War Stories

by Tobias Umbra

The Lylat War seen in StarFox 64 was a conflict of heroes, villains, ideas and emotions. In three stories from the war, see the conflict through the eyes of those that suffered and fought in it, from the dark beginning to the triumphant end.

3. Where Is Your God?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, after the extremities of last chapter, I'm sure we're all ready for something nice and light…not. This second part of Macbeth's invasion story gets much less ideas from HG Wells and more from real life, with the Nazi invasion and occupation of Kiev (and the Babi Yar mass killings) and Paris in World War II giving me a few points of inspiration. Also, don't be surprised to find more than a few Biblical references here; after all it is about religion. So, if you've got any idea of how dark WWII and some parts of the Bible are, you've probably got some inkling of the less explosive, more gothic horrors that will plague the city of Wayland before Fay and Lance's story is over.

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-Where Is Your God?-

The next day, Fay and Lance awoke on a different planet. Out the window, though the thick sepia-colored clouds had dissipated, in their place was a layer of dense, beige smog that drifted down from the sky to the ground, darkening the streets to the point that it was near impossible to see anything further than five hundred meters away. Though the sun was just barely visible as a vague, fiery red disc struggling to shine through the overcast, whatever dim light it was able to give the city of Wayland was surely blocked in most areas by the huge saucer-shaped craft that continued to hover still and silent, kilometers above the city.

After witnessing the crushing demise of the Thunder Child, a visibly-shaken Lance guided Fay away from the Horsell Common depot as the crowd of refugees that had been left behind began to ultimately scatter or take up camp within the large warehouse. Lance had initially considered staying at the depot like many other refugees, given the large amount of supplies probably in storage on the common. However, he eventually concluded that it was too large of a target, given its high ground location and being the origin point of the freighter that had escaped the Venomian forces. Thus, they wandered the city as darkness began to fall, coming across an abandoned hotel in which they traveled to the top floor and Lance blew open one of the rooms with his blaster. They had propped a sofa against the door in case anyone tried to get in as they slept. Eventually, the two were able to get some semblance of rest, with only their hopes (and Fay's prayers) that the hotel would not be struck by one of the Venomian drop-pods falling from orbit or by one of the seemingly random bombing runs that several squads of Venomian fighters unleashed on various sections of the city. Though the drop-pods and plasma bombs continued to fall all night, many times stirring them from an already restless sleep, both they and the hotel appeared to be intact by the time they awoke the next morning.

Fay was the first to rise; feeling disoriented at the surrounding room, and at first wondered vaguely if all of the horrible things of the previous day had been a dream. Looking out the window at the smog-choked, powerless cityscape of Wayland, an end of the saucer-craft visible at the edge of the window, Fay let out a shuddering exhale of sad acceptance. The wrinkled and slightly greasy feeling of her clothes after having slept in them, the warm, pasty feeling in her mouth of un-brushed teeth and the likely disheveled appearance of the bow on her head; things that would've annoyed and bothered her on a normal day, were less than irrelevant now. Perhaps it was because the present circumstances were about as far from a normal day as Fay cared to imagine.

She rolled over on her bed, glancing over to Lance's sleeping form on the other mattress across the room. The slightly twisted expression on his furred muzzle and on the brow between his horns conveyed a look of pain.

From what Fay had gathered, he'd taken the Thunder Child's destruction much harder than she. As they'd fled Horsell Common last night, Fay had continuously asked what they were going to do after finding a place to rest, a question that the usually resourceful and collected Lance had been unable to answer. During the entire trip, he'd barely spoken to her, his jaw clenched shut and his golden eyes staring straight ahead.

Fay briefly wondered if Lance had pinned some hope on the Thunder Child being able to single-handedly fight off the invading forces of Venom, restoring some semblance of order and victory to the ambushed city. Though she, too, had dared to pray that the battle platform would somehow be able to save them all, reflecting on the incident in the restless hours before sleep had led Fay to doubt that even the Thunder Child's crew had any expectation of survival. It was only by a stroke of blind luck that the repulsorcraft withstood the 'pulse' that Lance theorized the Venomians had unleashed; and she doubted, just from the sheer immensity of the saucer, that its guns posed a serious threat to the massive assault ship. What seemed more likely to Fay was that the Thunder Child knowingly faced certain destruction by charging the saucer craft, sacrificing itself in order to buy enough time for the thousands of refugees on the freighter to escape.

