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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 05:27:29 UTC




"I expected Gainer to do that. If he didn't do exactly that I would have been surprised." The smoke she exhaled hung in the still, cold air. "And the battle never ends on that Ship. Every week the world almost ends. I haven't missed that part of it even for a moment." She ashed into the snow and looked around, and frowned.

"Let go for a walk, bring that drink with you." She stood up abruptly, and tossed her hair over her shoulder with a flourish. "There's something I want to show you. Tell me about this treasure while we walk."

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 05:43:32 UTC
Resnick took the vodka and said goodnight to his comrades, old and new. He walked with her into the cold air, where lights showed frightened faces, flickering bonfires around which the more gleeful and bold were dancing, drinking and kissing too.

"The isorla are named Keijinan, Enge and Jaboli. They are on the dropship now." Read: Under guard in case Adette overestimated their character and they try to make a break for the Railway. "What did you want to show me?" He stuck his hands into his pockets too, stiff from hours at the controls.

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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 05:51:54 UTC



"Wait." She stopped and turned. "You have the terrible three? You have my men?" She looked shocked. "I couldn't find them anywhere, I was worried they had been excited for heaving worked for me or something!" She laugh out loud in sheer relief. "Why didn't you tell me you sooner you moron? They would have been useful a week ago!" She moved to punch his arm, but stopped herself, and returned her hand to her pocket instead.

"Well I'm glad they're alright." She turned back to the path they where walking, passing in the shadows pass small group of people celebrating, complaining, hiding, it was all really the same. The air was thick with collective held breaths, everyone knew something was coming when the sun came up, but no one had any idea what it was.
"It's just a bit further. Can't you just enjoy the walk?" She held out her hands for the bottle. "Give that here. I've been sober for weeks."

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 06:25:19 UTC
'Terrible' was right. He was glad to hand them off to her. "It was after your last transmission. I did not want to risk another one so soon..." And from what Ranna said, she certainly didn't seem in the mood to be bothered more than once.

It was certainly a tense atmosphere, but a slowly unwinding one. The oppression of living under a dictatorship (albeit a bumbling one) was being slowly replaced by that of war.

He handed her the vodka. Already it was starting to glow warm in his stomach.

"You poor thing." He said, remembering the Refusal War, so recent and yet somehow acquiring the luster of age in memory, when he'd gone without any kind of indulgence for six months. He liked this side of her better anyway, the competent HBIC. Maybe she'd learn to handle the bottle as recreation and not as crutch though, now that she was home.

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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 06:36:55 UTC



"Oh yes, poor poor Big Sister Adette." She mocked him mocking her, and snatched the bottle from his hand. "Forced into sobriety by the burden of duty." She swayed as she walked, like a young hooligan drinking from the bottle as they walked, completely unashamed.

They turned a corner and went down an alley between the tight buildings, and then over half of a stone wall, just beyond there was a big fire burning, and the sounds of boisterous celebration could be heard. As soon as the fire light washed over her face they all turned and yelled drunken greetings at them.
"Didn't expect you back so soon sis- oh!" The man who came over was obviously Adette's brother, the same eyes, and height, even the same manner of smirking. It was uncanny.
"Oh shut up!" She scolded him, putting her hand on his chest and pushing him backward. "I though I out to introduce you boys to our illustrious benefactor. Resnick. Resnick, the boys... Dutch, Chuck, Mike, Julie, and then of course, my brothers."

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 06:51:44 UTC
Already exaggerated sloppiness was overtaking her. But he wasn't fooled. He'd just seen the aspect of her that she never showed on the Chalice. If they ever made it back, they'd never believe it.

He followed, buzzed himself, and leaped the half-wall. He was fascinated by her and her brothers, the way they interacted. It was like and yet unlike a sibko. Instead of a constantly shifting hierarchy of dozens of little brats, it was relatively small and contained and everyone clearly both deferred to (to an extent) and looked up to her. The resemblance was clear too...though she'd clearly gotten most of the sexy genes, he thought to himself.

'Illustrious benefactor' would technically be Ranna, but he found himself liking the sound of it. "I see I am just in time for the celebration." He said. "This place is looking better already."

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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 06:59:48 UTC



"Much better than sitting around a space heater." Adette took up a rusted crate by the fire and preached on it, flipping the last of her cigarette into the fire. As if it where some unspoken signal the other man backed off, Chuck laughed a little and rubbed his nose as he grinned.

"This is much better." She turned to look at him, the firelight dancing on her soft curves of her face, Adette smiled a little. "Don't take it personally, the party is just better on this side of the fence."

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 07:24:51 UTC
He sat on an unoccupied cinder block on the other side, watching the way the firelight played over her.

