colonel
When Colonel Barst Gia is first introduced, it is as a living legend: an immensely talented soldier, held in admiration by subordinates. He encounters Zen in a state of madness, unleashing his unstoppable violence against everything in his path.
Gia: Interesting. So this is the power of Zen. You
are demonic. Daring and cold-blooded. Such high
combat strength. You could be an excellent soldier.
But as their battle progresses, Gia notices something very strange about Zen. He recognizes the look in his eyes, the same as someone from his past. And a moment later, he realizes it's the very same man — a man he thought was dead by his own orders...
Gia serves as the only character that can provide the answer to the question of "who is Zen?" Beyond that, though, is a man who has long been haunted by the memory of a unit that eschewed morality for the glory of its nation, built with foreigners who could be abused without compromising their ideals. And he is a man who benefited from that tragedy, becoming a powerful and respected figure in the military at the cost of innocent lives.
The benefits to Gia's position are all that is made evident at first, and Zen recalls only that he once came too close to death at Gia's hands. When Gia lays the truth bare, however, Zen cannot deny how true it rings. He doesn't trust him initially, but Gia's exposure of Hakka's true identity makes his intentions clear.
It's these intentions that make Gia such an interesting character. He is the only person we see who actively wanted to save the black ops soldiers from the life they had been forced in to. His superior, the general who oversaw the unit and Rian's father, used the soldiers for his own benefit, never seeming to care about what they were going through. And Hakka, of course, used Zero to eliminate them all. Against them, Gia is presented as someone who tried to change things but never got the chance, something that has clearly plagued him.
Gia: The fighting will end sometime. I... will put
an end to your fighting. (It's not worth laying
down one's life... for this rotten country's wars.)
However, Gia's troubles are very much limited to himself. While he makes it clear that he wanted to save Zero and never could, he gives no concern to his actual desires. Zero, with his lack of knowledge about the world, likely would not have understood why it would be important to escape, but Zen is a different man than Gia remembers.
And despite Zen declaring his new name, Gia doesn't understand it until Zen tells him exactly what he thinks of Gia's plans to stage a coup d'état. The government has only ever tried to control Zen in the past, and any attempt at changing the corrupt Galay for the better will meet the same from him. For all that Gia tried to save him, in the end he comes to realize who Zen has become without him. Zen is a man who's chosen his path, one completely at odds with the one Gia had in mind. Instead of ending his fight, he simply continued it in a different form.
Blank Slate © Aya Kanno. No infringement intended.
uncontrol © Larissa, 2011-2025.