An unfamiliar face (Ares)

Burying the dead was never an easy task, burying your father, the man who raised and taught you what you knew was....it was excruciating. Seraph had come all this way, flowers in hand to visit the grave she made under a large oak tree for the one who cared for her, a visible twinge of remorse on her normally stoic face that spoke of rationality taken to an extreme as she paused and looked up to the evening sky, tinted red like blood and blinked at the beautifully melancholic scene that the world had painted in the sky, like a canvas that invoked memories from before -- painful, hurtful memories of people, innocent people that she could remember killing in a blind, incandescent rage that gutted over a dozen sectors of the Vault from sub-basement lambda to sub-basement alpha and then beyond that to the clear inky black skies of freedom and the fear of being hunted.

She always reminisced on this, trying to think of a way that she could have....saved her father, instead of watching him die in her arms. But as she made her way to the old oak tree, she paused once more and looked around, felt a chill along her spine, an itch that made her nervous -- like being watched by unseen eyes or simple paranoia -- but did not deter her for too long in resuming her journey to that place, the grave where she buried her father with her own two hands.

Words were spoken, a threat towards her own life as Seraph turned and looked down at the interloper with a blink, face registering confusion as she let her mind click a few times and blinked again, wondering if this was someone she knew or recently met. The slightly concerned Seraph opening her mouth to speak, words as it were, simple ones that certainly had a severe twinge of confusion to them. "Do I know you?" The name Kurasawa however, she caught that, didn't quite make the connection since, frankly, there was probably close to ten thousand in this section of the united states alone.

But as she ran the thought through her brain like a fat kid on a treadmill, as the pressure increased to such an extent, that it created a thunderous bang as air rushed away from the young girl and brought a look of surprise to Seraph's otherwise immutable visage as she reached back to touch at the fixtures on her own back. Wasn't she the only one of her kind, a sentient, fully functional Gynoid that could make it's own decisions based on right and wrong? Wasn't she?

But as she watched with awe at the transformation before her, Seraph tilted her head and blinked again. Trying to figure out this riddle that stood before her.

Seraph was perplexed, baffled even, as she watched this diminutive version of herself break out into tears. The way she wept reminded her of an old memory, one that was burned into her brain, lingered like old ghosts that refused to leave as she felt the boulder slam into her like a wrecking ball, as Ares' words sunk into her like spears and arrows. But she stood firmly as the boulder crumbled around her, dust and particulates kicking up into the air like a choking smokescreen. There was a small twinge of, hurtfulness mixed with anger on her face as she stood her ground.

"I, did not kill my father. They did, they shot him in front of me. I watched him bleed to death in my arms!" Her voice came in heavy, full of emotion for the first time as she let her hands ball up into white knuckled fists as the air seemed to ripple and shimmer, a soft clicking sound echoing from her back as the skeletal frame for her wings spread out and a bright, incandescent flash of light illuminated the surrounding forest like a miniature sun for a brief second. She stared at Ares and grimaced. "And I promised him that I'd live to protect others, like the guardian angels in the stories he read to me. I don't know if we're truly related, but I won't let you stop me from living."

Seraph looked on with an air of disbelief towards her assailant, wings fluttering behind her with a distinctive crackle of concentrated energy. Then disbelief gave way to surprise as she watched this other, much like herself but not, produce a blade from the ground; still red with fresh heat. This of course prompted Seraph to extend a pair of singular edged blades from her wrists. The edges glowed a faint cyan blue and as if to demonstrate something, a lone leaf fell upon the blades edge cleaving it in two. "I do not tell lies, now leave me be or I will defend myself.

The elder gynoids tone was serious, lacking hesitation as she readied herself and stared ares down. No second chances after this one, no turning back as she glaNced down at her blades and blinked away a tear. So close to fathers grave, to close as she slowly lifted up off the ground. Hovered in place before looking past ares, "not here, not this close to his grave." she spoke curtly before moving further into the woods, further away from her father's grave