OK! Here we are at chapter 4! Sorry its taken so long, honest!

Usual disclaimer rules apply, I only own Aika and some other characters mentioned in this ;).

This chapter is for 'KittyAttack', who stoked the 'Ashes' fire enough for me to write this.

Ashes - Aika

"I've seen some strange things since I became a trooper, but what I saw in that outpost was the strangest. Bravo were all dead, killed by what I can only guess was the Reavers from the last radio transmission. But…If it was the Reavers, shouldn't at least one of those monsters have been killed? And why were there no spent enemy bullet cartridges? N…Now I think of it…There should have been boot prints f…from the Reavers? R…Right?"

- Corporal Hinata Hyuuga, 22nd SAS Regiment. Taken from Camp Falcon debriefing after SAS recon mission to Outpost 33-26.

A chill wind blew along the landscape. Along the frosted, snow covered ground and through the leafless and broken trees whose gnarled, broken branches stretched skywards like skeletal hands.

All it did for the small group of girls on a abandoned outpost was send another chill up their spines.

"That was a tank right…" said Tomo, looking around the girls.

"Yeah…" said Sakaki, frowning.

"I did…" said Kagura, sub-consciously aiming her AK at the rusted heap of metal.

The 'tank', if it could still be called that, was nothing more than a rusty lump on the hillside, the rust and scorch marks were so bad the girls couldn't tell if the Russian tank had belonged to the Soviets or the Loyalists. It had taken a missile round to the side which had blown out the hatches, peeled open the opposite side like a tin can, destroyed some wheels and broken its tracks. Small piles of ash surrounded the wheels where the rubber had been burned. The barrel was bent and battered, various bullet dents or holes peppered the front of the tank, no doubt caused by the two 'Dushkas' mounted in the outposts pillboxes. One of the fuel drums mounted to the read of the tank had exploded, tearing a gash in the engine compartment. It sat on the hillside, the turret and its bent, useless gun pointing at the helipad.

"If it was a tank, I doubt it was that one." said Yomi, folding her arms in apparent frustration.

"I think it was just echo's. The helicopters engines would sound like that being bounced around like that." said Chiyo.

"That sounded like a tank to me…" said Osaka.

"It wasn't a tank!" snapped Yomi, "That one is dead and why can't we hear it now!"

"Ah'm jus sayin' s'all." said Osaka.

"Don't you think hearing a tank and guessing it's the one in front of us is a bit weird?" asked Yomi.

"We've seen weirder stuff…I mean, look what happened with that Lucy girl when-" said Tomo.

"We're under orders not to talk about her." said Sakaki, cutting her off.

"But…"

"Operation: Elfenlied was Black Ops then, and it still is now." said Sakaki.

"Besides, thinking about her gives me the creeps…" said Kagura, shivering.

"Put in a call for reinforcements." said Sakaki, scratching the back of her neck.

"Oh come on Sakaki! You can't be serious!" cried Yomi.

"We're one squad. This is a big area to cover. We can't do it on out own." said Sakaki, firmly and straight to the point. Her words held a logical sense, they were supposed to be thinking as soldiers, not high-school girls anymore.

Yomi grit her teeth, she knew Sakaki was thinking that noise was the tank in front of them.

The rest of the girls braced themselves for another bout of Sakaki Vs Yomi. It was situations like this that they usually came head-to-head.

Yomi had never taken Sakaki's field promotion to Captain well. Yomi decided that she herself was the next logical conclusion for field command of the squad. She was the smartest next to Chiyo, and Sakaki's personality was something Yomi thought a combat leader shouldn't have, considering what the taller girl had behaved like in high school. Sakaki simply wasn't ruthless enough was what she had concluded.

Sometimes though, Yomi had to be reminded how Sakaki got command of the squad.

"Go to the radio room and establish contact with Camp Falcon for reinforcements…Private." said Sakaki.

"I don't thin-" started Yomi.

"Now…Mizuhara."

Yomi went silent. The girls, sans Yomi, all looked at Sakaki with widened eyes. Sakaki hardly, if ever, spoke like that.

"She reminds me of Aika when she does that.." muttered Tomo. Kagura, who had lit a new cigarette and folded her arms, looked over to Tomo and raised an eyebrow.

Yomi's eyes narrowed.

"Yes, 'Major' Sakura." she snarled sarcastically, then stormed over to and down the stairs. Sakaki's right eye twitched.

