Hello, fans of Valkyria Chronicles. Did you facepalm as Imperial soldiers unanimously shot unarmed civilians? Did you wince at the epicly random death of Isara, cutting off a path for a truly interesting character to develop?

Look no further. A debuting writer, I've chosen to practice on a previously established world - Valkyria Chronicles - but I'm not so lame as to shoehorn in side stories that leave the canon untouched or simply use main characters as puppets. This is an additional plotline, one that will eventually wrap around to affect the status quo.

Due to the nature of my free time, I will post in short blurbs, each one following an important event. This means constant updating - but for those of you who prefer something longwinded, I am sorry. If you want, just try copypasting it all together. I'll mark actual "Chapters" where they come.

I am open to all suggestions, comments, and reviews, especially reviews. Posting any sort of feedback keeps me motivated, and lets me keep on writing. Don't cringe at pointing out mistakes - if if've done something as minor as using an apostrophe where I shouldn't have, point it out. Doing so keeps quality high, for all of your enjoyment.

Enough with the longwinded introductions. The first 4 blurbs are up, marking the first "Chapter". Enjoy.

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Unit 29-4 stood collectively sweating under the barn roof, lit only by a single flickering lamp. A single man stood in the center across from his lieutenant, flanked by the spectators, the dozen soldiers the bedraggled remains of the once fifty-strong unit.

He held his chin up proudly, helmet tucked underneath his arm, chest thrown out. Dents and blastmarks pocked his heavy metal armor, but he stood unaided and unwounded. A heavy automatic rifle slung over his full kit, supplies and tools to last him a full week unaided. Silver streaking through his pitchblack military haircut gave him a look of dignity despite his young face, the ever-present band of black gauze around his brow and hidden left eye adding a dashing touch. In contrast to the rest of his squad, who were exhausted, nursing wounds, or worst of all laying cold and broken on the Marberry shores, he was the shining example of the Empire's might.

He sure didn't feel that way.

"Lance Corporal Celestyn Faas Jacelern," said Lieutenant Karst in crisp Imperial, the last of the mostly ceremonial – and unheeded – debriefing coming to a close. The soldier stiffened. "For valor under heavy fire –"

A sunny afternoon, some dozen years ago, his mother telling of her first husband before the unhappy marriage she was in then. Killed when the hospital was shelled, her grief on the letter. Telling of how she married the brutish shopkeeper who promptly died under mysterious circumstances, leaving them the place –

"– rescuing two wounded of your fireteam from Gallian attack –"

Later in life, school, interested in medicine even at a young age. He had a dark blue-black haired Darcsen alley-rat friend, one that everyone else avoided. A school group of belligerents decided to beat him up one day - him using the harshest language he knew, fighting the brutes, taking a stomach punch, giving one to the teeth, things breaking. Going home to his mother beaten and bruised, but victorious, learning just then why he had to keep the gauze over his left eye at all times, the dark blue tones in it betraying his real father's blood, the eloquent rebel who she had seduced in a moment of her unhappiness, the man who was everything and yet could not stay –

"– you have proved yourself worthy –"

Second Europan War. Pulled straight out of medical school by the headmaster, being enlisted as a trooper, swearing fealty to the Emperor, from learning to heal, to learning to kill –

"– of the Iron Cross, 4th Class."

Lance Corporal Celestyn Faas Jacelern stepped forward to let Lieutenant Karst pin the highest honor he could independently bestow onto a cloth patch on his steel-shelled chest, a humble grey thing the size of a penny glinting proudly as it could against the drab and stained armor. It was the Lance Corporal who saluted and received one in turn – but when the Lieutenant proclaimed "at ease", it was Celes the boy of seventeen years, who never wanted to go to war, who sighed and walked to join the rest of the shambling squad to the nearby haystacks. All of them – even the Lieutenant – arranged themselves onto piles, grumbling limp heaps of armor that belied the weakened forms inside.

"Anyone hurting?" asked Celes. Imperial squads didn't have medics – they were supposed to be in contact with a base of operations at all times, complete with a full hospital or at the very least a field surgery. That base was now a smoking ruin, crushed underneath the treads of that damnable Gallian tank, flying a flag raised by those cunning soldiers, better than any Federation troops they had once faced on the southern front. Celes squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the fresh memory –

His fireteam sitting in the trench, hearing first one beach gun stop, then the other. Slowly releasing that the attack was not going to be like all those told about by the veterans of this post, seeing the blue pillars of flame as the ragnite fuel went up, a thought that the Gallians just might have gotten through –

