All You Need Is Kill

by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

We should all have our turn feeling Death’s breath on the back of our neck, friend and foe alike.

Good ideas don’t stand a chance against good bureaucracy.

I had a whole day to repeat, but I didn’t have enough time when I needed it.

It was like everyone kept reading from the same script they’d been given the day before and ad-libbing was frowned upon.

Just because I had all the time in the world didn’t mean I had time to waste.

But it turns out that you can carve the perception of time into finer and finer pieces.

I’d started as a green recruit, a paper doll swept on the winds of war. I’d become a veteran who bent the war to my will.

The loop robbed me of every moment I spent with someone.

I etched the faces of the men I’d let die deep in my mind. In a few hours their pain would be gone, but I would remember. Like a thorn in my heart it tormented me, toughened me for the next battle.

Maybe spending so much time in such proximity to death had sharpened senses she didn’t know she had, revealing secrets that lay hidden from normal sight.

In dark times the world needed a figure for people to rally behind.

The Full Metal Bitch and the squire at her side were steel death incarnate.

I guess I had a call sign of my own now. They didn’t waste much time. It was a good name for a pig’s ass who won medals by killing his friends. I’d have to thank whoever thought of it. What a fucked-up world.

In a field of a million soldiers, I will stand out from all the rest, a lightning rod for the enemy’s attacks. I will be their target.