If her faith had been in the Thunder Child itself, then she might've seen what happened last night as a demoralizing defeat.

But from a standpoint of faith in what the Thunder Child's actions stood for, selfless courage and sacrifice in the face of impossible odds, amongst the highest of virtues in the Lylatian Tome, last night's events represented something different.

Rather than being a disheartening loss, she saw the battle platform's actions as a stirring case of martyrdom, a victory bought at a cost the combatants were prepared to accept. Perceiving what good did occur from the battle as an act influenced by the divine, Fay was able to extract a small sense of hope from amongst the grief, and it gave her a measure of peace.

Lance stirred on the bed, his booted feet and uniformed legs stretching out as his eyes slid open.

Fay gave a quiet, crooked smile, to which Lance gave a small nod.

"How long have you been awake?" Lance asked halfheartedly.

"Like five minutes or so," Fay shrugged.

"What time is it?" Lance said.

"As if there was a working clock that could tell me? As if it would matter?" Fay presented, "It's morning."

"I guess you have a point," Lance acknowledged dismally.

"So, what do we do now, oh wise one?" Fay questioned, trying to be flirtatious to offset the mood, "I'm guessing we're into Plan B now?"

Lance's eyes stared downwards, unblinking, and he remained unresponsive.

"Lance," Fay said, concerned, "You alright?"

Lance flickered back to life with a blink of his eyes, and he shook his head slightly, frowning just a bit.

"Yeah," Lance answered reservedly, swallowing, "I'll be fine."

"You sure?" Fay probed jokingly, "Just remember, I'm the preacher's daughter, you're the cop. If anyone's going to be losing their cool, it needs to be me; or we're in trouble."

"I'm fine," Lance confirmed with a cordial smile. As he looked at her, his face caught in the dim sunlight coming through the window, Fay felt just the slightest spark between the two of them.

He is awfully cute, Fay suddenly thought, and she went wide-eyed with wonder at just where the hell that might've come from.

"So," Fay blurted out, saying a mental prayer that she wasn't blushing, "What's our next move?"

Swallowing again, Lance glanced off to the side for a moment in thought, then came back with, "Well, first we're going to want to go up to the roof and see if we can get an idea where the Venomians are, and then not go there. Then, we find food, maybe try to find a working glow rod and some power cells, a map of the city and some blankets, and then we find a safer place to hide."

"We're not trying to get to a starship anymore?" Fay inquired.

"I don't think so," Lance replied with a shake of his head, "The more time that passes the more invasion and occupation forces are going to arrive. They don't need the element of surprise anymore, so they're probably going to park a fleet of ships up in orbit to blockade the planet, especially if the freighter from last night actually made it far enough to warp-drive its ass to Fortuna or Corneria."

"You don't think they did?" Fay asked.

"Things happen," Lance shrugged.

She briefly wondered if Lance would've been more optimistic if they'd actually made it onto the freighter or if the Thunder Child had survived, but she chose not to press the issue.

"So, what if we do come across a working ship?" Fay asked instead, "Are we just going to leave it there?"

"In the highly unlikely event that that happens," Lance stated doubtfully, "No. We'll decide what to do then if we actually get that lucky. Otherwise, we look for supplies and a place to camp out for a little bit."

"And we're just going to ride this whole planetary invasion thing out?" Fay challenged dryly.

"No," Lance corrected in an irritated tone, "Eventually, we're going to try to get out of the city. This is the capital, so right now there's a giant LAND HERE sign painted on it, for the whole Venomian Army. We make our way to the countryside, where they've got no reason to bomb it or anything. After that, we go our separate ways, and then we ride this whole invasion thing out."

"Okay. Sounds like a plan," Fay agreed.

Lance raised an eyebrow, as if he was going to say something else, but then decided against it.

"Alright, then, lets see what we can see," Lance said, getting off of the bed and stretching a bit. They awkwardly moved the sofa away from the door, pulling the door open and exiting into the hallway. Aside from the dim light coming through a window at the end of the hall, the corridor was completely dark due to the glow panels being disabled by yesterday's pulse. Lance led Fay down the hallway to the stairwell door, pushing it open and venturing up the ferroconcrete staircase to the roof access. Lance attempted to push the door's crash bar open, only to hear the door's deadbolt thump against the metal frame.

