They stood just outside of the landing zone, watching as the hulking VX-200 slowly descended from the skies. The deafening roar of the engines forced them to hold their hands over their ears.

As the fighter plane turned to face them, the sun’s rays glinted off the instantly recognizable insignia of the heavy fighter squadron; the silouhette of a harpy eagle, its wings flaming as it dove down upon its prey.

It has been just over an hour since they were informed of the fact that they were going to be picked up. They had hurriedly packed what little belongings they had with them, changed into their air force clothes, and made their way to the plane hangars.

Eden and the old lady were there as well, apparently having heard about the news. It wasn’t often for a VX-200, the most advanced and feared fighter aircraft ever, to pay a visit to their little town. And so, many people were gathered there, watching as it came in to land, almost as many people as when the European pilots came in their F-51.

“Are you leaving? Big sis?” Eden asked Ying.

“Yeah…” she whispered back.

“Will you ever come back to visit?”

“Maybe.”

Then Eden turned her eyes to Lenn, and with a pretend-annoyed voice muttered. “You promised that you’d teach me how to fly…”

“What? I never…” Lenn began. But Eden simply pouted and stuck her tongue out, preventing him from speaking any further.

“Promise that you’d teach me when you come back to visit!” She shouted.

“No…well…”

“Promise!”

“Ok ok…” Lenn smiled wryly and the old lady chuckled.

As the sturdy landing gears settled onto the ground, the rear door to the cargo bay opened with a loud click.

Lenn looked back as they walked up the ramp, meeting eyes with Takeshi. Lenn was sure there was a hint of remorse or sadness in his expression, but it vanished almost immediately.

Takeshi smiled. A slight, wry, yet sincere smile as the door to the cargo bay closed behind them.

The flight back was mostly uneventful. Cloud cover was too thick for them to see much below, and because of how high the VX-200 cruised at, there was almost no turbulence.

They chatted with the pilots a little through the intercom now and then. They talked about how they narrowly avoided pancaking into the side of hill, the European pilots who they met, and the beautiful town which they stayed at.

“Are those pilots like what they tell us?” The commander asked. “Like emotionless robots, designed for the sole purpose of killing?”

Lenn and his team weren’t quite sure how to answer that question. On one hand, the European pilots looked and spoke exactly like the rest of them did. On the other hand, they seemed completely devoid of emotions and compassion, their face always the same stoney expression.

“Yeah…pretty much…” Lenn answered after a while.

“So then why did they let you four go?”

“…”

They stopped chatting with the pilots after that. Not because they didn’t want to. Well, partly because of that. But also because the pilots never contacted them through the intercom again.

As midday approached they began to descend through the clouds. The dense cloud cover had become scattered specks of white here and there, and through the gaps they could see the towering walls of New Asia in the distance.

Within minutes they had already touched down back in their city. After a brief few days which felt like an eternity, they were finally back in familiar territory.

“I expect there to be a Welcome Back party when we step out of this plane.” Kang joked, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting to his feet.

With another loud click, the cargo door unlocked and began to hinge downwards at the bottom. A ring of soldiers were already stationed outside the plane, ready to welcome them back.

“Hey y’all!” Kang shouted to the first soldier. “We’re safe and s-”

His words were cut short by a powerful blow from the butt of a rifle. It hit him square across the chin, causing him to crumple to the floor, unconscious.

“K…!” Ying gasped.

Then very quickly the shock wore off, and she gritted her teeth in rage. She turned towards the soldier who hit Kang with a murderous glare, and would have charged him if not for Lenn and Rei grabbing her.

“Hands in the air!” The soldiers ordered.

For the second time in just a few days, they were confronted with the muzzles of rifles. Whereas before, it was by foreign soldiers in a foreign land. This time, it was by their own comrades.

“You have been charged with treason and are suspected to be spies. You will be kept in guarded isolation until further notice.”

*****

The rusty steel gate to their cell slammed closed with a resounding clank, leaving Lenn and his team alone in the empty room.

“I didn’t think that by ‘guarded isolation’ they literally meant a jail cell,” Rei complained, looking up at the ceiling, which was cracked and had patches of grey where the paint had fallen off.

Ying sat besides Kang, the latter with his head wrapped in bandages. The blow he received from the soldier had fractured his jaw, leaving him unable to speak much, something which Lenn was secretly kind of happy about.

“I’m gonna make them pay…” whispered Ying, a determined look on her face.

“Why are we even being shoved inside here?” Lenn asked, sitting across the little room from Ying and Kang.

