A young woman with red-brown hair crouched over the bloodied body of someone she might have called a comrade. The woman's corpse was face-down in the dried grass with half-clotted blood puddled beneath her neck. The kill had been clean: She was one of the first to be cut down, and hardly fought back despite firing two rounds at her assailant. The other eleven bodies had gone through a struggle but didn't seem to manage to even injure their attackers besides the horse. It was a massacre. This woman, however, seemed to suffer the least among her fellow dead comrades. 

"Comrades, Huh?" Azra whispered to herself. Were any of these people [i]her[/i] comrades? Now that she thought about it that way, it was somewhat troubling. These people simply wanted to put the world back together; to have a say in their own fate. These Vanguards wholeheartedly followed an ideal and put their very lives on the line. Each one of them looked at her and thought that she chased the same ideal--that she cared about their fates. Sure, their deaths were indeed very sad, but they were, in the end, a result of their own actions. These twelve people chose to put their lives on the line to change the world. It was an admirable goal, but not quite Azra's cup of tea.

"Those motherfucking Derps!" a young man's voice shouted angrily. Without turning her head, Azra knew it was the voice of her cell's youngest and newest member; Derrick. To say the kid was brash would be an understatement. He jumped into every fight like he was invincible, tried to hold a gun one-handed like some kind of action hero, disregarded the value of stealth completely, and was practically incapable of listening to reason when he was excited. The kid was the stereotypical hothead teen straight from Azra's novels: The one who either dies first or learns some kind of lesson from [i]almost[/i] dying. 

"James... and Yura... and Harris!" Derrick continued yelling, and seemed to be tearing up from what Azra could tell. "Those murdering fucks!"

With a sigh, Azra stood back to her feet and turned to face the furious teen. He was gripping the saber on his hip and its scabbard murderously, and scanning the area for something to take his anger out on. Unfortunately for him, the only thing around the area besides twelve human corpses was the body of a horse lying on the road. It was obvious to Azra that Derrick would eventually choose it as a target, since it presumably belonged to the people who killed his comrades. However, she had seen more than enough blood for the day, and didn't much feel like watching a teenager mutilate an animal's body

Before Derrick could take a step, Azra had approached him with a warm but somber smile and wrapped her arms around him. "It'll be okay Derrick," she spoke softly over his shoulder. Immediately, she could feel his body's tension unravel and his tears soak the her shoulder. This was the most reliable way to calm him down.

Derrick had only been with Azra's cell for two months. He was a relatively sheltered kid, considering the state of the world, raised in a DERB safe zone and provided with enough food not to die of starvation. Although many people would kill to be able to have an SZ residence--and have--Derrick felt like he and his mother were prisoners, and ran away in hopes of helping the Avant Garde liberate the Safe Zones. Someone like him had never seen so much death at once before. Azra both envied and pitied him.

"Az, they can't all be dead, right? I was just talking with David this morning. They can't just be gone, can they?" Derrick's aggressive rage had quickly faded into anguish.

"No, they're all gone Derrick," Azra found herself tearing up a little as well, but she knew it had little to do with this boy's grief. Even though she knew the two of them were almost nothing alike, she couldn't help but think of [i]him[/i] as Derrick bawled into her shoulder. 

[i]That's right. These people aren't my comrades.

They are a means to an end.[/i]

A man's hand found her dry shoulder, and the cell leader's voice spoke, "You guys take the horse up to Asylum. We'll stay back and clean up here."