"How many times am I going to have to do this?" Lance sighed, and Fay smiled humorously as Lance withdrew his blaster pistol.

He pressed the edge of the blaster into the locking mechanism, turning his head away and pulling the trigger.

The blaster let off a sizzling pop as it fired, the door swinging open with a smoking hole in its side. Lance holstered the pistol and walked out onto the roof of the hotel, Fay following close behind.

The morning air was colder than it should've been for the season, well under twenty degrees Celsius. Fay hugged herself for warmth as they walked over the gravel to the edge of the roof, to survey the new landscape of Wayland. The smog rendered their view of the farthest parts of the city little more than ghostly outlines, however they had some impression of at least the surrounding kilometer's worth of city. To the west, an entire section of cityscape was almost universal rubble, turned into a large, open clearing by one of last night's bombing runs. In the center of a street to the north of the hotel, just barely within visual range, a huge, seed-shaped drop pod the size of a four-story building laid broken open and nestled within its impact crater. They could see the movements of a giant robot to the south, stalking slowly down the thoroughfares, patrolling the area for victims. Fay looked back towards the center of the city and Horsell Common, just barely able to make out the large satellite dish of the depot they'd tried to escape from. Even further in the distance, visible just because of its sheer size was the saucer craft, the crimson sun partially obscured by its mass.

"Why is that thing still here?" Fay inquired, facing away from Lance, "We don't have any ships or vehicles. We don't have anything that can take it down. It's not like they really need it anymore to use against us."

"Psychological effect," Lance shrugged from behind her, "It scares people. Every time you look up you see a great big reminder of how quickly we got our asses handed to us."

"Is that so?" Fay asked.

"Are you trying to say it doesn't scare the shit out of you?" Lance quipped.

"Good point," Fay ceded grimly.

As she continued to scan the surrounding city, she let out a brief exhale at the emptied, vacant streets and broken, dark buildings. Hardly twenty four hours ago, it had been all so different.

"Oh…shit…" Lance moaned.

Fay worriedly turned back around, seeing Lance partially obscured behind a large cooler unit, staring out over the city. She walked over to Lance's side, behind the cooler unit, and exhaled in worried awe. Half a kilometer away, just barely obscured by the smog, a group of five large, sleek three-engine landing craft lay inactive on a six block area of the city leveled by bombing runs. The landers had a very plain, practical appearance to them, resembling giant tombstones with cockpits at the front and engines at the back. From the ramp of one of the landers, a pair of light hover tanks was being slowly unloaded, while a squadron of soldiers clad in maroon and black uniforms marched down from another. Among the landing craft was a small, hastily-built prefabricated building, around which several small figures could be seen working. All around the area, dozens of armed soldiers could be seen standing guard.

"It's an occupation force…" Lance remarked in an anxious tone, "Right next door to us."

Fay's palm drifted unconsciously to her Lylatian pendant, fondling it without thinking rather than saying any sort of mental prayer.

Lance's bottom jaw quivered a bit, and he looked down to the ground directly below the hotel's roof. Fay looked at him with concern.

She nearly put a hand on his back to comfort him, when Lance cut her off by saying, "We…we should go now. If we see them, stay out of their way. Try to avoid them and get supplies. St--stick to the plan."

Fay nodded in agreement, even though Lance couldn't see her face.

He turned and led her back to the stairwell, and they proceeded to journey down the poorly-lit pathways of the hotel towards the ground floor. In the darkness, holding onto Lance's hand as he guided her, Fay could not help but notice the sound of his breathing. Quiet and just barely detectable was Lance's shuddering, stuttering breaths, betraying the steadiness of his hand on her paw. Something seemed to be different about Lance, but Fay couldn't quite place it, probably because she'd known him less than a day. Continuing quietly down the halls, Fay decided to break the silence, inquiring, "What store are we looking for?"

"One that hasn't been looted yet," Lance grunted bluntly.

Fay gave off an enervated humph and a smirk, partially glad that at least Lance's sarcasm remained intact.

