I had to for their own safety. The forest ahead was too dense for me to easily move through in either form as well. I would have slowed them down which would have given the enemy time to catch up.”

Back to the memories, the past Valkyria left before any of the girls could say anything else.

What happened next was fighting her way through the enemies coming into the forest, and that eventually brought her back to the main battlefield before long. At that point, most of the friendly forces either fell back or were gunned down. Some who had the misfortune of being alive still despite their wounds were in the process of being captured as war prisoners, and I remembered from history lessons that being a war prisoner of that nation was a fate far, far worse than death.

“I likely could have abandoned the battle to return to my crew since I dealt with those entering the forest,” the current Valkyria said, “but that would have left everybody else to suffer. Once I saw just how many of our men were still on the field, either bleeding out or being captured… I could not abandon them.”

The past Valkyria, charging straight into the enemy, took out any fortified positions and vehicles with her tank cannon while the machine gun sticking up over her shoulder took out the ground troops with masterful precision. She managed to gun down all the enemy troops, even those right on top of the friendly ones, without hurting any friendlies in the process.

“Who… what are you?” one of the allied men asked, looking up at Valkyria as she stood over him and helped him up.

“Come on, soldier. You’re not allowed to die here.”

He looked down at his legs. The lower half of his left one was blown off and the right looked like it was barely being held together. “Save the others. Just give me a gun and I’ll try to hold them ba—”

Not taking that as an answer, Valkyria bent over and picked the man up, slinging her over her other shoulder before driving off the battlefield. Her tracks basically turned into diesel-powered rollerblades on the bottom of her feet that could drive over any terrain, and they were far faster than how quick a tank would normally be.

Unfortunately, there was no allied line for her to fall back to with him.

Everybody was dead or fleeing. The position was abandoned and, if she tried to escort him far enough back to where the allies were now, then it would be at the detriment of everybody else who still needed help.

There were, however, still sandbags and machine guns set up to serve as a desperate line of defense.

“You said you needed a gun, right?” Valkyria asked, dropping the man off behind one of the mounted machine guns. Then she went and grabbed a quick chair for him to sit on. “I’ll be back with more.”

“You’re—you’re going back out there?” the man asked.

Valkyria nodded with a slight smile. “For as long as there are lives yet to be saved.”

With that, she charged back into the battlefield, having lit a fire of determination within the man’s heart.

I’m not sure how long the next part of the “movie” lasted, but it just… went on, and on, and on. Over and over again, Valkyria charged into the advancing enemies and brought back surviving allies while taking out the enemies. That defensive line she brought the first man back to ended up growing fully staffed again with a crew of injured men manning it. Whether they lost their arms or legs, whether they had half their face blown away or chests full of bullet holes, those who could still find the determination to fight ended up doing exactly that. It was like watching a battalion of zombies holding the line.

But hold it they did.

It was impossible for them to not hold it after being rescued by the angel that was Valkyria and seeing her charge so fearlessly into the battlefield over and over again to bring more of them back.

But… no matter how brave Valkyria was, she was not immune to damage, and it showed. Each time she charged out there, she returned with more wounds than she had before. At first, it just looked like her equipment was getting scratched up and dented, but then her actual body was what suffered.

She took a bullet to the back of her shoulder while returning with one of the men.

Then she was shot several times in the back while protecting a group of men from machine gun fire.

A tank’s shot exploded in the ground next to her, shredding her leg and turning it into a bloody mess, but she used her body to shield a man even during that.

Even as she looked like she was on the verge of death, she whispered to herself, “Just one more,” with every single life she saved. It was always “just one more.”

I had no doubt that all the men she already saved wanted to beg her to just stay and stop given how she looked, but none of them dared to bring an end to her determination. They probably knew it would be pointless to try, anyways. Instead, they continued defending against any enemies who slipped by while tending to the wounds of the men she brought back.

Eventually, it really did come to be time for just one more. Almost all of the surviving allies were rescued, and the only one was left a man in grave condition who she spotted underneath some mud on the way back with the man before him.

It didn’t matter if there were bullets flying over Valkyria’s head with some of them digging into her body. She focused on shielding herself from as many attacks as she could while digging out the mud-buried man.

“You with me, soldier?” Valkyria asked. “Come on, say something.”

She heard him crying and shouting for help before, but no words left his mouth.

The other man was in even worse condition and she didn’t want to drop him for this man. So, she took him back as quickly as she could then came back for this one.

But it was too late.

No matter how incredible Valkyria was, she couldn’t save all of them, and the man previously begging and screaming for help died before she could reach him.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Valkyria said, closing the man’s eyes before standing back up.

One look at the current Valkyria confirmed that was probably the hardest moment for her. Her expression looked like she was more wounded from that memory than she was from all of the damage she took.

And she couldn’t even rest.

While it seemed like the enemy forces had died out, the smoke clearing in the distance revealed an entire column of tanks and infantry approaching. It was the enemy’s main force coming through, and it made the previous force look trivial in size.

“I couldn’t leave,” the current Valkyria said. “If I fled… I would not have been able to move everybody again before the enemy reached them. There was only one thing I could do.”

The Valkyria on the screen looked like she could barely even move at that point. Her body was covered in cuts and holes, her equipment was falling apart, her treads were damaged and slowed, and even lifting her arm to fire her tank cannon came with the sound of mechanical creaking that made it sound like it was going to fall apart at any second.

And none of that was able to convince her to run anywhere but straight into the line of approaching enemies.

