#her final prayer was answered / when the rifles fired again'

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: May 17

"Seven Spanish Angels” by Willie Nelson & Ray Charles

[atasteforsuicidal]

if anyone ever feels so inclined as to write a jayroy songfic to seven spanish angels, i would probably give them dibs on my eggs, js

[sellyoursoulforagoodfic]

Shelbys at Somme Chapter 24

Thomas X Reader

Word Count: 1629

Summary: Y/N’s got a gun and it’s time to get Thomas back.

by @adventuresintooblivion

Thomas was jolted awake by having his nose jammed against the wall in front of him. His eyes snapped open only to be welcomed by a darkness too deep. His thighs screamed while his heels jammed into his back. His shoulders protested as he twisted, or at least tried to, only to be welcomed by more blackness. Fabric rushed into his mouth as he gasped wildly for breath. Rough rope had chaffed his skin raw. It was then that he realized that he was likely in a trunk, with a bag over his head.

Then he heard the shovels. They were coming from every direction. Terror gripped his heart as he felt the wood reverberate through his back. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

“Oye! Shelby, you in there?”

He blinked away the ghosts of Somme, attempting to banish the ghosts with them. But he didn’t get to answer before the lid ripped open. Light stabbed his eyes despite the bag over his head. Thomas didn’t need to be told twice though, he lunged for the opening. Cold hard metal connected with his shoulder.

Scrambling for balance he rolled with it, his feet barely connected with the ground before another crowbar caught him in the ribs. Dark spots exploded in his vision as he hissed through the pain. He needed this bag off his head. Now. 

He flipped his head forward, hoping the momentum would send it sailing. He ignored the wind of another blow ruffling his hair, or the rough hands that gripped his arms. Thomas would be damned if he didn’t at least look his assailant in the eyes. But the moment the hood fell to the ground, he almost wished it were back on. There in front of him stood Rowan, THE enforcer for the Rothschilds, a wicked grin splitting his face.

Thomas’ heart sank. Before the war the Rothschilds were known for being swift and brutal in the take over of their part of Birmingham. Every plan had been well thought out and executed with such ferocity that it had taken the city by surprise. Now that Y/N had left, brute force was all that gang had left, and no one reveled in brute force like Rowan did.

Something cold and dark clawed at his stomach as he thought of Y/N. Could she be a part of this? It was possible she’d called in a favor or two if she actually felt insulted. Had he let it get that far out of control? While she had told him parts of her past, it was impossible for him to know everything. 

Rowan’s wheezy voice interrupted his thoughts, “Oh Shelby, why do you look like a dog that’s been kicked?”

“While I’m not surprised you’re the one getting your hands dirty,” Thomas spat out the bile rising in his throat. “Mind telling me who sent you?”

Rowan barked out a laugh, “You know who’s to blame.” He looked up to address the other two men beside him. “Well boys, boss said he had to be alive on arrival. He didn’t say in what condition.” He punctuated his words with a swift kick to Thomas’ stomach.

Thomas doubled over, gasping for air. His hands frantically searched for anything sharp nearby but suddenly his vision went white. Someone had kicked the back of his head. It wasn’t until his body hit the pavement that he realized that no one could come for him, or else risk everything. 

The Rothscilds were a gang twice the size of the Peaky Blinders. The Lees, having only recently aligned themselves, would probably watch them destroy each other and scavenge the pieces. It would be the smart thing to do. So, alone and grieving, he let the pain envelope him and become the bandages that kept his soul from breaking.

〜

Y/N shivered against the brisk wind, not daring to take her hands off the cold steel of her firearm. They had been patrolling around the main routes that the Rothschilds would take to get Thomas out of town and so far, theirs was the only one large enough to hold a handful of full grown men. Then, just when the anticipation was starting to get the better of her, she spotted Rowan driving a carriage identical to theirs.

She felt cold at the idea of Rowan of all people getting his hands on Thomas, but the Old Man wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with it. Y/N whistled softly to Freddie, signaling for him to follow. When John threw her a confused glance she whispered to him.

“He’s got to be in there. Our best bet of not letting them get out of the city is to break the carriage. But  we have to wait until we cross the next bridge.”

“Why?”

“It’s less populated and farther from the coppers. We don’t need innocent casualties or coppers breathing down our necks. Plus it’ll take longer for reinforcements to get here.” 

John nervously checked his gun. Again. “You know an awful lot about this side of town.”

Y/N sighed, “That’s a conversation for later. You ready?”

“Oh Fuck no, but we’re getting my brother back God dammit.”

Y/N smiled. She hadn’t shot a single bullet in three years and now, she needed precision. The rhythmic thunk of the bridge beneath them became the ticking of a clock as they crossed. Tick-tock says the clock. Time to shoot. Time to die. 

“On my mark, John. Three. Two. One.” 

Almost in unison they lifted their rifles. She had one shot that would have the opportunity to be well aimed. In the moment before the first shot rang out time seemed to slow. Y/N peered down her sight, adjusting instinctively until the prongs aligned. Her barrel was initially pointing dead center of the cabin, until she slowly released the breath she held. Between the natural sag of her shoulders and the sway of the carriage beneath her, she let it carry her until her aim landed on the axil. 

The artificial peace she’d constructed shattered the moment she pulled the trigger. John’s shot hitting half a breath after hers. In that moment, both the horses and Rowan spooked. The carriage in front of them lurched forward. Y/N wasn’t sure if she’d actually hit the axil, but a small thrill ran through her as she watched the back wheels wobble. But she didn’t have time to celebrate as two men, Smalls and Randel, burst from the cabin, returning fire.

She ducked behind the lip, wood exploding where she’d just been. She stayed there only a moment before popping back out to add her few shots to the mess. She watched wood and glass shatter, torn to pieces by the whizzing metal. Y/N kept hitting the cabin, her shots too far to the left to do any good. Ducking under cover only to calm herself for a split moment. Adjusting her aim she shot at them twice more. The first hit two inches from Randel’s knee, only to have the second shred his calf. He yelped, only to lose his footing. A loud crunch filled the air as Y/N’s carriage ran over him, his cries suddenly cut off. It was then that she watched Small’s eyes grow wide.

It was only a moment of hesitation on his part, as he glanced between Rowan and Y/N, and jumped clear of the whole mess. Leaving Rowan alone to deal with Y/N her small crew. Y/N sent a small prayer of thanks to whoever was listening that Smalls recognized her. But now she had one last thing to take care of.

Without the active gun fire, John was focusing on the axle. The wheels attached to it were wobbling widely and looked like they might give at any moment. But Y/N knew what came next, after the fight, after they got Thomas back and she couldn’t have Rowan stopping her. 

Her sight lined up once again with the center of the cabin. She slowly lifted her rifle until it was centered on the back of Rowan’s head. Letting the momentum carry her, she pulled the trigger and the reigns went slack. Rowan’s body tumbled off the carriage, the screams of random citizens chased them like ghosts as they pursued the now unmanned vehicle. 

Suddenly the horse took a turn, attempting to hide from the gunshots down an alley. The jack knife turn snapped a back wheel off as the carriage almost upended. Wood splintered and busted as it skidded along cobblestone. The reins on the horses almost pulled the panicked animals with it, their only saving grace was a worn strap that snapped, releasing them to torment the citizens of Birmingham.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” John was climbing out of his seat to hang off the side of the carriage. “TOMMY!”

The carriage skidded to a stop when it landed, lopsided, along a fountain. Freddie had barely tugged on the reins to slow them down before John was sprinting towards his brother. Y/N couldn’t afford such acrobatics anymore, but she’d already thrown aside her firearm. Her knuckles turned white as she got as close to the side of the seat as she could. 

Freddie finally slowed them down enough she could scramble down. The Communist was already beside John, yanking open the door and shuffling through debris. Y/N’s heart beat against her ribs as she closed the final few feet between them. It wasn’t until they pulled a trunk out of the wreckage that she realized where Rowan was taking Thomas. 

“Help me get this open.” John grunted as he snatched a metal rod from the ground, a crowbar. In moments he had the lid popped open. There inside was Thomas.

[morally-gray-prospector]

*pushing the panic down, she immediately sets to respinning the first of three of the wires, easily making the reconnection and reinforcing it with insulator clamps. the other two wires though… they’re chewed enough that they won’t meet anymore, and when she realizes she didn’t bring any conductor wire with her, her curse lays neatly on top of Ezra’s exclamation as she hears shots fired*

*forcing herself not to look and thinking quickly, she traces the wire to the tower beacon—unnecessary unless there was a ship landing anytime soon, and cuts a section away from it, harvesting it to bridge the gap of the final two wires.*

*it’s like wrangling a wild beast—her attention keeps skipping down to Ezra, wanting to know what’s happening, worrying, but reigning it back with her trust and confidence in him and just working her fingers as fast as she possibly can—trying not to burn herself when she causes a spark, doing her best not to drop the clamps down the shaft when she hears Ezra shout*

I’m almost there! I think—

*punching the reboot sequence in the keypad and saying a little prayer to Kevva, the few seconds of wait time feels like days until the column of lights fill up and the tower emits a low hum*

We’re up!

*Ezra takes a deep breath and raises his rifle to take aim when the leaves of the trees rustle again. Something definitely caused that. Something that he would prefer came no closer to them than it already has. He rests his finger lightly on the trigger, waiting for the creature to emerge enough from the trees to give him an actual target. But it doesn't, and he wonders what it's waiting for?*

*He gets his answer not even two minutes later, when another set of bushes move, followed by one, two, three, four, five more. Ezra's mouth feels dry. He can hear Adira move inside the tower above him to work on fixing it. Ezra can only pray that whatever it is that needs sorting out, she'll be able to do it quick. Hope sinks when he hears her curse, immediately followed by the first set of legs appearing from the treeline, and Ezra fires with a loud curse of his own*

*The legs retreat, but a second pair appear. He fires again. Are they testing him? Ezra mumbles a prayer to Kevva, begging for whatever good graces he held to be stretched enough to encompass them both or, should that prove impossible, to keep Adira safe in his stead*

*The next time the legs appear, it's three pairs at once. Ezra fires in quick succession but he can't aim at them all at the same time. When they retreat this time, Ezra hears a screech from one of them. He thinks it sounds triumphant. Perhaps they've reached the same conclusion that he has. That if they all attack at once, Ezra would be able to take some of them out before they reached the tower, but not all of them*

Little Dove, I don't doubt that you're working at utmost speed, but how's that tick coming along?

*His voice doesn't sound outright frightened when he calls to her, but it does ring a bit hollow and void of emotion. He thinks perhaps he should warn her. But her fixing that tower was their best hope right now, and fear made for a terrible work companion*

*It's just a couple of heartbeats later when the critters decide to make their move. They rush from cover all at once, like expected. Ezra fires and fires, landing most shots and slowing them down. A couple fall, immediately cramping up and rolling over onto their backs. More lose a leg or two, but keep moving forward. It's not enough, he has time to think, watching the attacking creatures, before a low hum suddenly fills his head and chest. It's almost immediately drowned out by the pained cries of the remaining creatures. The sound is deafening, something to haunt even the bravest man's dreams. Ezra watches in disbelief and fascination as the creatures throw themselves onto the ground before retreating, scrambling back towards the trees, still screaming*

*It's only when the last critter disappears from view, even if he can still hear them, that Ezra notices his hands shaking*

[xcoldcoffeesx]

perfect shot

This was it. Kill or be killed. The story of his life.

The tall silhouette approaches the window slowly and James catches his breath. It’s what he always does when he is about to pull the trigger.

Three.

His eyes are fixed on the point. No movement.

Two.

She just stops in the shot, perfectly still. His hands still aren’t shaking.

One.

It seems she is waiting for him and for the first time in his life, James believes.

a/n: so I needed to write something before the series finale and here we are. I've been rambling in my head alone since last episode so I though I'll do something about it. I have to confess that I wrote this on my phone at 2 a.m so I’m sorry if there are some mistakes x) (also English is not my first language). Stay safe!

Read on AO3

This was it. Kill or be killed. The story of his life.

“It's suicide” he knows she made her decision already and that there is nothing that he can do or say to change her mind but he can’t help it. He tries not to think about all the times they nearly lost each other, all the missing bullets, the hours of torture. He tries not to think about the blood, the pain, the death. “You wouldn't let me do it, so why should I?”

She looks at him and he swears at this very moment a second becomes a lifetime. There is something about the sparkle of fierceness she has in her eyes that always makes the world stop moving around him. The silence is peaceful, yet scary. There are so many things he wants to tell her, so unresolved feelings he wants to clear out but he can’t. Not again. His heart is still bleeding from last time. The bullet hasn't come out. He needs a sign first.

He never believed in destiny. How could he? The world is ugly. He knows that better than better than anyone. Hell, he is part of the reason why.

Her eyes are shining and before he can make a move she is the one closing the gap between them. She always is. He is the one waiting. Somedays, it seems like it is all he’s been doing since the moment they met. Perhaps even before that. Waiting.

He never experienced faith. It’s always been a foreign concept to him and well, the more he started climbing up in the business, the less it made sense. There was no point in believing. Prayers couldn’t save him in Afghanistan, nor in Texas. It wasn’t about faith. It was all him. Kill or be killed. Fighting or dying.

Surviving at all costs.

They kissed before but this one feels different. It’s deeper, heavier. Honestly, it takes him by surprise. He never thought she would kiss him again and he had come to term with it. They were different people now. Two sides of one coin, close and yet never together. Crossing paths without walking the same street.

Until survival caught up with them.

Then again, the timing is bittersweet. They’re on the road toward death. Their own camino de la muerte. She knows it too.

Fighting or dying.

James knows he is good at what he is doing. He wouldn’t trust anyone else. He doesn’t need prayers. Yet, for the first time in his life, he wishes he’d had faith. Faith in the world, faith in himself. Someone, something telling him that he made the right decision. That everything is going to be okay. He wishes he’d had a piece of hope he can hold on to. For the first time he actually wants to believe they can make it; that they are meant to.

He needs it.

Lying down on the rusty floor, ignoring his beating heart as he adjusts the rifle and chooses the perfect angle, it’s all he can think about.

Please let it work.

She looks surprised too when she pulls away. Not by the kiss, he guesses, but by the rush of emotions that came with it. His, hers. He knows she worked very hard to become untouchable. A queen who would never let anyone close, ready to sacrifice a part of herself to make sure nobody would ever have the chance to hurt her. Perhaps she thought she would never feel love again. Perhaps she thought she didn’t deserve it.

Either way now she knows.

It’s a beautiful day. The light is perfect and he can see the red walls and big closet in the room behind the big window. He planned everything, he made sure of it. James knows he’s been waiting for a couple of minutes only but it feels like hours. His breath is short but his hands aren’t shaking. As he looks at his watch James holds back a sigh. It shouldn’t be long now.

He’s never been one to talk a lot and make big speeches and declarations but in that moment, hundreds of words are rushing through his mind. There are so many things he wants to tell her but nothing comes out. Except for one thing.

“I love you” It comes so naturally he doesn’t even realize he says it.

In his mind he already told her tons of times before.

“Be careful”

“Answer me, are you hurt?”

“I need you to come back”

“I haven’t told Camila yet.” “Why didn’t you tell her?” “You just don’t get it do you?”

“We’re in this together”

“No, I can’t leave you”

“I’m gonna do whatever it takes to protect us”

“How are we going to get out of here?” “We’re not. You are”

“Since the first day we met, I’ve been trying to keep you alive. I’m still trying to”

He didn’t even know it at the time.

Perhaps they’re is really a meaning to life. Perhaps it was written from the beginning and he ended up being exactly where he was supposed to.

This is a good plan. If he succeeds, everything will finally be over. He’ll be free. They’ll all be. No more missions, no more Devon, no more just survival.

They’ll start living.

This is the only plan.

He kisses her again before he can start thinking about how he just shifted their entire relationship. Words are out, no more hiding. By now he hopes she believes him. It seems too little for everything they’ve been through together but they’re running out of time. She is meeting death soon, and so is he.