"None taken. The hangar is cold and has no fire and I have seen nothing but the other Fourth Wolf Guards for the past two weeks while we got ready for this." He looked at the others around the fire. More hard bitten men, from a hard bitten place. He could have grown to like it there himself. "Tomorrow, I need your help..." He waited for assent or just to be told to go on. "Let it be known that the Railway's stores are now open and to be distributed equally." That anyone might not distribute the goods fairly didn't even occur to him. "All military items are ours. Everything else is yours. Except the liquor." He grinned and reached over the fire to take the bottle from Adette, down a shot and pass it. "On that we must insist on an even split." He grinned.

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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 07:35:55 UTC



"I may have to fight you for that one. That's how you do it right? We fight over, and if I win I get my way?" The alcohol was starting to make her feel a bit swimmy, maybe it was time to quit. There would be more fighting to come, that was certain. She set the bottle down on the ground beside her born boots.

"This is what I wanted to show you. Do you see that house there, with the boarded up window?" She pointed to one of the slender brick houses crammed end to end along the lot. "That's the house I was born in, lived there my entire life till I boarded the Chalice and ended up in space. I live my whole life in this dirt lot full of rubbish." She swung her arms around if is presenting the grandeur of the place. "I loved it, I mean, I still do. This will always be my home. But, I wanted you to see first hand, how different this place is from your world."
Behind them a few men broke out in a boisterous song, as a few other came and joined the party, bottles in hand, and loud laughter as greeting. Adette smiled, it warmed her heart to hear it echoing off the crumbling brick house.
"None of it is mine. I didn't do all this for a cut of something that doesn't even belong to me. I did it for them." She looked over at her friends, their smiling face glowing in lantern light. "So they could all know what I know. But I haven't the foggiest idea how to run things, how to put them back together when this is all over. I didn't really expect to make it that far. But if someone must... then I can always stay here and run things myself if I have to."

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 07:51:32 UTC
"Aff, and as the challenged I would choose to wrestle you for it." Another grin. "But not right now. When you would be an actual challenge."

He looked up at the house, where boards imprisoned an old brownstone, around at the street strewn with papers and bricks. Grime marred everything, leaving black and brown smudgy fingerprints. Everyone's clothes looked like they'd been patched so many times that they could be entirely new outfits. Even the air had the faint whiff of decay, from where rats and cockroaches scrabbled on the brick to dumpsters picked clean of anything edible by humans. She was right. The monofocus of battle had kept him from noticing it until then, but the decay and neglect here was astounding.

He knew living in a hardscrabble place. The Clan homeworlds were, to put it bluntly, terrifying balls of shit. So easy to make materials and bare bones construction were the order of the day. But it was an ordered, clean poverty that even the Warriors had to experience. Simply put, he'd never been to a ghetto, had no idea how to parse the difference between it and the objectively not any richer frontiers he was used to.

"...I have never seen its like. The homeworlds are tough places, with few resources...but this is different. Because of the wealth gap, quiaff? Anyway, you will do what is best for your people. I do not doubt that." He didn't know where he was going after this either. That'd depend on what Khan Phelan wanted of him when he arrived.

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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 08:32:56 UTC



There was no lie there, Adette would have lost a fight with him quicker than it could get started right now. Her body felt sapped, the adrenaline pounding through her veins had subsided hours ago, and was replace with a deep tried, and an increasingly pressing sense of paranoia.

"Yes, everyone who lives in Domepoli 1 have all the money. This one is number 7. You don't want to see what 9 looks like this time of night." She pitied them, more than anything, no one should have to live like this. She had treasured it when it was all she knew, but she thought of how so many people in to the outside world had more food than they could eat, warmth and clothes in abundance... and how these people had lived so long on so little.

"I'm no leader, and I really... don't want to be. Give me a squad of ugly old men and let me blow something up, or break something apart. I don't think I would make a very good Baroness, especially since I heard the pay rate just dropped dramatically." Adette pulled off her over sized gloves and held her bare hands out towards the fires warmth.

She sat quietly for a long moment, listening to the sounds of the city all around her, rejoicing, and grieving all at once.
"Something big is going to happen tomorrow, I don't know what it is but I can feel it in the air. I'm scared, but I'm ready for it." She swallowed the lump in her throat and blurted out words that she had been holding in her mouth since his epic rescue in the hanger.
"It's very hard to be around you. It's not you fault, you're just to well put together. When the fighting here is over, and things have been settled... I think I want to go back to the Chalice. But there are moment where I wonder what it would be like to share that shitty little house with you. I wonder if a 'normal' life is even an option for me anymore, and if so... what that would even mean anyways? I know things could never, would never work out for 'us', if 'us' was a thing that ever existed at all." She paused, her eyes held a soft focus on the flickering red embers, Adette dared not look at him. " After what I've done to Yasuba, to Micheal it divine justice that it should be you I've become snagged on. But... you're not good for me. And I've accepted that. When this is over, there won't be anything between us anymore." Adette paused, she felt better now that it was off her chest and out in the late night air.

