This story belongs to me and my creative mind. However, many of the characters, names, and places all belong to their respective companies, so don't yell at me for copyright infringements! Remember, italics represent a person's thoughts or the telling of past events.
Enjoy...
: The Flags Hung Dead :
The city was beautiful on fire.
It had all occured so suddenly that there was no time to prepare, no time to evacuate and no time to pray for solace. The heavens parted and a terrible pillar of red broke through the clouds, impaling the land and scattering buildings and people in it's shockwave like so many leaves. The noise was terrible, the shrieking of banshees as the heat lit the air on fire, the force so powerful that your bones shook until they bled. The metal, concrete, steel and plastic all gave way to the explosion, and the towers fell into one another like dominos. Even from afar the visceral sensation was not lost, the ground vibrating as it shook in pain at this audacious strike to it's flesh. Those who bore the good and wicked luck to survive this event could only recall the chaos, undescribable in it's intensity, while holding themselves in abject terror. Even while they were prisoners to save the peace, they at least had the sense of normalcy and routine that salved the human mind from the million little fears that lurked in the darkness. To see this notion shatter before your eyes would be enough to drive anyone into madness.
>
"My God." She held her hands over her mouth, eyes struck wide at the city.
Neither Fefnir or Harpuia could offer words more than what was said. Being freed from their prison after the ground broke up around them and split the walls to freedom, they stepped out of their cells and into this wasteland. Nothing was familiar. The crisp autumn wind was dry and hot like a burning desert, feeling alive as it caressed their bodies. The air was choked with ash and dust, thicker than fog, and swirled with the winds generated by the attack. Their eyes were not limited to the crude spectrums of humankind, however, and changed between infrared and ultraviolet and frequencies of greater magnitude, and this told them of the carnage wrought to their homeland.
The epicenter, the grand Arcadia Tower where they ruled, was nothing but a melted crater that smoked and boiled with the intensity of the laser's energy. Streets, buildings adjacent to it, were wiped out. Some collapsed into the crater as their supports gave to the heat, others folded into themselves and hunkered into their basements, and so many others were stripped of their glass walls and burned black that it was not worth the time to count. The smoke, the gray and white smoke of evaporated material, soared into the sky and spread like a thunderhead into the heavens. The sound was most frightening, a deep throbbing pulse from the aftershocks of falling rubble and the temperatures changing and the mixture of winds and even the faint cries of humanity and reploids. It was war and it was hell and none of the three generals had experienced anything like it since they woke to the sight of their master and their destiny. Each time one of them tried to speak, their mouth only bobbed and gaped, unable to form a question in the shock of the scene.
It was Fefnir, uncharacteristicly, who took a tentative step forward into that nightmare. Nearly a minute passed before they could continue any further.
>
From the vantage of the abandoned military outpost in the south, the sight looked harmless enough. However, when the radio traffic around the region came to an eerie and absolute standstill, static all the people in the room could hear, did a deep and malicious feeling permeate their thoughts. As the radio began to revive, as conversations took place once again, it was evident the true nature of that tiny glowing thread in the distance. Their panic grew deeper as it swelled to louder and louder heights on all bands, all services halted and all stations empty of their programming to report on the attack. Scarlet realized that her communication line to area zero had been buzzing for nearly a minute, so absorbed into the crisis she was. She banished the radio from the room and allowed the transmission in, her counterpart appearing on the projected screen with panic in her expression.
"Colbor, are you seeing this?" Rogue asked.
Said reploid nodded, trying to stand tall and provide an image of leadership to his men, but what was any amount of experience to the degree of devastation that Neo-Arcadia just witnessed? Everyone was whispering to one another, nervous and worried. Colbor found himself struggling to appear unfazed by what happened. Would even the legendary Zero take this is stride as he did so many things? "Yes."
"Colbor, you must help those people!" A new voice interrupted. Ciel placed herself into the camera's eye, her face pale in shock. "Ragnarok was fired by Craft. We sent in Zero to stop him."
"What can we do, miss Ciel?"
"Anything! We have to evacuate Neo-Arcadia in case he fires again!"
This was a punch in the gut. "Evacuate...Neo-Arcadia?"
"You must!" The scientist pleaded. "It isn't safe any longer."
"B-But it's gonna take-"
"Please, you have to try!" She held back a sob. "They didn't do anything wrong. They don't deserve this!"
Colbor thought heavily on this. To evacuate a city of millions was a monumental task, especially when they were in the middle of a catastrohpe such as this. It would take a government days to do the same in optimal times; He, his sixty three reploid charges and two hovercarriers, would be wholly unable to do anything save aid a select few wherever they landed. He nearly considered to refuse, but could not; he could not run away from hardship, not again. There was no more time for cowardice in this age. He put on a front of courage and smiled. "I'll do it."
>
The smoke and ash began to settle in the center of Neo-Arcadia, and the people began to collect themselves from their panic to confront this gaping wound. Thousands were injured, and hospitals cleared out the halls and waiting rooms in anticipation of their arrival. Police and emergency crews rolled out, spreading around the crater and controlling the panicked masses and extinguishing the fires that spread with the blast. Independent news agencies, those willing to brave the trip to the front, recorded the humanity and the events unfolding around them. Camera flashes winked from all around the crater, thousands of video recorders humming as they etched the horror into their silicone brains. The world wide network hummed with live feeds, telling the world of the tragedy. Free of their shock, the people rallied together in that rare instance when the mob mentality was not aimed towards violence, but the preservation and the sanctity of all life.
The three generals activated the meager remains of the pantheon phalanx that were on patrol or in storage at external facilities, harnessing their hands and their strength to search for victims and to clear out paths for people to traverse. The entire military might of Neo-Arcadia began returning home to render aid, moving with reckless haste. They personally began helping to clear wreckage away from buildings to search for survivors, coordinating the military relief as best they could on internal comm. Without the massive control center and the dozens of people there to manage the military radio lines, it was a poor substitute at best. However, it was effective enough to glean a report that two radar blips had emerged from the resistence base, moving at high speed for Neo-Arcadian airspace. When contacted by Harpuia, they offered their help to get the people to safety, no strings attached. It was then that the general realized how futile their war had truly been.
As the resistence arrived in their small numbers, they aided the wounded as best as they could and began taking them away from the city to the outskirts where there was no danger from falling debris. The generals and their pantheons cleared a street to the outside world, and the resources of the city aimed the fleeing river of humanity down it and into the open air and the open sky. Tens of thouands were on the move, a literal sea of bobbing heads on the asphalt bed, emergency personel coralling them into organized lines and keeping the movement steady. It was shortly after that the second shot rang from heaven and into the fragile city below.
>
Harpuia looked into the sky at a random moment, seeking to clear his mind, when his advanced eyes saw the beam. It would only take a second until impact, but his processors ran faster than that and promptly calculated the angle and fall and estimated landing point in relation to his head. Fifty two meters ahead of him, right into the evacuating citizens. There was nothing to be done, no hope to be clutched at, not when cold logic was all you relied on; not even enough time to open a communication line to his brother and sister and say a final farewell to them. He only watched, and, beneath the ticking clock that spelled the milliseconds until his death, considered his life and his legacy. Ever since he was created, he believed in the desire for humanity and reploids to live in peace. Despite his killing of reploids and the war he waged against his own kind, he did it all with the intent that one day it would all lead to permanent peace between humanity and their children.
As Ragnarok bore down into the earth, into the wave of humanity, into him and Fefnir and Leviathan and the resistance, Harpuia hoped that he had done enough.