Because the truth is, he was ready to die for her.

He was also willing to kill.

Readjusting himself on the floor, James finally catches a glimpse of a silhouette behind the window. Long dark hair on white robe.

He is not a believer. But she is.

He’s never felt more human than in her arms. It is a feeling he can’t quite place. Love, respect, fear and joy all at once. They move as one and he knows he should feel afraid and angry about what’s coming next but he can’t right now.

He is just fucking happy.

So he kisses her again and again until they’re both back in the room -did he carry her at some point? he can’t even remember- and he runs his fingers on her waist, back, neck until her hair and unties her tight bun. Dark hair falls on her shoulders and bare collarbones and he smiles against her mouth.

“You have no idea how many times I wanted to do that” his breath is hot against her cheek and he doesn’t need to look to know she is blushing.

They stop a second to catch their breath and he caresses her cheek, putting a curl behind her ear at the same time.

“Teresa” it’s just a whisper and he is not even sure why he says her name but she does.

“It’s our only chance” she traces his bottom lip with her thumb and he knows she is not only talking about Kostya.

Camino de la muerte.

So he nods and their lips meet again. She quickly presses him to lose his sweater -his leather jacket is probably lost somewhere between the terrace and the room- and proceeds to kiss his neck and shoulders, right on his tattoos. He shivers.

“I was wrong” she comes back to look at him and she is smiling -a real, bright almost childish smile- “we don’t need another life”

“I love you”this time he is fully aware of what he says the second he says it and Teresa’s smile grows bigger.

By now he knows she believes him.

It’s time. One second, one shot. No more chances,  no space for mistakes. Kill or be killed. Fighting or dying. He must not overthink. After all, he’s done that hundreds of times before and never missed from this distance. His mind is on fire, screaming loudly but his body is ready. No shake, no sweat.

“We could just run away right now” she whispers in his neck, arm wrapped around his side “disappear”

He is playing with her hair, eyes closed.

“I would like that.”

“Start over” she sighs “I always wanted to live around mountains. We could go to Switzerland”

He smiles as his mind wanders. It’s nice to stop for a second and just allow dreams to fill in.

“What will you do in the mountains?” He asks, voice hoarse

“Read. All day” she pops on her elbows to look at him “you?”

“Maybe I’ll give Pote's recipes a try. I’ll probably need 5 to 10 years though” they both chuckle and for the second time in a few hours he finds himself completely happy “also I’d like to have a dog. A big one.”

“I’ve always imagined you with a dog” she kisses him softly, letting her lips hovering other his, both of their breath interlacing.

Their smiles are mirroring but quickly fade away as the silence takes its place.

“But we can’t, can we?” Teresa falls back on the pillows and he rolls on his side to face her.

“No we can’t.”

They both know what is coming. They’ve known for quite a while now.

“Do you think he’ll ask you to do it?”

“Probably”

“Then you should.”

The tall silhouette approaches the window slowly and James catches his breath. It’s what he always does when he is about to pull the trigger.

Three.

His eyes are fixed on the point. No mouvement.

Two.

She just stops in the shot, perfectly still. His hands still aren’t shaking.

One.

It seems she is waiting for him and for the first time in his life, James believes.

“If anything happens I want you covered” he doesn’t want to think about all the things that could go wrong but it’s his job to. Worst, it’s is who he is. “Two shots. Use them wisely”

“I love you” it’s sudden and she is just whispering but he hears it loud and clear

They finally found each other and yet they have to be apart.

Teresa made him a believer.

“Are you willing to put your life on the line?”

“More than ever”

He looks at her throat dry.

“I know what I’m asking” she says softly caressing his cheeks

“No you don’t” and really she can’t possibly imagine how broken and torn he feels but he closes his eyes under her touch. He knows she is right “what if I miss?”

“You won’t” her fingers sliders on his torso “I trust you. I believe in you. I love you.”

Teresa believes in him.

“It’s our only shot to get out of the cave”

So he pulls the trigger.

[uo-mabushi]

A Court of Dragons and Fallen Angels (NobuKichou Demon AU)

Tagging @ashavazesa​ not sure if you’re gonna like it, buttt think of it as thanks for your wonderful NobuKichou ficlet

Pairing: Nobunaga x Kichou, Mitsuhide x Reader

Length: 1,188 words

Warning: slight gore and sexual situations

Prompt: Demon AU based on Onimusha: Warlords 

It was another unsuccessful raid on Azuchi Castle. True to Mitsuhide's words, Nobunaga needn't don his armor and greet the invaders himself. The Oni warriors were swiftly massacred the moment they set foot on the other side of the wall.

His demonic vassals had outdone themselves once again. Tonight, another celebratory feast was in order. 

Nobunaga sipped his rice wine leisurely as he enjoyed the night breeze. 

At his side sat Azuchi's chatelaine, anxiously awaiting the return of her beloved.

"No need to fret," Nobunaga assured her. "Don't you remember how effortlessly he crushes Oni like bugs under his soles? He will return soon."

The seamstress shuddered at the image of Mitsuhide blowing the enemies' heads with his trusty rifle. Flesh-colored veins from his hand tangled along the barrel like a web of viscera.

"It's not that. I just find this all to be so...surreal, detached from my own reality," The princess whispered. "Even now, I still can't wrap my head around demon people killing each other with supernatural powers."

Nobunaga laughed.

"Monstrous, am I right?" He scratched at his muscular arm. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Soon, the history of this nation will change under the rule of my infernal army. Your future will change."

The expanse of his skin that transformed into adamantine scales would itch at certain times. But it mattered little to Nobunaga. He needed the protection it provided from flames and bullets. Now almost invincible, Nobunaga and his retainers were free to invade lads under Uesugi and Takeda's banners.

Not even resurrected warlords could stall his thirst for conquest.

"Look," Nobunaga pointed at the grounds below. "They're coming."

But his chatelaine didn't have his enchanted senses and thus could not make out the features of the returning men. Yet she only had to look at her lord's fond gaze.

"I heard Kichou was leading the party," she nodded. "I thought he would be exhausted from all our recent battles. That demon strength really is something."

Nobunaga licked his lips at the thought of Kichou gunning and slicing through hordes of Oni and men alike. He would always bring the barrel to his lips before firing, like a prayer so that he'd never miss his mark.

The shot was dedicated to Nobunaga, along with the unfortunate soul it reaped.

Ironically (then and even now to a certain extent), it wasn't the killing that fulfilled Nobunaga. Kichou did.

It's a shame Nobunaga couldn't declare them as lovers. Two hearts made of ice weren't meant to warm each other.

But Kichou fell in love with his vision. Nobunaga loved his devotion and unyielding trust. Even when he told Kichou that he was willing to call upon the powers of hell if need be.

To which Nobunaga literally did. 

There was a flicker of uncertainty in Kichou's eyes after Nobunaga showed him the books and spoke of his plans in great detail. For the first time in their long life together, Nobunaga feared that the other man would finally leave him for their adversaries in disgust.

But it didn't take long before Kichou appeared at the entrance to the tenshu. In the dim light, the smaller man reached for Nobunaga's hand, declaring his readiness to sacrifice his very own humanity.

Nobunaga smirked wryly. Then again, they had already stopped being human some time ago. Even though the princess believed otherwise.

Soon, she'd learn that their entire entourage (including her serpent) had long traded their human souls for the sake of Nobunaga's vision. 

They sealed their fates as asuras the moment they pledged loyalty to Nobunaga. It was a foregone conclusion that they chose infernal powers over the promise of nirvana.

Evil, the senile monk at Honganji had accused. But Nobunaga could care less about being the villain in everybody else's story. It was all about the ending they'd all eventually meet.

Nobunaga rose. It was time to go welcome his warlords. 

"Come," he offered his hand to the young woman. "Let's meet your “boyfriend.”

_______________________________________________________________

The warlords were still high on the thrill of bloodshed when Nobunaga called them to the meeting room.

Nobunaga was delighted at the fevered look in Hideyoshi's eyes as he babbled at their exploits. Kichou paid no heed to him speaking out of turn. He only answered to Nobunaga, and only when prompted.

Was his poor warlord fatigued? These consecutive series of attacks had taken a heavy toll on his sleeping schedule. Nobunaga chuckled at his gormless expression. Demon warriors were supposed to liven up at the prospect of bloodletting.

The constant need for violence was now running through their veins, no matter how righteous they believed themselves to be in the beginning. Just look at Hideyoshi.

"Excellent," Nobunaga concluded their assembly. "Now, go and let yourself indulge for tonight. But remember that we still have much to do in the morning."

The warlords left their seats after bowing to Nobunaga, leaving Mitsuhide and Kichou with Nobunaga and the chatelaine. She rose and immediately went to the silver-haired man's side.

"My little mouse," Mitsuhide stroke her head. "Have you been waiting long?"

The tired man beside them eyed the couple impassively. His old self would have sneered at the lover's audacious display. But not this Kichou, who patiently listened to the chatelaine chattering about his impish cousin with adoration in her eyes.

The more monstrous we become, Kichou muttered one night, the more we appreciate these little moments that remind us we still haven't changed.

Even for all his cruelty, Kichou was still very much a sentimental man, Nobunaga mused.

After what felt like eons, the couple finally bid good night and left Nobunaga alone with Kichou. About time. He wasted no time making use of his privacy with his green-eyed companion.

Nobunaga drew Kichou to his chest, grimy armor and all.

"Nobunaga-sama, please," He pleaded weakly, hands kneading at the fabric of his kimono. "I'm all covered in blood."

"Hmmm, does it matter?" Nobunaga chuckled. "You won't be needing all that bloodied garment on you once we're upstairs."

But Nobunaga understood the exhaustion in his voice. He will wait until morning, then, when Kichou was refreshed and awake to savor his ministrations.

Nobunaga enjoyed their couplings as a demon should: for pleasure and nothing more. But to Kichou, the steady rush of emotions between every touch of their skin was his last remaining tether to his withering humanity.

Nobunaga, already ruthless before his transformation, could barely comprehend the usefulness of keeping another fragile being close to his heart. The era they were living in nearly led him to believe every living soul was disposable, even his own. It was ironic that he only understood Kichou's sentiments now when they had literally been turned into monsters.

Kichou didn't protest when Nobunaga hauled him to his feet and looped his arm behind the Demon King's neck. A sturdy hand rested at Kichou's slender waist, pulling him closer to Nobunaga's side.

Kichou was allowed to clean up and rest in his master's suite, where he belonged. When he woke up, Nobunaga would ensure his right-hand-man was handsomely rewarded for his efforts.

________________________________________________________________

Notes: the “demons” are actually referred to by the franchise as Genma. The Oni (sometimes usually translated to “demons”) as well are their equally supernaturally enhanced counterparts, but good.

[gypsy-that-i-was]

He looked down into her brown eyes And said, "Say a prayer for me." She threw her arms around him, Whispered, "God will keep us free." They could hear the riders comin', He said, "This is my last fight. If they take me back to Texas, They won't take me back alive." There were seven Spanish angels at the altar of the sun. They were prayin' for the lovers in the valley of the gun. When the battle stopped and the smoke cleared, There was thunder from the throne, And seven Spanish angels took another angel home. She reached down and picked the gun up That lay smoking in his hand. She said, "Father, please forgive me; I can't make it without my man." And she knew the gun was empty, And she knew she couldn't win, But her final prayer was answered When the rifles fired again. There were seven Spanish angels at the altar of the sun. They were prayin' for the lovers in the valley of the gun. When the battle stopped and the smoke cleared, There was thunder from the throne, And seven Spanish angels took another angel home. ~ Ray Charles

[riseofthecommonwoodpile]

Warehouse of Prayers by Laura Kasischke

1. 

It’s dark in here. Please, let me out.

2.

No, I hear him say. I want to show you. And to see it, you have to stay.

3.

And, O, I saw it then. So many prayers. Who could answer them all? And yet

what god would have the heart to toss them out?

4.

Yes, he says, I know. It terrifies. The silence, and the din. The tremendous weight of them. It defies

anything you might think or say

about sound about size.

But, yes, of course. Of course I’ve kept them all.

5.

“We had gone for a walk in the dark.

Of all things, I was deeply in love with my husband! Then

something silent I couldn’t see crept out of the darkness, and bit his hand.”

6. 

The beauty of it. The great

beauty. The true beauty of it. The beauty beyond—

It’s 

bitten me. I’m bleeding.

7.

In the dark one night you felt around for your blue scarf. Its blue diffusion. Its shameless would-be sky. But it was gone.

Gone, with your watch, and your wallet, and those cheap beads. How

strange to understand, so suddenly

that none of it was yours. Not

a snippet, not a glimpse, not a bit, not

even the dust that had gathered

Amishly on it for years.

8.

And the green lawn rolls, and the green lawn rolls to the foot of it all, to the foot of it all

telling the story of a world created by a god, who wanted to be loved but did not like to talk.

9.

“We predicted this. Something

strapped to the chest of a child. Light pouring up from holes in the ground. A fountain

run dry, and a mild-mannered man on a rampage in July.

Still, we were confused. We

thought we’d looked for this trouble everywhere, and

never found a thing. We

believed there’d be more warning, despite the many warnings. We

deeply believed a mistake had been made.”

10. 

Then, in the morning, a mannequin sitting in the rain on the neighbor’s porch. The rain on the mannequin, like so many kisses bestowed upon a corpse.

11.

No. (He takes my hand. He opens a door.)

12.

Wow, I say. So this is all—

and this is the vault in which they’ve hoarded it.

All:

What is, what was, what will be—

added to in increments. (A skyful, a pocketful, a teaspoonful, a pinch.)

13.

And still, mostly vault.

14.

The blood and the bed. The basement full of blankets. The 

freezer full of meat. We

all will rise again, and all be dignified.

The vein straight through the center

of the leaf. The woody stem of a rose. The dark suburban fruit of mulberries on the lawn.

We will rise over it all, and all of it will still be here when we are gone.

15.

Hello. It’s me, Eurydice. I want to tell you about his eyes: Stupid

hopeful windows. You

idiot, I said. All this resurrection business just to have your dumb love-glance sideswipe me dead.

16.

Her boy, in the war, the gate, left open, the field full of flowers, the day, so cloudless, she couldn’t help but see the mysterious sense and emptiness of it: As a child, he was so quiet, you could have drawn a circle

around it with a piece of chalk.

You could have taken a bus to the edge of that silence, and stepped off

onto a sidewalk, made of time, and walked

for years and years, all through his childhood and still kept walking.

17.

This is the illegible scroll

on which Orpheus’ reply was written.

This

is the book, thrown from the window.

A cough.

A broken telephone.

A few notes of a song.

18.

And a woman sobbing in a hospital gown, Not fair. Just this one body, and not even the body I wanted, and still it clings to me weeping when I have to leave. Not fair.

19.

“Eurydice? Eurydice? Are you there?”

20.

RSVP: She

will not be arriving by ship of by plane. No car door slamming. No

driver to be paid. She will not be walking. Neither shall she run. Thank you for asking, but she can’t come.

21.

Please, please, please, sweetheart,

pick up the fucking phone if you’re there

22.

“The Czar was killed on the spot, as

were the Empress and the Grand Duchess Olga, neither of whom could finish making the sign of the cross.

But the daughters

wore corsets

lined with jewels. For long moments the bullets, fired at their chests,

ricocheted around the room.”

23.

Please?

24.

One day I saw the divorcée take a letter from her ex-husband.           Briefly, his fingertips touched hers, and then she slipped the letter into her purse:

But, O, that purse, full of old pleasure, and that letter. Memory, like a dark hole full of feathers.

25.

“Lust, that goat in violets. Those violets like so much tenderness

scattered in the grass. Love,

that rusty chain dragging you home through your past.”

26.

A woman turns at church in her pew and tell me before the organ starts up, “I know a story about your house.”

27.

Oh? Yes?

28.

“In the forties, a farmer named Elmer Barow, in your kitchen, shot himself.”

