Piece Two: Death of a Loved One
For several months after removal from the laboratories of the Idabashi Corporation, all those involved in said removal were concerned that Ai would never reawaken. Doctors were in her room every day, checking her vital signs, ensuring that she was indeed in a coma and not beyond salvation. The section of the building near her room was always silent; footsteps on the tiled floor seemed criminally deafening. At last, exactly three months and six days after Ai was rescued, she opened her eyes again.

The only ones present were the doctors, but they immediately called for her elder brother. He was not prepared, by any means, for what the doctors had known all along. "How could you not tell me?" demanded Michio. He was safe to talk; his sister was sleeping, somehow, regardless of the months she spent in a coma. He glared at the doctors until they looked away, then turned his eyes on the figure in the bed. She was no longer Ai. Technically, she was; her brain was the same, and her physical appearance had not changed drastically. She was distinguishable as the same person, if he studied her closely. "She's... she's..."

"Takayama-kun, your sister is male now," said one of the braver doctors. Even he, though, was cowering slightly in fear. For good reason, as Michio was known to be inhumanly strong and the most skilled gunner in the Narita Private Army. "Also, her memory has been permanently altered. She has no idea of who she really is. There is nothing we can do to reverse the processes she went under."

"Nothing?!" shouted Michio, so loudly that the small window in the sickroom rattled. "NOTHING?! My sister is dead!"

"If you must tell yourself that to reconcile it, Takayama-kun, yes," nodded the doctor.

"How can you leave her like that? Ai is -"

"You cannot call her by her former name," the doctor - Uchida-sensei, according to his nametag - said. "From the information our spies gathered, the Idabashi scientists referred to her as Shun. That is her new name, if in fact your sister is 'dead.'"

"You're so damn calm about this whole thing," said Michio, his voice going quiet all of a sudden. Knowing that this spelled danger for them, the other doctors moved away and began working feverishly, hoping to save themselves from his imminent wrath. "You just nod and keep taking care of her like you always have. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have eighteen years of living with her and loving her taken away from you? Ai is - she was - my Goddamn sister. You're as bad as the Idabashi bastards for letting this happen."

Uchida-sensei pushed his glasses up his nose; they were slipping due to the nervous sweat that was covering his skin in a thin, glistening film. "Please, Takayama-kun, I think it best that you go now. When your...sister wakes again, we will call you."

"Don't bother," Michio snapped. "She's dead. I have no connections to this Shun person."

He stormed out of the sickroom, fingering the gun strapped to his hip. He wandered the base for hours, always avoiding the medical ward, sending other soldiers and scientists alike dashing out of his path. He relived his sister's life over and over, thinking of all the innocence and fun of their childhoods, remembering how Ai cried when he first joined the NPA, remembering how she was determined to join him and leave behind the life of nobility. Everything Ai did in her life, everything he could recall, came rushing back to Michio in explicit detail. She had no idea anymore that any of it had ever happened. To her, it might as well have been a dream. Less than a dream, really; who knew if she even had those anymore, after what those bastards did to her?

That night, at midnight, Michio returned to the room. Ai - Shun - was unattended, fast asleep. Michio approached the bed, leaned over and studied this boy who was once his sister. He flinched, seeing that all of Ai's hair, her long, light blond hair that was identical to his, was cut short. Her face beneath this shorn crown was as beautiful and feminine as it always had been, her eyelashes long and dark against her pale cheeks. Surely when she opened her eyes, they would be as blue as before, a bit darker than his own, but devoid of all the knowledge and memories that they used to hold.

Michio pulled his gun from its holster and cocked it. At the same time, the boy who had once been his sister opened his eyes. Exactly as Michio predicted, they were that darker blue. Bleary with sleep, they were also horrifyingly empty. Ai truly was dead. And if she were dead, Shun deserved to die, too. Michio steeled himself and as the boy smiled faintly at him, he fired one shot, directly into the now-flat chest. Shun's eyes widened briefly and then closed, and his body tensed before going similarly limp. His smile was the only thing that remained. With such an expression on his face, he looked more like Ai than should have been natural after such a violent change.

Cocking the gun again, Michio aimed it at his own chest and fired one last time. He crumpled forward onto the bed. His blood and Ai's mingled. At least the bastards couldn't change that, thought Michio as the world faded away and he joined his sister forever. The pain was gone. So was he. So was Ai.