The Great War

Part Three

Mimi had arrived exhausted, but the two greeted each other and spent the whole afternoon and evening talking about the missions they'd been on. They could take off their uniforms and remain dressed only in the one-piece thermal uniform. After so long, they had gotten used to it; at least it was a relief to take off the exoskeleton they wore for fighting.

They exchanged anecdotes and stories about other teams they had crossed paths with. After a while, they walked by the shore, eventually sitting down to watch the sea.

The night over the Aegean was serene, carrying a stillness only waters free from threat now could offer. Lizbeth and Mimi sat by the edge of the tide, watching the moonlight glint on the orbiting debris above, while a cool breeze brushed across their faces. The mission was done for now, and though danger still lingered not very far, in that moment, both were silent—grateful for even a temporary reprieve.

But Lizbeth couldn't shake the weight of the past. After everything—after the battles, the deaths, the loneliness—Shin was still in her mind. Maybe he always would be. In many ways, the war had dragged back too many memories of him. Of both of them. When the three of them had been happy and also running around from dangers. It felt like centuries ago. Well… at least more than a hundred years, since she and Mimi first met.

Maybe that had been her mistake—allowing those days to resurface again after days of combat and tiredness. As they looked at the water and listened to the sound of ships patrolling around them, she let those memories out.

"Do you remember those days on the island? When it was just the three of us? Fuck! That was a great vacation," Lizbeth said, staring out over the Aegean waters. Her voice carried a note of melancholy, as if she were speaking more to herself than to Mimi.

Mimi didn't reply right away. She just sat there, eyes fixed on the moon, but her expression tensed slightly. There was something about those memories that had begun to trouble her in recent years—and Lizbeth could sense it. The tightness in her jaw, the flicker of heat in her eyes, the way her hands hovered nervously near her knees—all of it spoke volumes.

Still, she couldn't stop herself from speaking. Those years, dangerous as they were, had also been filled with joy. No one could deny that, even though at that moment it seemed to bring only sadness.

Later there were five of them, once Rein and Noki had joined.

"Those years…" Lizbeth continued, almost without permission from her own thoughts, "I remember how we'd sleep together, laughing about stupid things, forgetting the rest of the world. When we traveled—just the three of us. Each new place, each city... We didn't care about the future. We didn't even think about the consequences of what we were doing."

Mimi let out a soft sigh but said nothing. Her eyes darkened slightly, as if hiding something far heavier than nostalgia or regret. Her silence was sharp, loaded, almost defensive. As if every word Lizbeth spoke was picking at an old wound that had never quite healed.

Lizbeth glanced sideways at her, approaching closer. "I know it was foolish. All of it. But it was… perfect, wasn't it?"

A heavy silence fell between them as Lizbeth stepped even closer. Without thinking, her hands reached toward Mimi, her face reflecting a desperate need to reconnect—to revive something that could no longer be, but the two of them were still there. Her hand grazed Mimi's arm, her face close enough to feel the warmth of her breath.

The tension finally snapped. A sharp flicker flashed in Mimi's eyes, and she turned her face sharply away, like a wave recoiling from a jagged cliff.

"Stop!" Mimi shouted, rising to her feet, fists clenched. "How long are you going to keep clinging to that?! We're in a shit-show right now!"

Her voice was sharp, full of years of suppressed frustration, her body trembling under the weight of unspoken burdens.

"W-What's wrong...?" Lizbeth whispered, barely more than a breath between them.

"How long are you going to keep thinking about him? Shin is dead, Liz! He's not coming back! And you—you're still chasing his fucking ghost, lost in memories of what once was!"

Lizbeth, stunned by the outburst, stood up and took a step back, her heart twisting at the rawness of Mimi's tone. She could feel the invisible pressure of decades pressing down on her lover and friend, but she didn't fully understand it. Not yet. They had fought sometimes in the past, but always as any couple would. But it felt different now.

"Mimi…" she began, her voice faltering, "I just… wanted to remember. I'm sorry. Is that really so wrong?"

"Yes!" Mimi snapped, teeth clenched, hands trembling at her sides. "It is. It's pathetic! We're fighting to survive! This fucking war doesn't wait for what we feel! How can you be here, right now, thinking about a kiss… about memories that don't mean anything anymore? Shin is dead, and no matter how hard you try to find him in the past, he's never coming back to us!"

Her words cut deep, but Lizbeth could feel the undertone—the tension that wasn't just anger. There was fear, worry, something buried, twisting under the rage.

You were the one who told me I didn't have to do everything alone, Lizbeth thought, but she didn't say it.