29.

Oh, I thought, I know. I know. Time,

passing, all along— the hum of the cobwebs in the corners crocheting their intricate shrouds. The

dripping of the faucet. The blackened toast. Of

course, when we sat down at the table with our heads bowed, that

was him listening in on our prayers— Elmer

Barow with a rifle in his mouth.

30.

Always that

flash of desire, always

in the way (that

gray cat sleeping in the driveway, those

teenage girls bathing in a pond of bees)— that’s

what’s left of the freedom God had to make us, or remain free.

31.

Eurydice?

32.

In winter a woman I work with gets the idea that her hands are poisoned. She can’t touch anything anymore. She wears

gloves to bed, in case, in her sleep—

33.

No, E., of course, your hands aren’t poisoned. You cannot kill your children if you stroke their hair. You

know this, you know it.

34.

But, suddenly, gradually, myself—

everything I touch, there’s—

35.

There’s something wrong. (Not that. But something.) I

spend hours trying not to think about the something, but it’s

always there

in the shadowy tissue, in the silvery microscopic gloom, the lazy fluid slip of it, which,

released by love, billows loosely around the cerebral cortex—

a poisoned flume.

36.

Then—?

37.

“And then the day is over, and the—”

38.

And the day is over.

And in the dark I hear God say,

Laura, go ahead and pray.

39.

Okay.

40.

Okay. I— Okay. I—

Dear God, I—

offer up this prayer of dryer lint and hair.

41.

Orpheus here in a cellar made of glass. In it, with me, a blizzard of small black words. I

am sending this message to you from the world, but “This is a message from the world” is all it says.

42.

“Oh, to the teeth, sweetness is the medium, but the message is decay. Like

the soul, a hunch, wrapped in disintegration. Sweater

wool, skin cells, carpet fibers, ash, a gray

breeze: Virus,

and pollen, and ourselves

blown to breathing pieces.”

43.

And then at the petting zoo I knew

animal terror for the first time. Animal

despair: The trembling of the lamb under my trembling hand.

44.

Suddenly, God answers me!

I am made of the same thing you are, after all, and you

are made of me:

Some darkness, a supplication, a moral silence breezing

over the glassy stubble in a vacant field.

45.

“And let us not forget the petty prayers. The insatiable hunger of seagulls. The sunset

in the blood, and those

birds turning

in on themselves. Crying, reeling, happiest hungry. Let us be

you amphetamines! they scream. The market

full of fruit out of season. The locked

door of the embassy. The high

gate surrounding spring:

Please, God, I want all of it for me.”

46.

To: Orpheus Fr: Eurydice Re: Death

The babble. The cold, teeming, intangible hotel.

47.

God, do your hear that? That

bit of stitching in the wind? It unravels when you listen. Listen.

48.

The Debt Birds screeching, Insufficient! Someone shoveling snow onto a fire. A figure in a black suit swinging a lantern through the dark

in arcs, coming closer, and closer.

And my mother standing by the lilac

(the lilac, which is the suburb’s lyric poem

about death) talking

to a man she never met. I

overhear him say, Whatever

crazy sorrow saith.

49. 

“No one was crying, no one was bleeding, but the mail had been dumped in the street, and

someone’s husband a few blocks over was shouting loudly about accountability.

Shadows stuffed into envelopes— as when the forest creeps to the edge of the freeway, perfectly tamed, finally revealed,

and the wild illegal animals people keep as pets,

escape, are seen.”

50.

Jesus Christ, this stuff is everywhere!

51.

Excuse me.

I couldn’t help but overhear your prayer...

52.

“What the bloody hell is this? Someone must have written down every word ever said, then

shredded every word ever written.”

53. 

O, honey, O, lovely, O, please. It’s me,

Orpheaus, again, Eurydice.

54.

“Okay, now what we need here is a warehouse, or an abyss. Which one of you guys can get on this—

ASAP?”

55.

Like

trying to hold fire. Like

trying to hold perfume. Like

wearing fog to work. Like

stoppering a bottleful of light—

trying to talk to God.

56.

“Hello. Yeah. It’s me. Is he in? We’ve got a major mess on our           hands.”

57.

“Shit. Shit. Is he ever in?”

58.

Like stoppering a bottleful of light. Like wearing fog to work. Like trying to hold perfume. Like

trying to hold fire—

to make the simplest goddamned contact with—

59.

O, wait, look after all— that

warehouse, that

abyss, and

a beautiful naked stranger diligently trying

to ladle the oceans into it.

[nekron21]

You All Meet in a Tavern

The sun shone through the window as I rubbed at my eyes. Getiing up, I stretched and felt my left shoulder twinge in pain. That old Owlbear injury was flaring up again, but that was nothing that a trip to the local healer couldn't fix. As I stood, I felt Vuavi's arm grab at my wrist. "Stay. It's not as warm without you." she pulled me back to the bed and I chuckled a bit. As I got close enough, I gave her a kiss to let her know I still loved her Orc beauty. "I've got to open up, love. I'll be back tonight." As I slid out from her grip, I pulled the covers back over her. As she lay there, I tried to remember exactly when I fell in love with the brutal orc barbarian. It was either the time she had decapitated that cult leader while she was on fire or when she ripped off the Owlbear's arm that attacked me. Either way, I was glad for the thirty three years we've had together.

Pulling on my boots and lacing up my shirt, I ventured downstairs to the bar area. It had been twenty five years since I decided to settle down, leave behind the adventuring life. I remember back when our party first met here, nothing more than a group of idiots and get-rich-quick schemers. As I pulled the chairs off the tops of the tables, I recalled my old friends. Aekian, the elf rogue had gone on to the coastal cities. The news I heard was either he was a respected merchant or a feared pirate. Knowing Aekian, it was probably both. Oridani, the tiefling wizard had become a member of the Mages Guild. She's currently teaching students about the arcane arts at the Willow Creek Institute. Kiazin Greatwarrior, the minotaur fighter went off to seek a new purpose after avenging his family's murder. Not sure what happened to him. Anwyn, the halfling Cleric of Helm went on to become a member of the royal knights. And as for myself and Vuavi, we had a few more adventures before we finally settled down in the town of Stagpass. As I finished setting everything up, I went to the kitchens and began the prep work for the meals most travelers would want. After that was finished, I walked back out to the bar and waited for patrons to arrive. As the day passed, people ventured in and out, eating and enjoying themselves. Vuavi left about an hour or so after opening to go hunting, and at around noon both her and Kiroki walked in with a decent haul. "Hey papa!" Kiroki came over and gave me a quick peck on the check while holding a giant boar over her shoulder. "Managed to kill this one all by myself." "Impressive. Your mother still wins, though." Vuavi smiled while dragging three stags, two boars and an Elk in her giant net. As they both passed to the kitchen, Vuavi and I shared a brief kiss and Lanlin groaned from the kitchen. Why we hired that gnome I'm still not sure. Besides the fact he can cook just about anything. Around one or so in the afternoon, an elvish lady walked in, wearing very ornate looking robes. A book held in her hand and the tip of a wand poking out from her right sleeve gave her away. A wizard, no doubt about it. She approached the bar and held up her hand. "Excuse me, I'm wondering if you have any bookstores or magic shops around." "Well, we tend to do mining and hunting in the town, but the general store might have some items you'd be interested in. Although the next town over should have a magic shop. Head north for a while and you should reach it." "Thank you. I'm trying to reach the capitol so I can get an apprenticeship with the court wizard." As she spoke, the doors swung open and a dwarf male in full plate walked in. A warhammer on his back and a simple hand axe at his side, as he walked up to the bar, taking a seat next to the elf. "Thunderbrew. In a pint, if you please." As I went to pour him a drink, I scanned his armor quickly. No holy symbol, no military order of any kind, no mercenary guild sigil. A free agent with full plate and a decent weapon. Fighter, definitely. As I slid the drink to him, he nodded in thanks and chugged a good portion of it. "Any monsters around here that need killing?" "Well, there's been an Owlbear or two that's been extremely hostile off in the Crystal Forest. But that's a good distance from here." "Would you want any help?" the elf turned to him, and held out her hand. "Daedove, aspiring arch-mage." The dwarf looked at her and waited for a moment before shaking her hand. "Kharmun, dwarf master of battle." As the two began to chat, the door swung open again to show a seven foot tall female red dragonborn. As she walked over to one of the tables, she placed a giant greatsword on the table and pulled out a small bundle of fabrics. As she opened it up to reveal a small meal, she held something in her hand before giving a prayer. As she ate, I gave her a once over. Weapon, plate armor, holy symbol, and a decent amount of devotion. Possibly a cleric, but the damage on her armor and the scar on her face gave me the impression of a paladin. And then, it dawned on me. An elf wizard, a dwarf fighter, and a dragonborn paladin/cleric. All in the same tavern... Good gods above, it was happening to me now. I'm the tavern owner that the group of brave adventurers all first meet. Just like that old geezer when our group met. As I pondered this, the door swung open to reveal a black furred tabaxi with brown leather armor. A rapier and dagger on his hips along with the light footsteps he made gave him away immediately. This one was definitely a rogue, and they came to the bar. "I was wondering if you had any odd-jobs. Sell-sword type work." "Over on the listing board." I pointed him to the large board with several pieces of parchment over it, and he wandered over. At which point, the dragonborn got up and walked to where he was stood. As the two of them began talking, the dwarf and elf looked over at them. "Think we should ask them to join us with the Owlbear thing?" "Eh. Don't see much need for it." "Well, safety in numbers." The elf fiddled with her ears before seeing the other pair walk over. The tabaxi held out his hand. "Greetings. I am Sweet Rain, and this is Faepora. I am skilled in the ways of stealth, and she is a paladin of Tempus." "Daedove, wizard. And this is Kharmun, a fighter." The four of them exchanged greetings and shook hands. I smiled at what was happening, when a new face walked in. A tiefling with red skin, a mace at her side, and chainmail underneath a white tunic. A sigil of a waterfall plunging into a still pool sat near her left shoulder, which nailed her. The dragonborn was definitely a paladin, because THAT was a cleric. She saw the rag-tag group and wandered over. "Excuse me, but are you all looking for some additional help? I know healing spells." She thrust her hand out to them. "Zalia, cleric of Eldath. Hi." Good gods above, this one was awkward. As the group introduced themselves, the door swung open again to show a loxodon wearing simple leather gauntlets, a simple green tunic over his chest and a greataxe on his back walked to the bar. "Looking for work. Killing monsters, that sort of thing." Lack of armor, large weapon, simple thinking. Yep, barbarian. I pointed over to the group that was gathered, and the gentleman walked over to them. "Drintov. You guys killing things?" As the rest of them began to introduce themselves, a roar came from outside. As the new group of adventurers went outside, I reached under the bar and grabbed Bloodbringer, my old greatsword. Her blade still sharp after all these years, it glimmered in the light of the tavern. Outside, the group was engaged with several large orc-looking creatures. Large horns and black skin gave them away, Tanarukks. As the new adventurers began to fight, a few of them went down. The wizard and the rogue were looking in a bad state, and the cleric was being backed into a corner. "Demon filth!" I shouted out in orcish, and raised my sword. "Come face a true fight." As I swung my blade, I let out a single word in celestial, and Bloodbringer flowed with green flames. As they charged, I sliced through them. They might have had some resistance to fire, but I found a way to overcome that years ago. One by one, they all fell until none remained. Dispelling the flames, I put Bloodbringer onto my shoulder and helped up the wizard. The rest of the group began to rifle through the belongings of the orc-spawn and grabbed what looked of interest. "Who are you, exactly?" The elven mage looked at me with questioning eyes. "Hasaf Grun, Eldritch Knight." "Wait, as in Hasaf of the Dragon Knights?!" At this, even the others turned to look at me. They walked over to me, a newfound look of wonder in their eyes. "You lot destroyed a cult that was going to release a horde of demons!" the dwarf shouted. "Your group managed to rob a corrupt merchant completely blind in an hour and exposed him for murder!" the tabaxi chimed in.

"You guys obliterated a vampire den, and destroyed a necromancer creating undead Illithids." the teifling looked at me in awe. "Can I just ask, how did you all become friends in the first place?" the loxodon spoke up, and the rest of them muttered words of agreement, looking to me for an answer. I simply smiled, stood a little taller, and pointed behind me. "We all just happened to met in that tavern years ago."

[ma-sulevin]

Me? Publishing the first chapter of that time loop au I keep posting about writing? Before Thanksgiving like I said? Can you believe?

Pairing: Sharky Boshaw/Female Deputy, but it’s a slow burn Rating: E, but mostly for swearing Warnings: Canon-typical violence, but nothing particularly explicit I don’t think Word Count: 5505, chapter one of twelve

Read it on AO3 instead and say nice things.

---

Mattie’s shaking almost too hard to hold the rifle Burke thrust into her hands. She didn’t join the sheriff’s department looking for this much excitement, just a way to get out of Idaho and do some good in the world. So what if most of the “good” she’s done so far has been writing traffic tickets and, once, actually getting a cat out of a tree? It’s still better than this, praying wildly that the ammo the cultists are using won’t make it through the flimsy wall of the trailer and into her flesh, trying to cover Burke as he makes a mad dash for a nearby pickup.

She’s shot more people in the last five minutes than she thought she’d ever hurt in her entire life. She hasn’t even had to use her service pistol since joining the department. 

Burke’s triumphant yell when he gets the truck moving is enough to spur her straight through the window, running around the corner while her feet slip in the churned up mud around the trailer. Bullets still spray around her, hitting the trailer and the trees but missing her like her prayers were actually answered for once, and she’s safe from them.

She can’t hear what Burke is saying, but she knows he’s talking. She leans out of the window and shoots at their pursuers, crying out in pain as Burke swerves to the side and flies down a dirt road fast enough to bruise her ribs where she repeatedly slams against the truck door. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

She’s so focused on the trucks behind her that she doesn’t notice the one pulling in front of them from another dirt road on Burke’s side. He screams and fires with his pistol, and she turns around just in time to see the truck as it slams into theirs. Her head hits the truck door and she drops her rife. Something small and metal hits her in the leg, and she only has time to stare at it before the grenade explodes.

White. Black. Red. White.

Pain, burning, stinging.

White. Black. Red.

Do it again.

White.

She’s leaning out of the window and shooting at their pursuers, crying out in pain as Burke swerves to the side and flies down a dirt road fast enough to bruise her ribs where she repeatedly slams against the truck door.

“Fuck!” 

She’s so focused on the trucks behind her that she doesn’t notice -- she doesn’t notice -- 

She turns around. There’s a truck pulling in front of them from another dirt road on Burke’s side. It slams into them, and she jerks back, narrowly avoiding slamming her head into the door. Something small and metal hits her leg, and she scoops it up and tosses it out her window toward the truck behind them.

Burke cheers as the other truck explodes.

They continue.

The bridge collapses and the truck falls and she can’t get her seatbelt undone fast enough. Her vision is turning red around the edges as she watches Burke swim away, leaving her behind. Finally, finally, the catch releases and she kicks herself free, heading for the light, not enough breath in her lungs to care about being caught by a peggie when the other option is drowning.

She doesn’t even fight when one lifts her and slings her over his shoulder. She just sleeps.

---

The man who pulled her from the icy lake isn’t a peggie, just a doomsday prepper unaffiliated with the cult. This may not be the doomsday he was anticipating, but his supplies are helping him nonetheless. They help her too, as she dresses in some other woman’s clothes, straps his 1911 to her hip, his knife to her thigh. A waterproof backpack holds other supplies like extra ammo and bottles of water, and then she’s out on her own again.

She doesn’t think about the weird Final Destination moment from the truck ride. She just wants to get to Missoula, to call the National Guard like they obviously should’ve in the first place, US Marshals be damned. 

Fuck. The peggies have Burke. They have Whitehorse and Pratt and Hudson.

Fucking Nancy.

