“Athrun, she’s the enemy. Why are you even trying to understand her?”

I didn’t know if I was asleep or awake, but I listened. The brother’s were so silent that I started to doze off again when the younger started to talk again.

“I don’t get it. They have looked down on us. They killed our mother and sent our father into a maddening rage…I just don’t see how you and Tempest can be so…so…”

“You’re upset that we are treating her like one of us, is that right.”

I heard the angry breathing due to the startling silence surrounding it.

“I know why you’re upset, but, she’s…”

“She’s what, Athrun?”

“She’s like us…she lost just as much as us. At least, our father is still alive.”

“And what is that suppose to mean?”

“She lost both of her parents in one of our raids. I hacked into the city records. Her mother was bludgeoned and her father was shot. She was the same age Tempest is now. Six months later, she wormed her way into the military and has been a valuable asset to them.”

“That is why we need to take her back to our base. Get information from her that could help us.”

Silence filled the room. I listened, waiting to hear a response. I was disappointed when the younger spoke again.

“Athrun, you are a soldier in the RESISTANCE. We cannot afford to spare her on a whim that you and Tempest have. She has seen our faces and thanks to the two of you, she now has information she can take back with her to her base that could devastate us.”

“What information, Aaron?”

“She was looking through your case files. She knows about our next operation, and I’ll be damned if I let her mess this up for us. We are so close to winning this war…to having the freedom to exist. Don’t you understand, Athrun. This girl will ruin us all.”

“I understand, but I can’t take her in. They will kill her, Aaron and I won’t be able to live with myself if they do.”

“You’re putting us at risk, having to lug her around on missions. She’s a distraction. I don’t get why you have feelings for this girl and probably never will, but we have a duty to fulfill. No matter how much you beg, no matter how much you try to stop me, Athrun, I am taking her to headquarters. I’ll even ask of them to spare her life, but that’s all. If they kill her, then it falls on their heads, not ours.”

“So, that’s it then. You side with our comrades and your duty, but not your own family.”

“You are doing the same by siding with that girl than me, Athrun. I will not let another family member fall to one of them. To me, she looks like a witch who has cast a spell over you and our sister. I may seem like a demon to you right now, but if I have to play the responsible one here then I will.”

“Aaron, we…”

“Yes you can. Now let’s get some sleep and we’ll deal with this in the morning. I’m tired of arguing with you. Sometimes I wonder why I’m the younger brother and you’re the elder.”

I heard them shuffle around and listened to see if they would say something else.

“Because younger brothers and sisters are suppose to listen to their elder sibling.”

“The day you start making sense is the day, I will listen to you, Athrun. Goodnight, I’ll see you in the morning.”

I stilled as they climbed into the sleeping bags behind me and listened for their breath to even out in sleep before closing my eyes. My mind was too fatigued to take in all of their conversation, but of one thing I was certain of. I knew, that I was as good as dead, and unless I could convince the younger brother to not take me back to their home base. I needed to figure out a way to escape, to get back to base and warn then. I allowed myself to relax a little bit and drift back to sleep. All I could to was hope that tomorrow, I would be granted an opportunity to get away.

“Can I ask you something, Dakota?”

I looked at the redhead sitting across from me in the water. She was looking towards the sky with a small smile on her face. Curiosity got the better of me and I sighed softly hoping she wouldn’t hear it.

“I suppose so.”

“What makes us so different from you?”

I wasn’t expecting her to ask me that. All of my life, I had been fed the textbook answers to this question, but the way that she said it left me to wonder if she really wanted an answer to it.

“What difference does it make if I answer that? Are you just going to say something smart back to disprove what I say?”

I watched as jade green eyes turned away from the sky to look at me. I glared back, trying to figure out what she was up to. She smiled.

“And here I was expecting you to say something along the lines of, ‘We are too smart to be trusted,’” she said softly.

“It may be a textbook answer you hear all the time, but I really believe that. That…and my personal philosophy…”

“Which is?”

“You can’t trust something or someone who doesn’t trust you.”

“That’s a good philosophy.”

I waited for her to speak again. She had hardly gotten her point across.

“I often wonder about the things that we’re told. As members of RESISTANCE, we are told that those who aren’t as smart as us are inferior, but I disagree.”

I was a little confused by that. I had always thought that they believed everything their leaders said like drones.