"Whoa…that was harsh." said Tomo, watching Yomi walk away. Kagura walked over to Sakaki and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey…Don't worry about her. You know how she gets." said Kagura. Sakaki sighed.

"Yeah…I know."

"Still, calling you after your…the Major I mean."

"She's not 'Aika' to you anymore?" asked Sakaki, staring down the mountain.

"Well…I didn't know if you liked me calling her by her name."

"I know you where good friends with her." said Sakaki, "I don't mind if you call her by her name."

Kagura nodded and stared down the hillside, remembering the first day of the rest of their lives.

6 Years Ago.

"As it has been proved, Peace is a fragile thing. Because of a senseless act of terrorism by communist funded and equipped individuals, The entire world has once again been engulfed in the flames of war. This is not a war of 'normal' standards, our forces are scattered to confront this threat. We, the American people, have only just managed to wrestle our country back from Soviet invasion, paid for in blood by the sacrifices of many brave American Soldiers and Citizens. If we are to take back our freedom which is ours by right, as commander in chief of all Coalition governments, I am approving the implementation of the Coalition Mobilization Act. As those of able body, man or woman, are called upon to sign up in their current locations at the nearest military installation to battle and push back the Soviets and their Communist Allies. I am truly sorry this path had to be taken. I hope God and yourselves can forgive me.

- U.S President, 2 years after the 'Second Sun'.

"I can't believe I agreed to this…" muttered Yomi, looking up and down the front rank.

"We didn't have a choice!" said Tomo cheerfully, "This is going to be a great adventure!"

Chiyo looked around nervously and Yomi placed a re-assuring hand on her shoulder. Chiyo had his a growth spurt soon after school, and was now as tall as Osaka. If not in the current situation, it would have been comical, but it had helped when she lied about her age to stay with her friends.

Kagura and Sakaki glanced at Tomo, then at each other. Kaorin, standing next to Sakaki, looked as she where about to be sick.

"How can so much change?" said Kagura.

"I don't know." said Sakaki.

The girls where stood in rank. They where the front rank of two. Yukari stood in the second rank behind Nyamo. The male soldiers behind them looked as young as they did, except for one, he looked grizzled and old.

The girls all wore the same camouflaged uniform, a dark green base with various shades of green blotches on top of it. A small JGSDF flag was sown on the left collar, while a the insignia of a private was sown to the right. Their family names where labeled on a name tape and sown above the left breast pocket and another saying 'Japan' with a Japanese flag in front of it was sown to the right.

They had been given the very basics of military training, such as basic drill, how to load and maintain their weapons and the basics of some equipment, but other than that, they didn't know anything about being soldiers.

They had been told they would be meeting their new commanding officer this day, and that the 'real' training was about to begin.

"So…I hear this Major is a real hard-ass." said one of the recruits behind Tomo, seemingly to break the silence.

"Yeah, I heard she's some kind of Special Forces Commando. Did all sorts of stuff with the German army when everything kicked off."

Sakaki stiffened.

"She?" asked Tomo, turning her head.

"That's right cutie." said the soldier winking. His name-tape identified him as 'Hiroyuki'.

Tomo eyed him up and down and scoffed.

"You couldn't handle it." she said, turned her head back.

"She's supposed to be really tall, taller than Sakura by there," said another soldier, Kikuchi, calling Sakaki by her family name, "How can a Japanese woman be that tall?"

"Hey! Sakaki's that tall!" said Yukari.

"I heard she's half-American," said another recruit, "But she was born in Tokyo so on paper she's Japanese."

"She is part American…" whispered Sakaki, who had turned pale. Kagura glanced at her friend, noticing how pale she had gotten.

"You know her?" asked Kagura.

"I think so…" said Sakaki, "Its-"

"ATTENTION!" came a barked shout, that echoed over the square and the two lines of now soldiers snapped into the pose.

A woman was marching towards them, wearing a red beret and the same camouflage that the girls were wearing, but unlike the girls, she was wearing a tactical bulletproof vest.

She had 'Major' insignia pinned to the right side of her jackets collar, and the same small rising sun on the left.

She carried a assault rifle slung over her shoulder, it looked foreign and more modern than the rifles the girls had been issued. A pistol in its holster was hanging from her belt, that looked like it was a foreign made weapon as well, from the size of it.

