Makita sits in front of the two graves she dug every day. Sometimes it is only for a minute or two, sometimes for hours, but each time she cries
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This is as much a favor to the Gorkas as it is to the Fleet, thinks Maya, and the voice in her head is cold and detached.
The ground falls away in specific patterns, under the grid marked out by the red light. It's impressive. It's awe-inspiring, the level of precision shown in this display of power; the frozen ground sheering away at perfect right angles for 1,000 meters down. Men hurtle, screaming, to their deaths, along with tons of ice and snow and pavement and earth. One hits a protruding pipe on the way down, with a loud CLANG! His shriek cuts off abruptly.
Maya stands at the center of it all, on a pedestal of rock and ground barely wide enough for her to stand on, surrounded by a thousand-meter-deep hole.
Damn you, Urik, for protecting me.
The last straggler loses his frantic, clawed grip, and falls, scrabbling for purchase, to his death. With a great groan and creaking clank of metal and thunderous crunch of ground giving way, the shelled-out krawl tips and begins to topple over the edge of the enormous hole.
I should have been here with Alexandra's column a week ago.
Not exterminating parasites after we've lost the battle.
Makita froze as soon as she spotted the witch. She knew that the idiot scavengers were already dead, and she knew that the witch would go out of her way to kill a 'Gorka if she was spotted. That's just how the Reds were.
It turns out that freezing in place was the wrong choice. The krawl shifts and shudders as the ground drops away. Since the krawl is on the edge of the protokol's effect it doesn't simply fall, but it's sliding toward that 1000 meter drop inexorably. By the time Makita manages to scramble up and out of the hatch the krawl is in free fall.
Despite all that she's lost, Makita doesn't even consider going with it. "Fight until you die", she has been taught. And she isn't dead yet. She plants her feet, legs bunching beneath her as she shifts her weight as she reaches to pull her father's sickle from her belt.
Then she leaps, arm and sickle extended as far as they can go. She knows she can't reach a handhold on her own, but the reach of the sickle is just enough to catch a rusted iron pipe that sticks out from the edge of the hole. With a grunt of exertion she pulls herself up, breathing heavily.
[ooc: I didn't want that to get too long. So I need someone here (Kyuzo maybe?) to break this up before the letter flutters free, she catches it, and pulls herself up to follow Maya.]
As the krawl tumbles into the pit behind her with a shriek of metal, Maya lifts a hand. A bridge of rock and pavement roils up out of the ground with the grinding roar of rock, rising higher, higher, higher, until it links her pedestal with solid ground.
Makita hangs frozen in place as the witch walks away. Please don't turn around, please don't turn around, please don't turn around.
After a minute or so Makita begins to shift, preparing to pull herself the rest of the way out of the pit, but as she swings her leg up something slips from her pocket.
The letter! She promised! With a desperate twisting motion she swings to hang from the rusted pipe by the fingertips of one hand as her other hand swings the sickle's tip into the fluttering piece of paper.
It catches. It holds.
With a deep, almost relieved, breath, Makita swings her legs up to hook around the pipe and then slowly inches her way back to solid ground. Once there she spends thirty seconds just lying in the snow, clutching the letter to her chest and breathing raggedly.
This time, I'm not leaving. And you're not here to save me.
She stares down into the black of the pit, the wind pushing at her, setting her coat to whipping about her legs. She moves a boot near the edge; a shower of pebbles and small rocks slough off and fall down, down, down, until they can't be seen any longer.
Either I find you, or the Gorkas find me first. Either way.
Maya draws her foot back and walks across the bridge. On ordinary ground, her boots crunch in the hardpacked snow, leaving a trail of steady, perfectly even footprints.
Thirty seconds spent lying in the snow recovering. Makita would like to take more, but time's a luxury in Bahamut, and not one she can afford. With one last deep breath she pushes herself to her feet, tucks the letter into her coat, and moves lightly across the snow after the witch leaving almost not trace of her passing.