She doesn’t think about how she saw the grenade explode inside their truck, killing them both. She doesn’t think about how she saw the grenade, again, a second time, fly through their open window and then back out the other one to explode somewhere else.

She doesn’t.

She doesn’t.

She snaps a man’s neck with her bare hands. She doesn’t even hesitate, instinct and adrenaline flowing through her as he starts to spot her hiding in the brush outside the ranger station. He falls at her feet with a thud, and she stares into his glassy eyes for endless seconds before she has to turn and vomit into the dirt, losing the water and jerky Dutch shared with her.

Is this self defense? She doesn’t think so.

She retches again, a dry heave that makes her eyes water, then she’s moving. She doesn’t kill with her bare hands again, but three more men hit the dirt before she’s done. 

She releases a hostage, slicing the ropes that held his wrists together, and he gives her more water in thanks. It’s all he can spare.

When Dutch is satisfied and his radio is working again, she swims across the river and emerges, shivering, onto the opposite bank. She frees another prisoner and they take out two more cultists. Their blood splashes across her shirt, and she ignores it. 

There’s a dock near the Silver Lake trailer park, and sometimes there’s a seaplane there. She tells the man she rescued to go somewhere safe and heads in that direction, creeping through the underbrush in a way that would have made her father proud if he’d spoken to her sometime in the last five years.

The plane is waiting for her next to a dead body bleeding on the dock. The key is near the man’s lifeless fingers, and she doesn’t look him in the face as she scoops it up. She doesn’t want to know if she recognizes him.

She tries to remember what Staci told her about flying, tries to remember the flight simulator he’d made her try, the excited ramblings he’d been prone to once he realized she wouldn’t tell him to shut up once he started on the subject like Joey always did.

The engine stalls twice, but then the motor is running and the propellers are spinning and she’s in the air with the river getting smaller and smaller behind her.

She hates heights.

She doesn’t actually know how to fly.

The plane’s radio remains damningly silent as she banks and heads towards the mountains northeast of the county, aiming for MIssoula. She doesn’t know how she’ll land, but as soon as she sees a lake in any other county, she can at least try to get help without crashing.

Maybe she’ll go to prison too, but that’s better than being dead.

Isn’t it?

The mountains steadily grow closer. The radio stays silent. She begins to shake, hands unsteady against the throttle. She’s so close.

She’s so close.

She’s… facing southwest, toward Fall's End. She can see a few vague columns of smoke in front of her as the plane starts to sputter and the engine dies.

White. Black. No red this time, no stinging pain, just a sickly green and the sharp spinning of vertigo. White. Black. 

Do it again. Do it better. Focus.

There’s no escape.

White.

She’s standing on the dock, the airplane key clutched in her hand. She’s holding it so tightly it’s leaving deep indents in her skin -- any sharper and it would draw blood. The plane is still parked just a few feet from her, and when she forces herself to touch it, the metal is the same temperature as the summer air. No heat from a running engine or chill from the mountains.

What the fuck.

“What is happening to me?”

---

She can’t decide if she wants to keep track of how many peggies she kills, maybe collect their drivers licenses or something so, when all this is over, they can identify the bodies. Let their families know what exactly happened.

She doesn’t collect licenses, and she loses track of how many people surprise her and earn bullets or punches for their trouble.

She finds Boomer, a sweet blue heeler she’s met once or twice before, and he seems to decide that she’s his new person who can’t be left alone at any cost. It’s nice, in a way, having someone around her. He’s definitely watching her back, and his good ears let her know when there are cult members nearby. It keeps her from being snuck up on more than once. 

They find a car on the side of the road, doors open, battery dinging. It’s not running, but the keys are in the ignition, and a smear of blood on the driver’s seat and on the pavement nearby let her know what happened here.

She doesn’t take the time to mourn the lost life or look for the missing person. Boomer doesn’t act like he can hear anyone, and that’s good enough for her, now, after everything. She coaxes the dog into the car, rolls the windows down for him, and heads to Fall's End.

The car rolls to a stop without her deciding to let it. She just… forgets to keep putting pressure on the gas pedal. Boomer sits at alert in the passenger seat, leaning his head out the window to smell what’s going on around him.

She can smell it, too. It looks like the world is ending. Whole buildings have been destroyed, burned down and still smoking. Fires are raging deeper in the town, and she feels acid churning in her gut.

The first time she came to Fall's End, it had been beautiful. It was late spring, the trees were all green and flowers were everywhere. The house that’s currently a burning pit to her left had been freshly painted a beautiful blue. She knew she wanted to stay and make it her home even before her interview at the jail because of how it felt, even though she had to stop and get Claritin on the way home from all the pollen.

Farther down the street she can see the tree she’d climbed to save a cat her third week on the job, Staci snickering and recording the whole thing on his phone to show Joey later. It has a car wrapped around its trunk.

She’s going to kill every fucking peggie in the county.

She shuts the car off and leaves it in the street, Boomer chasing after her as she stalks down the double yellow lines toward the Spread Eagle. She draws her pistol as she moves, holding it carefully in front of her. 

She can’t hear anyone.

That, in of itself, should have been a warning. It’s not like a lot of people live in Fall's End proper, but it’s the area of the county with the most stores and hangouts close together now that the 8-Bit’s closed. She advances slowly, head cocked to the side like that’ll help her hear better, and Boomer takes off running to the east. She glances after him, and it’s in that half-second of distraction that she finally hears something to her other side.

She turns just in time to see the peggie pull the trigger, just in time to hear the sharp pop of a weapon with a silencer, and then she falls.

White. Black. Red. Pain. She’s never been shot before, but this must be what it feels like. The peggie got her right in the chest, a clean shot that probably tore right through her heart, ruining her shirt and…

Well… does it matter if her shirt’s ruined if she’s not alive to wear it?

God, this hurts. Is it real this time?

Is it real?

WhIte.

The car rolls to a stop without her deciding to let it. She just… forgets to keep putting pressure on the gas pedal. Boomer sits at alert in the passenger seat, leaning his head out the window to smell what’s going on around him.

She blinks once, and two fat tears roll down her cheeks. She inhales sharply and turns off the engine, clutching the keys in her hand. There’s a little alien on the keyring, and she hisses as she tries to catch her breath. 

Boomer looks over at her, then shifts to lick at her tears. His breath is atrocious, and she laughs, high-pitched and hysterical. He wines, and she scratches his neck under the weird rope collar he’s still wearing. 

This is okay.

This is okay.

This time, she keeps her head low as she walks, cutting across the street to sneak behind some of the still-standing houses where the last peggie came from. She spots him walking a slow patrol, and when Boomer growls at her side she notices a few more peggies up the street, just standing by some parked cars.

Illegally parked cars, she realizes, but she doesn’t care. What are parking tickets at the end of the world?

She’s still shaking when the peggie she’s tracking wanders close enough to her hiding place, but she still pops up out of the tall grass and wraps him in a chokehold, ignoring the elbow she takes to her ribs and the scratches he leaves on her forearms. 

He’s strong, but she’s furious, running on adrenaline and little else.

When he falls unconscious, she drops them to their knees and keeps the pressure up for a few more seconds before dumping his body in the dirt. She doesn’t check his pulse, just leaves him there and sneaks behind the buildings.

There’s a man on top of the general store that she can’t do anything about with her pistol, and the little group of peggies has too many people in it for her to take down on her own, even with Boomer willing to act as a distraction by trying to tear out a throat or two. She doesn’t want him to get shot.

He doesn’t deserve to be hurt by the decisions of the humans around him. He’s a good boy.

She tells him as much, and his tongue lolls out of his mouth in a little dog smile. She scratches behind his ear, and then he runs off, and she hopes he’ll be okay.

She’s too busy trying to see where he’s going to realize one of the peggies has gotten close to the body she left in the grass. He yells out a warning, something about a sinner, and she hits the ground to army crawl out of his line of sight.

After that, it’s chaos. The peggies are on high alert, shooting at (hopefully) nothing, though she can hear the high-pitched, furious screams of a woman nearby. The sound makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she starts heading that way while still staying as hidden as she can. 

She peeks around a corner to see Mary May on her knees, hands bound with zip ties behind her back, lips still parted on a scream.

Christ. Mary May’s younger than Mattie, even younger than Staci, and even though the distance isn’t all that big, it still fills Mattie with a protective rage that has less to do with being a deputy and more to do with seeing a younger woman in that kind of trouble.

She manages to shoot one of the peggies standing by Mary May, getting him right in the eye, and he falls with a heavy thud. Mary May stops screaming, holds her breath, and carefully doesn’t look over her shoulder where the shot probably came from. 

She always was smart.

The other peggie turns, rifle raised, and Mattie shoots him too. This time she just gets him in the arm, and he has time to shoot back before she can dodge out of the way.

White. Black. Red. Pain.

Not again. I can’t do this again.

Please.

White.

The car rolls to a stop without her deciding to let it. She just… forgets to keep putting pressure on the gas pedal. Boomer sits at alert in the passenger seat, leaning his head out the window to smell what’s going on around him.

She blinks once, and two fat tears roll down her cheeks. Then she punches the steering wheel again and again and again and her knuckles bleed and she wants to scream but she doesn’t want to give away her position and get Mary May killed.

Boomer whines next to her. He could jump out of the window, but he’s not scared enough for that. He’s just worried. As soon as she stops flailing, he’s pressing his wet nose against her cheek and licking up her tears.

“Is this happening to you, too?” He licks her face again and doesn’t answer. 

She allows herself a few more seconds to wallow, then another few to steel her resolve, then she’s out of the car and heading to the opposite side of the street, the side with the general store. She sneaks, Boomer sneaks, and then she’s able to climb a ladder up the back and sneak up on the peggie on the roof.

She snaps his neck and he doesn’t make a sound.

She doesn’t throw up, just calmly picks up his sniper rifle and gets herself into position. It takes her a few seconds to get used to looking through the scope, another few seconds to figure out the best way to take down the peggies she can see, then she starts picking them off one by one.

Mary May screams until the bodies start falling, then just holds herself still and quiet, head down. Mattie gets to her as fast as she can, slinging the sniper rifle over her shoulder so she can take it with her. It came in handy once, and something awful inside her says it’s going to come in handy again.

She cuts Mary May free with the knife Dutch gave her, then helps her stand up. Mary May thanks her with a hug, then runs off toward the church.

There are more peggies there, trapping Father Jerome inside. Mattie’s spoken to him on a few occasions, but she’s never attended any services. She hasn’t been to church since she moved away from home, and she’s not intending to start again now.

Mattie just manages to forget the bigger picture here, that a cult has taken complete control of the county, that the roads have been closed and something’s wrong with everything else so that she can’t fly away and can’t even fucking die, until someone yells that air support has been called in and there’s a goddamn airplane shooting at her from the sky.

She’s going to die. She’s going to die and she’s going to have to do this again and she can’t keep killing the same peggies over and over she can’t she can’t she can’t

Jerome manages to shoot out one of the plane’s engines, and it crashes right next to the Spread Eagle. 

He finds Mattie where she’s shaking and half-hiding behind the church sign, and he looks way more concerned about her than he should be. She came to rescue him, but he’s just coaxing her out into the open with a soft smile. He’s wearing a bulletproof vest over his shirt and collar, and Mattie doesn’t even care why he already had it. She just wants to know if she can get one too.

With Fall's End free of the peggies, people start crawling out from their hiding places and heading to the miraculously still-standing Spread Eagle. Even Jerome comes, helping Mary May set things back up and lightly teasing her about having liquor hidden after Eden’s Gate tried to get rid of all of it. 

Mattie sits at the bar in silence, and Mary May gives her a beer on the house. Boomer is still somewhere outside, hopefully not getting into trouble, but he’s definitely not allowed indoors when he’s covered in mud and human gore.

“You doin’ okay, Deputy?” Mary May is leaning on the other side of the bar, and it looks like she’s comfortable, so as far as Mattie knows she’s been standing there for several seconds waiting to be acknowledged and Mattie just… hasn’t noticed, too wrapped up in her own thoughts.

“Oh,” she says, then clears her throat and tries again. “I’m okay, Mary May, thank you. Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” she says, and she smiles a little sadly. Mattie grimaces and nods. “I knew those peggie sons of bitches were up to no good. I warned you.”

And, yeah, she had. She warned them a lot. She warned them so much that Whitehorse had gotten tired of her, the other deputies making jokes about it. Mattie carefully doesn’t think about it.

“You were right,” Mattie says instead. “We should’ve listened.”

“Yeah, you should’ve.” She’s angry, and that’s fine. Mattie just waits as she collects herself before speaking again. “But you’re going to make things right, aren’t you?”

Mattie can’t do anything but nod at the younger woman, pinned into place on the bar stool with the weight of her gaze. 

Yeah. Yeah, she’s going to make it right.

She takes her beer with her when she finally leaves, walking down the sidewalk toward Jerome’s church. Someone’s already moved the bodies out of the way, and she’s happy she doesn’t have to look at them any more. 

Jerome is sitting in the center of the sanctuary when she hesitates at the open door, now not sure she should have brought her drink with her. Is that even allowed here? The Baptist church she’d been raised in hadn’t believed in drinking, but Catholics are okay with it, right? But inside their own church?

Jerome waves her in regardless. She sits on the front pew and listens as he reads a bit from his notebook, feeling like she’s in some sort of small group Bible study that lost some of its members. She holds her beer in her hands but doesn’t drink from it. Jerome doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t even look at it, but it still feels wrong somehow.

She doesn’t miss the concern in his eyes when he asks, “How are you holding up?”

She hesitates. Should she tell him? Should she tell him she’s died four times already and she’s still sitting in front of him? That she’s felt the pain of being shot and ripped limb from limb? That she’s not sure she’s actually alive right now and not dreaming all this?

She breaks her own unspoken rule and finishes her beer before she answers. He doesn’t look more annoyed or less concerned when she meets his gaze again, so she figures she didn’t fuck up too badly.

“I’m hanging on,” she says. He lifts one eyebrow and waits. She knows he wants more information from her, and she doesn’t feel up to fighting it. “It’s just… I was an EMT before, you know? I never signed up to kill people.”

He nods. “You never really get used to it, but it does get easier.”

“They have my friends,” she says. “I have to stop them.”

He nods again, a small smile playing on his face. It feels comforting, somehow, despite everything going on around them, the bullet holes from some peggie’s AR-15 in the wall behind him. “We’ll help you,” he says. “As much as we can.”

And that… that’ll just have to be good enough.

He lets her sleep in the little parsonage behind the church, on the couch in his living room. She doesn’t dream, doesn’t cry.

She just sleeps.

---

Not being able to die is making Mattie reckless. She’s died no fewer than 27 times; she’s taken to making little tick marks on the inside of her forearm with a stolen sharpie every time she’s shocked back into place a few minutes before her last mistake.

She still doesn’t know why. 

No one else has mentioned it, not even the peggie she had to kill three times in a row because something else kept fucking her up on her way into one of the cult’s outposts in the valley. The restarts help her plan better (usually) but the peggies don’t seem to be getting the same advantage.

Whatever’s happening here only seems to work for her.

She’s rigging little homemade bombs to take out John’s silos, ugly red things with the Eden’s Gate cross painted in white, eyesores she’s hated for months; she’s gunning down cultists who aren’t even pretending not to be tying up civilians on the side of the road; she ran three over with her little car before she had to give up on it running again.

Apparently dead peggie is bad for engines. Who knew?

She’s just about to finish clearing out a peggie outpost for the resistance when she hears John’s voice click on over her radio. She’s been ignoring him, ignoring his occasional attempts to contact her, mostly because everything he says is a barely disguised manic sermon, but this time…

His people are coming to get her?

She takes out the last two peggies with her sniper rifle, the same one she lifted from the peggie in Fall's End now improved with a suppressor, and she radios Jerome to let him know Kellett’s place is ready for his people to move in -- John will be able to hear it, but he won’t be able to do anything about it fast enough to stop her -- and then she’s jogging off to the nearest copse of trees.

There’s no point in staying behind, especially if John’s people are going to start looking at their lost outpost for her.