"Hey," Lance chuckled cynically, "Remember what I said yesterday, when we saw those people looting? Turn off the power and everyone becomes a criminal? Here we are."

"This isn't really the same," Fay rationalized, "We're going to take things to survive; it's not really stealing."

"Go ahead and tell yourself that, princess," Lance replied with indifference, the darkness obscuring his face and magnifying the coldness of the statement.

Fay did her best to shrug it off as they began to emerge from the depths of the hotel into the abandoned lobby, but she still couldn't help the discomforting feeling that Lance's remark had planted in her head.

The lobby's only light was whatever dim beams that shone through the glass doors and windows, throwing stark, contrasting shadows over the corporatized lavishness of the room. Through the glass, the grey sidewalks and trails of wrecked skycars that had dropped from the air yesterday were covered in a thin layer of ashy dust.

They walked towards the doors of the hotel, intent on exit, when Lance, up ahead of her, gasped and suddenly shoved Fay backwards. Fay let out a cry of alarm as Lance yanked her around a sofa in the lobby. Just before she went completely behind the sofa, Fay saw shadows on the windows out of the corner of her eye.

Fay was about to inquire what was going on, until being urgently hushed by a growling hiss from Lance as he drew his blaster pistol.

Fay peeked under the sofa, seeing the feet of a small group of people outside the hotel, facing the windows.

"Fuck, I think they've seen us," Lance whispered with anxiety.

Fay started to shiver uncontrollably, letting out a tiny whimper of fear.

"I saw someone in here, guys…" a voice from outside remarked.

Fay grabbed her pendant and closed her eyes, mentally begging, Oh God Lyla, Mother of the planets and the stars in the sky, protect and watch over me; as the hound watches over its pack.

The glass doors of the hotel were forced open with a reluctant grinding, and a figure stepped into the lobby. Lance gripped the handle of his blaster tightly, his jaw clenched shut.

"Hello?" the voice called out to the lobby.

Fay tried to keep her breathing as quiet as she could, but it was nearly impossible as the footsteps kept getting closer and closer to them both. Her grip on her pendant was so tight that the points of the six wings were digging into the pads of her paws. For some reason, she remembered the child's prayer that her father had taught her when she was little: As I lay down for the night, I pray that Lyla will keep me tight. If I should die before the day, I pray to Lyla with Her I'll stay.

The last sentence of the prayer kept echoing in Fay's head maddeningly and with terrifying resonance.

"Fuck this, they're not taking me like that," Lance growled.

"What?" the voice remarked, having heard.

A split second later, Lance sprung to his feet and fired the blaster with bellowing war yell, the blue laser beam exploding from the blaster's end and flashing across the room.

"WOAH!!!" the voice cried with alarm, and there was a sudden thump as the owner hit the floor.

Fay put her hands over her ears and continued to pray, just barely hearing as the voice yelled, "Cool it, pal!!"

Lance's eyes softened for a bit, his teeth still gritted but his face now filled with confusion.

"I'm on your side!" the voice professed.

Lance's expression lessened in intensity, and his pistol lowered just a bit. Fay's shaggy white ears perked in confusion, and she sat up, peering over the edge of the couch as a figure in the shadows got up from the floor and walked towards them. From the depths emerged a male German Shepherd in a Macbeth Civil Protection officer's uniform practically identical to Lance's.

Fay let out a ragged sigh of relief and dismay, putting her hand over her heart as it began to slow.

"Kind of jumpy, aren't you, pal?" the German Shepherd remarked breathlessly, "I thought I saw another uniform."

Lance's guard was still up; however he slowly holstered his blaster.

"Corporal Jack Wells. I was in Precinct 13," said the canine, extending a paw.

"Sergeant Lance Cody. 16th," Lance replied, shaking the canine's hand.

"Ohh, sarge, huh? Well, kudos," Wells smirked, giving a casual salute, "Not that it really matters anymore, right?"

There was the briefest twitch of a frown on Lance's face, and Fay noticed a sort of somber look in his golden eyes, as if Wells' remark had struck some sort of nerve. But at the exact moment that Lance's nonresponsive silence began to feel uncomfortable, he replied aloofly, "I guess not."

"And you are?" Corporal Wells inquired, looking over to Fay and flashing a classy grin of canine teeth.

"Fay…Donahue," Fay replied, offering her paw.