Valkyria refused to surrender no matter how grave the situation grew.

I wanted nothing more than to personally jump back into her memories to help her, but I couldn’t. Valkyria was all on her own, surrounded by enemies, gunning them down and destroying their tanks as she took more and more damage unto herself.

An entire legion of enemy soldiers was held back by her and her alone.

But again, she was not invulnerable, and they eventually damaged her enough to the point where she could no longer fight back.

A shot from a tank tore into her right shoulder and annihilated it, destroying the shoulder and taking her arm with it.

There went her cannon.

Heavy machine gun fire rained down on her and filled her body with holes, enough of them hitting her legs that she dropped to her knees and could no longer stand.

But even in that condition, there was a rifle on the ground dropped by one of the soldiers from before that she picked up with her left hand and fired into the incoming enemies.

Then, when what was basically her ammo rack on her side was shot, it exploded into geyser of flames that completely covered the side of her body, burning her alive as she still refused to end her final stand.

“I had no mercy for those who killed so many of my allies,” the current Valkyria said. “I had every intention of killing them until I no longer could. Even if I lost my other arm, I would have used my teeth.” The expression on her face… was kind of scary, honestly. It was one full of hatred for the enemies throwing themselves against her. However, it softened once the remaining arm of the past her was shot up to the point of uselessness. “But I couldn’t. I was no longer able to move no matter how much I wanted to.”

Seeing that Valkyria could no longer fight back, and figuring that she must have been some sort of incredibly advanced weapon, the enemies decided to try and capture her. They stopped firing their weapons and charged at Valkyria while screaming at her in a language I couldn’t understand.

But with the sound of engines coming from above and behind Valkyria, she lifted her head and smiled at those who planned on capturing her.

Allied air support finally arrived. Knowing that the frontline already dissolved and that any friendlies had retreated, the allied bombers carpet bombed the entire battlefield to completely destroy the hostile forces.

And Valkyria was caught up within all of those explosions.

The battlefield became one of smoke and dust obstructing the view, only the light of more explosions occasionally illuminating it as more bombers arrived to make sure that not a single enemy was left.

Once the final bomb was dropped and the smoke had a chance to clear, the battlefield was nothing but the ruins of what was once a grassy field full of grass and flowers. Any bodies left on the field were so blown to pieces that nothing recognizable was left, and the only visible “corpses” around were those of the tanks and other vehicles that were destroyed on the field.

And standing in the spot where Valkyria was last seen was a destroyed tank filled with holes from guns and tanks, blackened by fire, left utterly unrecognizable among all the other machine corpses on the field.

Some of the men she rescued came onto the field once the bombs were done to look for her, shouting for her and desperately trying to find her, but none of them had any idea that they walked right by her. She was just… back in her original form and unable to do anything.

“I was still alive,” Valkyria said, “but I was too tired to do anything. And perhaps it was selfish of me, but I wanted to take a long nap after that.”

And so, a long nap ensued.

Over the years, that blackened battlefield of mud, corpses, and debris turned into a grassy field once again. New trees started to grow and so did flowers. After enough years, the field became beautiful and filled to the brim with flowers growing on top of where so many died and all around the destroyed tanks still sitting there. Children from a local village even came to play in the field, climbing all over Valkyria and the other wrecked vehicles.

After enough rust kicked in, she looked just like she did when I first met her.

The “movie” ended showing her suddenly vanishing from the field of flowers, presumably to come here.

“And now you have seen what really happened!” Valkyria said, standing up from her seat.

That was when the dams broke open and most of the group swarmed her to hug her.

“Ca-careful,” Valkyria said. “I would not want to fall over onto any of you.”

“But! But you went through so much!” Delphi cried. “You need hugged! And soup! Soup will make you feel better!”

“Worry not, Delphi. I assure you that I am in good condition now.”

Somebody else who was crying just as much, to my surprise… was Lake. “Somebody—somebody who understands what it’s like! We’ve been through so much! We need to start a support group for weapons of war who have been turned into people!”

“There, there. You can talk to me about all of what you have been through as well. I am sure you have not had it easy.”

If there was one person who wasn’t reacting how I expected, though, it was Vala. Vala wasn’t crying or anything else. She was just sitting in her seat looking… disappointed?

Since Valkyria was already being swarmed with love, I gave Vala my attention instead to ask, “Something wrong?”

“Yeah,” Vala answered. “Where’s the happy ending?”

“It… it was a war. War doesn’t exactly have happy endings. It just… ends.”

“That’s not acceptable. Her crew said they would come back and find her… but we never saw them even look for her. What’s up with that? How—how could they promise something like that and never return for her?! Isn’t that screwed up?! If that was me, I never would have stopped looking for her! I would have gone back and looked all over the country for her!”

“I don’t… know what to say. They probably had their reasons for not going back.”

“Bull! If they really loved her, they would have gone back for her no matter what it took. After… after everything that Valkyria did for them,” Vala’s voice broke and the tears started to form, “and they didn’t even come back for her… what kind of ending is that?!”

Vala stood up and wiped her arm over her eyes.

“Going back in time to change things would get me in too much trouble,” Vala said, “but I can interfere with the present as much as I want. The documentary said some of the crew are still alive, so this isn’t over until we have a happy ending.”

“Vala?” Valkyria asked. “What—what is it that you are going to do?”

With a confident smile and red, teary eyes, Vala looked at Valkyria and dramatically pointed at her before saying, “Forcing the happy reunion to happen that everybody’s waiting for!”