An Exploding Ally XL

Amaya came down barefoot. Hair a war zone, three-day-old hoodie. She rubbed one eye with the back of her hand and yawned like she hadn't slept since 2012.

Good morning, Mom," she snarled. "So… What's for breakfast?

Reya Wagakure leaned against the stove. Slouching. Pacing as if she just unpaused herself. Her smile was too polite. One of those smiles you wear when there's nothing left to put on.

"Your favorite," she replied without glancing about. "Bacon and fried rice. Japanese style."

Amaya blinked. "Damn. Thanks."

She picked up a glass. The kitchen filled the air with oil and soy and faint ghosts.

Then she saw it.

The bottle is in the trash. It is empty. Same label as last week's one. The prescription was ripped in two, as if they tried to conceal it but did not even make an effort to do so.

Amaya remained quiet for a moment.

And softly, not venomously

"I told you not to take so many."

Reya stiffened. The spatula in her hand shook. As if anyone would notice. Barely, so Amaya did.

"I'm not—" Reya began. But the words broke halfway, like ice underfoot.

"You're hooked," Amaya said to him. Not accusingly. More like a person remarking on the weather. "You've been tweaking for months."

Reya laughed. A broken, splintered sound. "If I'm addicted to anything," she panted, "it's to pretending this house isn't disintegrating."

The pan hissed in return.

Amaya remained silent. She just leaned against the counter. Observing her mom stir a pot as if she was trying to stir her way out of her own head.

It wasn't anger. Or drama. It was an ordinary morning, one that had sorrow embroidered into its fabric. Two women in one household, both tired in their own manner. One is cooking breakfast. One watching.

Amaya placed the glass down harder than intended. "You need help."

Reya winced.

"There's a clinic in Kanagawa. Real people. Trained. They don't just give you pills and shove you out the door."

"I don't need a clinic," Reya snapped too hard, too fast. She spun around, her eyes wide, her pupils too bright, too charged with static. "What I need is peace."

Peace is not the bottom of a bottle.

"I'm fine, Amaya!"

No, you're jerking every time the doorbell rings. You're taking more than you're supposed to. You haven't looked me in the eye in months.

Reya's fingers curled on the edge of the counter as if she would tear it off. "I said I'm fine!"

Amaya stepped forward, her voice shaking but firm. "Mom, you're not. Please. Please just listen to me for once. Let someone help you. I'm not enough. You need someone better than me."

Reya's face twisted. Her lips trembled before she flashed her teeth, not in a smile, but in the snarl of a wounded animal. "Oh, I need help? That's rich. Coming from you."

Amaya blinked.

"All of this—this—everything that is wrong about this house started when you were born."

"Mom—"

"Think I'm like this because I choose to?" Reya's voice became loud, urgent, and trembling. "Think I wanted this life? I had a family, Amaya. A real one. And they started dying, one at a time."

Her voice broke.

"And somehow… somehow you were always there."

Amaya stood stock-still. As if the earth had opened beneath her.

You watched your dad die. You watched your uncle slit his wrists in the bathtub. You watched the fire engulf your aunt. Like a black hole. You suck the life out of people.

Silence. Thick and stinging.

Reya broke away first. Her entire body is shaking now. But Amaya stood there, her fists balled, breathing hard and shallow.

Tell me again," she panted.

Reya didn't.

"Say it again, and I go out and never come back."

But Reya just turned back to the stove. Stirred the food as if the fight did not just exhaust the air between them.

"Breakfast's almost ready," she whispered.

Amaya didn't budge.

Something broke quietly in her that morning. Not like glass. Like old wood splitting in the cold. No sound, just a shift you could feel in your chest.

And then she went upstairs.

Not slamming the door. Since slamming would mean she still had something to say.

.....

The screen blinked across a skyscraper in the heart of the city. High-definition, too loud, too bright. One of those news networks that filled the skyline like neon prophets.

"Welcome to MNY Networks," the anchor said, all gloss and calm. "I'm Rois René, and today we're joined by the controversial leader of Al-Fitkari, Yasuul Qasim."

The face of the man was on the split-screen—weathered, tired, eyes aglow like a man who'd fought too many battles and lit too many matches.

"Salaam alaikum," he said, his voice flat and clean, through the Zoom link.