"Pleased to meet you, Fay," Wells responded warmly, shaking Fay's hand with tenderness.

"Alright, what's going on here, corporal?" Lance demanded as Wells looked back at him.

Lance glanced over Wells' shoulder, and Fay followed his gaze outside to a group of Civil Protection officers and civilians outside.

"A few civvies, some other CPs and I are trying to do all that we can to help," Wells explained, "We're working to help get people out of the city, stocking up weapons to try and resist those bastards out there, and a few of us over in the Brandenburg district are looking for the Chancellor and the Executive Council. If you guys need someplace safe or if you want to help, you're welcome to join us."

An astonished look crept over Fay's muzzle. In spite of the dark circumstances, it made her feel more hopeful and secure to know that there were not only other good people still around, but ones willing to do something as well. Perhaps not all was lost.

"You've got working blasters and supplies?" Lance interrogated.

"Central Precinct had an underground storage facility filled with all sorts of stuff. We're guessing that the thickness of the 'concrete shielded it from the blackout. There were some comlinks, blasters, food, medical supplies, all sorts of stuff. They even had some replacement parts that they used to repair one of the patrol spinners we had. Marshal Fang was flying around in it all night trying to organize all of the CP barracks that he could. Pretty much each precinct has blasters, supplies and a comlink now, and we're using them to organize our movements," Wells instructed.

"Marshal Fang's taken charge?" Lance said with elated disbelief, "We're going to resist?"

"Of course we are, Sarge," Wells remarked, "Just because those monkey bastards gave us one hell of a sucker-punch last night, it doesn't mean we're just going to roll over."

"Thank God," Fay beamed, shivering but hopeful.

"Yeah," Lance nodded, agreeing in essence if not in verbatim.

"So, do you guys want to come with us?" Wells posited.

"Roger that, let's get the hell out of here!" Lance nodded enthusiastically.

The wavering, confounded despondence that Fay had detected in Lance seemed to have vanished, replaced instead by a level of confidence, committal and (dare she say it?) hope that Fay hadn't previously seen in the ram. The cynicism in his voice and face was still there without a doubt, but the curved smile on his lips and the gleam in his golden eyes belied the disdain that Lance emanated. A smirk appeared on Wells' face and his brow rose.

"Are you sure your girlfriend here is alright with that?" Wells asked of Lance, beckoning towards Fay.

Lance's face contorted in objection as Fay scoffed incredulously. They both reeled, taken aback.

"I am not his--"

"She is not my--"

"GIRLFRIEND!" Fay and Lance protested in unison.

"Okay, okay," Wells remarked, holding up his hands, "Alright, sheesh. Don't wig out too much. So she's just your friend then."

If Fay hadn't been looking right at Wells, she might not have noticed the pleased look on his face as he said the last sentence.

"I don't even know her, we just sort of wound up together," Lance growled.

"It's not like we'd get along or be together if all hell wasn't breaking loose," Fay added, feeling like she needed to say it out loud to remind both herself and the two soldier-cops.

"Alright, I believe you, that's cool," Wells clarified, chuckling, "What I mean is, does Fay feel comfortable coming with us?"

Lance looked caught off guard, and then gave off a small half-frown. He looked over at Fay and said, "Are you in? If you really don't want to go with them, it's your choice. I can always try to get you a way out of here on our own and then meet up with them later."

Fay didn't see Wells rolling his eyes; instead she was caught off guard by the sincerity in Lance's voice. If she didn't want to go, Lance was actually going to make sure she was safe rather than abandoning her, even though Fay was sure that Lance wanted nothing more than to join his fellow CPs. Those last words that she'd said, implying that she wouldn't be around Lance unless she had to, grew more and more hollow by the second.

"I'm in," Fay pledged.

Lance smiled, and again Fay felt the vaguest tingle of a connection between the two of them.

"Alright, then, let's head out," Wells instructed, cocking his head and pointed ears towards the doors. He led them out the doors and amongst the group of six Civil Protection officers and four civilians waiting outside, the CP units all armed with holstered, functioning blaster pistols. Wells introduced them all and they began walking down the cracked, dusty streets through the cold haze of smog. Wells bade them to hang near the back, and he soon joined them in taking up the rear of the group. As they walked down the eerily quiet streets amongst the towering, darkened buildings, the canine leaned over and began to whisper in the ram's ear. Curious, Fay listened as best she could.

