All You Need Is Kill

by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

When the bullets start flying, it’s only a matter of time before fear catches up with a soldier.

If it moves, fuck it!

It don’t matter how much ammo you have left when you’re dead.

Our company had been torn to shreds.

Bad day

Pain lets you know you’re not dead yet.

Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

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

In training they taught us that even when you’re in excruciating pain—especially when you’re in pain—the best thing to do was to find some sort of distraction, something else to focus on

“Sweat it too much, you’ll turn into a feedhead—end up losing your mind before they even get a chance to blow your brains out.”

That I knew I was caught in a loop I couldn’t break out of was the worst part of all.

If I stayed here, I’d be killed. Whether I died before or after Yonabaru didn’t really matter. There was no way I could survive the firefight. I had to get away. I had to be anywhere but here.

today was a repetition of yesterday, Ferrell would be around any minute. The first time he showed up I’d been taking a dump, the second I’d been chatting it up with Yonabaru. After that we’d be off to a ridiculous session of PT, and we’d come back exhausted.

“Corporal, you have a sidearm, don’t you?”

Wow. This took A turn

So what if the world hands me a pile of shit? I’ll comb through it for the corn.

If checkflag RitajoinsPT =true, then end. Else continue routine: FuckingIsoPush-Ups

In martial arts training, you punch and shout at the same time. Your “Shout louder!” command helps to override the “Less power!” command.

“That’s what she said when she first asked me to cut her the axe.” Shasta relaxed her grip on the monkey wrench.

Rita is stuck in the loop btoo

girlfriend’s birthday?” “If I had to put a name to it, I’d say it’s the number of days since I died.”

If I strayed really far from the routine, I could force something different to happen,

time I tasted it, I thought it was delicious. That was about five subjective months ago now, maybe more.

My outward appearance may have been the same, but inside I was a hardened veteran of seventy-nine battles.

There were things I could do, and things I couldn’t. If I practiced, in time I could change some of those things I couldn’t do into things I could.

but here on my 157th pass through the loop, I could still recognize the Mimic that had killed me the first time.

It was our savior, the Full Metal Bitch, Valkyrie reborn, Mad Wargarita—Rita Vrataski. “How many loops is this for you?”

People could adapt themselves to their environment and their experiences in any number of ways.

I don’t know which flags I’d set or how, but on that 160th loop my relationship with Rita deepened as it never had before.

“Good. I don’t want to die alone.”