“My brothers, especially Aaron, were trained never to question what they hear. Even though Athrun loosely interprets everything he has been told, he still doesn’t question it. I wasn’t taught that way.”

“How could you not have been taught that way?”

“It’s because I went into a different occupation than my brothers. They went into the military like you. Aren’t you trained to never question orders?”

“Yeah, but not to question orders and not to question everything you’re told are different.”

“Yes, but because our government and military are interconnected, the lines tend to blur quickly. Laws, rules, and orders become one in our society.”

She was starting to go into circles. We were back to my original question of why she saw things differently than others. Her words still confused me to. Wasn’t she in the military now too?

“I started to train as a medic after our mother died. My mentor worked with me and one other girl. As we got better, the two of us began to accumulate fame. It became so much that the rumor was that we could bring anyone from the brink of death. I was practical, and I refused to let all the praise change me.”

“Does this story have any relevance to my question?”

“It does, please let me continue.”

Her face pleaded along with her words. I nodded and she gave me a sad smile.

“The girl that I studied with me became arrogant. Her father was a military officer and he applied what he learned in his household. She had been taught never to question the words of others, so she didn’t. She honestly believed she had the ability to bring anyone back from the edge of death. It got to the point where she would flaunt it out loud.”

“This story isn’t going to have a happy ending is it?”

“No, she eventually walked out on a lesson and told our mentor that she didn’t need any more lessons…that she was good enough to do the nearly impossible. She criticized me for not believing I was good enough to walk away with her. I didn’t know what to say to her at the time and so I didn’t say anything. She scoffed and walked away, not looking back.”

Tempest closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She must have been conjuring up some dreadful memories. I know I did the same thing.

“A few weeks later, investigators came to my mentor’s clinic. We had just opened up when they came up ordering us to close down. We did and were escorted to the equivalent of a police station. They separated us and pulled us into an interrogation room to answer some questions. Apparently, the girl I had trained with had been pulled in to heal a critically injured soldier. Due to her inexperience, she fell apart and the soldier died. She had been arrested for falsely claiming to be something she wasn’t. In the end, she was executed. I found out later, that my mentor had denied saving her, saying she had walked away and insulted her comrades. Neither of us could forgive her for what she had done.”

I didn’t really know what to say. I felt kind of bad about hearing about her comrades betrayal, but at the same time, I felt like she got what she deserved.

“So, you have her mistake as a reminder.”

“Yes, it’s where my personal philosophy about the difference between us was rooted. We look the same, act the same, and have the same emotions. On the outside we aren’t different at all. I think that if we could just settle our prejudices and stop the war, than I think we can once again create the world that once was.”

I watched her as she stood up and looked back up towards the sky. I was reminded once again of the skyscrapers I had thought about a few days before I was captured. As unlikely as it was, I almost wanted the same thing…even if we both seemed like hypocrites.

“If that’s the way you feel, then why did you join the military?”

“But, I haven’t joined the military.”

‘But…you…”

“I got permission to follow my brothers onto the battlefield, without becoming a soldier. I don’t like fighting, nor could I see myself fighting. However, I do see myself as a healer. I can’t stop my brothers from fighting for what they believe in, but I can help them to stay healthy and try hard to make sure they don’t get killed.

Here's another part of the story. I also started a feedback forum so that you guys could let me know what you think. The link to the forum is:
http://kwertman.forumotion.net/index.htm

Here's the clip: August 4, 2008 (This is when I started this clip. I have worked on it in my spare time.)

I used to wonder what the world was like when the buildings reached up to touch the sky. My mother used to tell me these things when I was a child, but I was never one to believe in something that I could never see. On days when I have nothing better to do, I start to wonder about things that used to exist.

The supposed skyscrapers had disappeared into legends; legends of better days where the world was at peace and prosperous. Families weren’t torn apart by wars of mass destruction. The landscapes were full of bustling cities instead of acres of ruins and dying nature.

I sighed and laid down on the dirt mound to look at the sky. I didn’t need to think about such thing. It reminded me of my own better days…days before I knew what a war was and I was more interested in dresses and how pretty I looked.

“Dakota?”

I lifted my head up to see my good friend Kayden giving me his goofy lop-sided grin. I sat up fully and waited for him to continue.

“You know, you could answer me, for once,” he said in a teasing tone.