Around the screen, a small crowd had gathered. Commuters slowed down. Onlookers craned their necks. A storm raged without thunder.

"Those capitalist dogs haven't even withdrawn their claws from the media," a grizzled old man grumbled loudly enough to be overheard. "Now they're interviewing terrorists on primetime."

Behind him, Fatiba Darvish remained frozen.

Pink hijab. Padded coat. The bookbag was held tight to her chest like armor. Her voice didn't increase—but it carried.

"I think everybody should have the right to speak," she said softly. "Even the devil has something to say."

The old man turned. So did two others. And then more.

They saw the scarf. The pink. The language it represented. The meaning they decided on for it.

"Of course you'd say that," one man muttered, eyes narrowing.

"Always defending your kind, huh?" Another spat, his words slathered in sarcasm.

"She's for the Ummah, not the truth."

The air grew sharp—like the moment just before glass breaks. Fatiba didn't flinch.

She didn't step forward.

But she did not step back either.

"I didn't say he was right," she said. "I said he should be heard. That's what freedom is, isn't it?"

They didn't listen to her.

They weren't paying attention.

They only saw the cloth. The symbol. And made her the enemy in a conversation she hadn't initiated.

"Go back to your country."

"I was born here," she said baldly.

That stopped them—long enough to remind her that she still had a name. Still had a voice.

The silence didn't last, though.

It never did.

Fatiba stood, frozen in stone, in a city that glanced at her and saw a flag rather than a face.

And the screen above her continued flashing—headlines, zones of conflict, split screens. Louder than the hate below. Louder than the beating of her heart.

Then they came.

Three of them—with half-zipped, swaggering gazes and malice—emerged from the crowds thinning like wolves scenting blood. One cracked his knuckles. Another fidgeted with his collar. All smirking.

They said nothing at first.

But they did with their eyes.

Fatiba's chest hardened. Her breathing constricted. Light around her twisted.

One step forward—and the world shattered.

The sidewalk curved into a tunnel. The crowd around her turned to silhouettes—faceless, skin blending with ink, mouths twisting into satanic grins cut too wide across formless faces. Red eyes glowed like fire in smoke.

Her mind screamed.

"GO BACK."

"No."

"WHAT'S IN THE BAG? CHECK IF SHE'S GOT A BOMB."

"No."

Her voice was tiny. Stuck in her throat. Her legs froze.

"NO—"

"NO."

"NO!!!"

She ran.

Her backpack thudded against her back as her feet pounded onto pavement—hard, loud, too loud. Behind her, there was the echo of footsteps. Laughter. Shouting. Words cutting into knives.

"WALKING BOMB!"

"Go primp up in that for the desert!"

"Terrorist!"

She paced faster, tears and sweat blurring together on her face. Her hijab streaming behind her like a banner of warning, not protection.

No one stopped her.

No one helped.

She wasn't a girl anymore—a headline they believed they knew.A scarf. A name. A symbol. Not a soul.

Fatiba didn't turn around. Her feet clomped on the pavement, every step attempting to leave judgment, fear, and memory behind. Everything around her dissolved into noise. Shoes. Shouts. Screens.

Above, the giant screen continued to play, booming and indifferent.

"So, what's your opinion on your actions in the Middle East?" the reporter inquired.

On the opposite side of the screen, Yasuul Qasim smiled. A dry, slow grin. One that was familiar with blood.

"Well, well… the little ones we rear," he said, hacking into his hand. "Aren't they considered time bombs by your people as well?"

The reporter winced but didn't break in.

"The media will play every bomb we detonate," Qasim went on. "They'll replay the screaming, the debris, the blood. They should. But that's only one part of the story."

His eyes grew somber—not apologetic, not proud. Just weary.

"You don't present the sanctions that strangled us. The puppet governments. Soldiers guard our oil fields who don't speak our language. You don't present the New York and London boardrooms, where our country was sold like meat at auction."

He moved closer to the camera.

"So we're given a choice: let them steal our black gold and re-write our history… or fall back into something nastier. Faith warping into rage. Childhood becoming martyrdom."

On the street again, the music from the speakers faded away—instantly another broadcast. Instantly another war nobody wins.

