[Hermes]

"You're a Knight, your wounds are wounds earned, I am sure. And...Alright then."

~~Flashback Time~~

Hermes could smell the stench of blood coming from his own hands and gunblade, hear the cries of the man he had left wounded and dying behind him. He had taken the man's knife, and felt pity for leaving him no weapon to end his suffering. No matter.

He kept running, straight at the line of corrupt swordsman in front of him. He loosed three shots from his gunblade into the crowd, through the knife at another, and leapt into the group. Having already disabled two opponents, and killed two others, he was left with just three. He swung in a wide arc, beheading one of them. Suddenly, a fresh, stinging pain in his arm, and there was a knife stuck in it. With his other, he turned the gunblade and jabbed it through the man's torso, tossing him to the ground. He pulled the knife out of his arm as the final man kicked him in the chest.

The man pulled off his mask, and Hermes froze on the ground, staring up at the face of his brother Pontus.

"Hello, little brother." Pontus said, in a deriding tone. "What good fortune I have. I get to see the last look you make after realizing where I've been~"

"But...you've been...Mother said...I don't understand!"

"You thought I would die in some foolish fishing accident? Really? No. Although, father's body probably made a good decoy..."

"This isn't you. You were such a sweet boy when we were younger...we haven't seen you in TEN years!"

"Ten years I've been alone! I was in those woods, did you know? I just couldn't find my way home...then, years later...Instead of my "family", my new family found me. They taught me the way of the sword, taught me to fight, and taught me what familuy really meant." Pontus dug his heel into Hermes' chest. "And now I spit on insects like you." And he did so at saying this, it hit Hermes on the nose.

"Is there no turning you to my side? No changing your mind, even though you stare me in the face?"

"Not even a thought for it, not one." He dug his heel deeper, cracking one of Hermes' ribs. "But what I AM thinking about is the sweet sound of all of your ribs breaking under my boot~"

"If there is no changing your mind, then...This is the only way I know to save you..." Hermes, using the last bit of strength he could muster, lifted the gunblade, and shot Pontus, point-blank, in the eye. His head blew open, a spray of crimson spreading around them, and he fell. Laying on the ground next to Hermes' head was the necklace he had fashioned of silver for his brother 21 years ago. He picked it up, put it on his own neck, and layed there, waiting for a field medic to findhim, or a foe to end him.

When the medics finally found him, he was unconscious and barely breathing. He would wake up in a hospice 3 weeks later, the war over, and many dead or missing. He would hear stories of beating away doctors mercilessly even though comatose, when they would try and take the necklace off.