"Jillia," he asked the princess beside him, "Is General Seed your boyfriend?" Inside, he cringed, thinking {I'm afraid she'll say 'yes...'}

It never occurred to the poor boy *why* he was so nervous about it.

"Seed?" Jillia Bright replied to her childhood playmate. "Ew, no! He's been like a brother to me. A... normal brother," she finished, the thought of her siblings bringing to mind Ruka Bright, the maniac who was leading Highland into war (at the moment, against this very fort.)

"Huh?" Makoto said with a blank look, before both what was said and the thought of Ruka registered. "Oh! Right. I'm sorry..." he replied, shaking his head. "Agh! We don't have time to hang around here! Come on! We've got to help Pohl get all the important stuff out of there and then run!" he urged her, taking her hand in his as he led the way to the stairs. Jillia willingly followed him.

The run to the planning room was mercifully brief and uninterrupted. "Pohl! Got everything?" he called out to the slightly pudgy boy that some said was the reason the fort had kept working. Makoto had sent Pohl up to do two things: first, get the Toranian stratgeist Apple out of the fort to safety, and second, to gather up all the maps that the fort commanders had been using for strategy. "We've got to move fast!" the young Gentaro finished.

"Not quite..." the boy replied. As Makoto threw open the door, Pohl was revelaed trying to peel the largest map off its permanent mounting on the planning table. Pohl had accomplished at least part of his mission though, as Apple was nowhere in sight.

Makoto ran to the nearest corner fo the table while Jillia went to the far side from the door, and they all tugged at the stubborn paper.

"Won't it be too bulky to run with anyway?" the princess asked, tugging on her corner.

"We'll carry what we can and burn what we can't. No way am I letting the Highland strategists get ahold of this!" Makoto answered, finally getting a grip on his corner and, together with the others, ripping the whole thing off the desk.

It was just then that the door to the room banged open again.

The view was almost too perfect.

Three kids, two of them being some boys, and the other... heh... the other was his 'beloved' sister.

"Casualties." he whispered to himself and grinned. He drew out his sword and pointed it to Jillia.

"Sister, I'm sorry I couldn't 'save' you in time... I was a bit... 'hung up' in trying to kill a Princess." he laughed and proceeded to strike the killing blow towards Jillia.

Something stopped him in the middle of his strike. A clang was heard and Ruka was forced back.

"WHA-" he stuttered and saw one of the boys in front of him. The boy was blocking the way between him and Jillia, with tonfa in his hands. And somehow, the boy looked familiar to Ruka. But he dismissed this little familiarity and proceeded to strike the boy. But the boy was good, and he was already in a defensive mode. The boy parried every blow that Ruka let out.

"OUT OF MY WAY, JOWSTON SCUM!" he shouted as he kept on banging on the boy's defense, hoping for a glint of an opening so that he could just strike into it and finish this busy-body once and for all.

*CLANG!*

The boy staggered back, a clear opening right at his chest, time for the strike.

*CRASH!!*

A vase... was... thrown... towards Ruka's head. Blood was coming down from the back of his head, trickling slowly at the side of his head. He swiped a bit of the blood from the side of his head. He looked at his hand, filled with his own blood. A sight he'd never thought he'd see. His hand is now filled with his own blood. He licked his hand and tasted the foul stench of his own blood. His eyes, now looking very wild, his mouth, twitching on the side...

His own blood.

His own blood.

Blood.

"Heh heh heh heh... huh huh huh ha.... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

He threw his head back and laughed while he scratched at the side of his head, putting more blood into his hand and making more blood flow through it. Then he snapped back into position.

The tonfa boy was standing in his position, quite startled from looking at Ruka's reaction. So was his own sister, he was thinking that his sister never really did see his... condition as it is now. They were both wide eyed. Ruka took this opportunity and used the back of his sword to whack the tonfa boy into a sitting position.

The tonfa boy was now helpless, forced to sit on the floor, and defenseless.

"Not yet..." Ruka said.

The tonfa boy looked up at Ruka, who now had his sword and his head down.

Ruka's head wildly turned to the left, where a pudgy looking boy was wide eyed and almost hugging the table in front of him.

"I have to thank you for showing me my own blood." Ruka said to the boy, and in a flash of a moment, Ruka was suddenly behind the fat boy, with his sword drawn out. He sheathed his sword, and something unspeakable happened.

The table got cut in half.

The pudgy boy backed up just before he bumped into Ruka, and suddenly, there was a big slash on his chest. Blood came flowing out of it like a geyser, and the boy coughed before slumping to the ground. Ruka looked back and grinned his devilish grin.