“I mean…we did get shot down, then had a nice chat with the enemy. They probably suspect that we leaked important information. And the fact that we survived means we could have ties with Europa, or something.” Rei answered him. “Since, you know, people don’t tend to stay alive after they get shot down like that.”

“So they think we are traitors or something?”

“Well…yeah.”

“So that’s how it is?” Lenn asked angrily. “We fight for our city and this is all we get? They just call us traitors and shove us in a cell like this?”

“Don’t shout at me,” said Rei, holding his hands up in front of him. “Ask them.” He pointed to the barred door to their cell.

Lenn sighed, holding in the mass of words he wanted to say.

“So what do we do now?” Lenn asked his team.

Rei shrugged. “Wait for them to interrogate us? Have a trial?”

“Then?”

“Get exiled? Sent to a labour camp for the rest of our lives? Executed even, maybe.”

“If we explain ourselves really well during the trial or interrogation, is there a chance that they’d let us off?”

“They probably won’t even bother to have a trail. To them, we are worthless, a burden they have to spend their time and resources on. There is no shortage of pilots, they don’t need us that badly. To them, we are failures, living people who should have died.”

Lenn fell quiet. “So do we just do nothing and accept our fate?”

“I don’t know…” Rei shrugged, sitting down in a corner of the room.

If this were to happen to those European pilots, Lenn thought. What would they do?

He thought back to their encounter and the interactions they had with those pilots. Their emotionless faces and monotone voices.

When they flew away on their fighter, they said that they would do stuff, make changes, or something. Lenn couldn’t quite recall.

How are they doing now? He wondered.

For some reason, even though they are enemies, even though they are on the opposite ends of the world, Lenn badly wanted to speak with them again.

*****

The sounds of their boots pounding against the hard floor echoed down the hallway as they sprinted.

“Where are we going?” Two-six shouted, panting for air.

“Our plane,” One-six answered.

“What about our flight suits?”

“Doesn’t matter! As long as we make it out of here.”

Ducking and dodging past the crowds of people, they made their way our of their dorm area, through the mess halls, and towards the entrance to their hangar. Among the mass of soldiers attending to their duties, their little escape was hardly noticed by anyone.

They burst through the door leading to their hangar and sprinted for their plane, still parked at the same place on the opposite end of the cavernous sapce. The hangar was pretty devoid of people, since their squad didn’t have any assignments currently.

A gunshot rang out, causing One-six and his team to skid to a stop. Across the hangar, three more armed guards were there, walking towards them with their rifles drawn.

“Hands in the air! No sudden movements, or we will shoot!” The guard shouted.

Two-six slowly moved besides One-six. “Do we make a run for it?” She whispered.

He judged the distance to their plane, and decided that it was too far for them to make a break towards it. “We’d never make it.” He whispered back.

The guards came to a stop a dozen or so paces in front of them and lowered their rifles. They seemed to be speaking through their earpieces, but their words were too quiet for One-six to clearly make out.

“What do you want?” One-six shouted, his hands still up in the air.

The guard ignored him.

“What do-” he began once more, but the guards raised their rifles up.

It was clear that they did it with intent to kill.

He shoved Two-six to the side and dove for cover behind one of the fightercrafts as bullets wizzed by through the air. The guards’ guns had suppressors mounted on the end, and so the only report they could hear was a dull pshh every time a shot was fired.

One-five seemed to have read the situation as well, and he and Two-five had both managed to evade danger just in time too.

They leaned up against the side of the F-51, which sat low enough on the ground that the guards didn’t have an easy angle to shoot at them from.

“Injuries?” One-six asked, carefully leaning his head over to get a look at the guards.

“None.” One-five replied.

“How many rounds do you have left?” He asked One-five.

They were forced to ditch the bulky assault rifles because it would arouse too much suspicion, and so they decided to just go with the pistols they had on them.

One-five extracted the magazine partway. “Ten.”

“That’s too little.”

“I’ll make it count.” muttered One-five as he leaned his body out of cover and took aim at the guards.

More rounds wizzed by, some rattling the bodywork of the F-51, sending a shower of sparks over them. One-five fired several rounds too, the loud report of the unsuppressed pistol echoing throughout the vast hangar.

“Six rounds left.” One-five reported.

One-six nodded, it seemed that tides were not turning in their favor. Despite them being elite fighter pilots, their shooting and firearm handling skills still paled in comparison to the foot soldiers. With a sigh he readied his own pistol. Two-six and Two-five had left their weapons behind in their room, and so all they had left were two dinky handguns with twenty or so rounds of ammunition, against the assault rifles of the guards.

