The Eighth Dream - action
[Vivi has simply not been able to cope with her dear mother being sent home. It's just too much. First, she died, and now she's simply gone... a small girl can only cope with so much. The "v-girl" has taken over quite a few times, when the pain becomes unbearable... and tonight is one of those times
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A charge is set in motion, and both sides begin to shout at each other with their falsetto battle cries as they wave their mock weapons high in the air. They lurch toward each other in an organized mess set to collide, arms flailing about in search of the kill.
Just before they meet, a little pigtailed girl in a paper hat stops and is quickly left behind by her army as it enters the fray. She lowers her wooden sword and stares at the anomaly in her dream, the strangely dressed girl who doesn't fit in.]
Hey, it's dangerous, you know!
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Is it? [Suddenly, armor. Real armor, falling from nowhere and landing in a pile in front of Vivi... who seems to suddenly be armor-clad herself. The difference is that hers is pink. :|b] Now it's not, hee hee hee.
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This looks like cheating to me. Don't you know how to play?
[But the armor suddenly appears over her too, and she offers Vivi an inexplicable spare wooden sword.]
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[And now they're friends, just like that. Mini-Marica points over to the battlefield, where there are already a few bodies crumpled on the ground, and the angry clacking of wooden swords and raised voices sounds back to the two girls.]
It's easy! If you get someone with your sword, then they're dead, but if they get you, then you're dead. Whoever's team is still alive wins! [She pats her armor and purses her lips.] We might get in trouble for having this, but it's okay. Jale and Sieg cheat all the time.
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[...She's scoring a few "kills" already.]
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She catches an unsuspecting opponent across the side, and when he turns, across the face. When he falls, another one replaces him, and she hacks through him too with a practiced hand. The bodies crumple into almost comical heaps, but her army pays them no mind, plowing through with slow but bullish progress.
It's child's play. The other side seems to be barely putting up a fight at all, as much as its soldiers stab and shout; their swords are batted aside as if they were hardly moving at all. And as Marica moves forward with her company, a tiny drop in the horde of shields and blades reflecting the red sun overhead, her ungloved hands run slick with the blood of her enemies.]
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[When Vivi does check on Marica, she recoils a bit. Wasn't this supposed to be playfighting? (Except for the armor, mind you.) Maybe she should put an end to this. Slowly, Vivi's going to bat her way through the crowd, aiming to "kill" Marica. A harmless smack with the flat of the wooden sword should do it.]
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[-- And it sails right over a little girl in bright pink with a wooden sword in hand and a funny hat on her head. Marica's arm drops to her side, her sword making a muffled thud as it lands in the grass. The clashing and growling of her comrades draws away as she stares down at the little girl, the remainder of what should have been.]
Sorry... [Tears are streaming down her cheeks, mingling with the droplets of blood flecked across face. Her composure caves in before she can get the next words out, and she falls to her knees in the blood and grit with her tears left unchecked.]
I'm sorry!
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[The armor falls off of her, as if Vivi had suddenly become insubstantial. She drops the sword as well, then slowly walks over to Marica, kneeling in front of her.]
You did what you were trained to, hee hee. You don't have to be sorry for that, okay? [The "trained" part is an educated guess, but hopefully it's on the money.]
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[A small hand sticks out from the corner or her eye, bloodied and limp. Numbly, her eyes follow it up to its owner with its face in the dirt and its torso cleaved nearly in two, the guts and life of it spilled carelessly across the ground. Beyond is a motionless litter of misshapen forms and smears left in the wake of her army, whose clashing and groaning is already faded into the descending mist.]
[Marica looks out over the aftermath of the battle. The evidence of their victory is spelled out in heaped bodies and broken families, and it becomes a part of her with the stench of sweat and blood and waste. Her tears are already gone. In its place is resignation.] ... It was never supposed to be like this.
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[Slowly, the bodies begin to sink into the earth. The sun passes overhead, and then the moon. Marica climbs to her feet with her legs all mired in mud, and as she does, the sun comes round again. In an absent motion, she undoes her cheerful armor and drops it to the ground.]
Sieg and Jale... and even Liu. They're always so strong. So I have to be able to do at least this much...
[She trails off, gazing out at the freckled plains, before glancing down at Vivi.] Sorry. Maybe you're too young to understand.
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... Thanks for listening.
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