Fatiba slowed at last, panting, her chest trembling. She ducked behind a shuttered store and fell to her knees. Her hands trembled—not only from terror—but from something far worse:

Recognition.

The truth was out there, in between the screams and the silence.And everybody—everybody—was lying by telling only half of it.

Nobody was right.

Nobody was innocent.

Not the man on television.

Not the people who pursued her.

Not the city that observed.

Hell didn't come from one direction.

It came from every side.

Up on the building's broadcast, the interview kept rolling.

"You say that," the reporter said, jaw tight, voice strained, "but your regime's executed Christians. Jews. Homosexuals. All under your flag. All under the tale of seventy-two virgins. I've lost someone to your politics."

Yasuul Qasim didn't blink. His face stayed calm—dead calm. He said, softly, "His death wasn't necessary."

"Then why—"

What do you think makes my men die on command?" he cut in, his voice low. "You think it's religion? Some kind of cosmic prize? No. Religion is merely the tool. I was born to this. Raised in flame. Fed on dogma and earth."

He moved forward, eyes burning like ash.

"I've killed thousands. Men. Women. Children. And I'll kill more."

Silence.

"Because now I have the strings. And when you have strings, you tug. You get them to stand, march, fight, and laugh about it. You break their gods. You give them meaning. You tell them there's heaven ahead—because if you don't, they'll witness the emptiness."

He stopped.

And then, matter-of-factly:

"We're not saved. We're programmed. Too deep. Too broken. You can't save a virus. You just erase it."

The voice of the reporter shook—rage and incredulity. "That's monstrous. You could have done anything—peace negotiations, resistance, talks—"

He sounded like a laugh—a racking, disgusting one, like gravel in a throat.

The screen creaked once more, warped by wind and static.

*Peace?* Yasuul Qasim hacked, angling forward. *Peace is the space between two acts of a film titled war. It's not real. It's a rumor. A pause before the next massacre.*

The studio went silent. Even the reporter stopped adjusting her notes.

He locked eyes with her, unblinking.

"Where was your peace when your empires carved the world into borders with blood? You're Spanish, right?" he asked, almost conversational. "So where was peace when your ancestors slaughtered entire civilizations in the name of the true faith? When they bathed cities in fire because a scroll told them they had the right?"

The reporter didn't reply.

She didn't need to.

"Peace?" he spat again, louder now. "We've never known peace. Not really. As long as man breathes, we'll kill each other. For land. For oil. For pride. For gods. For flags. For scripture soaked in empire."

His voice dropped to a whisper, the kind that slices deeper than any scream. "War is the only time people listen. And even then—only long enough to reload."

The screen rattled—lines of compression trembled—but the broadcast remained. Yasuul Qasim leaned forward, face serene, cold, and whole. "There is prejudice in your blood. In the blood you shed and the tales you spin. You'll cloak genocide in Latin—Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat—hallow it, say it legacy.". Then you'll rephrase everything with gentle lies: 'We prevented the pagans from offering children as sacrifices.' As if that excuses the cities you incinerated. As if the corpses you piled up were not human because they didn't kneel in the right manner.

The journalist turned, jaw clenched. The studio didn't catch its breath. Qasim smiled weakly. "And now, thousands of Instagram warriors will descend upon the comments. All righteous. All boisterous. Not because they are right—because they can't handle it. They're terrified to confront the rot within their own narrative."

He didn't blink. "You sit beside the camera, so I'm the monster. But to the ones buried in the rubble your weapons made—to the mothers dragging limbs from ash—I'm the liberator."

The feed froze, holding his face in digital stillness. Then resumed—glitchless. Clear. Cold.

"Mankind will never be together," he declared bluntly. "Bedtime story of world peace we tell before giving our kids guns. We are primed to split. Same religion? We kill over race. Same race? We divide by language. Same language? We will detest skin color. Or accent. Or the way we say 'God.' If we had one devil and one prophet, we would still have two groups just to continue bleeding."

He exhaled. The kind of breath that sounded like it had been held for years.

"I'm not saying we're not monsters," he murmured. "I'm saying you're not saints either."

And then, softer still:

"When judgment comes, we'll all boil in the same pit of fire. Together."

The screen went black. But no one felt silence. Not anymore.