Makoto stared as what might have been his best friend in Jowston collapsed, his chest a bleeding mess. The young Unicorn survivor could only see another child dead at Ruka's hands, another youth gone... another friend, *murdered.* What he did next was out of more rage than thought.

With a wild yell, he charged. To Ruka, for a few short moments, the boy's tonfa seemed to be everywhere at once. The murderous prince would block one high, and the other would smash him in the kneecap. A low block led to a smash in the bloodied side of the head, leaving a sticky red mark on Makoto's right-hand tonfa.

Roaring in rage, Ruka slashed out, aiming to remove the troublesome boy's head from his shoulders, but Makoto ducked and swung both his weapons into a *very* unkind spot, bringing them up in short arcs between Ruka's legs. The prince doubled over.

For that one moment, Jillia, staring at them in horror from the side, actually dared to hope, {By the True Runes.. is Makoto going to *win??*}

Alas, it was not to be. Taking one hand off his sword, Ruka smashed the armoured fist across Makoto's face, sending him stumbling back. Shaken out of his rage, the fatigue from making such a fast assault caught up to Makoto. His arms and legs feeling like lead, he could only fight back with words. "Now what, prince of murder!?" he growled. "You going to kill me just like the rest of the Unicorn Brigade??"

"So that's where I've seen you before," Ruka replied as he slowly straightened back up, "You're the one that got away. Yes, killing you sounds like a wonderful idea. Then, of course, my sister dies a tragic death as well."

Sucking in a breath, Makoto pulled himself to his feet. "Maybe on a cold day in hell, you bastard!" he shot back. Ruka's eyes got very big at the insult... very big and very blood-red.

(Note: Ruka does note that the King is not their father in the game...)

Screaming, the prince rushed at Makoto, taking a tonfa to the head again but not even flinching. Slamming into the Kyaro boy, he knocked him sprawling, the tonfa clattering away across the floor.

Looking up, Makoto tensed. {He's swinging up his blade to cut me in half from head to toe,} he noted. {I'll have to roll out of the way-}

However, they were both interrupted before that could happen.

Jillia had been frozen by shock and fear until that moment, when she found herself moving under the direction of a much calmer, colder part of herself. Her fingers brushed across the pearled hilt of Seed's dagger. Her eyes narrowed dangerously as she gripped it tightly and drew it from its sheath.

She leapt at Ruka with the dagger aimed at one of the small weak points in his armor. At the very last instant, Ruka's sword turned against her instead and momentum thrust her into it. Jillia's eyes went wide at the sensation of cold steel impaling her through the middle, and as she slid off of the blade to the ground, her blood flowing out of the open wound. The last things she heard were the sounds of laughter and shouting.

What luck. What blind luck.

He'd been acting out of reflex, but hell, the results came out just as well. His sister now on the floor, dying out of a wound he inflicted, something he had wanted to do for a long time, and no one can actually blame him for this either, because it was out of self-defense and circumstance. Oh well.

"Well, well, well, sister, I doubt you can hear me with that deep wound of yours, but seeing you stuck on the blade like this... I can't help but think how truly beautiful your dying face is. It is a work of art."

Jillia slowly slid off the blade and flumped to the ground, her blood flowing out of the open wound.

"Too bad, such a treasured art must not be kept long or it will be spoiled and rot away... I'll chop it off for you... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!"

Makoto was frozen in horror as Jillia leaped in, evidently to his defense, and was impaled when Ruka stabbed his blade back at her.

He drew in a sharp breath as he saw Jillia move on the ground. His mind was filled with only two thoughts:

{The Great Blessing cured an arrow wound just as bad as that one in the courtyard,} and

{I have one Great Blessing left. I *have* to get Ruka off of her so I can save her!!}

Snatching his tonfa back up, Makoto leapt to the attack, swinging high. As he'd hoped, Ruka pulled his sword back to block - and thus failed to finish off killing his sister, who lay still on the floor.

In his deperation, the Unicorn survivor threw fair play out the window, kicking the side of Ruka's knee as the prince blocked the high swing. The knee, the same one that Makoto had hit earlier, began to give out, and as Ruka stumbled Makoto dashed around him, getting between the prince and princess. He raised his right hand to cast the spell-

-and yanked it back down to block as Ruka swung at him. It took both tonfa to stop the sword, and Makoto only broke the murderous clinch by bracing a foot against the wall to get leverage behind his push.

"Silly boy," Ruka chided, beginning a series of short fast chops that forced Makoto to stay on guard or take a severe wound. "Did you think I'd just let you heal her after all the effort it took to get her half-dead? HOO HOO HA HA HA!!"