That was then they noticed that she wasn't exactly marching. To be more exact it looked like she was pacing towards the squad with such force it looked as she had intent to kill someone and wasn't in the best of moods.

She stopped at the end of the line and began to walk along it, the line the girls happened to be making.

The Major stopped at the left of the front rank. She clasped her hand behind her back and began to walk up the line looking, but closer to glaring, at the girls.

Her red beret had an insignia pinned to it, a silver wreath surrounding a dagger, a small German flag underneath it.

At least one of the rumors were true.

She had long black hair, no-where near as long as Sakaki's, it was tied back and Kagura could only guess that when it was undone, it ended somewhere just below her shoulders. Her eyes were cobalt blue, the same as Sakaki's. They looked strikingly similar, Kagura felt like she was looking at an older version of Sakaki. She had a slimmer jaw line, and a slightly different nose, but it wasn't really noticeable. They all the same thought at the same time, the only thing that stopped them all from crying out was the Major's presence.

As the Major stopped to briefly look down at Chiyo, Kagura gave in to curiosity and took her chance to glance at the Major's name tape, and it read;

'SAKURA'

Kagura's eye's widened slightly. That was the same family name as Sakaki. The Major couldn't be…but she looked to similar for to be coincidence.

"Eyes forward Kawada!" snapped the Major, making Yomi jump. Kagura's eyes fixed on a building opposite her.

Kagura found it strange that this was the first time anyone had heard her family name. All the chances they had in school and they find out what it is when the world was going to hell. Her older brother would of laughed at that, and Kagura began to wonder where he was right now…

After passing a shaking Tomo and a stoic Yomi, the Major gave a blood chilling sideways glance at Kagura and stood in front of Sakaki.

That was it. It was like they were looking in a mirror. The Major was taller than Sakaki, which the girls found almost unbelievable. Sakaki swallowed under the gaze the Major was giving her.

"Sakura…" the Major drawled.

"M…Muh…Ma'am." said Sakaki. She looked terrified. The only time the girls had seen Sakaki this worried was when Tomo mentioned the word 'pound' when Yukari had found that kitten.

"Huh." grunted the Major, then ignored Kaorin and Osaka and took up a position about five feet in front of the two ranks.

"At ease!" she shouted, and the squad complied. The Major looked intimidating to the girls. She had an aura of strength and self confidence that seemed to emanate from her.

"My name is Aika Sakura. Major Aika Sakura. You will address me as 'Ma'am' or 'Major'. Understood?"

"Yes Major!"

"As I'm sure some of you know," said Aika, looking at the girls, "I am Private Sakura's mother."

Kagura felt her heart sink a little, She wouldn't even call Sakaki by her given name. She heard the other girls gasp quietly in shock.

The girls could see where Sakaki had gotten most of the things she was known in school for from.

"Great…she'll be getting it easy then…" muttered Hiroyuki. Kagura winced.

"I said, 'stand at ease'! Not talk!"

"Sorry Major!"

"Yes, Private Sakura is my daughter. But that doesn't mean she'll be getting it any easier than all of you."

Aika began walking down the front rank again.

"You will all train together. You will eat together. You will fail together and you will succeed together." she said, stopping and looking at whichever girl was at her left when she said 'together'.

"If one of you falls, or trips, I want to see at least two of you helping him or her back to her feet. You will go at the pace of the slowest person. You will learn to work as a team or I will drill it into you until you get it right. Understood?"

"Yes Major!"

"All that will be different will be sleeping quarters. I do have some morals and modesty."

Aika walked back to her first position to look at her squad. She clasped her hands behind her back and slowly blinked.

"Most, If not all of you, are here because of the Coalition Mobilization Act. Your now going to become soldiers. I'm not going to lie to any of you. This is a War. I have been given five months to turn you into soldiers. After that five months, you will all be members of the newly formed JGAF. That stands for 'Japanese Ground Attack Force'. We will be going overseas and we will be involved in fighting at the front lines."

She looked around the squad as she let that sink in.

"I'm not going to tell you that we're all coming home. I'm not going to say that we'll all come back and see mount Fuji again. Simply put, some of you are going to die."

The faces in front of her paled.

"I don't see why I should bullshit you. Just because some desk-riding, pencil-pushing, paper-filing limp-wrested, four-eyed maggot who sits in a warm safe building while men die in the mud thinks that lying is a morale booster, doesn't mean I'm going to do it."

Nice thought Kagura, Aika obviously had no love lost for the Commanders.