“I could, but I don’t want to.”

His grin faded for an instant to a look of sadness and pity as he looked down a little bit. He recovered and gave me that goofy grin again.

“The captain told me to come relieve you. He told me to tell you to take tomorrow off and get some rest. We’ll be moving out, possibly to a battle zone this week. He wants everyone in the stealth division at top strength.”

“What about you?”

“I’m taking over ‘til midnight then I’m gonna be relieved.”

I looked at him and studied his features. His hair was shaggy and uneven, despite the fact that it had been cut just the week before. It was naturally a dirty blond, but was a little greasy since water was a precious commodity and was given to the woman first when it came to bathing. He had a little bit of stubble on his cheeks. His blue eyes were bright and full of excitement with the hint of exhaustion.

“You’re tired,” I said.

“So are you.”

“Am not,” I said as I yawned, betraying my words.

He smirked. I always swore that if this war hadn’t happened, he could be a male model. Life was so unfair.

“Orders are orders,” he said before taking a deep breath, “please…for me?”

I felt like groaning, but I kept it in. Kayden knew how to get me to do anything. I pulled my legs up to my chest and jumped to my feet. I didn’t glance at him as I began to walk back to my tent. Due to the odd number of women in the group, I had my own tent and I was grateful for my own space.

I picked up my hand mirror, my one indulgence to look at my face. My dark hair had a gray tint to it from lying in the dirt and I had a few smudges on my face. Green eyes that had seen too much, were looking back at me, dark smudges from many sleepless nights were under them. I could barely see the hint of the person I once was, but I saw even more, the person I had become.

The mirror was hard to prop up, but I made it work. First, I poured some water into a small basin and placed a wash cloth in it to soak up the water. I wrung it out before I began to wash my face. I yanked the hair tie out of my hair and began to wash my filthy hair. I grabbed the small bottle of shampoo off to the side and began to massage my scalp. After rinsing all the soup out, I wrapped it in a towel and sat down on my cot.

It took a moment for me to get all the excess water out of my hair. While I squeezed the water out, I looked around my small tent. I didn’t have many personal items; most of them were left in my empty house because I couldn’t bring myself to look at them.

A large trunk sat at the foot of my cot. It held my clothing and, when on the move, many of my personal things. I had a few crates of supplies that I often used as a table or chairs. A lantern sat on top of them at the moment, but I didn’t care to light it. I pulled open the trunk to reveal my mother’s family bible and my father’s journal sitting upon my blanket. Normally I would open them up and look at them, but Kayden had a point. I was practically dead weight, but would try to hold off on going to bed for as long as possible. Anything to keep my nightmares away…

I've been working on this for a  little while and I'm happy how this little clip turned out. It's a scene with Athrun and Dakota  Let me know what you think!

 Here are two more profiles for the story I'm working on. Time to meet Aaron and Tempest Wicker.

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Name: Aaron Wicker
Age: 18
Hair/Eye Color: Brown/Green

About Him:
Aaron is the twin, younger brother of Athrun and elder brother to Tempest. He is a soldier for RESISTANCE. Aaron has a short fuse and is quick to action. He is the sole witness to his parents deaths and hates the NATIONS government with every fiber of his being. Aaron takes things too far sometime He is quiet, observant, and overly protective of his family. He excels at hand-to-hand combat as well as interagation and torture tactics and uses them to his every advantage. He also is a skilled sniper and assasin with high mission success rates which helps him to improve his status in the chain of command.

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Name: Tempest Wicker
Age: 14
Hair/Eye Color: Red/Green

About Her:
Tempest is the younger sister of Aaron and Athrun. She is a medic working to keep soldiers alive during the war. Tempest has great compassion for the soldiers who fight and will even give a willing hand to help enemy soldiers, which gets her in trouble with RESISTANCE. Despite her age she is very mature and could easily pass for someone older than what she is. Shortly after her apprentenceship ended at the local hospital, she recieved permission to follow her brothers and serve as an aid to them and those they meet. Tempest is headstrong and firm in her convictions and doesn't approve of the war. She doesn't believe in revenge and believes that tragedy is what helps bring people closer and gives them the strength to live better lives. Despite her compassion, she does have a little temper that tends to come out when arguing with her brothers. Tempest is also skilled in hand-to-hand combat and due to her medical background she knows how to do maximum damage to the body.