Lizbeth didn't answer right away. She just looked at Mimi, feeling every word land in her chest like a blow. The pain ran deep, but she couldn't stop thinking about what they had lost.

What they all had lost.

"I hate you for this, Liz," Mimi said finally, her voice low and trembling, on the verge of tears. "I hate you for making me feel like we're trapped in the past… when we're supposed to be fighting for the future."

Lizbeth said nothing. She just stood there, eyes heavy with sorrow, feeling the weight of Mimi's pain without fully knowing its shape.

And still, she sensed it—the rage was only half the story. There was a fracture behind the anger, a knot of fear and grief that had nothing to do with her.

So many battles. So many sorrowful days over the past years.

She had to be tired.

They both were.

But in Mimi's case, as well as Rein and Noki's, they should have been even more so. She had been in Nevermore from the beginning. She had continued on her path without joining. They had been more responsible by choosing a side from the start. Lizbeth, on the other hand...

Lizbeth looked at her in silence, holding her breath.

And though she didn't fully understand the reason behind such fury, she felt something— a fracture that didn't come only from their shared past, or even from Shin.

It was as if Mimi were carrying something else, something she couldn't bring herself to scream. An invisible knot in her throat.

A guilt, perhaps. Or a grief so dense that words couldn't pass through it.

Lizbeth didn't need the details. She knew her well enough to recognize that the rage wasn't pure.

It was laced with something else.

With silence.

With fear.

And somehow, that hurt even more than the shouting.

Not because Mimi had pushed her away—but because she still couldn't trust her with that weight, or was protecting something and Lizbeth and the girls too?

Ever since the early 2000s, Mimi had seemed to carry a burden she refused to share, and now it seemed to have exploded—almost a century later.

She took a couple of steps closer, but Mimi took the same number of steps back.

"I'm sorry," Lizbeth whispered. The words felt hollow, but they were all she could give.

Lizbeth stepped back, maintaining the delicate distance that Mimi seemed to demand. The heat of anger still radiated off her lover, but beneath it was something else, something untouchable and private. A weight that Lizbeth couldn't reach, and maybe shouldn't, not yet.

"If you want, we can talk tomorrow..." Lizbeth added quietly, stepping away, putting more space between them. "I'm sorry, Mimi," she murmured, her voice soft, almost drowned by the whispering night breeze. "If I upset you... that wasn't my intention. I love you."

Mimi didn't answer. She didn't turn her head, didn't move. Lizbeth took her silence as something filled not just with resentment, but with a deeper pain—something too raw for even a scream to express.

Her stomach twisted. The distance was no longer just physical—it was a chasm carved by grief, rage, and unspoken words.

As she walked along the shore, she heard a stifled sob, a crack in Mimi's voice. A fragile thread of vulnerability that, if seen, would break both of them in two. Lizbeth thought of turning, of stepping back into that storm of fury and unspoken pain.

Held her.

Let her know that what had been taken from them, what the war hadn't left in ashes, still meant something.

That not everything had been destroyed.

But something deep inside told her not to. That reaching out now might only make the wound worse. That Mimi might reject her if she tried. They were both stubborn. And they both knew each other too well.

I hate you. Those words still echoed in Lizbeth's mind.

Maybe she said them in a moment of rage—but they had landed deep.

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And Lizbeth hadn't turned back either.

Some wounds, she thought, needed to be faced alone.

Sometimes, the best thing one can do is let the pain overflow— let it flood and run its course, so it can one day truly begin to heal. Even if such wounds could leave scars, it was something one had to live with.

But something told her that now was not the time.

If you need to hate me, that's fine, Lizbeth thought, as her feet carried her away from the shoreline. Hating me is a way of healing too.

Even as her silhouette disappeared into the night, she carried the knowledge that Mimi was carrying more than just anger toward the past. There were layers she couldn't touch, not yet. And that was why the distance between them was so sharp, so cutting.

Maybe… just maybe… it was the same thing Lizbeth felt: the desperation to make all of it mean something.

When her silhouette finally vanished into the dark, Lizbeth stopped walking, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.

She imagined that if Mimi called out to her—just once—she would run straight back into her arms. But there was no call.

No word.

Nothing.

And in the silence that settled between them, Lizbeth simply waited out the night, sadness weighing heavy on her chest.

Maybe time could heal the wound—though she wasn't sure it ever truly would.

No, she knew better. Sometimes, wounds don't heal.

You just learn to live with them.

The two of them now stood on opposite sides of that pain, as if the abyss between them had no end.

And even though Lizbeth knew that pain was necessary, she couldn't help but feel that something inside her had just shattered—something she knew it wasn't that easy to repair and could take a very long time.

