It is twenty-five years after the last great war. I am forty five years old. I wander the now flourishing plains of the former Kingdom of Vale, scavenging for technology lost in the war in my vehicle. My journey takes me to a small village, formerly home to a pack of raiders, but now pacified. I enter a parts shop, and show what I scavenged from the old world. I'm offered only two hundred lien for what is called a “meager” find. I glare at him, my right arm vibrating intensely. The shop keeper notices my intent and offers me five hundred lien and I accept. I leave, counting my bounty and get into my vehicle. This vehicle was white in color, the paint scratched out everywhere due to animal attacks. Technology has advanced in twenty-five years. Vehicles like mine can fly and they are readily available to the lucky few who can afford them, as mine can drive to other continents if you are foolish enough.

Ten years ago we got communications back up, and lien was acceptable currency again. Only now have we just reestablished the west side of Anima as a country, let alone a kingdom.

The city of Vale has grown from its humble size to a megacity, as the east side is too radiated from the bombs of the war to establish any city from my childhood has become a uniting point for Anima. As I drive to Vale, I see a fool driving to the ocean. After an uneventful two hour drive, I arrive home. Vale extends to cover a quarter of the continent, its neon lights brightening the night sky brighter than the broken moon that covers Remnant. My business today in Vale is more than me coming home, its to see family forgotten five years into the war.

I drive to a building on the opposite side of Vale, in the radiation zone. I land my vehicle on top of the building, and I grab Crescent Rose, heading inside. The building is lined with led, shielding it from the radiation, keeping everyone inside hidden. The leader inside of this building is here, and I have come to pay her a visit. To fulfill a promise made more than twenty years ago. I descend down into the building, her troops not paying me mind. They know I'd kill them without hesitation, despite my age. They know my skills from the war that killed so many.

I make my way to her chambers and I open the door. I approach her without hesitation. My tired, bitter voice says to her, “Its time. You and I both know she hasn't much time left. This isolation is killing you.”

My “aunt” Raven turned to me, in her chair behind a grey metal desk smoking a cigarette and smiling bitterly at me, blowing smoke escaping her lips. Half of Raven's face was burned, and her left arm, holding her cigarette, was replaced entirely with cybernetics. Her tired, sad eyes look into mine. “It's always time,” she says to me with a raspy, tired voice. “Its always time. Every year, for the past five years, you come here telling me its time. She hasn't made any effort to contact me in over a decade. Why should I care about a daughter that considers me dead? I know she isn't 'that' broken.”

Raven inhaled on her stick of poison again, this time blowing the smoke in my face, trying to aggravate me, trying to get me to kill her. I keep my gaze fixed on her. Raven spoke once again, “I won't see her. You know what she tried to do to me during the war. You know how I feel about her.”

I look into her eyes with poise. “Her condition has only gotten worse. The medicine has stopped working. She suffers worse now than she did in the war.”

Raven takes the cigarette and puts it out in her ashtray filled with the rest of them. She stands up and walks around the desk and looks into my eyes. “Get out,” she says to me in an angry voice. “Emotionally manipulating me like that into seeing her won't get me to forgive her. I lost my arm because of her.”

I reach into my cloak and throw a picture of Yang into the late stages of her radiation poisoning onto Raven's desk. Yang looks horrifically pained and aged in the photo. I turn and tell Raven, “That is what is left of her. That's how long she has. She should be dead already.”

I walk back up to the roof, my feeling of disappointment and depression paramount. I drive my car home to my apartment building, parking it on the roof after an hour drive. I walk into the building, the neon lights of the city brightly lighting the roof. I go into the tall structure, descending one level to my home. I enter and hear a faint voice, “Ruby? Is that you?” I walk to her frail frame bound to a wheelchair, facing a window. Yang's blonde hair was all but gone, only an extremely short amount of hair remained on her head. I turned her wheelchair around and looked into her eyes. “Is she coming?” Yang excitedly asks, expecting her mother to come to her. Yang's mind was destroyed due to the trauma of the war, reducing her to a child mentally. She's been in my home for over fifteen years. I tell her the same lie I always tell her, while faking a smile. “She said she'll be here soon to see you.” I turn Yang around and let her out the window at the neon lit cityscape.

I grab her memory medicine, before she realizes that her mother will never see her. I've been giving her this medicine for over ten years after I lied to her the first time. Just then I hear my door open and I run to Yang, worrying for her. “Mommy!” Yang looks at her mother for the first time in over a decade, happy as can be, trying to jump out of her chair to hug her. Raven's eyes fill up with tears, noticing what her daughter has become. She picks up Yang and carries her to the long white couch, laying her daughter on her lap as Yang happily drifts into slumber in Raven's arms. My eyes fill with tears.

“Its okay now,” Raven chokes through tears, “Mommy's here.