"Some of you are going to die, maybe all of us will get shot or blown up in some foreign country we can't pronounce. Maybe you'll be lucky. You might get a sniper round straight through the brain and you won't feel a thing. Maybe you'll get blown into a million pieces so quickly you won't know what happened until you see the Yasukuni Shrine. You might just get to come back home because you'll get wounded."

Tomo took a sharp breath, the Major had a rather unique definition of 'lucky'.

"On the other hand, you might not get it so easy. You might get gut-shot, and lie there in your squad-mates arms bleeding to death with everyone around you. You might get a limb blown off.

You could end up lying in a ditch, staring at the sky and dying alone. You might find yourself holding something that should obviously be inside you. You might die screaming for your mothers or crying like little girls because you know you can't do anything about it. I've been wounded in combat, and I would rather have a quick death than have to go through that again."

Aika looked at her squad, she thought some of them were going to be sick. She sighed.

"But…You are all now my responsibility, and I don't intend on losing any of you. I want to drag you kicking and screaming into Hell, kill everything, then drag you all back out. If you listen to what I try to teach you, If you work together then you will be coming through this, but I cannot guarantee it."

"Yes Major!" came the half-hearted reply.

"I know that's upset you all, but this is a War. Its not a walk in the park. This is what you need to realize. Your going to see and do things that some people your age should never see and those things will stick with you for the rest of your lives. Things that only you as a squad will understand."

Aika run her tongue over her teeth.

"I have to put things bluntly. If I lie to you, then all I'm doing is making the shock even bigger and worse when it happens. You are my squad, no-one else's, you take orders from me and me alone. The one thing I guarantee you is that I will never lie to you. The next five months are going to be hard, they will test you to your limits and beyond them…and you will all be coming through it together. We will be joining the fight against those who launched an attack our homeland and seeking revenge for those lost during and those suffering from the 'Second Sun' over Tokyo."

She glanced at Tomo as she spoke, who nodded back with a determined frown.

"The best way out is always through. We are the masters of our fate." said Aika, finishing her speech.

The girls all frowned in determination. Aika looked over her squad and nodded.

"Attention!"

With the sharp crack of boots, the two ranks snapped straight.

"Good, you can do that…" said Aika, "Front rank! Two paces forwards, March!"

The girls and their teachers took a step forwards.

Aika reached into a pouch on her vest and pulled out a stack of triangular patches. She walked along the two ranks, handing out the patches, then she stood in front of them again.

"I want those sown onto your right sleeves by tomorrow morning. As of now, you are mine. Welcome to Echo-174."

Kagura lay on her back on the floor of one of the pillboxes, smoking a cigarette. She held it away from her mouth and blew the smoke up into the air, watching it drift lazily through the gap and into the night sky.

Ever since Sakaki's 'Aika relapse' earlier, Kagura had been replaying the day she had met Sakaki's mother in her head.

For someone with her attitude and some of the things Kagura seen Aika do before Sakaki had become Squad-Leader, it seemed like a cruel twist of fate that Aika was allergic to cats.

Aika had been labeled 'Missing-In-Action' for eighteen months now. She had broken cover to destroy a Soviet tank during a battle on the isle of Crete, but as she ran back to cover after planting the charges, she had taken a bullet to her stomach and was thought to have been caught in the explosion. No body had been found, only her G36 which Kagura gave to Sakaki.

Kagura sighed. She missed the Major. It was because of Aika that Kagura was smoking. Kagura had discovered that beneath her tough surface, Aika was actually some-what normal. Aika had a tough up-bringing in America, which eventually led to her running away to Japan when she was fifteen with her uncle. It had turned Aika into a rock hard woman who's education came from the street and problems where solved with fists. So when Sakaki was born, Aika couldn't let that part of herself go. After Sakaki's little sister Shizune was born, Aika realized her mistake and began rasing Shizune a little better than Sakaki. As a result, Shizune wasn't as anywhere near shy or self-conscious as Sakaki. Kagura had only met Shizune once, and she wondered where she was now, she was at the right age to have fallen under the Mobilization Act four years ago. Aika loved hers daughters and just wanted them to succeed.

Sakaki knew that, and Kagura thought that she pushed herself to hard to prove to people she could do it, that was why she was so good at things in high-school. Kagura chuckled as she thought back to calling Sakaki her rival. Aika made her realize all it did was make Sakaki want to prove to her mother she could beat Kagura. Not that she didn't have to try.

