The Corps Dies

-

A survivor of the Fifty Years' War, a bloody and efficient soldier, dishonorably discharged from the Hokuten for crimes such as robbery and rape at the war's end, Gustav Margueriff. From a proud warrior to a destitute miserly insect, starving, famished, and hungry, out of words at the worst times, sitting in the corner plotting, stomach always rumbling madly. Like the rest of the Death Corps, the end of the war had seen Gustav acquire a magnificent sum of compensation for his enlistment in the army totaling absolute zero, and no matter how many times you got paid zero, it always added up to zero. So what if Gallione was nearly bankrupt? They still deserved more than zero.

Gustav sat against the wall with his head in his hands, massaging his greasy hair, thinking. A group of the Corps loyal to him had gone out to rendezvous with another group loyal to him, which had split off into the desert nearby. He had requested one of those particularly loyal to him—Flansburgh, or was it Norris?—to request, through a mediator, a ransom which would be delivered to a particular location, at which time the Marquis would be released unharmed. Gustav still knew a bit of fairness, and he kept his deals; the thought kept him at least a small bit happy as he chugged down the last of his rotgut sickly-colored liquor and promptly coughed half of it up. A rat ran by.

By the time he had finished vomiting and picked himself up from the ground, he finally realized that his captain was standing there, his white garb pristine, kicking Gustav's dusty clothes with the conspicuously white collar in the teeth. Gustav got on two feet, shook his head out a little. There had been two of his men here, standing around; now there wasn't. Gustav looked around, his foggy eyes surveying the ground, seeing one corpse, then the second, then the bound form of the marquis, then he looked up at Wiegraf, trying not to look at the spinning floor.

Damn, Gustav thought.

"Wiegraf. What—the hell's going on?"

"Gustav," Wiegraf said, addressing him plainly. "Why?"

"Why? What you mean, why? What are you talkin' about?"

"Why did you do it. Why'd you kidnap the marquess?"

"Unh. Yeah, well…It's a big reward." Gustav shook his head, rubbed his eyes. "We could get something out of it. Live off it."

"What? Money? What good is money to us? We can't buy our respect, and hiring a mercenary corps to help us would defeat the whole purpose of the insurrection." Wiegraf scoffed. "What would we need money for? Only nobles need money."

Gustav groaned. The Rat Cellar—good name for the place—was home, but it wasn't nice. The liquor didn't come easy, and when it did it made you hurl, and you could never really see yourself, as there wasn't a lot of light filtering down to the underground. It wasn't Wiegraf's home either; his home was a noble's palace, or it would be, Gustav thought, after he killed the noble that lived there and sewed their patch onto his.

"Unhhh…you can buy things with it."

"Don't be an idiot!" Wiegraf said. "I'm losing my patience. Don't you realize this undermines everything we've ever worked for?"

"That's not true!" Gustav said, and he shook out his head. "First of all, it's a statement, second of all—"

"I said don't be a fool, Gustav! Both you and I know that kidnapping a noble just to give him back and get some gold won't get us anywhere."

"We need this!"

Damn it, don't you understand this, Wiegraf?

"The nobility need to understand that we're not their playthings. Don't involve innocents and get involved in hostage taking just to fulfill your desires."

"These aren't my desires!" Gustav said. The bout of sickness now almost completely shaken off, the swordsman stood ready, both feet planted firmly in the ground. He stared his commander down. "It's not just me, there's a lot of us who want this—who need this! I'm not alone."

"What's next? You and your sympathizers defect, start a mutiny, hijack the Death Corps to be nothing more than an undead body that steals and loots and feeds on immorality? I know how it works!"

"You don't know what you're talking about, Wiegraf! There's more of us on my side than you know. We live in the real world, not some fantasy!"

"You're a debaucher!"

"Yeah, and you're an ass!"