Makita lets her fingers brush across the pistol in her pocket and her teeth draw back in a predatory snarl. Damn witches. They've taken so much, and now it's time to take some back.
He's bruised, he's bloodied, he's got a leg that probably isn't broken but sure as hell feels like it is--
But he's alive. He's not down at the bottom, a broken wreck like Ilya and Nikola and all the rest. Can't kill old Koba that easy.
"Bastard -- Red witches --" Koba pants, each breath harsh and tearing in the frigid air, as he pulls himself up to the edge of the pit. "Didn't get me!" The words give him strength.
"Not Koba!"
He'll just hold here. Just a minute. Get his breath back, and gather himself for one final push.
The hailer makes a soft click as Kyuzo brings it to position; not from its firing mechanism, but simply because the movement makes the gun shift in its placement against his right gauntlet.
He stares down at the survivor and there is a moment where he considers the face of this man who was capable of clinging to a wall while the world fell apart around him in a single 'kast.
He does not feel pity or even empathy. A waste. That's all this is. Another waste of life and limb in a completely pointless, perfunctory epilogue. There is no compassion left in this cold bright war littered with familiar dead.
"I didn't shoot at her," the man pleads. Koba, his name is; Koba, who is dead and doesn't realize it yet. It's important to know the names of the dead. Even when the list becomes too long for them all to be remembered. "I mean - I - I -"
In the end, a person's life is not equal to zero; it always has a value.
It always leaves something behind.
"Mercy!" Koba pleads, finally, too late. "Mercy!"
Kyuzo's eyes do not waver. His finger closes around the hailer's trigger; an explosion of light obscures the man's face but not the sickening sound of what a hailer does to an unarmored man at point blank range.
Kyuzo does not wait to hear Koba fall. He will remember the name; it is all the mercy the man before him deserved. A hand comes up, toggles a switch: "Guardsman Kyuzo to Sorcery Corps -" a burst of static - "this is Kyuzo, come in, Corps ..." He waits for the affirmative, then continues. "I'm groundside with the Major.
"No - nothing she couldn't handle, yet. But she's heading into a 'Gorka zone.
"Just ready a strike team - hailers - and track my position. Have them standing by to drop in."
He pauses to lift his head and take in the surroundings, the fires burning far away and the empty, merciless bone-white world from which the fires sprung.
"... and tell them to be ready for anything."
The switch toggles off and the wind howls through the empty bomb-broken buildings in the comm channel's wake. Kyuzo listens with his head bowed and continues on into the brightness of Nokgorka's war-wounded heart.
The ground falls away in specific patterns, under the grid marked out by the red light. It's impressive. It's awe-inspiring, the level of precision shown in this display of power; the frozen ground sheering away at perfect right angles for 1,000 meters down. Men hurtle, screaming, to their deaths, along with tons of ice and snow and pavement and earth. One hits a protruding pipe on the way down, with a loud CLANG! His shriek cuts off abruptly.
Maya stands at the center of it all, on a pedestal of rock and ground barely wide enough for her to stand on, surrounded by a thousand-meter-deep hole.
Damn you, Urik, for protecting me.
The last straggler loses his frantic, clawed grip, and falls, scrabbling for purchase, to his death. With a great groan and creaking clank of metal and thunderous crunch of ground giving way, the shelled-out krawl tips and begins to topple over the edge of the enormous hole.
I should have been here with Alexandra's column a week ago.
Not exterminating parasites after we've lost the battle.
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It turns out that freezing in place was the wrong choice. The krawl shifts and shudders as the ground drops away. Since the krawl is on the edge of the protokol's effect it doesn't simply fall, but it's sliding toward that 1000 meter drop inexorably. By the time Makita manages to scramble up and out of the hatch the krawl is in free fall.
Despite all that she's lost, Makita doesn't even consider going with it. "Fight until you die", she has been taught. And she isn't dead yet. She plants her feet, legs bunching beneath her as she shifts her weight as she reaches to pull her father's sickle from her belt.
