Integrity

An Operation Individuality Side-Story

“Where do you think you’re going, you little brat?!?” the young man exclaimed. He glared at his current victim, a dark-haired boy about ten years of age. “YOU CAN’T escape.” He always emphasized those two words: You can’t. The reason he did that had never been clear to the young boy.

“Let me go!!!” he shrieked as he desperately fumbled with the doorknob. Tears were streaming down his face, and his silver eyes were filled with terror. The door was locked. He was trapped in the darkened room with this living nightmare that was too crazed to be put under the category of “monster”.

“YOU CAN’T leave…” the living nightmare hissed, his purple figure slowly creeping closer to the young boy.

“W-why…” the terrified boy stammered before crying out, “...WHY NOT?”

“YOU CAN’T escape…” he repeated.

“You…” the boy whispered to nobody in particular. “You’re not the older brother I know…” He stared up into the purple nightmare’s eyes, waiting for a hint of recognition. He had heard the accusations in the past, but always dismissed them. He had thought that they were the ones who didn’t know his brother, but this chain of events made him question everything. He just wanted his kind, slightly awkward, funny older brother back. Instead, he got a purple nightmare with a reputation to maintain. A reputation of murdering children.

“YOU CAN’T save them…” the nightmare snarled, raising his knife.

“Who are they?” the boy asked, though he had a feeling that “they” were his past victims. “W-why can’t I-”

“YOU CAN’T save yourself…” he interrupted. He lunged in for the kill…

I woke up with a scream. This can’t be happening again…

“Vincent?” a familiar voice asks me softly. The pretty magenta-haired girl turns around and looks at me, her bright red eyes overflowing with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Char…” I respond, barely able to form my thoughts into words. I sit up as she walks towards me.

“You had one of those flashback-nightmare-things again, didn’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Well, what else would it be, a baby rabbit about to eat your face off?” She giggles.

“That was one time…” I mutter.

“You’re never gonna live that down,” she retorts. She still manages to have that caring aura, even when she’s joking with me to try and ease the pain. That’s one of the things I really admire about her. She notices that I’m staring at my upper right arm and follows my gaze.

“…What?” I say flatly when I notice her stare. “Never seen a scar before?”

“I-I’m just not used to seeing you in a T-shirt, that’s all…” she replies awkwardly. “You’re usually wearing that jacket, so I guess I’ve just adapted to not seeing your arms…”

“It’s not like you don’t have your own to stare at,” I sigh.

“Scars?” Char responded. “Nah, the closest I’ve got is a razor nick-”

“Arms.”

“You idiot!” she exclaims, teasingly pushing me with said arms. I can’t help but smile.

“Get a room, you two…” Rebel comments, cutting the moment short. There’s a reason we call her the “Ninja of Sarcasm”.

“Shut up!” Char squeals jokingly. In the midst of the commotion, I hear a small noise and freeze.

“Uh…” Rebel says as she sits up to look at me. “Vincent?” Nothing. “Vincent!” Still nothing. I can’t… my senses are fading away… I’m stuck in an endless void of terror and despair…

“VINCENT ‘I HATE MY NAME’ JUNIOR!!!” Rebel yells, grasping my shoulders and shaking me. Heh. “Rebel yells”. What is this, a YouTube music playlist? Wait, why is she shaking me?!?

“Geez…” she sighs as I escape from the endless void. “You really had me worried there…” Her purple eyes scan my face almost robotically. She just does that to people sometimes. It’s almost like a social tic she’s developed.

“What happened this time, Vincent?” Char inquires. There it is. The question she’d been meaning to ask since the beginning.

“I… uh…” I mumbled. I then described the “nightmare-flashback-thing” in full detail, making sure to clarify exactly how the purple figure had moved in before his attack. My brother has always been… always is… a pretty nice guy most of the time. Why am I thinking about him as if he’s dead? He’s still here in this world, alive and… uh, I’d say “well”, but “not as psycho” will have to suffice. Most people say it’s just schizophrenia, but I think there’s something else. “Just schizophrenia” wouldn’t turn an awesome older brother that at least partially resembles a human into a bloodthirsty mess of a living nightmare.

