Stephanie had been given a life of freedom in a country that was very, very peaceful. Eventually she embraced her doubts about that tepid environment (or perhaps, was given the freedom to embrace them), so she determined to leave. The motivation for that civilian to head to the battlefield as a mercenary had been exceedingly infantile. She had been in a period where she was concerned with the twisted parts of society and could not stand to ignore those who were suffering. She had been in a period where she would only be satisfied by helping out directly with her own ability.
And a civil war in Costa Rica became Stephanie's first hell.
Unlike with proper soldiers, that was the distinctive baptism of a mercenary. It assaulted the novice Stephanie in the form of a discrepancy in intelligence. She had known about the attack helicopter, but she hadn't heard anything of the additional electronics that included equipment to link in a highly sensitive anti-personnel ambush radar. Thanks to that, Stephanie's mercenary unit had been unsuccessful in their attempt to hide in the thickets and had ended up having a large number of rockets come down from overhead.
The motley unit had been instantly annihilated.
Her comrades had not just been turned to corpses. Not even the dog tags that had been provided by their client had survived. Stephanie alone had miraculously survived, but that had not been due to her own actions.
A large caliber anti-tank rifle had accurately pierced through the attack helicopter's fuel tank from a great distance.
That had been when she had met Sunazara Chimitsu.
Unlike Stephanie, he was a rare type of mercenary who headed into battle alone instead of creating a team. She was injured and Sunazara had taken her in and saved her life. And it hadn't ended there. Stephanie had headed into the battlefield with major gaps in her knowledge. If Sunazara had not proceeded to teach her every little skill she needed, she probably would have simply ended up dying in similar circumstances on a different battlefield.
Even when the civil war in Costa Rica ended, Stephanie stuck with Sunazara. It was partly due to how much she admired him, but she could not deny that it was also partly due to the fact that sticking with someone strong was a good way to survive as a mercenary.
And after taking part in battle after battle, a question occurred to Stephanie.
The value for her to stick with him was clear, but what did he gain from having her with him?
The sniper known as Sunazara Chimitsu used to work alone without creating a team. It seemed the reason for that was that an ally had once tripped him up and caused a major crisis, but then why was he letting a novice like Stephanie stay with him? He didn't seem like the type who would allow that simply because he enjoyed having a young woman serving him.
She never directly asked him what his reason was, but she managed to make a pretty good guess from the things he said offhand.
It was possible Sunazara was tired of the life of a sniper.
In his job, he killed people with almost complete certainty. Even if he aimed for an arm or a leg instead of a vital point, the high powered rifle would still rip the limb off causing them to lose a large amount of blood and die from shock due to the pain. And since a sniper had to aim with pinpoint accuracy from long distances, he couldn't exactly lower the power behind the bullet.
On the other hand, Stephanie's specialty was not long distance sniping.
She had emulated him and used a sniper rifle a bit, but she had realized it just didn't match her personality. She preferred high speed battles at extremely close quarters.
And at close quarters there was no reason that you absolutely had to kill your enemy.
Stephanie fought her enemies at 10 meters, 5 meters, or even less than a meter away, so she could get away with not killing her enemy by shooting them in the arms and legs with a lower power handgun bullet. And with someone she wasn't sure was an enemy, she could use hand-to-hand methods to knock them down and incapacitate them.
It was possible that Sunazara envied that flexibility because he could do nothing but kill. It may have been asking for too much, but it may have had value in Sunazara's eyes.
If he made the best of his skills as a sniper to analyze Stephanie's actions, he could gain the ability to silently get to mid or close range.
If he did that, he may be able to put together a strategy where he could accurately shoot their arms and legs with a low power bullet and not kill them.
Of course, if he wasn't used to it on a real battlefield, it could be fatally dangerous.
But if he succeeded in putting together such a strategy, that was great.
And even if he failed in putting together such a strategy, the number of people who would needlessly be killed at his hands would still lower.
It was possible he had been thinking those things in silence.
When Stephanie had that thought, she decided that she wanted to help him.
But she wanted to do it in a way other than the worst possible way that Sunazara himself was subconsciously wishing for.
And yet Stephanie's determination had ended in vain.
Sunazara had been hired as a mercenary to take part in the conflict between Group, School, Item, Member, and Block, the 5 teams at the depths of Academy city. There he had been struck by his own target and injured badly enough that he still had not regained consciousness.
Sunazara was in the situation he had thought up as the worst possible result with a tiny bit of salvation.
And Stephanie Gorgeouspalace had sworn to take revenge.
She knew that it was selfish of her.
His path to that tiny salvation was supposed to have been more difficult and more complex, but Kinuhata Saiai had granted it for him almost too simply by means of death and violence.
And so Stephanie made Kinuhata the target of her selfish revenge.