Groaning and moaning from those standing, but nothing serious – no reopened stitches, no need for any more Ragnaid. "I'll go see to them, then," he mumbled. He got up quickly, moving in long strides to the opened door. It was cooler outside in the night air – his wet face chilled, and he struggled to keep from dampening it further with hysterical tears –

Fire from behind, a few scouts and troopers somehow through their lines already. Couldn't move, couldn't look above the trench, face the enemy, raise his weapon, fight. Kell and Heinrich screaming their visuals – one at 12, the other at 10; then one neither of them saw at 7 emptying a clip with uncanny accuracy. Rounds cracking the joints of the armor around the chest, falling in a spray of red. He was up then, saw a dashing scout with her hair back in a red scarf charging forward, only then able to spray his rifle's magazine into open air to force her to duck behind a rock – cover that should have been removed, but they weren't supposed to have cut through the beach –

Celes dropped his helmet loosely onto his head to free his hand, climbing the barn ladder. Right at the stop, he stopped at the hayloft opening, and turned to look at Marberry a mere quarter-day's march away, fires and booming from the Gallian mop-up operations easily making it over as further units pushed past the beaches and swept onto the mainland –

The remaining members of the forward fireteams forced that scout aside with wild fire, chasing her to a flank while they fell back from the front – even so one falling to an accurate burst from her hip; nothing to be done for him, a shot straight through the visor. Panicked men jumping into the trench, covering fire as he slung his rifle, did his best for his teammates, cracking a Ragnaid capsule, knowing it alone wouldn't be enough, opening the breastplate clasps to reach the chest. Applying bandages that were somehow already in his hand, sealing them with tape except on one corner, to let the lungs reinflate in their cavities if they were collapsing –

He blinked away the sight, and lifted himself up. It was brighter here, most of the lights from below moved up here to give him, him, the best working conditions possible. His personal surgery kit, the only physical reminder of his three years of medical school, was strewn all over crates and barrels as tables that surrounded two wounded men, resting under tarps. Redheaded Kell and short, mustached Barnett were breathing, but unconscious and pale – given the heat and pain they must have been in after he had removed the bullets from the first, the shrapnel from the other.

He considered cracking an additional bit of Ragnaid for them but decided against it – who knew when they would have a resupply with Marberry gone? The trooper sat, and began to pull a string connected to a third suspended tarp, creating an artificial breeze for all their relief, his free hand pulling off his helmet once more, letting it drop heavily onto the straw-strewn boards.

Celes cooled his face with his gauntleted free hand, feeling the sweat evaporate and cool, being reminded of the blood that was on it not so long ago –

Shouts for a lancer as the two tanks crashed through what had once been a cloud of smoke, the last one in his squad suddenly spurting blood from both ears as a sniper took him. They had all the advantage: position, psychology, momentum, sniper coverage and now heavy weapons – especially heavy weapons, as an azure comet hit the ground in front of the trench, fragging any that were standing into piles of shattered limbs, gore spilling into the trench –

Sobbing freely now, the forner med student lost control. It had been so bad –

Lieutenant Karst, the imperturbable, still rock steady somehow even with what must have been the remains of a kidney across his high brow, the front of his once-black dress uniform now matching the crimson inside of his half-cape. He calmly fired his custom sidearm in the tanks' direction, as if it would somehow be effective, giving the order to withdraw, as collected as if he was giving the order off of a scout's report, instead of while facing down a tank so fearsome to have cut through most of the beachhead aided only by a single other vehicle, a light one at that.

Their officer lifted himself out and ran with them almost towards the force that had made it around, laying down cover fire as best as they could on the move – some of them lost their nerve and made a second group running back to the cliff wall, but that was no exit, given the rapidly approaching armor. Someone had scooped up Kell, and likewise Heinrich, no – Heinrich's man fell to return fire, that red-scarf dervish firing with them, and then they were past them. No one was going back into that hail of fire to get Heinrich.

A second shell, lighter, landed nearby – threw Barnett far in front of them, landing in a twisted heap, but bloodless. They snatched him up just as machine guns rippled through them, angry wasps that tore through their armor like a heated razor through tissue. Barnett's man dropped him as he himself was felled along with several others; Celes picked Barnett up in turn, helped by Lieutenant Karst – and they made off past a bend in the trail. The Gallians didn't pursue – but the second group never made it, pinned between armor on one side, their own occupied cover on the other. They bought the time for Celes's group – but that was all they could do, screams as they went down in a last stand, even as the red and black Imperial flag came down over the command post and the blue banner of Gallia was raised, a sign of defeat over a shattered ruin.

He found himself leaning against the wall, tears flowing down his face like waterfalls and gave into shocked unconsciousness.

War is hell.