“You’re okay now…” Char said to me as she put an arm around me reassuringly. “He can’t hurt you here.”

“Yes he can…” I respond. It’s hard for me to contain my emotions. “I can’t even contact him to see how he’s doing…” My vision starts to blur slightly. “How am I supposed to know that he won’t lash out again and attack someone else?!?” I can’t take it anymore. Tears stream down my face. Just like they did back then, on the day I got this scar.

“Go, Vincent!” Rebel calls out in a joking tone that still somehow shows concern and sympathy. “Gender roles are overrated! It’s okay for guys to show emotion!” Of course Rebel would say that. She’s so confident about being transgender that she finds telling others about her gender just as mundane as telling others her favorite color… which is shocking pink, by the way. The same color as her hair.

A few hours later…

“C’mon, Vincent!” Char exclaims for what feels like the billionth time. “We’re all gonna be late because you can’t get your lazy butt outta here!”

“Get the baby bunnies away from me…” I mutter. I’m completely awake, but I want to see whether she’ll fall for it or not.

“I’m not falling for it,” she replies. That answers my question! “Now get up!” I then proceed to do so.

“So, what’s the plan for today?” Rose inquires, adjusting her lavender-framed glasses as she stares into the fridge. “I mean, there’s gotta be somethin’ going on if Char’s so fired up!”

“Investigating more hidden laboratories,” Rebel says between mouthfuls of cereal. “Again.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something interesting for once…” Char responds. “Yeah, we haven’t found much besides the goodies from our first search and a few tidbits, but there’s gotta be more! S.T.I.F.L.E. can’t be hiding their info that well…”

“We are talking about a government organization here,” a low but slightly feminine voice interjects. “You do realize that, right? They’re not just gonna let some bunch of teen weirdos break down the door, creep around, and get the valuable information they need to prevent said organization from enslaving and brainwashing all of humankind.” I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard Liane speak at once, so it took me a while to recognize their voice.

“True,” says Char, unfazed by the dark-haired artist’s random appearance.

“Oh, there you are, my dearest gem!” Yumiko purrs as if she had been searching for Liane instead of following them. She pins them against the wall and attempts to giggle seductively, but ends up just sounding strange. Liane turns their head in my direction and mouths the words “help me”, but we all know that they’re fine with it. It amazes me that anyone could be brave (and dare I say, “kinky”?) enough to date a real-life yandere. Liane and Yumiko are still pretty cool, despite their quirks. That’s how everyone here in S.H.O.U.T. is. We all embrace our flaws and differences, while S.T.I.F.L.E. just wants to erase them completely.

“Get a room, you two…” Rose, Char, Rebel, and I all say in unison. Rebel pantomimes vomiting into her now-empty cereal bowl.

“Yeah, what they said,” a childish voice interrupts. “And get outta my way, idiots. Can’t a girl get to the fridge without anyone gettin’ in her way? Geez!”

“Hey, Chiki!” Rose says cheerfully, moving away from the fridge. I think she’s one of the few people who can put up with that kid for more than four hours. Sure, tsundere characters are funny and all, but when you actually have to listen to them and can’t simply hit the mute button, they get annoying. Really annoying.

“Ugh, it’s not like you had to clear the way for me, Rose-baka…” Yep, you heard that correctly. “Rose-baka”. Our “Cheeky little Chiki” here thinks that just because the whole “tsundere” thing is Japanese and that “baka” means “idiot”, she can therefore use “-baka” as an honorific like “-chan”, “-kun”, or “-san”. That kid’s more than a handful… or five. We all ignored her comment.

“So, who’s gonna go to the lab this time?” I ask to break the awkward semi-silence and get everyone back on track.

“I dunno,” Char answers. “Akira never told me specifically. All she said was that ‘we’ were going.”

