TROA) I Hope I Died (Patreon)

I watched as the faces of these men twisted in anger. But they still held back. At least they knew what was good for them. One of the men stepped forward and stood in front of Jen. I looked at Jen, who nodded to me and said: “Now then… Begin!”

As soon as I said this, Jen pushed off the ground and shot forward. Seconds later, the man in front of her lost his head. Jen cut it off with her phase sword. No blood came out. The cut was cauterized. Even the head of the man did not seem to understand what happened until it slid off his body and fell to the ground. 

“Next!” My cold voice filled the silence. I was not even going to give them a chance to react. 

“You! This is not fair! What kind of weapon is that!?” One of the men yelled out.

“What kind of weapon? One that cuts people’s heads off, why?” I asked innocently. Did they expect us to play fair?

 “Fuck! Fuck this!” Another man yelled out. I turned to see him running and jumping off the building. I raised an eyebrow and pursed my lips. I walked over to the edge to not such a good scene. 

I turned and smiled at the remaining two men. “Whose next?”

“Can’t you just let us go!? We really did not have anything to do with the shooting just now.” It seemed one of them had broke.

“Then tell me why did you not stop the man?” I asked calmly with my arms crossed across my chest.

“If we did, he would have killed us instead. That man was crazy. He shot many people and even a few robots as we made our way here.” The man replied. For some reason, it did not feel like he was lying.

“I see. I can let you go, but you need to strip down to your underwear to make sure you have no weapons on you. After that, you can leave.” I can’t prove if the man was lying or not, so I will go with my gut instinct. I have already killed most of them anyway, so making them leave everything behind to ensure my own safety was enough for now.

“Thank you!” The two men did not hesitate to strip to their underwear. When I nodded to them to say they could leave, they rushed out the door as if their pants were on fire. Well… they were only wearing boxers, so I guess boxers on fire? Anyway, they ran away pretty fast.

“Now what?” Jen asked as she kicked the head at her feet off the edge of the building.

“We should try to look for survivors. Those men said they killed other people, so there might still be people left in the city. We should take this time and try to find them.” I wanted to bring people back to the base so that they could slowly get their lives back. Humankind was not all bad as long as you took in the right people.

“Alright then, let’s get going.” Jen opened her arms towards me, causing me to laugh. I stepped forward, wrapped my arms around her waist, and kissed her lips. “Then let’s go.”

With that, I jumped. I jumped right off the edge. But how I jumped was not straight outwards but toward the side of the building so I could use it to slow my body down. It was just faster to do this instead of trying to climb the stairs down to the bottom floor. When we finally landed on the street side, I let Jen go, and we began walking down the street again. However, this time, we were much more vigilant.

“Do you think there will be places where people will gather to try to get their lives back in order?” Jen seemed very curious about what was to come.

“There will be. Humans have always been social creatures. Those who wish to gather will gather. But these same communities will also be targets for those with evil hearts. I have seen it many times.” I sighed, just thinking about it.

“When I was seventeen, I followed a group of women to a place. Little did I know these women were what were called gathers. They gathered young girls and brought them back to the base that was set up. The only thing that stopped me from entering the base was the scream of another girl from inside.  I was quite skittish at the time, so I quickly ran away. I found out later that there were bases and settlements that did these kinds of things.

“To be honest, I was quite lucky at the time. If I had not run away, I might have ended up in a very bad spot. Most of those kinds of bases ended up all being run over anyway. When the robots swept through again, they would destroy such settlements in a matter of minutes.” Just thinking about it made me realize my luck was pretty good.

“I hope I died in that timeline.” Jen suddenly said, which made me look at her. “I mean, I would have ended up in a bad spot. Without you around, I am pretty meek and antisocial. I do not like it when boys come near me. Well…. It’s changed now since I can kill them but before. And in that timeline, I was sure to end up in a bad spot if I was not killed first. But my guess is that I was long dead before then, after all. My parents were never home, and I would have probably held up in my room until some robot smashed through it or I died of hunger.”