Her (borrowed) ATV is parked there, Boomer sleeping beside it with his legs all up in the air. He perks up when he hears her footsteps, rolling over and jumping up to greet her with his front paws on her chest.

“Who’s my good boy?” she greets, accepting his kiss with only a small grimace, wiping away the slobber when he thinks she’s been properly groomed. He’s fully accepted his role as her right-hand dog, and he takes it seriously.

She doesn’t hear anything, and Boomer doesn’t act like anyone’s nearby. She doesn’t linger before climbing on the ATV and only slightly grimacing at the sound of the engine roaring to life. Boomer takes off ahead of her, ready to scout.

She wouldn’t have heard John’s men approaching her if they hadn’t announced their presence over the wrong radio channel, coming through her speaker tinny and quiet: “Use the bliss bullets!”

She has exactly enough time to ask the open air, “What the fuck are bliss bullets?” before she gets her answer in the form of a sharp pain to her right arm.

The world goes shiny and distorted, and she crashes her ATV into a tree.

---

She doesn’t realize she’s under water at first. Everything’s blurry and distorted, bright spots of light still floating around, the hands on her shoulders barely registering. It’s not until she’s brought to the surface that she realizes she couldn’t breathe before, that a peggie is staring at her with an unreadable expression.

Is he angry with her, and that’s why he’s drowning her? Is he happy that he pulled her out of the water in time to save her?

Why is the world spinning like she’s seven drinks in and about to be sick?

The peggie tries to draw her forward, but he’s stopped by another man, a man who looks familiar with his white book and unbuttoned shirt and combed-back hair.

John Seed.

“Not this one,” he says, and if she had any energy left to care about what happens to her, she’d be afraid. But she doesn’t. He passes his book off to her peggie and adds, “This one’s not clean.”

She’s under water again before she realizes it, and since she knows she’s under water, it’s worse. It’s so much worse. It burns, panic lacing through her despite the calm of just moments ago, and she scratches at his arms before she remembers. She remembers.

She’s laughing when he draws her back up, her hands on his wrists. She’s freezing, water dripping into her eyes, lights dancing around John’s face. She laughs and she laughs and she laughs, head tipped back, nails scraping gouges into his skin.

“Ahh, tsk,” he says, eyebrows drawing together at her laughter.

“You can’t kill me,” she says, still laughing, and his fingers tighten on her arms. There’s a dull spike of pain in one arm where she was shot, but she’s still too blissed-out to care. “I’m a fucking god. ”

He doesn’t like that. His face contorts into a snarl and he drops her into the river, and she’s still laughing when she hits the water. His hands find her throat and hold her down, hold her under the water until she doesn’t know if she’ll drown or strangle.

He pulls her back up at the last minute. She’s still laughing at him, sputtering water back in his face. He clucks his tongue again, shushes her laughter, and starts to lower her again when he freezes, expression changing from anger to fear and then… nothing in an instant.

Joseph is here.

Now, he’s holding her at arms length, hands on her shoulders, that spike of pain back under everything else. The lights seem to spin faster now. “Despite all that you have done, you are not beyond salvation. You’re not here by accident, by chance. You are here by the grace of God. You’ve been given a gift. Now it remains to be seen whether you choose to embrace it… or to cast it aside.”

Is the gift the forced baptism? She was baptised already when she was eight, in the lake by her daddy’s house. She hadn’t almost drowned then. She hadn’t been shot or drugged. She’d just been desperate to be good, to feel the love of her father the same way her older brothers seemed to.

It’s not until Joseph releases her to turn to his brother that she realizes the gift might be her inability to fucking stay dead .

“This one shall reach Atonement. Or the Gates of Eden shall be shut to you, John.”

Their foreheads touch. It looks to her like John’s a sad puppy, the littlest brother desperate for love. “Yes, Joseph.” The sadness is replaced with simmering rage when he looks back at her, and the drug-addled sympathy drains away when he grabs her again. “You will confess. Every sin you’ve ever committed, no matter how petty, no matter how small, I will pull from you. Then we’ll see if you’re worthy of Atonement.”

She bares her teeth in a snarl wonders how much pressure she’d need to exert to tear out his throat, but he scoffs and pushes her away. The other peggie catches her and leads her to a waiting van, exactly the kind she’s sprung prisoners from before.

Super.

Super duper.

She briefly considers adding more blasphemy to her promised confession, but the world goes black before she can.

--

Jerome is still radioing her assignments when she finally makes it back to the Silver Lake trailer park. There are a few peggies holding up a few normal people -- but that’s not unusual. She ignores Jerome and takes down the peggies with the weapons she took from their dead brothers and sisters across the county. 

She listens to the pleas of the people she saved, nods like she’s going to do something to help them immediately, and then starts ransacking the nearby trailers for something dry to wear.

Saving the county is all fun and games until she’s trying to decide if she wants to put on a stranger’s clean pair of panties while eating baked beans straight out of the can.

(She ends up taking the panties and several more pairs tucked into the bottom of a bag she finds, followed by an extra set of clothes. She’s pretty sure Jacob won’t try to drown her if he catches her, but better safe than sorry, right?)

(She tries not to think about the person who used to own these clothes.)

“Jerome, I’m laying low for a bit. I’ll let you know when I’m back in the Valley, promise. Over and out.”

The radio crackles once after she signs off, like Jerome wants to argue. He doesn’t say anything, and the line goes quiet. For just a few blissful minutes, she’s alone, the only sounds around her the cicadas in the trees and the quiet sigh of Boomer settling on the couch.

After another moment of hesitation, she flops onto the couch next to the dog, tucks her feet up under her, and falls asleep.

[d3-iseefire]

Beneath the Surface Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Bilba struggled to stay upright as she was dragged through the door. The corridor outside was narrow and low, lit only by small, guttering lights that did little to dispel the thick gloom.

The sounds of fighting came from her left, just around a corner and beyond her sight. Bilba tried to go that direction, hoping to draw Sam and Dean's attention, but the creature wrenched her to the right. Fire rippled through her feet as they scraped against the floor and she half collapsed, forcing the thing to partially carry her.

She tried desperately to break its hold, using techniques Fili and his family had shown her over the years, but nothing seemed to work.

The thing slid an arm around her waist and lifted her clear off the floor, twisting her around to face a thick, metal door set in the far end of the corridor. It pretty much screamed "murder door" and a jolt of pure adrenaline laced with fear ran through her.

This was it. If she went through that door, she wasn't coming back out.

Her heart was hammering in her chest, and she couldn't seem to catch her breath. Her body was shaking violently. Desperate, she reached behind her, found his face and, with all the strength she could muster, drove her thumbs into his eyes.

She didn't really expect it to work, nothing else had, but at least she'd know she'd done something.

The creature swore viciously and jerked back. His grip on her loosened and his hand slipped, falling away from her mouth.

Bilba screamed, the sound hoarse and choked, but still loud enough to carry, especially in the tight corridor. She struggled forward, trying to shove off his grip. If she could only reach Sam and Dean...

For a second she thought it might actually work. Then the thing recovered, far faster than any human would, and snatched her back.

"You little bitch!" He shoved her, face first into the wall. A hand grabbed at her hair, yanked her head back and then, before she could gather herself enough to react, slammed her head forward against the wall.

Pain bloomed through her skull. A wave of black washed over her and her body sagged against the wall. She was aware of being pulled back, and then being lifted over a bony shoulder. The rush of blood to her head was too much and she sagged, barely conscious.

Tortured metal screeched and then she was being dropped, unceremoniously, on the ground. Under her fingers she could feel uneven stone, bits of grit and debris getting catching up under her nails.

The door shrieked again, and another shot of adrenaline cut through some of the pain and fog in her mind.

"No," she mumbled. She planted her palms flat on the ground and pushed. She managed to get up a few inches but then dizziness drove her back down again.

The door slammed shut, and then the only sound was that of her own breathing.

Bilba struggled to bring her vision into focus. It was dark overhead, but she could make out what looked like uneven, sloped rock. Turning her head to the side revealed the same thing, rock. There were darker spots that might have been tunnels, but her vision was still refusing to focus to they looked like little more than extra dark blotches.

Aside from that the only thing she noticed was the dampness in the air and the faint sound of water dripping somewhere far off in the distance.  

A cave, her mind informed her dully.

She was in some sort of cave

Her stomach chose that moment to rebel, violently, and she just managed to roll onto her side in time to lose the contents of her stomach. Thankfully, it wasn't much, but it was still unpleasant.

She struggled to slow her breathing, grimacing at the acidic bite of bile left in her mouth.

Her head pounded in time with her heartbeat and she groaned through clenched teeth. She focused on breathing through her nose and struggled to roll onto her stomach and push to her hands and knees.

She needed to get out.

Somehow. She needed...

 Something skittered nearby.

 Bilba froze.

She held still, holding her breath as best she could.

She wasn't stupid.

She wasn't going to be like the people in horror movies who always called out "hello?" in situations they should keep quiet in.

The skittering came again, louder, and closer.

Whatever it was, it was big, and she really, really, really didn't want to meet it.

Dean's words about the creatures' plan to feed her to something ran through her mind and she bit back a whimper. Her muscles were so tight it was a wonder they didn't snap her bones, and she couldn't seem to stop shaking.

She struggled to her feet. Her body felt heavy and her knees kept trying to buckle beneath her. Dizziness washed through her in waves and her stomach was threatening to, any minute, try its best to expel everything she'd eaten the last month.

There was light, she noted hazily, dim but there. If she could find out where it was coming from...

Her thoughts trailed off as something scraped over rock from what sounded like only a few feet away.

Her heart, rather than speed up, actually slowed and began to pound so loud and hard she imagined she could audibly hear it. She hunched her shoulders and tried to draw into herself, clasping her hands together in silent prayer until her knuckles were white.

"Please, Fili," she whispered under her breath. "Please come get me."

She turned, slowly, her breath coming out in slow, choked gasps.

 There was something in one of the tunnels.

 It moved, closer, lurching out until her mind was finally able to identify it.

Spider.

But not just any spider. It was enormous, several times larger than the horses Fili had taken her to ride when she was fourteen. Each of its legs was as thicker than her body, and the curved fangs jutting from its jaws were as wide as her forearms.

Bilba let out a sound born of pure terror and staggered back. "Fili.

The word was a plea more than anything else, and not one she particularly believed would be answered but she said it just the same.

The spider scuttled closer and pushed up on its feet. The action revealed a monstrous stinger on its back end, a bead of poison the size of her head poised on the tip.

Bilba whimpered. She wanted to back away, knew logically that she should, but her body was frozen in place. She physically couldn't move, no matter how badly she wanted to.

In horror movies, monsters always took their time with their prey. Chased them around, gave them a chance to fight back or provided the hero a chance to arrive just in the nick of time.

Bilba wasn't in a movie, however, and the beast before her had no desire to play.

It lunged forward, faster than Bilba could have thought possible. Something punched her in the shoulder, hard enough to rock her back a step. She looked down and saw the thing's stinger buried in her shoulder.

Oh.

It didn't hurt.

That was probably a bad sign.

The creature wrenched the stinger out and Bilba swayed in place. She felt...better strangely enough. Her heart slowed from the manic pace it had been keeping, and her breathing evened out. A strange, almost dreamlike quality seemed to fall over her and when she fell to her knees it was as if it happened in slow motion.

She never even felt her knees strike the stone.

The spider loomed up in front of her, fangs clicking in front of her face. She should probably be scared, Bilba thought, but she couldn't seem to find the energy. Blackness ate at the corners of her vision, marching leisurely inwards.

 A loud blast sounded from behind her.

 Bilba frowned. She looked over her shoulder, almost losing her balance in the process, and saw the door fly open, the metal twisted and dented in a way that would never again fit properly into any frame.

Fili stepped through the door; rifle cradled in his arms. Kili was behind him with...was that a crossbow?

Huh.

Something told her she should be happy to see them, was happy to see them. Right?

She turned her head back, just in time to see the spider rocked back with a screech of pain. The sound of a rifle blast reached her a second later, followed by another, and still another after that. Black ichor splashed her body, and face, and it burned...it did...but her mind couldn't seem to conjure a reaction.

Arms grabbed her and Bilba sagged into them. Her head fell back, and Fili was there, looking down at her. He was talking to her, but his voice was muffled, and too far away for her to make out.

He looked upset.

Finding the strength from somewhere, Bilba struggled through the darkness and fog and managed to reach a hand up to touch his face. She trailed her fingers lightly his jaw and cheek and back up into his hair. "I love you," she managed to whisper. "I'm sorry."

Sorry she hadn't taken his call. Sorry she hadn't believed him.

"It's okay," she thought she heard him say. "It's going to be okay."

Then he wrapped his arms around her and stood, lifting her with ease. Bilba spotted Kili again, now with Tauriel alongside him. Past them she caught sight of Dwalin and the boy's uncle and a few of the other family members. She spotted Sam and Dean too and felt a rush of relief that they were safe.

Then the darkness finished its inexorable march and, for the second time in a day, she had no choice but to let it sweep her away.

[ikesenhell]

Rising Summer

Elysium, Part Two. You can find all other IkeSen/IkeVamp works of mine in my Masterlist. NOTES: I guess general fighting tomfoolery trigger warning? It’s not bad at all. Oblique references to PTSD, burning, and a panic attack.  ---

They set off at dawn. There were always people journeying from one town to the next--mailmen, families in carts, small coaches of travelers on their way to the great sights of the world. It was easy enough to link themselves to a tiny convoy of three. Isaac took a spot inside one of the carriages, content to ride out the distance reading a book. For their part, Jean and Napoleon opted to ride alongside the tiny contingent of guards accompanying it. 

Napoleon was content in the breeze. Jean--well, Jean was withdrawn and quiet. He always was on these journeys. He talked more than when they’d first met, that was for certain, but that also wasn’t much of an achievement (How could he have talked anyway? His lungs were still so full of smoke that he could barely speak his name, let alone hold a conversation. He and Napoleon didn't truly have a discussion until months after his rescue, and even that barely counted. Jean had to swallow his anger first). Whatever simmering paranoia Jean held in check so neatly in Elysium always sprang to the surface when they exited the walls. 

That was a soldier for you. Napoleon could relate. 

The rolling hillsides fell away into the woods, tidy stone roads degrading to dirt paths as they crossed the borders of their province. Summer looked good on the Great Forest; trees bowed together overhead, their limbs knotted and twined. Deer bounded from sight. Birds wheeled and dove overhead, flitting gaily from nest to nest. It was no wonder the fae usually considered such places their domain; it felt like crossing into another world. 

Nearby, a flock of birds lit from the trees, and Jean snapped from his reverie. 

So much for a silent journey. Birds knew when something arrived, and when so many fled at once...

“I’ll take right,” Napoleon volunteered, hand flying to his sword. 

Jean’s lip tensed almost imperceptibly. “I’ll take left.” 

And then came the volley of arrows. 

It was a sensible strategy, really--the hail rained down in the middle of the path, yellow ribbons fluttering from the shafts. The horses spooked; Jean flung himself from the saddle first, landing with his boots in the earth and prepared. Napoleon wrestled control of the reins before abandoning the ghost and leaping off, too, and then--their assailants were upon them. The bandits sprang from tree limbs and behind trunks, swords and bows raised. 

One, two, one, two--Napoleon fell back into hard-won habit, engaging with a ringing clash of steel. The first bandit caved easily under the pommel of his sword, the blow to the head disabling him. Easy enough. They were untrained ruffians, no match--

And then he took a foot to the chest. 

It wasn’t his finest hour. He slammed back into the carriage, wheeling out of the way of the saber that shattered part of the wooden siding. His first assailant was a mere nuisance. This one bore more attention. He shook hair from his eyes and leveled his rapier once more, only to stagger back as the brigand swung their whole weight into the next swing. Steel sang; he parried it with a block of his own, finally locking weapons long enough to get a good look at them. 