"Look, sarge, I respect your rank and all, but right now things are a little nuts. We're working with whoever we have, since a lot of regular officers, corporals, sergeants, etcetera are still missing because of the blackout and the bombing runs. So, for right now, since you're just getting into this, you might just have to listen to me for a while instead of pulling rank," Wells whispered to Lance.

"I understand, corporal. I'm not going to be a dick in the middle of all this," Lance nodded calmly.

"Well good," Wells nodded, "I didn't know how you were going to take that. Now that we've got that out of the way, though, I thought I'd ask: You're going to fight them with us, aren't you?"

"I'm not a deserter!" Lance hissed.

"I wasn't saying that" Wells defended, "It's just…we don't think that all of the people we're missing are dead. Some of them are probably just separated, like you were, some might be injured and incapacitated. And others are probably AWOL…we think they might've just left when they got the chance."

"Goddamn cowards…" Lance growled in disgust.

"I'm just saying that I wouldn't really blame you if you wanted to…" Wells said, "The last time something like this happened was so long ago, everyone old enough to remember is dead. The only combat most of us have seen is riot control or pirate raids, if that. No one really knows how to handle this, so a few are just cutting and running."

"That's not me," Lance rumbled, "I'm not going to run away and do nothing while they turn this place into a hellhole. I swore an oath to protect and uphold the law, because I believe it works. It still does."

"Well, great," Wells remarked, "After that speech, I'm guessing you're going to stay here and help us resist after we get your lady friend out of the city."

"Yeah, that's the plan," Lance nodded.

"Good," Wells remarked nervously, "Because there is something we've got to do, first."

"What?" Lance inquired.

Wells frowned briefly, and then looked back at Fay. She tried to pretend that she hadn't been eavesdropping on their conversation, staring straight ahead at the other CPs and civilians up ahead.

"Look, we only really ran into you guys by chance," Wells explained, "We've known about the landing zone in this area since they started touching down and unloading here last night. We've set up a sort of hideout in a building close to it, while we get everything ready for the first shot at hitting back at them. That's where we're headed."

"What do you mean?" Lance inquired.

"We can't go back right now;" Wells said, "We've all got a job to do, so you're just going to have to stick with us while we take care of this, then we'll take you back to Precinct 13 and work on getting you out to the countryside using the regional maglev tunnels, okay?"

"What are you guys 'taking care of'?" Lance asked.

"Precinct 13 had a storage facility of their own," Wells explicated, "It wasn't as underground as Central's, so a bunch of our stuff got fried by the blackout. But we were able to salvage some comlinks and some seismic charges that we confiscated from a gunrunner a while ago. The thing about that landing zone that the Venomians made for themselves is that it's right on top of one of the maglev tunnels. We've wired the seismic charges to one of the comlinks and spent all night attaching them to the top of the tunnel, right under that occupation force."

A smile formed on Lance's face.

"We're headed there right now to set off one of the biggest booby traps in history," Wells nodded in response to Lance's expression.

Fay breathed outward, not sure whether to feel happy or instead just accepting. It was a sin to kill in the Lylatian Tome. Many people believed that there were exceptions; that in certain occasions killing could be right. Fay's views were complicated by the dark history of the Lylatian Church, which had excused its past violent and oppressive activities in the name of God. Fay believed that it was a sin for a reason. There was always another way around killing someone, and violence only bred more violence in response.

But at the same time, she had to admit that the Venomian Army's actions yesterday had been appalling, and that they would likely do much worse if they were not stopped soon. Fay came to the decision that if killing was to be done, it would have to be someone else that did it. She was not going to kill anyone, regardless of whatever ends it would serve, because it would still be a sin in the eyes of the ultimate end. But she certainly wasn't going to get in the way of someone killing people that would probably kill her.

"What about the other landing zones? There have to be dozens just like it all over the city," Lance whispered.

"There's probably thousands all over Macbeth," Wells said, "We don't know for sure. But it'll set an example."

"And if they retaliate against us?" Lance posed.

"The harder they squeeze, the more we'll slip through their fingers," Wells replied.

Lance nodded in agreement.