He looked up at the open canopy of the fighter they hid behind. They would probably be able to all hop inside and close the canopy before the guards got to them. But a plane isn't like a car, you can't just jump in and go. Startup would take at least a minute or two, and by then the guards would already be on top of them and the canopy wouldn't hold up to the gunfire.

“They’re flanking us,” One-five shouted above the noise of gunfire.

The guards were advancing towards them along both sides of the hangar, holding their weapons at the ready to fire if any of them dared poke their heads out for too long.

One-six swung his gun around his cover and took a few quick shots at the guard coming around the left. None of the bullets hit, and he himself was met by a hail of gunfire. Fragments from the bullets striking the plane cut into his face, causing him to grimace in pain.

He wiped the blood from his cheek, took a deep breath, and swung out from behind cover again. This time he took aim more carefully, and fired a round which struck the guard in the chest. He heard the guard grunt in pain and fall to the ground, dazed, but otherwise unhurt. His little handgun just isn’t powerful enough to get through the kevlar vest of the armed guards.

“I’m out!” One-five shouted, throwing away the empty magazine and putting down his pistol. “They’re coming around this side!”

One-six turned around to look just as two more guards came around the plane they were hiding behind, their rifles pointed straight at him. Quickly he brought his own pistol up and pulled the trigger. He managed to fire off one round, which missed and burried itself into the ceiling. Then the slide locked back, signaling that he was out of bullets..

Time seemed to freeze as he saw the barrel of the guard's gun turn towards him. And he closed his eyes as the guard pulled back on the trigger.

There was a hail of gunfire, but none was aimed at him or his teammates.

Once the gunfire subsided, One-six opened his eyes a sliver, and saw the guards on the ground, dead.

A deathly silence descended upon the hangar, and One-six began to notice the ringing in his ears due to the firefight.

“Anyone hit?” One-six asked his teammates.

After checking themselves over, they responded together with a “no”.

Then they heard a set of footsteps approaching from where they had originally come from, and a moment later a man in dark blue uniform and a heavy battle rifle turned the corner and came to a stop before them.

“You foolish bastards.” Captain Steiner said with a tone One-six has never heard before.

It was a mix of anger, relief, and a hint of admiration. Of course, Neither One-six nor any of his teammates could tell, since they were never made to understand those emotions.

“Captain Steiner?” They asked together, slowly getting to their feet.

“This day would finally come, huh?” Captain Steiner chuckled heartily. “This document contains everything about the upcoming attack on New Asia,” he said as he produced a little flash drive from his pocket. “Do whatever you want with it, hand it over to New Asia even. But know that you don't have much time, only two more days to think up something."

“You want the attack to fail?”

Captain Steiner shrugged. “I hate this city with all of my heart. It would bring me a great deal of joy if this city doesn’t win the war.”

“Won’t you be punished for treason?”

Captain Steiner laughed, an action completely opposite to his normal high and mighty mannerism. “They won’t do anything to me until after the attack. I’m the only general left who is capable enough to lead an assault of such a scale, and they know it.”

“You knew about our…”

“I knew from day one. The moment you left through those gates, I knew. But I decided not to do anything, just to see how it would turn out.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to start a revolution since I was young, but I’ve never gotten the chance. When I saw what you guys were up to, I thought that maybe this time something might happen and something might change. I wished that you four would be able to do something I never managed."

“Was us seeing you incinerate our seniors part of your plan too?”

“That… not really. But hey, in the end it all worked out.” He looked down at his watch. “Now it’s time for your four to get out of here. Take this.” he tossed the flash drive to One-six, who clumsily caught it against his chest. “And one more thing,” he mumbled, reaching into his pocket and taking out a small, old-styled paper envelope, much like the one Mr. Takeshi had given them. “I have one last assignment for you four. Hand over this envelope to Takeshi for me please, the same person who met you in Valkyria. This is not an urgent assignment, you can complete it whenever you like, after the war is over, even. But I still want it to be done.”

One-six looked down at the little envelope, stuck closed with a small round sticker.

“And also,” Captain Steiner continued. “I assume you have met with Alpha?” He asked.

"Yes."

"Then, in that case, I order you four to go and learn what it means to truly be human." And with that he saluted his men, a textbook salute from back when he was still a fontline soldier.

One-six and his team saluted too, as loyal soldiers to their commander, for the final time.

Then they hurriedly put on their flight suits, turned and ran to their fighter, started it up in record time, waved goodbye to Captain Steiner with a flick of the hand, who stood watching from a distance, and accelerated off into the morning sun.