They weren’t that large. He was almost surprised, given the force of their swings. The highwayman wore a thick scarf bundled around the lower half of their face, pale, curling hair swept back in a careless short ponytail. They sank heavy into their hips, leather armor polished in the half light, and their eyes--oh, their eyes burned like a wildfire. Not even the din of the fight around them could drown it out. 

Their swords unlocked, and his opponent charged again. 

Napoleon recognized military training in even the most unorganized fighter. This was not that. It was not even the brawling of the common man. The strikes were too clean, the stance too precise, the footwork that of someone with some kind of training. What kind, he couldn’t tell. It was too foreign to his own. He rushed them back; they locked together, shoulders straining against one another, and even as he overpowered them they lunged back and in again. Ting! His sword went flying. He ripped out his backup knife just in time to parry the next crushing blow, driven to one knee under the weight. 

“Napoleon--!” Jean’s voice cut through the crowd--a crowd that, he realized with growing alarm, was remarkably quiet now. 

And then came the searing pain in his scalp. Napoleon hissed, squeezing his eyes shut against the fist in his hair. The familiar coolness of a blade pressed to his neck. And then--then it was all over. 

“Drop it.” The brigand hissed through gritted teeth, motioning meaningfully at Jean’s outstretched sword. “Just drop it. You’re outnumbered.” 

That they were. Napoleon surveyed the damage. The guards they’d come with were dragged alongside the carriages, their wrists bound. Isaac was yanked from the first one unmercifully. Jean hesitated, his arm still outstretched. 

“Will harm come to the ones in the carriage?” 

The highwayman huffed. “Is your surrender contingent on that?”

“As always.” 

“Rest assured.”

Still, Jean stood, planted securely in the road. And then--at last--he lowered his arm and drove his sword into the dirt. 

Before he could resist, someone gathered Napoleon’s arms behind his back and bound his wrists tight. He joined Isaac at the edge of the carriage. Jean followed shortly thereafter, thrust onto his knees in the dirt, eyes clenched firmly shut and breathing staccato. Around them, the carriage doors flung open, the crew entering and rifling through the possessions. 

“How many injured?” Napoleon muttered. 

Isaac shook his head. “Doesn’t appear to be any. They’re bandaging the few guards that were hurt.”

Sure enough, they were. One of them had sustained a nasty cut to the head, but a bandit was pouring water over it and dabbing it clean with a cloth. The highwayman that had bested him--their leader?--stepped aside and conferred with a few others. Strange. He’d expected them to simply loot the caravan, but… no. This was far too organized. A woman sat nearby, trembling, a pair of expensive pearl earrings dangling from her ears. This was no mere robbery. No bandit would have passed those up. 

Jean inhaled sharply. “Hail Mary--”

Isaac paused, wide-eyed, then hissed, “Napoleon, his wrists.”

Of course. He could hear it now; the barely restrained panic in Jean’s mangled prayer. He knew how Jean was bound to that stake so long ago. Was he back there, back there in the smoke and fire? Could he see it behind his shuttered eyes? The general’s calm facade was almost impenetrable--but Napoleon knew better. 

“Hail Mary...” Jean started again, a strangled whisper. 

The bandit leader was looking at them now. Those bright, burning eyes seared through his blood. Napoleon tried to ignore it. 

“Hail Mary, full of grace…” Napoleon prodded gently, trying to bring his friend back. “Full of grace.”

Jean barely nodded, the lump in his throat rising. “Full of grace.”

The crunch of footsteps. The bandit leader stood before them now, his--her?--their?--eyes searching Jean. On cue, the man fell utterly silent, eyes still shut, fluttering breath as measured as possible. But they didn't leave. Instead, they knelt before him. 

“Oi.” Gently, they tapped Jean’s shoulder. Their voice was almost impossible to place--higher than expected, too gravely to be feminine. “You okay?”

Jean said nothing. That didn't dissuade them. Calmly, the leader reached around his back and severed his bonds, pulling his hands to his lap instead. A beat; he allowed a single, shuddering exhale. 

“Breathe,” the leader soothed. “Breathe, man.”

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Jean answered stubbornly. “The Lord is with thee.” 

Those intense eyes crinkled; a silent laugh, wreathed in fabric and flyaway curls framing their face. It was only a moment. Then the light was gone, and they rose, leaving Jean’s hands penitent on his lap. 

“Sir.” One of the other assailants hurried to them. “It’s not the one.” 

Apparently, that was their cue. The leader motioned; the bandits set everything back in the carriages and unbound the civilians in a flurry of activity, saving Napoleon and Isaac for last. He sprung to his feet, rubbing his sore wrists. Without ceremony, the leader presented his lost sword back to him. 

“And to whom do I owe the honor of being bested?” Napoleon took it by the hilt. 

The leader cocked a brow. “You’d ask the name of a criminal and think I’d give it?”

He motioned around them. “It was a fair fight.”

“Hardly. Being jumped from the woods doesn’t count toward chivalry.”

Napoleon sheathed his sword and took two steps forward, searching for something, anything in those wild eyes. “You’ve been educated. I can tell by your swordsmanship and your speech. Why are you here?” 

The leader gave him no answer. Like ghosts, the rest of the men dispersed into the woods, and they turned to follow. Napoleon cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled after them. 

“Napoleon!”

And the leader paused at the edge of the trees, turning, the cock of their brow all they granted before they shouted back, “August!”

Then they were gone--just a figment of the shadow of the woods.

[zefyre]

Garrus/Kag?

a+, 11/10, 👌👌👌✔✔✔✔✔ would write if iknew how to spin it, will cry if somehow by some miracle i ever see any contentfor it, like p l s? god?? y'all, garrus is apparently fucking s e v e n??? feettall??? you guys should know by now i’m so fucking weak for height differences,they’d be so freaking cute together?? that i wouldhonestly die of happiness

god pls i’m just imagining some scenariowhere he has to carry her out of a fire fight or smth bc she’s injured! hewould dwarf her, cradle her close and careful to his chest bc yea she’s abadass but she’s also tiny and human and in his head smol + human + hurt = vstrong need to protect his girl

and now i’m getting ideas lmao look what u did nonny!

(warning: a long spiel of unasked rambling under the cut)

((also also it’s been a while since i lastplayed mass effect and i’ve got the memory of a goldfish so apologies for anymistakes or ooc-ness lmao))

hmm but then how would they meet/knoweach other?? old c-sec partner? kagome comes onto the normandy to like, assistdr. chakwas??? oh! or maybe she meets him during his time as archangel, was apart of his team there but had managed to survive? and when shepard finds themboth holed up at his base and garrus inevitably takes that blast, she helpskeeps him stable and refuses to leave his side?

mhmm, since i can’t really see her abilitieshaving a place in like space? lolol maybe she’d have biotics instead? good witha pistol, deadly with a sniper, and maybe a bit of training in field medicinefor both humans and aliens??? which was maybe why garrus recruited her in thefirst place (and knowing him, he could never turn down a good shot, esp. afellow sniper, and she was a damngood one so the choice was obvious)

like garrus maybe meets her to ask her somequestions – she’s been on omega for a while now, made a bit of a name forherself as someone who’s willing to give a lending hand. she’s not really adoctor per say, but the thing is she knows her stuff. she’s got connections.and what’s better is that she’s nice, she’s unaffiliated, and more importantly,doesn’t ask any questions.

((kagome doesn’t involve herself with any ofthe mercenary outfits, however much she dislikes them, but rumor has it she’sunder aria’s protection which is why no one messes with her. kagome’s justreally good at making friends with the strangest variety of people and bc of that she’s left alone.))

but yea, what started as patching up a coupleof teens here and there that got into scrapes or roughed up from a job or whathave you turned to her apartment becoming a sort of safe haven if you needhelp. if kagome couldn’t help, she’d be sure to know someone who could and sendthem there. garrus picks up her name one day pretty early on in his days on omega,figures with people from all the merc groups coming through her door she’d hearsome things and finds her to get some intel. except kagome isn’t a snitch, pplwouldn’t consider her safe to approach if she was, so of course when he triesto press her for info she only smiles at garrus, hands him some medigeland bandages for the gunshot wound he was trying to conceal (and would swear?? hehadn’t let on about??), and some rations bc helooked like he could use it.

“you seem like a goodguy,” kagome says as garrus finally goes to leave. “smart, too.”

he pauses, halfwayout the door, and turns to look at her over his shoulder. she was stillsmiling, though it was softer now, more genuine. he doesn’t say anything inreply, but he tips his head to the side, listening, mandibles twitching as hewaits.

“you’re not the firstone to get it in their head to take on the mercs.” she looks at him closely.“you know it’s a suicide mission.”

garrus tenses, headdropping low for barely a moment before he straightens and pins her with a hardstare. “you’re telling me to drop it?” the very idea makes him bristle.

the small human womanactually snorts. “i doubt you’d listen. somehow i doubt you’d even care.” sheshakes her head. “no, i’m telling you you’d be dead before the week is up, soif you want to last longer than that, if you actually want to make adifference, put a dent in the mercs’ operations, then you might want to find some people.”her smile grows. “a squad.”

garrus stares at herfor a long moment, studying her. curiosity and something else stirs deep in hischest and he turns fully towards her, eyes narrowing something wry. “and youwouldn’t happen to know a few people that might be interested, would you?”

“well,” she shrugs,all casual and indifferent, but the curl of her mouth was definitely coy. “iknow a lot of people.”

it actually pulls ashort laugh from him, the sound raspy and gravelly but genuine, and it startleshim. he hasn’t laughed in long while, hasn’t had much reason to, not sinceshepard and the normandy…

he shakes himselffrom those thoughts and turns his attention back to the woman in front of him.“then I’d appreciate any help you could give me.”

and from there, garrus finds himself payingvisits to kagome’s modest little apartment every once in a while. sometimes tosee if she’ll give him any intel picked up from her other visitors (shedoesn’t), sometimes to ask if she knows somebody that could get him one thing oranother (that, she could help with) or if she heard any rumors about this murderor a string of missing people (she was more forthcoming when it came to thingslike that, and didn’t mind passing on info she’d heard on her own). andeventually every once in a while turns into a few times a week, to say hi, tochat, sometimes to have a drink.

except as garrus’ team grows and they make aname of their own, they start to make waves – it doesn’t take long after forthe wrong people to make connections, and even all the friends kagome madedoesn’t stop her apartment door from bursting open one day, ppl crashing in armed withguns and demands that she come with them, archangel on the tips of their tongues.

but it’s omega of course, practicallyeveryone was armed one way or another. kagome was no different. it didn’t hurtthat they sent a small group, thinking she’d come without a fight. throwing upa barrier and knocking them out with her biotics was too easy – not a lotpeople even know she was a biotic, so the element of surprise was with her.

It takes over an hour after the fact that hehears about it – he storms over and into her place to see it in shambles, theintruders still knocked out, and kagome gone with the wind.

there’s blood.

none of the mercenaries are bleeding.

suffice to say, garrus is neither gentle norpatient when he grabs one off the ground and shakes him awake to interrogatehim, and it’s only the slightest relief to hear they weren’t able to take her.

even that is squashed when he hears it’sbecause of him that they even came for her, and he’s none to kind when he knocks the fucker out again with the butt ofhis rifle before he’s off to find her.

he’s been looking for over 24 hours whensomeone approaches him, or rather, knocks into him under the guise of passinghim a note with an address on it.

he goes to it, of course, recognizes thehandwriting as well as the address and it’s with knee weakening relief to findher safe and sound in a well-guarded room in afterlife, nursing only a grazeand a strong drink, not even caring how she was even able to organize it.

(aria’s an old friend, she later says, muchto his bewilderment)

and there’s a moment™, garrus crouched down in front of kagome where she’sresting on the couch, and he reaches out to gently take her injured arm,mandibles fluttering in his distress, subvocals thrumming almost a whine when he turns toapologize that she stops him, striking him speechless as she reaches up to touchthe side of his face and smile kindly as she simply says, “not your fault.”

afterward, after garrus double checks on herwound and checks her over for any other injuries despite her rolling eyes andinsistence that she’s fine, and they’re left sitting together on the couch bothnursing a drink of their own, sitting close enough that their thighs arepressed together, she turns to him and says that since she can’t go home now,there’s nothing left but to join up with him now.

to which garrus sputters, choking mid-sip onhis drink, but because he couldn’t find any reason to object (not that heactually wanted to object – if he washonest, if he had ever thought there was the slightest chance she’d actuallyagree, he’d have asked her months ago)he agrees and welcomes her on board.

she fits in nicely with his crew, shepractically already knew most of them in some way or another, and from thereit’s smooth sailing. he couldn’t ask for a better squad, and it was almost tooeasy to disrupt the stranglehold the three merc groups had on omega.

(there’s a human saying about knocking onwood when it came to chancing fate, and if there had actually been any nearby he’d have done so in a heartbeat)

it takes him a long while before he realizes he’snot just fond of her, but attracted toher – it isn’t until they’re betrayed by one of their own that he recognizesthe driving force behind the strong sense of protectiveness that overwhelms himwhen they’re in a firefight, the same one that spikes whenever she dives out of cover tohelp when someone gets hit, and in the months that follow when it’s just themtwo holding the fort against wave after wave of mercs, it’s her that compelshim not to throw himself in one last blaze of glory to take out as many mercsas he can.

when shepard comes blazing in, he almostcouldn’t believe it, he thinks his prayers to the spirits for some way for themto get out of the corner they’d been backed into were answered in the form of amiracle.

he should have remembered the spirits had asick sense of humor when he took a rocket to the face.

[nezzfiction]

ENMY Chapter 88 - Operation Gun Dog

Chapter Synopsis: The Kingdom of Vacuo is about to enter its most daunting challenge, since the Third Crusade. Salem has personally come to see the end of some of Remnant’s greatest warriors, including Team ENMY. Assistance from Atlas is on its way, but will the Fleet arrive in time to make a difference?

Only one thing is certain. Whatever happens in Vacuo will echo the things to come for the rest of Remnant.

Series Synopsis: Team RWBY is disbanded, and Yang must find herself new allies. For her, that might very well be yesterday’s enemies. Joining up with the likes of Emerald, Mercury, and Neo, the four will comprise Team Enemy(ENMY).

Links to read the series: Ao3 or FF.net

Or hit the jump below

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Narrated by Yang

Previously on ENMY…

After watching from the sidelines long enough, Salem decides to bring the fight to Vacuo personally.

One of the dirtier plays she makes against the Kingdom, is sending a parasitic-type of shapeshifting Grimm into the city called Cuckoos.

While the Kingdom has its hands full with dealing with the infestation problem, Salem builds her army and chips away at the Kingdom’s forces.

With an alliance formed between Vacuo and Atlas, an Atlesian Fleet is enroute to provide Vacuo with aid.

The problem is whether it will get here in time, or be enough to make a difference.

This leads Weiss and Cinder to asking Qrow for help, or more importantly, the immortal called Titan.

Meanwhile, Temujin comes up with a brilliant idea to exterminate the Cuckoos once and for all, and get this war with Salem back on track.

To do that, her Khans give Team ENMY the training session of a lifetime.

Whether we’re actually ready or not, we’ll find out soon enough.

It’s time for the war between Vacuo and Salem to continue…

As Team ENMY takes part in Operation Gun Dog!

.

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Operation Gun Dog

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Gun Dog: n.- types of hunting dogs trained and developed to assist hunters in finding and retrieving wild game, usually birds.

.

.

The sun was a couple hours from cresting the horizon, yet shades of purple were already trailing into the dark canvas above. The morning would arrive early—immeasurably so.

As if Remnant itself knew the day would be a long one, a pivotal moment that would determine the world’s very Destiny.

…

On the eastern shores of Vacuo, Temujin pensively overlooked her brother’s grave. A stone polished endlessly by seawater. A white tooth which sprouted from the sands of Vacuo’s beach.

“I wonder what words you would have for me now, brother? How disappointed I’m sure you would be.”

The old woman felt a sharp wind blow sand into the cracks of her face.