“‘We’ meaning her, Rose, Char, and I,” Rebel clarifies. “And she said to ‘bring the Goth boy too’, so you’re coming with. That can’t be enough, though…”

“Akira called me Goth?!?” I exclaim. “The girl with multiple piercings in each ear and a skull tattoo calls me Goth?!?”

“Well, you do wear almost all black and have pale skin, so it makes sense,” Rebel teases.

“Don’t get too flustered, Goth boy,” Akira snickers from the doorway. “It’ll ruin your complexion.”

“Listen, just because you went to some ‘badass crime-fighting beauty school’ or whatever, that doesn’t mean you can-”

“Respect your elders!” Akira gasps, though she’s clearly joking. I, on the other hand, am still flustered about her calling me Goth.

“You’re 20!”

“I’m still older than you.”

“Yeah, by five years! That doesn’t make you an ‘elder’!!!”

“So, about today’s mission,” Akira says, her sudden shift in tone getting everyone’s attention. “We’re going to the next hidden lab. Everyone, if you’re not doing so already, please sit down. If I call your name, stand up. Everyone who’s standing will be going to the lab, and everyone else will report to Shei and Mira for their daily assignments.”

“What about everyone else?” asks Rose. “Is it just gonna be us?”

“I already took care of the other groups,” Akira replies. “You guys are the last ones. Okay, Rebel?” Rebel stood up.

“The shocking pink ninja of sarcasm stood up and observed her surroundings, eagerly awaiting her mission.” Everyone laughed, even Chiki.

“Rose?”

“Blooming like a flower and singing like a choir… that’s me, Rose Melody!” Rose says as she stands up. Melody is her middle name (literally, not like the expression), and in my opinion it suits her perfectly. As Akira calls out names, everyone that gets called stands up in turn and says a short, funny quote of sorts that describes their personality, kind of like something that might happen in an anime. It’s one of the bonding exercises Akira had learned when she first started at her “badass crime-fighting beauty school”, and everyone always finds it hilarious.

“Charlotte?” Akira is one of the few people who ever calls Char by her full name, but she only does it when trying to sound formal.

“Never try to smother your sister’s face in cherry gelatin, no matter how annoying she’s being.” Char’s response got a whole lot of laughter, a hint of confusion from Chiki, and a wide grin from Yumiko. That must have given her another idea for how to eliminate her “rivals for the affection of the dearest gem”. I can imagine Rebel pretending to barf into her cereal bowl again.

“Vincent Junior?”

“As dark and mysterious as the night, the shadow creeps closer and closer. As it reaches its destination… it shouts ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!’” Of course everyone laughs, though that really wasn’t that funny. It’s the element of surprise that was the real punchline. Even I think what I said was so cheesy that it almost made me cringe.

“Liane?”

“With eyes like emeralds shining even while covered in the dark grey cave of my hair, my reflection gazed back at me. Blah, blah, blah, more poetic shiiiii… uh, stuff.” They barely caught themselves swearing in front of Chiki, but they manage to censor themselves just in time.

“You don’t have to censor yourself in front of me, idiot!” Chiki exclaims. “I’m gonna be thirteen in a few months!”

“Yumiko?” Akira continues.

“I will do anything to keep my dearest gem, Liane-senpai, out of harm’s way.”

“And that’s all,” Akira concludes. “We leave at 9:00 AM sharp. Get movin’!”

“Um, Akira-baka…” says Chiki. “It’s not like I care or anything, but why am I not going?”

“It’s for your own safety,” Akira responds.

“I might be the youngest member of S.H.O.U.T., but that doesn’t make me a child!” Chiki exclaims. Great, another tsundere outburst… and right before we have to leave at that. It’s already 8:50…

One tsundere outburst and long walk later…

“Finally…” sighs Anika, Yumiko’s (thankfully not yandere) twin sister. “I was starting to get light-headed…”

“Says the girl who uses her magic blood like a magic carpet and doesn’t have to walk a single step,” I mutter without thinking. Admittedly, I’m always a bit cynical, but walking long distances in warmer-than-optimal weather while wearing almost all black definitely emphasizes that part of me. “Of course you’d be light-headed from blood loss!”