The next morning, when Lizbeth woke from an uneasy sleep, Mimi was gone from the camp.

***

Over the following two years, her reputation within the organization solidified with each completed mission and every successful infiltration. Lizbeth proved she could dismantle fractus trafficking networks and neutralize Dark Events—even under extreme conditions and in hostile terrain. Her reports became reference material for future operations, and her tactics were studied as models of adaptability and precision.

During that era of chaos, disasters of all kinds unfolded. Often it wasn't just Dark Events, black markets, or fractus incursions—it was the result of people tampering with forces they barely understood.

That's what happened during the Tokyo disaster of 2098.

Lizbeth was far away and couldn't abandon her post, but she nearly did when she found out Oxy had been caught in it.

Thankfully, the restless girl had been found alive, her regenerative abilities having allowed her to survive an event that erased life for kilometers around.

Lizbeth never learned the full details—but the Council was already reviewing protocols, and considering restricting control over certain types of experiments, to make sure tragedies like that one…would never happen again.

Lizbeth had stopped counting the years, but her body remembered every battle.

By 2099, the war against the fractus showed no sign of slowing, and she had gone from being a veteran to almost a ghost on the battlefield—drifting between squads and fronts with no true home base.

Her first major mission of the year took her to the ruins of Warsaw, where a fractus swarm was devouring the city's foundations. The order was simple: stop the advance before the evacuation routes collapsed.

What no one told her was that the swarm had mutated, forming a colossal entity made of hundreds of fused fractus bodies. For hours, Lizbeth and her team bombarded its core while dodging its serpentine limbs.

In the end, she had to plunge into the chaos herself, using her sonic waves at maximum power as bait, until the creature was destroyed by a coordinated barrage of electric strikes from the surrounding units.

It cost her an email reprimand from Leon, asking her if she was trying to imitate what Shin had once done during World War II when he had acted as bait. That had also been the first time she had seen his regeneration. She regretted remembering it. She already had more than enough with the nightmares of past wars, added to the current ones, to keep adding fuel to her unconscious during the night.

Days later, on the cliffs of Norway, she faced an anomaly that left a hollow pit in her gut.

Something beyond the fractus was trying to come through. It wasn't an invasion—it was a leak: a massive, unreal-looking creature that appeared and disappeared between dimensions, devouring everything in its path—friend and foe alike. There had been reports of fractus attacking fractus, but they had never seen fractus disappear so quickly when that creature arrived, gliding through the sky like a bird of prey.

The team she was in Lizbeth fought it for six hours straight, attacking without knowing if her strikes even mattered.

The mission ended with the use of an experimental charge that sealed the dimensional breach— but not before the creature looked directly at her.

That moment haunted her dreams for months.

What were they to the fractus, really?

Just like insects? Just food? How really was the world of the creatures?

Lizbeth had asked herself that question—and she knew others had, too.

Some fractus displayed patterns unlike the rest. More advanced.

Intelligent?

Aware, maybe?

That was one of the deep, unspoken fears among government agencies: the emergence of fractus that could understand the human mind. Evolve. Become conscious. The eyes Lizbeth saw in that creature were too… alive. Predatory, yes—but also almost… inquisitive. As if it were asking why it was being attacked.

In an operation in Istanbul, her squad was ambushed in an underground market where fractus had begun infecting living humans. It was a trap—she felt it the moment the air changed. One by one, her teammates fell until she was alone in the shadows, the sound of fractus creeping through the debris. The infection was quite similar to that caused by certain fungi, although in this case the spores penetrated the organic tissue from a higher dimension.

She didn't remember exactly how she made it out alive—only that when it was over, the entire place was in flames, and her suit was soaked in blood and fractal residue of the core.

She spent a whole week in quarantine. It was confirmed that she had also been infected, but her Timid Organ seemed to have fought back against the infection, causing the antibodies in her body to triple. After that week, she had to get going wherever she was called.

By late July, she was sent to intercept a fallen fractus core in the Alps.

It was supposed to be a simple recovery mission, but what they found inside was something Lizbeth had never seen before: smaller fractus that had broken off from a massive core and had absorbed human technology, using weapons they shouldn't have been able to comprehend. The battle was a mess of crossfire, with Lizbeth fighting enemies that fired back using their own stolen guns.

When they finally secured the area, the unease lingered.

The war was changing.

The entire mission was put under immediate classification while higher-ups deliberated what had really happened.

Rumors among the soldiers said that the same type of fractus had appeared before, in Bolivia. Nevermore was only able to find out that it seemed that behind it all were soldiers who had recently been influenced by a certain sect that worshipped fractus as gods, and that according to some investigations, this sect encouraged its followers on the battlefield to make closer contact with the fractus. The mushroom-type fractus and that type seemed to absorb matter and basic information.

