blitzkrieg
A Brutal Rebellion
1
Fifteen Acres of Broken Glass
When she stumbles through that concrete archway into the blinding stadium lighting of the execution chamber, she can feel her heartbeat making her entire form tremble. Her stomach does flip flops as the crowd roars and boos at the sight of her, and her hair stands on end in the chilly night wind.
Tonight, she is a soldier set to her final march, screamed at and harassed by the state that she once fought so valiantly against. Tonight, she will fall to her knees before them, and lose her final fight. Tonight, she would give in to those who had proven stronger than her, and trudge like an animal to slaughter.
They have dressed in her all white, a traditional execution gown, to show the blood better on the cameras, she supposes. It makes her coral pink hair stand out like a neon sign, and her tanned skin look even darker, she thinks, examining her black and blue feet.
When she looks up, trying to see past the impossibly bright lights that blind and disorient her, she is greeted by a massive screen that displays, to her horror, her own squinting face. She swallows a lump in her throat and releases a breath she didn't realize she was holding. She is standing at death's door, and she knows that she is minutes away from crossing the threshold. She isn't afraid of death. Nervous, maybe, but that might be the sedatives that they had pumped her full of having not worn off yet. At least she would die knowing she fought for a just and viable cause. She just wishes that she would have had the chance to see her friends one last time before she had to take this trip.
The crowd's noise seemed to die down and fade into white noise as she slowly begins to shut down the over stimulating sensations that are rolling over her. She focuses briefly on the bottles that rain over the field like an apocalyptic thunderstorm and silently thanks genetics for making it impossible to lob a heavy object more than several meters for most people.
"Walk." The stern faced monkey that escorts her to her doom prods her firmly in the back, making her stumble forward. In a show of true disconcertion, her captors have purposely left her unchained, and for the most part, unescorted, as the gorilla of a man next to her appears to be unarmed. Not that she was thinking about trying anything, she was sure that there is a sniper out there that would just love to make her skull look like a smashed watermelon.
So she walks, hating herself for it. She had allowed herself to be turned into a slave to fear. Tonight, they would finally set her free from the grip of that terror. She would finally feel release from her agony.
However, despite her what seemed to be hopeless situation, she would die like a true soldier tonight. They had tried desperately break her, to crush her will and make her their's. Him especially, but she had not broken. They had shattered and stomped on her a million times, cracked her in a thousand places, ripped her heart out and made her beg a hundred times, but she had not given in, and she would die smiling because of that accomplishment.
She will gladly go through with this televised public execution.
Barely able to walk straight, she trudges on over the cold grey sidewalk. To be completely honest, she's surprised she can walk at all, considering she feels like hell warmed over. Hell, she must look it too, face mottled with black and blue bruises that extend over the majority over her body. Her precious trigger finger has been mangled by being broken and haphazardly treated so many times during the torture, and she's pretty sure she's been walking around with a split rib for a few days now.
Funny, it had looked like it was going to be a long walk, but it was over in only a few short moments. The center stage was a few mere steps away.
Raised several feet up above the ground and surrounded by cameras and covered with dark brown stains whose source she could only imagine, the stage looks nothing like she imagined her death. She had always pictured her life ending on the run, mask on, the heat of the Wasteland sun on her back, dust in her lungs, pistol in hand, hailed as a hero by her men and buried with her motorcycle next to their dilapidated highway battlefield in an unmarked grave.
She scowls. They had robbed her of her dignity.
And then she spots him.
His horribly too perfect face twists into a grin as she is forced up the steps to her doom. This surprises and sickens her, she thought that maybe she was of a status worthy of a council viewing. When she turns her head to glance at the crowd, she sees she is right, as the council sits with undeserved dignity parallel to the stage, front row. Their lined and bearded faces hold mixed expressions of disinterest and pleasure, and she feels her stomach roll once again.