“It’s not blood loss if it regenerates,” Anika responds calmly. Okay, that quote should be on a T-shirt. I’d wear it, even though I don’t have “magic blood” like her. We all enter the lab and look around. This is one of the abandoned ones, so there’s no need to be on the lookout for security cameras or employees of S.T.I.F.L.E. Akira quadruple-checked that yesterday. We decide to split up. Rose, Anika, and Char check this room, Yumiko and Liane check the basement (with Akira as their chaperone so nothing kinky and/or gory happens), and Rebel and I check the back room.

“Hey, check this one out,” Rebel says, barely able to contain her laughter. I turn to see her flexing her biceps while what looks like a whole lot of paper is crammed in her sleeves to resemble fake muscles.

“That was fast,” I respond, laughing with her. That Rebel sure is something. I’m glad I was paired up with her after such a difficult night. Her goofy antics help me relieve some of my residual stress. She removes the sheets of paper from her sleeves and reads them, scanning for any useful information.

“I’ll help,” I say simply, taking one of the sheets and reading it to speed things up. “Hmm… wait, this is a cheesecake recipe! What’s that doing here?!?”

“What?” Rebel exclaims. “Stop messing with me. A cheesecake recipe in one of S.T.I.F.L.E.’s abandoned laboratories? Please!” I shove the sheet of paper into her face. “Wow. S.T.I.F.L.E. has reached a whole new low. Their employees really are stupid enough to leave cheesecake recipes in the lab.” She looks at the sheet a little more. “Wait… see how there are marks on it right here? They probably wrote something important on a sheet of paper that was on top of this… maybe they’re not that stupid after all.” She stares at it at different angles.

“I can barely make out the words, but it says something like ‘save the’. Save the what? Date? Whales?” I froze.

“Let me see.”

“Huh?”

“Let me see,” I repeat. She hands the sheet back to me, and I stare at it. That handwriting… the way it seems like it’s being carved into the paper instead of just written in pencil… No. I read it again.

s a v e t h e m

It can’t be…

“Vincent?” Rebel asks in a concerned tone. I must have made a weird face or something. “Is everything okay? You look even more pale than usual…”

“Yeah,” I reply awkwardly. “False alarm…” I tuck the sheet into the pocket of my jacket when she doesn’t notice. “Let’s keep looking. There’s gotta be something interesting in here. I can feel it.” Or maybe I was just feeling my guilt after lying to a trusted friend about my own well-being. If anything, I was trying to convince myself more than Rebel. My brother couldn’t have been working with S.T.I.F.L.E., which only left one possible outcome, one even worse than working with them: being experimented on by them. But why would a government organization target my brother? Okay, thinking that for even a split second actually makes me feel stupid. They targeted him because they’re the government, he’s a supposed child-murderer, and they wanted to appeal to everyday citizens that have fallen under their spell.

“Hmm…” Rebel sighs to herself. “Hey, you know how sci-fi movies and video games always have those giant test tubes with the latest specimens inside them?”

“What does that have to do with anything right now?”

“I may or may not have almost walked into one of them.”

“This isn’t funny, Rebel.”

“I’m not joking, for once. Look.” She was right. She had been standing right by a giant test tube covered by a strange white tarp the whole time and just noticed it now. “We should uncover it. You never know what could be hidden in these things… maybe it’s a huge pile of-”

“This isn’t a video game,” I interrupt. “We’re not gonna find any money in there!”

“I was gonna say ‘information’...” Rebel continues with a grin. “But that would be pretty cool too.” We each grab one side of the nearest edge of the tarp and pull. The tarp cascades to the floor to reveal a faceless humanoid form made from a silvery material that looks like a hybrid of metal and hardened wax. Another one of S.T.I.F.L.E.’s experiments. They call them “droneforms”. The “perfect beings”, each one an exact clone of the last, except for their voices. Those are the only things retained from the human lives sacrificed to create these forms, though they’re a bit muffled and robotic. The droneforms have so few qualities to them that it’s nearly impossible to even call them “life”. The processes S.T.I.F.L.E. must use to separate a person’s soul from their body and implant it into one of these blank vessels… the mere thought of it sickens me.