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 08:49:01 UTC
Nine, then, would be the one Able and Bravo star had been assigned to take. He hoped they were staying in their mechs and battle armor tonight, grateful populace or no.

When she started to speak it seemed to all spill out of her mouth at once, until he couldn't hold on, all objections swept downstream. The things she said hammered at his chest each time.

"Whatever it is I will be...I do not know what my feelings are for you because I have no experience of this. You were raised with it, I was not. But Ranna helped me articulate it somewhat and I have been learning. If my duty keeps me here after this campaign is done I will do it, but it will be bitter and cold without you." He moved as if to go over to her, shifting on his log, but couldn't go, knew she'd retreat away from him as he'd been. Irony of ironies, after he'd pushed her initial advances away. "I am not good for you? I have not been this close to anyone since what I did to my sibkin, and you will throw that away?" He could feel his pride ready to catch him. He was getting the words out before it pounced, brought him under its control again and forced him to make a stiff-faced exit.

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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 09:07:25 UTC



"I've throw away a lot of things over the years, and this isn't one of them. Perhaps, 'putting it away' is more like it. Away on a high shelf where I can remember it with out feeling it." Adette was tried, she rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. "I can't go on like we where. It's so much. To intoxicating, to easy. To perfect. And to know that no matter how much explaining is done, you and I will never feel things the same way, never understand the other completely no matter how we tried." Adette got to her feet, putting her gloves back on.
"I watched Yasuba get down on his knees and sob like a child, begging me to come back to him. What I did to him was a crime, that I should hold such power over so fine a man. I don't deserve to be allowed to love anyone else, and then to inevitably hurt them so deeply." She brushed off her bottom.

"I don't know how I can explain it any better than that." In all her weeks alone, she had only decide this this because no matter how she tried she could seem to choose Resnick over Micheal in her mind, while all the while part of her still longed for Yasuba. If her heart was so fickle, than wouldn't it better to give it to no one at all?
And if she did give in, and give herself over to his beastly charms, what then? Would she had to be assimilated into his ways? And how would he act when she did to him exactly what she had done to every man before him?
No. This train has to stop, Adette wanted off.

"It will be dawn soon, we had better get some rest. There some stale bread and tea in the house. There won't be time for breakfast so it would be better to eat up now. Plus there is a fire in the hearth already, it's warmer than the ground."
When the fighting was over, she would quit him, but right now, the fighting was a long way from over.

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 09:49:14 UTC
Truthfully, he wanted to see the house, to pick up the chipped cups and scavenged toys that had been with her from child to woman.

"You cannot know if you do not try. You cannot feed your guilt every opportunity that comes your way. I went down that road. It leads precisely nowhere." He stood too. The light was warm and flattered his features, making him look less gruff, less bitten by experience. But his eyes narrowed. "Jin Yasuba will beg you. I beg noone." His pride had finally caught up with him, and besideswhich he had not understood her offer. Later he might crawl in with her or allow her to crawl in with him. But tonight he'd sleep on an inflatable mattress with someone's elbow in his eye, or in his mech's cockpit.

He only then realized that they'd been having this little spat in the middle of a party. He glared at anyone who dared to look as if this was any way unusual. The apocalyptic mood had been infectious anyway, and their was hardly the only breakup (or reunion) happening.

He turned to storm off, wishing desperately for his dress uniform, with its long cape, that would sweep around as he did so.

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hearturrushrod August 24 2012, 21:21:24 UTC



"That's what I'm afraid of." Though her answer was short, her voice filled with an uncontrollable softness, and longing.

Adette reached out to stop him, but found her feet very much frozen in place.

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an_alpha_wolf August 24 2012, 23:07:40 UTC
He walked away rather mechanically, maniacally focused on not looking back, climbed the wall and was gone into the night. Noone seemed inclined to want to pursue him.

That night, he watched the inhabitants of the hangar from inside his mech's cockpit, willing himself back to the state of cold, ambitious indifference he'd been in six months ago. If she does not deserve it, then neither do you, sibkin-slayer. Perhaps your genechildren will erase the stain on your honor, but not you, and not her.

He slept there, a position guaranteed to cause cramps to the back, knees and neck. As he did, he saw her framed by the firelight again, and even more beautiful for it, burning a piece of paper in her hand. Then with horror he realized her hand was a mech's fist, bloody and covered in glasstic shards...

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