"It's over, Gustav," Wiegraf said, and drew his blade. A second later Gustav drew his own and readied himself. He crouched forward, leaning in, preparing to shuffle his feet if Wiegraf made the first move. Wiegraf merely stood, stoic, always stoic, quintessentially immobile, holding his silvery blade out several feet in front of him, the line of his eyes never leaving Gustav's brow.

Gustav swallowed. This was not the way he'd planned everything. Maybe if someone else were in command they would have understood why his sympathizers were so obsessed over a few bags of gil. The ransom wasn't going to be much, after all, certainly nothing the nobles couldn't afford, just enough to feed some of the starving members of the Corps, maybe buy some cheaply tailored clothing that wasn't entombed in dirt, maybe enough to rent out some actual housing and not just some hole in the ground.

But that, Gustav supposed, was how it went. That was damn near how it went. You always started at the top, and in Gustav's case, that was with the Hokuten, but he was never really happy then either. Then he got a little drunk on foreign soil, broke into a few houses, stole a few handfuls of gil, and wasted it all at the bar to get drunk on better stuff. Then the barman threw him out and the proprietors roughed him up a bit and it was back to the streets, burgling an easy house, trolling the back alleys hoping some half-decent-looking farmer's daughter or noble girl would walk through so he could pull her down, rip her clothes off like he was ripping off an enemy's skin, and bury his face in her breasts. When the "fun" was over he'd scurry away, hope one of his superiors didn't catch him—they eventually would, of course—and troll around under the bridges, looking for any more fat pockets or pretty girls. Always a "now" person, always surviving for another day, not giving a rat's ass about the future, Gustav Margueriff.

"It's not over!" Gustav snapped, sitting pretty in the Sand Rat Cellar, where all the good boys and girls went to die. This was a shitty 'now'. "Your little revolution is never going to work! We need food, clothing, a place to live, not ideals! What good is your revolution if we die before we can see it through?"

"Then you die trying to attain them," Wiegraf replied, taking a tiny step forward. "You start at the base, Gustav. You should know this. You can't hope to destroy a structure from the top and hope to get results; you destroy it at its very base and topple it. You kill them in the streets for free, but you don't kidnap them for money!"

"And you'd watch us die for that? What are you—"

"We all die, Gustav!" Wiegraf yelled. He took a step forward. "Even you! Think about the present."

"I am thinkin' about the present. You're the one who isn't! Just give us apples or bread or something—God, Wiegraf, don't let us starve. Nobody wants you around. We just want to live, can't you understand that?"

Damn it won't you listen stupid fool—

"You won't succeed going your own way, Gustav. What could you hope to do?"

"Change it!"

Gustav put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. On cue, three knights entered the room, one after another, and drew their swords. They all wore the dulled green garb of the Death Corps, but they all looked at the Corps' leader with contempt.

"To hell with your ideals!" Gustav screamed. He readied his sword, charged in, and lunged. One easy sidestep and Wiegraf ran him through swiftly, withdrawing his sword as the sub-leader lurched forward and hit the floor. Wiegraf turned, readied his sword, and the three knights, stunned at the sight of Gustav falling so easily, charged in.

"In the name of –" Wiegraf shouted at the charging men, and the last word was drowned by the sound of light, and a crystalline flash swallowed each of them, muffling their screams. By the time the light cleared, two of the men were stopped dead in their tracks and the third stood frozen with fear, and that last soldier knew just who had helped Wiegraf pull off that little move.

"Good God," the soldier said as Wiegraf felled him with a single slash. Two precise stabs to the heart later and the other two stopped men fell over like statues, dead.

"Y-you! Hypocrite!"

Wiegraf turned around. On the ground, slowly crawling towards him, was Gustav, trailing a line of blood along with him like a slug would leave its ooze. The crippled subleader's voice was weak, but easy enough to hear for the trained soldier.

The captain lowered his head and walked forth. "No one's on your side, Gustav. No one."

Damn it…

"Y-figh't…for the common man, but y—you don't feed the hun—" Gustav cringed, and he saw his former captain grimly prepare the downward blade. There were a couple kids at the door, and Gustav hoped they fared better than he did. "—gry."