“Why am I not surprised?” I comment as I stare at the droneform. “But what’s with the tarp?”

“Look closely,” Rebel responds. “The glass is broken.” She’s right. A small spiderweb of cracks appears to dance across the surface of the large test tube. I’m not just saying that to be poetic. It’s actually spreading across the test tube as I stare at it.

“We’re screwed…” I think out loud. An ethereal glow slowly fades in where the eyes of the droneform would be, like lights in a robot’s “eyes”. It’s been activated. I hear Rebel unleash a torrent of panicked swear words.

“Stay calm… this isn’t anything new… we’ll be okay if OH FFFFFFUUUUUUUUU-”

“Rebel!” I exclaim. “We’ve dealt with droneforms before! We can do this!”

“We can do this when there are more than two of us against it!” she shrieks. “Those things are really strong!” The droneform steps out of the test tube, and tiny shards of glass fly everywhere. Thankfully, Rebel and I had enough common sense to back away from the test tube first, so none of the shards hit us. The droneform steps out of the tube and heads towards us… no, it seems like it’s focused on me.

“YOU CAN’T escape this time…” it hisses. That could only mean one thing.

This droneform was created with my brother’s soul.

“Did you know about this?!?” Rebel inquires, eyes widened in shock.

“Not until now!” I lie. I knew it a few minutes ago, but I don’t want to distract her from the fight. The droneform creeps closer, its otherworldly “eyes” gradually getting brighter.

“YOU CAN’T get away…” It pins me against the wall. Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have backed away that far…

“Don’t tell me what to do!” I shout. “I’m not a little kid anymore!” I try to push the droneform away, but those things are so heavy and strong that even a professional bodybuilder would struggle with them. Well, that’s how it seems to me, anyway. I’m just a high school freshman with an average build…

“YOU CAN’T save yourself…”

“You can’t …” I reply through closed teeth as I struggle to push the droneform away. “Tell me… what I can’t do!” The droneform staggers backwards, and I take the opportunity to move away from it and take a few breaths. Rebel immediately tries to tackle the droneform, but it anticipates her move and throws her back.

“Rebel!”

“Ow…”

“Are you okay?”

“Okay enough to keep fighting, or just plain old okay?”

“The first one!”

“Yep.”

“Well, that’s good to-” The droneform senses that we’re distracted and tackles me, pinning me to the floor. This is even harder to escape than being pinned to the wall…

“Vincent!” Rebel exclaims. The droneform freezes in place just before it punches me in the face and turns its head around slowly like an owl.

“I’m still here…” it hisses. Rebel is confused, but this makes me remember something. Something that seems minor, but could have altered the outcome of this entire fight.

I had previously told Rebel that my brother’s name was Paul, and the reason that I’m Vincent Junior instead of just Vincent was that my father was named Vincent.

That’s only half true.

Paul was my brother’s middle name.

His first name was Vincent.

Rose and Char knew the truth, but not Rebel. I had met Rebel after the others, so she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to meet my brother in person. I had lied to her about his name for this very reason, as well as to protect his privacy.

If only I had known what a huge impact that tiny lie would have.

The droneform slowly got up from the floor and turned its body to face the same direction as its head: right at Rebel. It suddenly charged at her and pinned her to the ground, making her its official target instead of me. Memories flooded my mind. I wanted to help Rebel, but my body was frozen. I could only watch helplessly as the droneform attacked her mercilessly. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that (I think I might have blacked out), but we both survived somehow. If I had only told Rebel the whole truth about my brother’s name and the mysterious note on the cheesecake recipe, we wouldn’t have been injured as much, both physically and psychologically. We could have been more prepared, but I had held back in a weak attempt to protect my friend. The incident still haunts me to this day, and I always reflect on what could have happened. Thank goodness we’re both okay now, but there’s one injury from that incident that will never heal.

The damage to my integrity is irreparable.