That could be a much worse danger.

Rein was the one who informed her. Mimi and a special team trained in intelligence were cooperating with a special branch of the joint forces to uncover these problematic clusters around the world.

Mimi seemed to have developed a taste for intelligence work. She sent Mimi several messages asking how she was doing, but the replies were rather terse. There was no "I love you," "I miss you," or anything like that. But at least Mimi also asked if she was okay.

In August, she went to Moscow—or what was left of it.

The fractus had turned the city into ruins, and something was hibernating at its core. She was ordered to infiltrate and assess the threat, but what she found left her speechless: an Ancestor fractus, so-called because they had only ever been observed in anomalies, never actually crossing over.

A creature that shouldn't exist outside its own dimension… growing in the dead center of the city.

The mission changed from recon to eradication.

With only a small support team, she spent two days harassing the creature, studying and attacking its weak points until it finally collapsed—disintegrating and leaving behind a core nearly a hundred meters long.

But as she walked away, watching Moscow burn in the night, she wondered if any of this still made sense.

But the end came.

***

On November 23, 2099, Lizbeth had just returned from a two-month covert mission in a remote base in Madagascar.

She was reviewing reports in a modest operations center when the transmissions from other bases broke through:

The war was over.

Lizbeth blinked, thinking it was some kind of joke.

Messages flooded in from every direction.

The fractus were gone.

In battle zones across the world, soldiers froze in place— the enemy had simply vanished, leaving behind only fractium cores.

No one believed it.

Five years.

Five years of endless fighting—over, just like that.

Could it really be true?

Throughout the day, updates came pouring in as everyone waited, breathless.

The war that had defined the existence of both feys, humans and aeons seemed to be at its end.

The massive anomaly in Russia, where the first fractus breach had erupted, had disappeared— leaving behind an unsettling silence and a mountain of unanswered questions. Though the full details remained unknown, the news felt like an unexpected twist of fate— a ceasefire written by something far beyond the civilization hands.

Some wept. Others celebrated.

Commanders failed to restrain the flood of soldiers abandoning formation to celebrate. By that evening, in many places, there was nothing but revelry.

Lizbeth accepted a few drinks— but spent most of the time glued to the radio.

That night, she slept in the open field, under a starlit sky during an unusually warm November. In the distance, fragments of that strange land still floated in orbit. The fractus were gone— but that… that remained.

Only then did she realize how beautiful the spectacle was on those full moon nights. Over the years, those remnants had gradually formed a ring around the Earth.

As the music played softly, she drifted to sleep— for the first time in a long while, that night she slept without the tension that always gripped her muscles.

The next morning, she woke to discover that someone had painted her face while she slept. But she didn't mind.

It was real.

The war was over.

The end of the war felt both liberating and bewildering. As old wounds began to slowly heal, the world reorganized itself into a kind of uneasy calm.

For Lizbeth, accustomed to the violence and uncertainty of recent years, it was hard to imagine a future without the constant roar of battle and the looming presence of the fractus. Every time someone called her, she jumped as if she expected to hear news of a new deployment. She was tired of the conflict. But her regenerating body seemed to act on reflex.

Yet this new reality carried the promise of profound change—a chance to rebuild what had been lost.

The disappearance of the anomaly in Russia became a symbol of an era finally stepping away from the edge of the abyss.

A month later, with the fragile peace that followed the war's end, Lizbeth embarked on a journey to Siren Island—a place she had only visited a handful of times before. Aboard a modest ship, she crossed uncertain seas and horizons, the weight of years of fighting and solitude easing with every wave.

Siren Island, with its enigmatic atmosphere and an almost ancient strangeness to humans, now offered a sanctuary where the din of global conflict seemed finally left behind.

There, in that remote refuge, Lizbeth saw a truce to the turmoil that had defined her life in the last years.

It was on that voyage, in the vastness of the sea, that for the first time in ages, Lizbeth allowed herself to cry like a child.

As the rhythmic sound of the waves mingled with the wind, her thoughts turned to Shin and Mimi. Not only them— but everyone she had known, lost, and found along the way. It was difficult to encapsulate the pain and longing accumulated over a hundred years since her beloved disappeared in 1999.

Each tear shed was a testament to the internal battle she had fought for decades—a struggle against oblivion and loneliness.

And now, it seemed, she had lost Mimi as well.

In that moment, amidst the ebb and flow of the sea, Lizbeth understood that despite the peace heralded by the war's end, her heart was still waging a personal battle—a war of love and memory that might never truly cease.

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