"Quite the celebration, isn't it, Candy?" Her executioner exclaims to her, having to yell to be heard over the shrieking crowd, "And to think this could have all been avoided, had you just been a bit more cooperative…" His hand extends to caress her face with familiarity that makes her wither on the inside.
Kabuto had been her torturer, her warden, and her nightmare. He had been the one to break her fingers when she refused to talk, he had been the one to deny her water when she refused to break, and now he would be the one to give the order to end it all. It actually seemed fitting now that she is standing there, about to experience it.
She catches his wrist with the palm of her hand and gives him the glare she would have once sent across the battlefield. His cocky smile fades, and a sharp flicker of anger that she is ever so used to flashes through his eyes. He falls silent, and so does the crowd. They stare at her, and she feels smaller and smaller and smaller like she is fading away under their gaze, but she wills herself to speak.
"I'm ready to die now." She says, finally, painting a look of expectancy over her features, "Let's get this over with, I have places to be."
Kabuto smacks her hand away at her words, and she smiles at him. He is enraged, she knows, his expression does not betray this, but she has spent enough time with him over the past year to recognize his rage.
"Very well." He says briskly, and snatches a microphone from the podium with theatrical flourish, but she is not impressed, she has seen the best of the best rally her troops and Kabuto is of no comparison.
"Citizens of Paradis, and outlaws of the Wastes, we bring to you today a criminal who has committed countless atrocities against this city and her people. One of the rebel leaders, who you all know as the cartoon inspiring Acid Candy, has been caught and brought to justice!"
The crowd roars, pleased, and he continues.
"Her crimes include murder, theft of government property, possession of unauthorized firearms, possession of unauthorized substances, operation of unauthorized vehicles, inciting rebellion, trespassing, attempt to gain unauthorized access to the city, and failure to cooperate during interrogation."
The crowd roars again, and bottles and other objects continue to rain from the stands and onto the concrete surrounding them. The wind blows fiercely, nearly knocking her off her feet, and sending her hair skyward like fire, but she keeps her balance precariously.
"Funny, isn't it? That a name that once struck so much fear into our hearts could belong to such a little girl." He laughs, and the crowd laughs with him as he mocks her. She counts to ten silently in her head, hoping to keep her composure.
"Bring out the other prisoner!" Kabuto roars, and the crowd screams with excitement. Another prisoner? At least she won't have to die alone. "I think you'll be excited to see my little surprise, Candy. You have missed him ever so much, haven't you?"
She feels her heart climb into her throat with those words. Missed him? He can't mean… No, of course not. She had given herself up to save him from this very fate. He can't have gotten himself captured after that, surely he would've learned.
Three figures appear in the entrance opposite of the one that she had been forced through mere minutes ago. Two large gorilla like figures that she instantly recognizes as military monkeys, and one significantly smaller one, with bright blonde hair that sparks tears in her eyes.
Rage.
She tries to run to him, but the monkey that had escorted her to the stage seizes her by her wrists and pins her easily against the concrete, his kneecap pressed roughly onto her skull as she struggles vainly. She can see them drag him across the field, his body limp and his bare feet pulling against the ground. He appears unconscious, and she wonders blankly if he is already dead. For a split second, she hopes so, if only so that she doesn't have to watch him die again.
"MY GOOD PEOPLE OF PARADIS! I GIVE YOU THE NOTORIOUS RAGE! VOICE OF THE INSURRECTION THAT HAS RANSACKED OUR GROWING ECONOMY!" He is thrown onto the stage next to her with little ceremony, and in a burst of passion and anger, she manages to throw the oaf off of her back and falls upon him, pulling his head into her lap and stroking his overgrown hair out of his eyes.
He looks like he has seen hell and come back from it. His skin is covered with fresh scars and blood that has already dried is garnishing his face. His hair, once light as the sand, is grey with filth, and the only thing that seems clean about him is the fresh execution uniform that they have dressed him in. His wasteland sky blue eyes are slightly open, and from what she can see, he has been heavily sedated.
