"Epilogue ~ One"

One Day Later

As festive as the bar was done up for the season, complete with holly, red ribbons, candles, and all the trimmings to show this was a classier bar for higher end folk and trying to promote a warm and welcome atmosphere, it clashed rather hard with the heavy metal music blaring out of the old fashioned jukebox.

Yet perhaps that hardly mattered. After all, if anyone was still around at 3 AM in the morning in the French town to look through the windows, they'd see the place void of life save for a single scantily clad woman in skin-tight leather-imitation clothes seated at the bar. She had little respect for it, having leaned back and put her overly thick heels on the counter, and was guzzling one of several of the 180 proof bottles that had been on hand, now arranged haphazardly in front of her. As she relaxed from the bottle momentarily, she leaned her head back momentarily and soaked in the music.

Somehow over the din, she heard a small beeping noise from nearby.

She remained leaned back for a moment, then slowly leaned up. A hand went out and grasped a remote that the owners of the bar had long since wired into the old system, and she used it to shut it off. Leaning back over on the bar, she reached into her pocket and removed the beeping device: a small rectangular tablet. She placed it on the counter and opened it up. The image of the man on the other end, or at least his outline, was already displayed.

"Where are you?"

She leaned over, propping her head on one hand, and smirked. "Just getting a little late-Christmas, early-New Year's party in. I figured you wouldn't mind."

A pause. "…So long as you don't 'leave a mess', I won't. I'm back from Berlin."

The eyes lifted. "You really did go out there personally? I could have handled it."

"I know of your propensity for chaos when it comes to crowded places like that. I preferred to deal with it myself."

"Oh, that's no fun. I could have shown some of those Germans my own little version of the 'Nutcracker Suite'…"

"I didn't contact you just to tell you I was back. The hybrid has been moved. Specifically, moved to a mobile location. Fortunately, her main way of hiding now is in fooling the world into thinking she's dead. But as I know where she is, finding her will be simple even if the spot keeps moving around."

The smile widened. "Is this where I ask whether or not you'd like the little freak plain or gift-wrapped?"

"I have no interest in bringing her in. She's more valuable to me for research in the field rather than in an isolated environment. What interests me is that the others have gotten involved with her at this point. Individuals on both Lists A and B. With her as a focal point it would be possible to draw most of them out. And as we have a new…associate who has part of the Oversoul, it would be foolish to waste this opportunity to gauge them all at full strength. I am assigning this task to you."

"…All of them?"

"That's why I'm trusting the task to you. Be advised, Frederick is involved."

The smile spread enough to show teeth. "Oh, goodie. My first chance for some real fun with some big, strong men in years… I only hope they like to play rough with women…"

The man on the other end turned sharper. "This isn't about you 'having fun' again. This is a serious assignment. I expect you to carry it out as discretely as possible and with them having no reason to suspect your involvement, let alone mine."

"Aw, come on. Just a teeny, tiny bit…"

"I will give you free license to use whatever means necessary to carry out this assignment, but beyond that you are to do nothing more. Understood?"

The smile ebbed as she sighed. "Yes, master…" The last word was not spoken sarcastically.

"There might be others involved. I'll send you the full listing as well as preliminary information shortly. Best to move on her daughter first. That will provoke the quickest response, especially from Frederick. I'll leave the rest to your own discretion. Don't fail."

The image vanished.

After a moment, the woman's hand reached up and closed the rectangular device. But as she grasped it and pulled it away to put back in her side, she smiled again.

"Now master…you can't really expect me to finally have a chance to go up against Frederick and Ky and not raise a little Hell as part of the deal, do you?"

Still smiling, she reached over to one of the chairs nearby as she removed her boots from the bar stool, taking up a hat; specifically what looked like a combination cowboy hat/witch's hat. After plopping it on her head, she reached over to her other side and took up a sky blue electric guitar, moving the strap so that it could rest on her back. Once that was done, she grabbed the bottles of high proof liquor, two to each hand by fitting them through her fingers, then hopped off the stood and turned around.

She began to make her way to the front of the bar, having to walk carefully as she did so. That was because the floor of the bar was lined with the remains of its patrons from three hours earlier, most of them soaking in puddles of their own blood. From the looks of them, however, they hadn't been killed by others. Rather, each one had seized whatever they could, whether it be a fork, knife, broken glass, or bottle, and had either cut themselves in their own vitals, beaten their own heads in, or done everything possible to kill themselves. The woman gingerly stepped around all of them, simultaneously dumping the high-proof liquor behind her as she went along in long, messy trails. She whistled a little bit of the last rock tune that had played as she did.

On reaching the front door, she dropped the bottles, letting them break, then fished in her pocket for a book of matches. Striking them once against the door frame to light them, she held the whole burning pack in front of her a moment.

"I always clean up after myself, master."

She tossed the pack over her shoulder, instantly igniting the liquor and spreading flames toward the flammable decorations.

As the entire bar quickly began to catch fire, the woman walked out into the night, headed for the nearest road. One hand went into her pocket while the other one held out a thumb, getting ready to hitchhike.

"Now…the world is gone…I'm just one…"

THE END

Author's Notes: And finally, after nine years of work, it's finished. Yes, I started writing this about a month or two after completing "Guilty Gear", but was continuously sidetracked with pretty much every fanfic I've put out since then. The reason posts have been so rapid is due to how long it's taken me to edit the finished story. At any rate, I find it hard to believe the quality hasn't suffered after nearly a decade of on-again, off-again work, but at last it's done.

I'll take the time to go ahead and definitively state I have no plans to ever write a "Guilty Gear XX" fanfic or beyond.

There are multiple reasons for and against this decision. In truth, there were a lot of threads I wanted to expand on. I wanted to have a scene between Sol and That Man. I wanted to bring Axl Low back for a meeting with Raven. As you can see from my epilogue, I was interested in the chance to write for I-No. And, probably most of all, I wanted to at last give the long-hyped Millia vs. Eddie fight to end that story arc.

But, there are a lot of reasons against it too. After "Guilty Gear X", the multiple plotlines and endings get too hard for me to follow. We start getting characters who are too bizarre for me to be able to treat seriously and fit in with the tone of the story (which is why Faust was relegated to a glorified cameo in this one). Writing these various fight scenes is extremely difficult, as is trying to get these stories out of the same local and to find reasons for characters to come together and fight. Most of all, like I said...it took me almost a decade to put out this one. I'm not eager to spend another decade on Guilty Gear. Ultimately, I decided against it.

I hope in spite of being so stale that you enjoyed this story, and that you'll enjoy other fanfics I have written. Catch y'all later.