Kagura had to agree with Yomi sometimes, Sakaki just didn't have that same ruthless edge Aika was known for.

Kagura frowned and sat up, looking over the wall and at the tank. She frowned harder and stood up, then climbed over the wall. She didn't believe the noise she had seen earlier was the tank, but part of her had to make sure that the tank was actually dead. That incident with 'Lucy' had proved to her that some things were not as they seemed anymore.

Kagura unslung her AK, and began to walk towards the tank. Every step she took sent colder and colder shivers down her spine. The frosted earth cracked under her boots, and her breathing became more and more heavy as the rusted hulk grew larger in her vision. She moved her shoulders, was the air getting colder? Even the gnarled tress looked like they where turning to watch her. The fact she was walking towards a tank head on didn't help, neither did the turret mounted machine gun.

Kagura caught herself checking the bolt on her AK. It must have been the fifth time she did it since she left the pillbox. Even though it was legendary for its reliability, Kagura had the thought in the back of her mind that AK would jam or mis-fire while she was near the tank. She finally reached the tank, and her eyes constantly darted around, as if she were expecting some thing to be waiting for her. She shook her head.

"C'mon Kawada…Snap out of it." she said, imagining it was Aika talking to her. Her breath was misting in the air, and Kagura wondered if she should light a cigarette to calm her nerves.

Kagura rolled her shoulders and walked to the engine. Her eyes drifted over the wrecked components. If the explosion hadn't riddled it with shrapnel, then the years of exposure to the elements had seen to it that it would never run again. Kagura rounded to the front of the tank, catching the faint smell of burnt rubber. She stopped and frowned, then crouched.

How could the rubber still be burning? It was impossible. She run her fingers down one of the wheels, and jerked them back when she felt a very faint warmth from it. Kagura stood and found herself looking into the interior, then she screamed and fell backwards. Two blackened skeletons where sitting in their positions, jaws agape and eyeless sockets staring towards the outpost. Kagura held a hand to her chest to try and catch her breath. Kagura looked to the floor and stood up, turning away from the tank. She closed her eyes and sighed. It had been a shock, nothing else. She looked at her hand, the warmth from the wheels must have been he mind playing tricks on her. She was wearing gloves after all. Kagura turned, chuckled at herself. Then her blood turned to ice.

One of the skulls had turned, and wasn't looking at the outpost anymore.

It was looking somewhere else.

It was looking at her.

Kagura screamed and raised her AK in a blur, and found to her relief that it didn't jam or misfire, but it put six rounds into the tank, one of them punched into the skull and blew the top of it to pieces. Kagura turned and sprinted back up the hill, not daring to look back. As she ran, she heard the unmistakable growl of the engine. Kagura felt herself turning to look, and as she did she twisted on her ankle. A searing pain exploded in her leg and she fell to the frozen earth. Kagura groaned and lifted her head, feeling something wet and warm on her face. She wiped it with her hand and it came away red. Kagura yelped and found herself staring at a hand slick with blood. She didn't feel any pain, and when she raised her head she saw why.

A dead soldier lay in a pool of blood in front of her. The same soldier she saw every time she slept, the first man she'd killed. Kagura's eyes widened. What was he doing here? Maybe that was it, she was dreaming.

Her twisted ankle reminded her she wasn't.

Kagura scrambled to her feet as the tank growled again, and this time it was joined by the sound of the treads crunching across the earth.

Kagura limped as fast as she could to the pillbox, and dragged herself into it, cursing as she hit the floor. She scrambled back to the wall and pointed her AK at the opening.

All that greeted her was silence. No tank noise, no skeletons, nothing.

She moved her head back until it hit the concrete wall behind her. She sighed and tried to regain her composure. Her ankle twitched, and a bolt of pain shot up her leg.

"Dammit…Medic!" she called.

This is going to be an interesting explanation. she thought.

Well, there we go! More strange happenings, sort of cameo's and the introduction of Aika Sakura! I know the spooky elements of this chapter are a bit lacking, I wanted to focus on Aika and the inevitable impact she's going to have on the girls as the story progresses.

As for 'Corporal Hinata Hyuuga' and "Operation: Elfenlied", Ashes was never going to be contained to Azumanga Daioh, a few series are getting the same treatment, some will show up here, some will get their own fics. Ashes is a large world where nothing is as it should be.