He can't have been in captivity very long, she reasons, as his skin is still sun tanned, where as hers has paled from months spent in an underground cell, kept away from the light. A indescribable sense of illness fills up her core. She could not imagine elegant, well-mannered Rage experiencing what she had gone through the past few months.
"Rage…" She shakes him gently, hoping to bring him out of his stupor, "Rage, you idiot."
The sound of her voice seems to wake him, if only a little.
"Candy…" He coughs, and she notices that one of his feet appears to have been crushed before she forces herself to look away, "I'm sorry."
Her stomach rolls, and Kabuto continues to announce the death of them.
"How adorable. It appears the partners in crime have been reunited at last. Tragic, isn't it?" The crowd laughs, and tears prick in her eyes.
Kabuto grabs her roughly by her fore-arm then, and pulls her up, level with him. He moves the mic away from his mouth and speaks to her then, with a resolute expression on his pale face.
"This is your last chance, Candy." He breathes and she forces herself to believe that the scent of mint on his breath is something foul, "If you renounce your disgusting little band of rebels now, I will release you into the custody of General Orochimaru and you will be spared. You may think me cruel, but I am not unreasonable, and I see great promise in your skill set as a soldier and a strategist."
Reject what she had been fighting for? The starving outcasts that had not been so lucky to have been born inside city walls? The mothers of children that struggled to keep their young out of the hands of the gangs and fed with the meager remains scavenged from the barren landscape they were forced to call home? Her men, who had fought tooth and nail for nothing but a chance at equal opportunity, a chance to escape the graveyard of a dead civilization that held nothing but the promise of a short and difficult life? The little boys that she had pried guns from? The young women who had been raped because they were unable to defend themselves?
Her home? Her people? Her war?
Even if she took Kabuto up on his sick offer and lived, they would still have slaughtered her in the most vicious of ways.
She glances at the man that lay prone at their feet, and back into the soulless grey depths of Kabuto's gaze.
"And what about Rage?"
"Unfortunately, the people of Paradis are hungry for blood, and your friend has made himself the figurehead of your uprising. They deserve justice, my dear, as do his crimes."
She is silent for a few brief seconds, contemplating his words, and he grins.
"So, do we have a deal?"
The sound of her saliva making contact with the flesh of his face is almost as satisfying as the sense of freedom she is rewarded with when the back of his hand cracks across her face one final time.
"He was the voice, but not the gun." She hisses and he smiles at her to mask what she knows is a mixture of hatred and frustration. He moves the mic back to his mouth.
"Rally the firing squad!" He yells into the mic, and the screaming is fierce and blood thirsty.
6 stocky looking soldier in identical red and black uniforms march onto the field, ceremonial rifles cocked on their broad shoulders. Their faces are blank, but she can see their hands quivering. No one wants to pull the trigger on the unarmed.
"Any last words for you and your compatriot?" He sneers at her, and she seizes the mic from him. Surprisingly he does not snatch it back from her, but stares at her with mocking expectancy. He does not care anymore, he has already won the war with the opposing side's leaders' deaths.
The crowd slowly falls silent, as she opens and closes her mouth, looking for the words that she will end her life with. The last scream echoes into the distance as, finally, she closes her eyes and breathes.
Her heart is pounding, but she wills the anxiety away with an image of blue skies and the sandy battlefield, her guns strapped to her body and her boots on her feet. The sun beats down ferociously on her back. Her men, ragtag and grinning, some of them boys, march ahead of her, passionate. Rage smirks at her from her left.
"Sometimes…" She opens her eyes slowly, blinking back tears that she will not let fall, "Sometimes, you have to die for what you live for, kids." Her voice grows in volume with every word, until finally she thinks she is screaming. The speakers crackle, "Long live the reckless and the brave, and for fuck's sake, don't let them catch you alive!"
I am No Ordinary Thief.
I lost my e-mail password and couldn't retrieve it, so I am putting this story on this account and continuing it here.
Next chapter should be up in a few hours.
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Deuces