Gritting his teeth, Makoto stepped back, bashing his shoulder against the wall but avoiding Ruka's next slice. As the Highland prince followed through his surprisingly unblocked attack, Makoto lunged, catching him under the chin with the butt of one tonfa while he smashed the second downward - slamming the same knee that was already twice abused.

Ruka stumbled back, Makoto whipped his right tonfa into his belt and raised his hand-

-and recoiled, eyes wide, as the prince beat him to the gesture, the red flame of a Rage Rune flaring on his hand. "Damn brat! FIRE WALL!"

Two curtains of flame converged on Makoto, the confined space of the planning room altering the spell's usual pattern into an 'X'. Frantically, he dove forward, performing a tuck-and-roll as his hands reached the floor, careening into Ruka's knees and toppling the prince. For a few seconds, there was only an ungainly tangle of limbs as the two tried to sort themselves out, set to the unholy music of the crackle of flames spreading from Ruka's spell, cast as it was in a wooden room. Noticing that the planning table's halves (and the maps beside them) were alight, Makoto thought with some amusement, {I guess we don't have to burn the papers now.}

Finally pulling clear, Makoto dashed a few steps away from the Highland prince and raised his hand again. "Hang on, Jillia! Gre- grea..." he began, sure that this time he would cast the spell, but coming to a faltering halt as he saw something.

Ruka's errant Fire Wall attack had converged on the wall of the planning room.

Right where Jillia had been lying.

The spell had blown a charred hole in the wall, opening Flik's bedroom to view, and of Jillia.... there was no sign at all.

"Well, so much for that!" Ruka roared in mirth. "Nothing left of her to bury. Well, that's all right, she'd have been cremated anyway-!"

Makoto cut him off. "RUU-KAAA... DAMN YOU! **SHIIINING LIIIGHT!!**"

The resulting explosion of light blew Ruka right through the fortress' wall and into the courtyard. Shaking his head, he began to get up, but had to roll aside as Makoto, heedless of his own safety, leapt out of the second-floor gap and slammed both tonfa down where the prince had landed. The blows left cracks in the stone.

Springing up, the boy attacked like a wild thing, smashing at Ruka so hard and fast the prince could find no opening for an attack of his own. Only one thought occupied the boy's mind: to kill Ruka, and then to go and kill *anyone* else who had helped him with this murder. Makoto pressed Ruka further and further back across the courtyard, finally stopping when the prince took advantage of a missed swing and jumped back out of reach. For a moment, the two just stood there, panting.

In the background, the fire that had started in the planning room had spread to engulf the top floor of the fort, and the flagpole fell onto the palisade wall, spreading the fire there as well.

Raising his head, Makoto said one word. "Why..?"

Ruka stopped gulping in air and scowled. "Why? Why what?"

"Why.. do you.. do it?" Makoto asked, his words coming faster and louder as he went on. "Why do you need to kill? You kill the people of Jowston, you lead your soldiers to danger and death in a pointless war, you killed a whole company of the best and brightest of Highland's youth, you even killed your own *sister!!* Where do you get this poisonous need to kill!!?"

Ruka scowled. "A soldier's job is to risk his life, boy! And I only killed Jillia because she threatened my war! I only had to kill your brigade to go back to war with Jowston!! ONLY FOR JOWSTON!!"

Makoto's scowl, uncharacteristically, was as black as Ruka's. Nodding, he replied, "I can understand that. I guess it's sort of like this feeling I have for *you* right now... but why do you hate Jowston so much? What could possibly demand that you massacre your country's children - AND YOUR SISTER - just to continue your war??"

Ruka's expression became a snarl that ground his teeth together hard enough for Makoto to hear it over the crackle of flames. "You seemed fond of my sister boy..." he breathed. "... oh well, traitors attract each other, I suppose. As to your question, ask yourself, if someone were to kill your family... what would you do?"

Makoto blinked, surprised enough to lose some of his anger. But he couldn't answer.

Ruka nodded. "Jowston killed them, boy. Jowston raiders killed Dagan on the day he was to recieve his Rune Initiation, and a Jowston assassin with a Rune killed Mother - and nearly killed Jillia too, did you know that? - when they were coming back from a.. *peaceful..* visit to Scarlet Moon down south," the prince explained. "When Dagan died, I hated Jowston. When they killed Mother.... *Then* I swore that no matter what it took I would destroy them - all of them - for what they took from me. We left them alone after Genkaku gave Kyaro to us by not fighting Han... and they rewarded us with raids, murder, death. *That* is what I can't forgive..." the prince breathed, just barely loud enough for Makoto to hear.