Then she leaps, arm and sickle extended as far as they can go. She knows she can't reach a handhold on her own, but the reach of the sickle is just enough to catch a rusted iron pipe that sticks out from the edge of the hole. With a grunt of exertion she pulls herself up, breathing heavily.
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Damn you, Urik.
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After a minute or so Makita begins to shift, preparing to pull herself the rest of the way out of the pit, but as she swings her leg up something slips from her pocket.
The letter! She promised! With a desperate twisting motion she swings to hang from the rusted pipe by the fingertips of one hand as her other hand swings the sickle's tip into the fluttering piece of paper.
It catches. It holds.
With a deep, almost relieved, breath, Makita swings her legs up to hook around the pipe and then slowly inches her way back to solid ground. Once there she spends thirty seconds just lying in the snow, clutching the letter to her chest and breathing raggedly.
That was too close.
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Maya pauses halfway across the landbridge.
I would have died in Al'Istaan if not for you.
This time, I'm not leaving. And you're not here to save me.
She stares down into the black of the pit, the wind pushing at her, setting her coat to whipping about her legs. She moves a boot near the edge; a shower of pebbles and small rocks slough off and fall down, down, down, until they can't be seen any longer.
Either I find you, or the Gorkas find me first. Either way.
Maya draws her foot back and walks across the bridge. On ordinary ground, her boots crunch in the hardpacked snow, leaving a trail of steady, perfectly even footprints.
I've seen enough of this world.
She walks into the wind and the twisted, skeletal remains of the city, a lone, upright figure in a long coat.
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Makita lets her fingers brush across the pistol in her pocket and her teeth draw back in a predatory snarl. Damn witches. They've taken so much, and now it's time to take some back.
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But he's alive. He's not down at the bottom, a broken wreck like Ilya and Nikola and all the rest. Can't kill old Koba that easy.
"Bastard -- Red witches --" Koba pants, each breath harsh and tearing in the frigid air, as he pulls himself up to the edge of the pit. "Didn't get me!" The words give him strength.
"Not Koba!"
He'll just hold here. Just a minute. Get his breath back, and gather himself for one final push.
"I--"
There's a shadow falling across him.
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He stares down at the survivor and there is a moment where he considers the face of this man who was capable of clinging to a wall while the world fell apart around him in a single 'kast.
He does not feel pity or even empathy. A waste. That's all this is. Another waste of life and limb in a completely pointless, perfunctory epilogue. There is no compassion left in this cold bright war littered with familiar dead.
"I didn't shoot at her," the man pleads. Koba, his name is; Koba, who is dead and doesn't realize it yet. It's important to know the names of the dead. Even when the list becomes too long for them all to be remembered. "I mean - I - I -"
In the end, a person's life is not equal to zero; it always has a value.
It always leaves something behind.
"Mercy!" Koba pleads, finally, too late. "Mercy!"
Kyuzo's eyes do not waver. His finger closes around the hailer's trigger; an explosion of light obscures the man's face but not the sickening sound of what a hailer does to an unarmored man at point blank range.
Kyuzo does not wait to hear Koba fall.
He will remember the name; it is all the mercy the man before him deserved. A hand comes up, toggles a switch: "Guardsman Kyuzo to Sorcery Corps -" a burst of static - "this is Kyuzo, come in, Corps ..." He waits for the affirmative, then continues. "I'm groundside with the Major.
"No - nothing she couldn't handle, yet. But she's heading into a 'Gorka zone.
"Just ready a strike team - hailers - and track my position. Have them standing by to drop in."
He pauses to lift his head and take in the surroundings, the fires burning far away and the empty, merciless bone-white world from which the fires sprung.
"... and tell them to be ready for anything."
The switch toggles off and the wind howls through the empty bomb-broken buildings in the comm channel's wake. Kyuzo listens with his head bowed and continues on into the brightness of Nokgorka's war-wounded heart.
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