“I knew my ways wouldn’t last forever. Our people are learning that, too. It won’t always be the strongest who survive Vacuo. Which only begs the question, who will? Will anyone?” she sighed. “Whatever the answer, I’m no longer fit to see it.”

The constant sounds of waves breaking on the shore soothed the jagged corners of her heart, if only a little.

“Then again, what is the thing called, strength?” Temujin scratched one of her frayed ears. “Peh! What’s the point in getting philosophical now? Why did I even bother coming here? It’s not like I’m asking your permission!”

The old woman turned, and began the trek back to the city.

“Hmph. To make sure my people live to see a world better than the one I forged—”

“What is one more sin, anyway?”

.

X  X X  X  X

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At the mouth of a cave, staring through the waterfall, Inna Kao looked to the horizon.

In her hand, was a steel chain with three dog tags hanging from it. She shifted through each one, like a pious one did their prayer beads. The names of her late teammates cycled her fingers and formed silently on her lips.

“Ferret.”

“Remington.”

“Earp.”

Their deaths were anything but remarkable. They were three among the countless who lost their lives in this War. As a soldier, Inna knew it was only the way of things. It was inevitability, it was their occupation.

“Ferret. Remington. Earp.”

But it didn’t stop her from wanting to give them meaning. To give reason to their sacrifices. Out of the members of FIRE Team, Inna was its only survivor. She decided it was on her to accomplish what her teammates could no longer not.

And if the war’s end was brought sooner with Vacuo’s destruction…

“For the fallen…” she whispered.

Inna snapped her rifle to her shoulder, and aimed Raven down her sights.

“Good reaction,” the woman greeted coolly.

“Mornin’. Done conferrin’ with the enemy?”

“You do know the enemy is a matter of perspective? Unless, we’re talking about Team ENMY, in which case, it is their namesake.”

“…”

*Sigh*

Raven rounded her way to the other side of the cave’s mouth, and sat across from Inna.

“You and Bean are too smart not to see what’s waiting at the end of this.”

“I see Vacuo fallin’, and Atlas next.”

“So, you haven’t had a change of mind after meeting the illustrious puppeteer behind it all?”

“Salem gives me the creeps, that’s for damn sure. But she won’t be the end of the world. If anyone will, it’s gonna be Bean, and I won’t let him go that far.”

“If you only knew,” Raven sighed again.

“I’m sorry we’re comin’ after Yang, if it makes any difference. Condolences and what not.”

“Inna, you’re the one I’m going to feel sorry for, if you two actually meet.”

“That right?” Inna set her rifle to the side. “So, what are ya goin’ be doin’ when the battle finally breaks out? You can’t fight your home, but you can’t fight Salem neither.”

“I guess, all I can really do is sit back and watch.”

“Even if I take my shot at Temujin, too?”

“No direct interference with the Witch. Those are the rules.”

Inna couldn’t help but turn a skeptic look at that, but the woman only remained passive.

“I heard from Adam back in Mistral, you tried to kill Yang and her team.”

“Different circumstances.”

“And you tried again in Atlas.”

“Again, different circumstances.”

“…”

“The wording’s very strict on my contract. Me not being forced to fight Vacuo is one of them.”

“Team ENMY isn’t from Vacuo.”

“The moment Temujin put them under her protection, they were under Vacuo’s protection. To be honest, I didn’t know that loophole existed either.”

Inna breathed a small chuckle, then her demeanor hardened.

“But if Vacuo falls…”

“If that were to somehow happen, I’m sure Yang’s strong enough now she won’t be killed so easily by me.”

“You give a whole new meaning to the term ‘tiger mom’, you know that?”

“So, I’ve been told.”

Raven got up, and began moving into the cave. She stopped to glance back.

“I’ve had my share of fighting the wrong battles for the right reasons, Inna. I fought my own team, whole Kingdoms, practically made enemies of all the wrong people. And I lost a lot of good friends along the way.”

“…So?”

Raven’s expression became conflicted.

“You have an obligation to let them go, Inna. Trying to make a world that should have been with them in it isn’t an honor—it’s an insult. Don’t shame them by trying to make them stay. Death is a part of who they are now, and you can’t change the memory of your teammates. Took a long time for me to learn that.”

“……Does that preachy horseshit work on everyone, or am I the sole exception?

“No, it never works. But I tried.” Raven showed a sympathetic smile of sadness. “Maybe, I just like acting out a history that keeps repeating itself.”

“…”

“My Mentor once said the same thing to my team. I think my brother and I ended up more or less like him, if not worse. The question is, do you really wanna end up like me? Do you want that for Bean?”

“…”

“That’s a question you ask yourself. Or maybe, some things you can’t learn until it’s too late… Or maybe, you think about it.”

The woman turned to walk away, and Inna heard one more sentence echo back to her.

“For the fallen.”

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X  X X  X  X

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“Will this work?”

“If they fail, we have our options.”

“Yes, but will it work?” Weiss repeated her question.

“It depends greatly on Salem’s ability to read our intent,” answered Cinder.

“Yes, but—”

“You know, there is a reason we agreed that I be director of all affairs military.”

Weiss pouted at that.

Within Atlas HQ, the two queens and their Board of Directors watched a projection of Vacuo’s capital. The room had gotten fairly used to the debates between regents, to an extent they no longer paid it any mind when they bantered playfully, at least from Cinder’s side.

“Leave the chess game to me, my Queen,” the Black Queen smiled. “We have controlled what variables we can, stacked whatever odds in our favor as we could, prepared as many surprises as possible, and devised several failsafes should our initial plans fall through.” Cinder continued to read the projected layout of the land. “If there is a weakness to be found in our opponent, I will exploit it.”

“I suppose that is what you’re good at,” Weiss huffed. “Do you still need me here, when you have your generals?”

“Oh, don’t be like that. You offer an insight I could never hope to gain.”

“I vaguely remember you calling it naivety and optimism, right before choosing to ignore them.”

“And I would rather hear them, than not.”

“You’re insufferable,” Weiss crossed her arms.

“Yes, and I enjoy your company, as well. Now, I believe Team ENMY is about to begin the Operation.”

As all eyes turned to the floating hologram, Weiss sulked deep into her chair. Her worries continued to pile until they were mountains. She couldn’t help thinking there was something else they could have done—something they could still do.

…As it stands now, I can’t see Vacuo winning this, she thought.

Cinder knows this, too.

She’s looking for a mistake by Salem, but will the Witch really make one?

Weiss turned to her fellow regent, and saw Cinder with her usual confidence. But she knew deep down, the Black Queen held her doubts.

“Nothing is more troublesome than an opponent with a good sense for preparation,” she remembered Cinder telling her before. It was also one of the reasons, the Black Queen liked to keep her around—as she remarked right afterward.

“Nor, is there a more troubling opponent with good intuition.”

Weiss scoffed to herself.

Preparation vs. Intuition.

I wonder if that’s all it comes down to.

The cold math.

Weiss thought there should be another way. A method which varied from Temujin’s, Cinder’s, and the Witch’s. Some other element they could exploit, because as it stood now...

Even I can tell, the way this is playing out—if we go purely by numbers and strategy…

The White Queen shook her head vehemently.

I can’t think that way.

There has to be something we can do for Vacuo.

But any more dedication of our resources, and we practically forfeit crucial defenses for Atlas.

What more can we commit to this battle?

What can I commit?

…

I can’t help remembering, it’s because I fought that way, I lost to Cinder in the first place.

Weiss set her sights to the projection and the countdown on the corner of the map. It read ten minutes.

Is this all?

What we can sacrifice and what we can gain?

What moves are more effective?

How far we can predict our opponent’s moves?

…

Weiss stared at a certain holographic marking one of the four units with a [Y].

What would Yang say, I wonder?

.

X  X X  X  X

.

Yang sneezed loudly, before wiping her nose. A moment later, their radios gave a soft crackle.

“Did I hear some nerd just short out her comms?”

“It’s called a sneeze, Em.”

“Someone was probably talking shit about you.”

“I wonder who.”

“Just sayin’… it was Ilia.”

“Wouldn’t put it past her.”

“I can hear you, you know?” Ilia’s voice resounded testily.

“Oh, don’t get your pony tail in more of a twist,” Emerald snickered. “Ready comms check. Gun Dogs Four, maintaining bored status.”

…

“Gun Dogs Three, ready,” Nai clicked in.

“Gun Dogs Two are ready and standing by,” Minerva answered.

“Gun Dogs One, geared and evil,” Yang checked in for her team.

They were positioned dead center of the city in the Hanging Gardens. The zone they were assigned was the most populated.

With her, were Neo and Mercury. Biding their time on the top balcony of the palace, her teammates double-checked their equipment.

“Think they’ll hold up?” Mercury tapped his steel toe against the floor.

“I doubt Masa could’ve done it any better, Merc,” Yang replied.

After having both their prosthetics broken, the two had to rebuild them from scratch. It was odd not having their reliable weapons tech in Masa Moon with them, but they knew their designs by heart. It was only a matter of trust at this point. And although Yang had entrusted him with far more, Mercury still found himself with the question.

“Hey.”

“What’s up?”

Mercury took a short breath, before speaking again.

“What would you think about me opening a weapons shop?”

“What, like here in Vacuo?”

“Doesn’t have to be here. Anywhere, really.”

“Sure. Why not?”

Mercury stared at her without another word. Only then, did Yang straighten with more attention.

“Merc?”

It wasn’t hard to read him now. He was trying to hide it, but he was obviously being sheepish.

“Oh,” Yang blinked a few times. “You mean…… quit Team ENMY and start a shop full-time.”

“When everything is over, I mean. It’s just a thought, but yeah.”

“You mean…When we beat Salem, end the War, and somehow stop Remnant from destroying itself, even when it’s already halfway there?”

“Yeah.”

“…” Yang cocked her brow. “You really believe that, don’t you? That we’re somehow going to win this.”

“What, you don’t?”

“I do, I just… never heard it out loud, or I thought I was the only one.”

Yang felt a sudden jab in her ribs by Neo beside her.

“Okay, okay. WE thought we were the only ones. But back to what you were saying…”

“Yeah, I- I don’t know. It’s just an idea that’s been bugging me lately. Reading my dad’s diary, killing Jupiter, meeting Temujin, working with Brig, and the other stuff. It just got me thinking.”

“That’s new-puh!” Yang felt Neo jab her again. “Sorry, Emerald’s influence. Go on, buddy.”

“All my life, I’ve been raised to be an assassin. When Cinder picked me up, it was pretty much the same. And then, there was this team. Don’t get me wrong, running with this crew… not as bad as I thought it was going to be. But working here, in Vacuo? I just kinda…”

Neo rounded her way, and hopped up to hug Mercury from behind. The expression was as transparent as the girl herself. Her gloved hand went to petting his head, like cooing a child. An encouraging smile beaming on her face.

“You heard the wife,” Yang nodded. “Me and Neo will support you in whatever you wanna do, any way we can.”

Mercury fought down the brimming emotion, and forced himself to turn to the scenery. A hand went to hold Neo’s, while a stuttered breath escaped him.

“Thanks, Neo, Yang. Means a lot.”

“Of course. Hey, I might even join you.”

“Seriously?” he asked in surprise.

“After some adventuring, though. I still want to live the life of a Huntress, but maybe after that.”

“You could sponsor me and have your name on the door. Mercury & Yang’s Workshop: Best Weapons Forged Under the Sun. It’s not a bad ring.”

Neo started pointing to herself eagerly. Shining expectation lit her grin.

“You could…be our billboard girl?” Mercury replied uncertainly.

“Our mascot,” Yang added.

Neo put Mercury into a headlock while puffing her cheeks.

Yang chuckled. “I don’t know about sponsoring, though. Me and Neo might be flat broke Huntresses. If you’re looking for sponsors, why not ask Em?”

It was then, she paused.

“Have you told Em, yet?”

“I…” Mercury sighed. “I don’t know what to tell her. I mean, we’re partners. She probably expects me to join her and Cinder in Atlas. Part of me thinks that’s what I should be doing. I mean, this weapons shop thing is just a dumb idea I came up with and—”

Yang and Neo jabbed him on each side.

““It’s not dumb!”” the two communicated. Then, Yang clapped his shoulder.

“I bet you anything, Em’ll support you even more than us. She’ll get it.”

“We are talking about the same person, right?”

“Aren’t we?”

“……Maybe, I’ll put the word with her and Cinder after this Vacuo deal is done.”

“Sounds good.”

The three took a moment to silently watched the morning sun rise.

“You know,” Yang started. “It’s bad luck to talk about stuff like this right before a life-threatening job.”

“Yeah, but we’re Team ENMY,” Mercury smirked back.

“Our luck’s always been shit.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

“Our luck’s always been shit,” Emerald heard the sentence, as well as the matter her partner discussed beforehand.

Idiot.

Why would you think I wouldn’t understand?

And why’d you go to Neo and Yang first?!

“Ugh! Whatever!” Emerald grunted aloud, and kicked the copilot’s console.

“Hey! Easy on the merchandise!” Ilia complained beside her. “If you heard something you didn’t like, maybe you shouldn’t be using your Semblance to peep on other people’s conversations.”

“Just a little warm up, ponytail. Get the mind juices flowing before I run the biggest brain acrobatic routine of my life.”

In an airship circling the capital, Ilia and Emerald continued to chat.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” the chameleon Faunus asked.

“Not like your boss gave me much of a choice.”

“Either we will become nourishment for the fire, or the fire will nourish us,” Temujin lectured over the radio. “Life is nothing but an endless cycle of tests and trials.”

“And I thought I was the only mind-reader here,” Emerald replied.

“Well, I thought it was about time Ilia voiced her doubts about your abilities.”

“You could make that guess every two seconds to be fair. Flygirl here, has no faith whatsoever—and no problems showing it either.”

“Only because so much depends on your team,” Ilia growled. “Especially you. If you mess up your part even a little, our people are the ones that pay for it.”

“We’re only disarming a thousand ticking time bombs, surrounded by innocent people, across one of the largest cities in Remnant, in the span of half an hour. You should relax, you’ll live longer.”

“…”

Emerald sported a sarcastic grin.

“Alright, ladies and gentle-powerbottoms. It’s Hurt Locker time. I’m putting the sheep under.”

The girl stood from her chair, and made her way to the back of the cockpit. There, four Godmother devices were hooked up to a metallic helmet, which Emerald fit snuggly onto her head.

“Clear your mind,” Minerva advised over the comms. “Remember, there are no limits to what the mind can do.”

“I know, I know. There is no spoon,” Emerald breathed deeply through her nose. “Just brain-tapping a whole Kingdom. Not like you guys are asking me to perform a miracle or anything.”

It was dawn, and the teams could see the citizens of Vacuo already waking. Many of which, were flooding the streets, busy with their daily commutes.

Emerald could sense their minds, some still vulnerable to sleep and dream. It was the best time for her Enchantress’ Semblance.

She closed her eyes, and the Godmothers hummed with life. Her fingertips pressed the sides of her helmet in concentration. The devices amplified her abilities, as the focus of her thoughts extended in every direction.

Once Emerald finished linking each mind to her mental network, a single word echoed the thoughts of Vacuo’s people.

(((♪Dream♪)))

.

X  X X  X  X

.

As soon as Emerald voiced the mental chant, various bodies across the city collapsed where they stood. Everyone that fell under the girl’s Semblance was trapped in a dream of her crafting.

Meanwhile, the only ones still awake and unaffected by Emerald’s Semblance could only be the teams—and the Grimm.

On the outer crust of the city, the team assigned Gun Dogs Three, dashed through their designated area. The walls faced the most thorough inspections for Cuckoos, but there were still a few that made it through screening. And it was on Nai, Mouse, and Knives to eliminate them all.

The silver irises of the siblings glistened with a sharp light. They tracked their targets with their exceptional vision, and marked them for execution.

“Nai, the man at 2 o’clock,” Knives called.