Makoto narrowed his eyes and prepared to bark back a scathing retort - then a realization crashed through his mind with the force of a tidal wave. {That's *exactly* how I was thinking about Ruka... How he feels about Jowston is how I felt about him... there but for the True Runes' grace go I,} he thought. Lowering his weapons and stepping back, he vowed silently, {Never. No matter what, I will never allow myself to become like him. I won't let it happen to me.}

Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, he said, "Ruka... I think I understand you now. But you're wrong. Don't you see? Those raids, that assassin; they were sent because someone in Jowston wanted revenge for something Highland had done to them in the war! Revenge may feel satisfying, it may quiet the hate inside you, but it's a vicious cycle! What do the Toranians say: 'Payback is a mother'? All you're doing is making sure more Jowstonians want revenge on you - on Highland!" the boy exclaimed.

Ruka's reply was swift and sure. "Not if I kill them *ALL!!*"

Makoto's jaw dropped in shock. "You... no... you'd actually kill a whole nation? Spare no one? Is *that* the only way you can let out your hate?" he asked. Recieving a snarling nod in return, the Unicorn survivor took up a fighting stance. "Ruka Bright... I don't hate you any more, not like I did a minute ago. But for the sake of both Highland and Jowston, I think it better if you die here."

"You? Stop ME!? HAH!!" Ruka howled, moving back to the attack.

Makoto fought as hard as he could, but without the rage giving him extra speed and strength, he was simply outclassed. A missed parry opened a gash on his leg; when that caused him to stumble three slashes later, Ruka laid open his shoulder. That wound slowed and weakened Makoto's left arm, and Ruka smashed his next parry aside, slicing down Makoto's chest as the boy desperately leaped back, not *quite* avoiding a slash meant to split him down the middle.

Stumbling back and crashing down on his back near the palisade, Makoto knocked Ruka's stab at his heart aside, sending the blade into the dirt on his right. Desperately, the boy kicked out with both feet at the knee he'd already weakened, and was rewarded when Ruka cried out and stumbled back. Setting his left tonfa against the ground like a crutch, Makoto pushed himself to his feet.

He'd barely turned his attention back to Ruka when the mad prince knocked his right tonfa away from him with a crosswise slash. Desperately, Makoto flipped his left tonfa into his right hand and blocked, but the next blow was too much for his wounded leg and he fell back to the ground. Seeing Ruka winding up for an overhand slash that he had no chance of stopping, Makoto stared resolutely up, resolving that, {I may have failed, but I'll be damned if the grandson of Genkaku won't die a brave death!}

Makoto would remember what he witnessed over the next few moments for the rest of his life.

The sword began its deadly arc down, and there was a *clang* as of metal meeting metal. Shocked by the inexplicable parry, Ruka stumbled away again, his shadow dancing wildly around him as flames reached the palisade beside the fight.

In the unearthly light of those flames, Makoto sould see a shape - that was either out of focus or a bit on the pudgy side - step into the gap Ruka left and stab something - perhaps a spear - into the fortress wall and lever it out, causing two burning logs to pull free of the wall and come crashing down between Makoto and Ruka.

Smoke and sparks spiralled up, obscuring Ruka from view, and the silhouette turned to Makoto. In a whispery but familiar voice, it said, "Well? You gonna lie there all day or you gonna heal yourself and escape? Come on, you have to work to eat, you know!"

"...Pohl?" Makoto asked in a quivery voice.

"Yeah, it's me. I can't stay here long, but I guess the afterlife has rules about folks who die with unfinished business," the ghost said, planting his spear butt-first into the ground. "I can't do much more, but I wanted to be sure I at least got to use that parry you taught me *once.*"

"I never thought it'd save me like *this,*" Makoto whispered. Shaking his head, he raised his right hand and cast his last Great Blessing, curing his wounds, and got up. "Pohl... thank you. I... I'll never forget you," Makoto whispered, putting one hand over his heart and extending the other to his Toranian friend. He ignored the sharp chill that shot through his hand when Pohl shook it.

"That's the most anyone who's dead can ask for, I guess," the spirit replied. "Until we meet again..." he said, fading away.

Blinking back tears, Makoto scooped up his tonfa and ducked out through the hole in the palisade, running north through the woods. {I don't know if *anyone* else got away,} he thought as he ran. {Someone has to take word to Muse that the fort has fallen and Highland's on the move... and I guess I'm elected,} he reasoned. {A good night's sprint should get me to Toto. After that... well, I'll just have to take it as it comes.}

{Strange,} Ruka thought. Something had blocked him from finishing off his opponent. As the logs fell down between him and the Unicorn Brigade survivor, he looked around for anyone who might shot an arrow to block his attack and found no one. He looked back at the falling logs, now on the ground, creating a wall between him and the boy.

"Heh, a traitor with merits. I'll keep you in mind, boy."