Even without hearing the end of her sentence, the large warrior bolted in the direction of her sight. There, a lone man carried on with his inspection of a damaged truck, oblivious to the events unfolding outside his peripheries.

Nai braced his fist in his other hand, and drove his elbow through the man’s skull. A large splatter of blood erupted from the other side. There was a glimmer of doubt, before the person’s shape distorted into its original, grotesque bird form.

Before Knives called out the next target, Mouse spotted another Cuckoo, and drove his straight-edged dagger into its solar plexus.

The three continued to zip through the routes planned beforehand. Some of the Cuckoos were discovered and mapped prior to the operation. Some were not.

Regardless, they carried out their grim task with cold execution. Any person found moving was eliminated without second thought. If they hesitated, the Cuckoo might become aware and potentially kill anyone in their surroundings. Fortunately for the trio, most of their prey would be isolated.

The same could not be said for the team assigned Gun Dogs Two.

…

Standing on the highest branches of Shade Academy’s great tree, Minerva and Temujin gazed down at the tiny specks below.

Unlike the outer perimeter, the middle-zone was significantly more populated. Groups of Vacuo’s citizens and Shade Academy’s students were bunched together. The Cuckoos would no doubt notice what was happening.

Minerva had to act fast. Her spellcasting had to be swift, but precise. The point of her wand jabbed at the various focuses for her Magic, before violently flicking them upward. Bodies levitated into the air, clear of any sleeping innocents.

As some of the Grimm realized what was going on, they began to morph back into their monstrous forms. But by the time they could utter a single sound of resistance, Temujin silenced them.

The old wolf Faunus took a number of arrows shafts in hand, and loosed them all at once. A stream of projectiles coated in black Aura sniped the flushed prey like a high accuracy shotgun.

Without a moment’s pause to see the end of her partner’s work, Minerva was already levitating the next batch—and then the next.

“I need more targets!” Temujin hollered, after a time.

“Silence, you cackling fur rug. My role requires more concentration.”

“I can only hope so, and it isn’t about having second thoughts on killing your students.”

“They are not my students,” Minerva clenched her teeth, as she lifted another group of Cuckoos into the air.

“How certain. It’s very possible Emerald missed Enchanting a few.”

“There will not be any innocents among them.”

“It is possible.”

“…”

Temujin didn’t meet Minerva’s brief glare.

“Truth be told, if she missed a few, they would still be considered acceptable losses.”

The Headmaster’s anger boiled for a second, but was channeled into the violent purpose of her wand.

“Emerald will not err. I taught her myself…!” Minerva grunted.

“…I see.”

“And her Magic surpasses my own.”

“Hmph. Quite the pedestal you’ve placed for the girl.”

“As if you and I haven’t been training her team to combat the Witch herself.”

In the small break between shooting down her last targets and waiting for the next, Temujin spared a thought in the Hanging Garden’s direction. She wondered how the main team was performing—the three who were charged with the most occupied section of the city.

As far as they were, Minerva and Temujin could hear distant explosions. As well as the disgusting caws of dying Cuckoos.

…

“Clearing three!” Yang called out.

Racing down Vacuo’s main thoroughfare, Yang made a hard angle turn towards a trio of confused bystanders. When they saw the blazing blonde rocketing toward them, they began to drop their forms. But any resistance they could put up paled in the strength of the girl hurling them into the air.

At the same time, Neo made out a couple of moving bodies in houses. The team would waste crucial time trying to navigate indoors, so she dropped them down a mirror portal like a trapdoor. Her targets reappeared with the other Grimm flushed into the sky.

“I got ‘em!” Mercury shouted, before leaping off one of the nearby roofs.

He concentrated pockets of dense air at his heels. And then, with a resounding kick, the aerial bullets pierced the flightless birds. Their overgrown skulls cracked open with a sickening crunch, as they faded to nothing but ash.

Still treading the air, Mercury used his vantage point to spot the next number of confused wanderers.

“Five in my sights!” Mercury called.

“Pull!” Yang answered.

The young man dove down, and skidded across the rough road on his landing. His body postured low under the unsuspecting group. And then, with a chain of upper-cutting kicks, launched the targets into the air, positioning them much like Yang and Neo had done before.

The Spring Maiden stopped in her tracks to unleash a flurry of blows. Artillery shells from her Ember Celica detonated the prey at the peak of their lift. And then, it was on to the next Cuckoos.

It was a crude, but effective method Temujin developed. Each of the Gun Dog squadrons was assigned a spotter, a flusher, and an exterminator—or some mixed combination of the three. Emerald’s massive Enchantment negated any panic unwary innocents would have caused, while making it easier to identify the Cuckoos. Their next main focus was to separate the Grimm from its immediate surroundings, which usually involved casting them into the air. There, they would be safely disposed of.

Apart from the other two teams, Yang, Neo, and Mercury traded between roles in order to conserve as much Aura and stamina as possible. The fluidness of the interchange set a low margin for error, but the trio performed it with all the flawless execution of a perfect killing machine.

As Mercury and Yang hurled another group of Cuckoos into the sky, the pests managed to complete their transformations into their original forms. Their gross necks elongated their overly sized heads as their beaks parted. A cacophony of cries screeched above Vacuo.

Despite the altitude, the team could feel the life force sucked from the area, making the air thinner.

Neo took aim, her thin blade exposed from its sheathe. Her irises flickered a sharp light, as her sword worked a blinding fashion. Even though she was still groundside, her attack pierced the Cuckoos from afar.

Neo’s training with Raven did much to improve her sword work, as well as awaken the abilities of her Silver Eyes. Just like her “mentor” had shown during their deathmatches, the petite girl was now able to distort time and space to an extent that her blade was able to strike from a distance and seemingly multiple times at once.

Still…

This isn’t good.

Yang clenched her teeth, as she continued to lead her squadron’s charge through the area.

We’re starting to cut it close.

The last batch got their attacks off. More of them are starting to catch on.

We need to do move faster.

Seeming to read her mind, Neo and Mercury accelerated alongside her. Their wash, rinse, and repeat pattern grew more rapid in its pace. They carved a swathe of floating Cuckoos in their wake, paving from one section of the city to another.

It’s only a matter of time.

I got a bad feeling.

.

X  X  X X  X

.

“I have a bad feeling. Hm.”

Salem stood in the middle of the Black Oasis, while facing the direction of Vacuo. Her brow squinted in concentration, sensing the events transpiring in the distance.

“They are purging the Cuckoos,” Bean appeared at her side, having detected the same thing.

“So, they are. It is time we made our move, as well. Notify our forces. The moment for Vacuo to be put out of its pitiful misery has arrived.”

“I understand.”

The boy turned, and headed into the cave to rouse their soldiers. At the same time, he linked his thoughts to the various leaders of the Grimm Clans. Their dark army would be ready to march in a matter of minutes.

Salem allowed herself a small smile of approval, as she gave a passing gaze to the humongous black cocoon bridging two cliffsides.

“Well, then. A valiant effort on your part.”

But did you really think it would be so easy?

.

X  X X  X  X

.

Neo was the first to notice the abrupt change.

She immediately stopped midstride and closed her eyes, as if entering meditation. Yang and Mercury slid to a halt as well when they noticed. Just when they were about to ask what was wrong, the answer to their question came over the radio.

“Salem is aware we are eliminating the Cuckoos. She is activating them. All of them,” Mouse’s voice crackled.

“We still have a quarter of the city left we didn’t cover…!” Yang bit her lip. She looked to Mercury, and then, to Neo. The fight wasn’t out of them yet, and neither was it for her. “I was starting to think this was going a little too smoothly for an ENMY gig,” she commented with a light heart.

“See? Our luck’s total shit,” Mercury remarked. “I’ll get our ducks in a row?”

“And I’ll knock ‘em down. Do or die time.”

“The words our team lives by.”

“Can you get them all?”

“…Not all of them. Neo’s probably working her Silver Eye voodoo to find them, but it’s not like I can—”

“Neo maps them, I’ll translate the locations, Merc pulls, and Yang’ll mop them up,” Emerald’s sudden orders came over the comms.

“Em?! Aren’t you supposed to be maintaining the Enchantment?!” Yang exclaimed.

“I can multitask! Neo, feed me the positions of the remaining Cuckoos, double time!”

The petite girl’s scrunching face blinked open, and a bright light poured from her vision.

Her abilities were not perfect and far from infinite. But her sight encompassed an All-Seeing Truth. Whatever the moment, whatever the distance, whatever the depth, if Neo concentrated hard enough, she could see it. If only for a moment.

But a moment was all she needed.

“A trained swordsman must take in the world in a flash,” Raven’s mantra whispered the back of her mind.

“Read the terrain and your opponent, like that!” she snapped her fingers.

“The scenery changes, the landscape shifts, all in the blink of an eye.

So, you need to capture that.

It’s the world in a single moment.”

Raven’s katana drew just short of Neo’s throat.

“And you need to wield your blade in the same instant.

Knowing what I know about you, it should be something you can excel at.”

Neo viewed the locations of the remaining Cuckoos in vivid reality. Their outlines, their exact coordinates, all of it was captured in her memory, despite the enhanced sight being granted for a nanosecond. She tapped her communicator quickly after.

It was Emerald’s turn. She kept track of her team’s whereabouts and instantly accessed Neo’s memories. And like a well-prepared document wrapped in a bow, Emerald took what was mentally presented to her, and packaged it Mercury’s way. In the transference, she added her own brand of assistance to the data.

Mercury’s mind was suddenly filled with thoughts that were not his own. The familiar sensation of his brain being hijacked was something he was fairly used to, but never liked. Still, he allowed Emerald to take over his senses.

It wasn’t just plain sight that came to him, it was something he could only describe as a sixth sense being opened. A type of clairvoyance that was impossible to perceive by normal standards.

The locations of the remaining Cuckoos were not simply shown, but “illuminated”. He recognized the targets’ exact positions in reference to himself. A complete awareness of spatial cognizance layered into his conscience.

“Damn. They gave me auto-aim and no fog of war?” Mercury scoffed with an impressed tone. “Leave it to Neo and Em to prep the best cheats.”

He breathed deep and measured his timing. The Cuckoos were already about to siphon the life from their surroundings, but it would do no good to rush. His confidence had to be unwavering.

“Dominance is key,” Temujin’s words echoed his memory.

“Your Semblance and mine have a similar peculiarity.

You possess an aggressive heart.

You pent up all those things your environment gives you, and you trap it in that little chest of yours.

Your emotions, your suffering, your sins.

And then, when you’ve had enough, you lash out. Unleash what is inside onto the rest of the world.

But you lack direction.

Do not blindly release the storm brewing in your soul.

Temper it!

It is an instrument that can be used to control your environment.

And when you master such a thing, the sky will no longer be just an outlet for your rage, or merely your playground.

It will be your domain.”

“Everything above the ground belongs to the sky,” Mercury said quietly. “And I am the sky.”

The wings on his heels flourished, like a great bird of prey taking flight. Wind and air within a several mile radius answered his call. His influence extended to the very atmospheric pressure and weather itself. Even sound silenced at his increasing concentration.

It was a small motion, barely noticeable. But in the stillness of the thick stagnant space, the stomp of his left foot amplified, like the world shaking. As if a deity had laid down a new law on the mortal realm.

Every Cuckoo was expelled into the sky without exception. They were mere moments from killing those around them, but in the span of a breath, Mercury flushed them out like the poison they were.

“You really are something, Merc,” Yang couldn’t help, but say in amazement. “You, Em, and Neo are seriously something. It’d be embarrassing if I fell behind now.”

The Spring Maiden’s hair flared with blazing excitement, as she cracked her gauntlets together. Her irises painted with a bright-orange glow. She could see the burning cracks marking the Grimm’s weaknesses. The “life” fluctuating in their bodies was already emitting a feeble light.

“I Burn.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

“Hm. It appears the team of miscreants is growing into a greater thorn than initially anticipated. Due to yours and Temujin’s teachings, no doubt,” Salem said, while staring off a cliff, in the direction of Vacuo.

“It’s not direct action against you,” Raven replied. “No breach in contract.”

“I know. Your offenses aren’t punishable…yet.”

Raven chuckled. “Is the great Witch starting to slip?”

“You can hope, but you’d only disappoint yourself.”

“…”

“The efforts of your daughter’s team and your old allies is of little matter. Vacuo will not see another sunrise after today.”

Raven couldn’t muster a comeback. There was no point. That, and the evidence laid before her silenced any realistic rebuttal.

The endless stampede of countless limbs trampled the desert below their perch. Grimm of all manner of make and terror made its march on the capital. A host of monsters Remnant would possibly never witness again. An army that painted the golden sands of Vacuo in shadow.

“For what it is worth, Raven, I am sorry it had to come to this.”

“……No, you’re not.”

“You were once my most loyal knight. And now, I destroy your home because of your previous betrayal. I truly do lament this.”

Raven wanted with everything to draw her blade, and cut down the woman in front of her. It would be a kill of weightless guilt. The easiest death she could ever gift.

“I can only wonder the price your next betrayal will warrant,” Salem resumed.

“You’ll have to end Vacuo first. It’s not decided yet.”

“Oh, is it not foregone conclusion?”

“The strongest will survive Vacuo.”

“My dear, tsk tsk tsk,” the Witch clicked her tongue, while shaking her head disappointedly. “How long do you plan to delude yourself? I doubt even Temujin still considers that creed to hold true any longer.”

“Despite all your schemes, you still don’t know how this story ends,” Raven spoke her last words of defiance.

“Oh, but I do, poor Raven.”

The Witch turned to the gigantic cocoon with a pulsing red core behind them. Large cracks in the shell began to heave like melted ice caps. The dark webbing gave way to the monstrous creature hatching inside.

The first part to break out into the light of day, were a pair of gruesome wings. So large and jagged, but possessing of some mysterious elegance. One beat of its dark sails kicked up a gale of tornadoes.

Raven could hardly believe what she was witnessing. The sight of the nightmarish Grimm was enough to shake the most veteran of Hunters.

In the meantime, Salem only gleaned a satisfied smile to herself.

“Have I rid you of your naïve delusions?”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

As the last Cuckoo was eliminated, Mouse’s panicked voice crackled over the radio.

“Temujin! We have a problem!”

“Calm yourself, Mouse. What is it? Has a deviation occurred?” the elder asked.

“No. Purging the Cuckoos has incited Salem to attack as planned. But it is only now, that the means have been revealed.”

“So, her army marches?”

“Yes, but before that, there is a greater problem!”

“What is it?”

As Temujin wondered what could rattle Mouse so, she found her question answered by the enormous black shade flapping its wings towards them. She could see the Grimm over the height of the city’s walls. Although it was still far, she made a rough estimate of its size—and its sheer mass made her doubt her senses.

“What in the world?”

“Anyone else see that fucking thing?!” Emerald shouted over the comms. “I’ve never seen a Grimm that huge!”

“That is because there’s never been one…”

“I read up on all the Nightmare Class Grimm in Vacuo. Only one of them matches that description, and it’s supposed to be in hibernation, isn’t it?!”

“It appears the Witch modified its sleep cycle.”

“And apparently its diet! That thing looks roided out compared to the pictures!”

“Finish your Enchantments, Emerald. Remember to relay my orders. Our people must be ready to fight as soon as possible!” Temujin ordered.

“Shit! SHIT!”

Despite the curses, Emerald reached into the Vacuo citizens’ dream states, and carried out Temujin’s orders.

As she and Minerva readied to return to the Hanging Gardens, the elder woman could only look on to the horizon with a bleak expression. Salem’s Grimm army was circling to hit the city on all fronts. And making its way, in the most direct route possible, a monster-like butterfly continued to beat its wings.

“Behemoth…”

[giffingthingsss]

she knew the gun was empty and she knew she couldn't win but her final prayer was answered when the rifles fired again

[12timetraveler]

∞ 👀

Song: Seven Spanish Angels - Ray Charles and Willie Nelson

"She knew the gun was empty

And she knew she couldn't win

But her final prayer was answered

When the rifles fired again"