They kept walking up the quiet street, only once spotting a group of people in the distance, which fled before they got close enough to ask if they needed help. Wells looked back at Fay, staring at her chest for a few moments, to the point where Fay began to feel insulted and violated.

"Nice pendant," Wells suddenly remarked, and Fay understood.

"A—are you a dog of faith?" Fay inquired tentatively.

"I guess you could say that. It helps me through some difficult situations. Guides me when I'm unsure," Wells said.

"I'm…well, I was… studying to be a priest," Fay informed him.

"I can't remember the last time I went to church," Wells sighed, "But still, that's good. If you've got faith in something strong like that, you're probably better off than the rest of us. Why do you say you 'were' studying? Are you not anymore?"

"Well, with all this happening…" Fay replied, gesturing to the wrecked skycars and buildings all around them, "Who knows what's going to happen?"

"Don't be so unsure," Wells shrugged, "If there's one thing that being a Lylatian is good for, it's reinforcing the belief that, somehow, everything's going to work out in the end. Don't worry about the how; God'll take care of that, remember?"

She smiled in acceptance, and Corporal Wells gave her a wink. Fay's smile deepened and she tried not to blush.

They approached a five-story building, two stories higher than most of the buildings around the area. Past the building, down the street, the other structures grew in states of damage until the furthest buildings were completely leveled into dust. Beyond that, they could make out the shadows of the landing craft that they'd seen from the hotel roof.

"Alright, Barney, you've got the remote?" Wells questioned a tall, white-furred equine in a Civil Protection uniform.

"Aye," Barney replied, holding up a small comlink with electrical tape around the bottom half.

"Good, get down there and get to work. When we're ready, I'll send Gordon down there and the two of you can have the honors," Wells directed.

The horse nodded and sprinted across the street, down a block to the recessed stairwell of a maglev tunnel entrance.

"Let's go," Wells instructed of them, and they all entered the building. It was an old, small residential building made of brick and masonry. The section of Wayland that they were in was one of the many dilapidated slums that dotted the various areas of Macbeth's capitol. The whole group traveled up the stairwell, eventually reaching the top floor. The top floor was comprised of a hallway that divided the floors only rooms. At the end of the corridor was a door that led to the roof access. They flooded into one of the rooms, a large, open loft area that had once been a game room for the apartment building, however instead of holo-chess, WarGames consoles or holoprojectors, the room was filled with ancient dartboards, pool tables and sofas, anachronistic relics that were the only things within the poor building's price range.

Strewn about the room were dozens of metal cases stamped with serial numbers and the words PROPERTY OF MACBETH CIVIL PROTECTION, CENTRAL PRECINCT, WAYLAND. The group gathered around the windows, which offered a perfect view of the landing zone outside. Fay peeked through the windows, seeing the groups of Venomian soldiers much clearer than before.

Dozens of different species made up the Venomian Army, however most were reptiles or primates. Fay spotted a wolf and several rodents as well. They all wore the same maroon uniforms, with blood-colored body armor over their chests, legs and arms. Black combat boots were on all of their feet, and featureless black helmets with visors that completely obscured their faces were worn by every soldier. In each of their hands, they carried semiautomatic blaster rifles.

"Alright, guys, tell me if you spot any of those huge-ass droids anywhere. Otherwise, start packing up. We're going to want to leave here after we get done, they're probably not going to be happy with us," Wells ordered.

Many in the group moved around the room, sorting through the various supplies around the crates and packing them up. Wells tapped Fay on the shoulder, and she turned around.

"Here," Wells said, handing her a glow rod, "A gift. These get pretty valuable at night."

"Thanks," Fay smiled, clipping the glow rod to her belt.

Behind Wells, she could see Lance picking up a bottle of Rey Leo whiskey left on one of the pool tables, pocketing the bottle. Fay dismissed the action.

"Okay, Gordon, start heading down. Tell Barney to light 'em up," Wells ordered.

A red-plumed avian grunted affirmatively, then left the room and ventured down the stairs.

"In about ten minutes, those bastards are going to get the biggest surprise of their lives," Wells smirked.

They spent the next six minutes in quiet anticipation, their eyes glued to the windows, waiting for something to happen. It was then that, just faintly and under the realm of detection, Fay heard a familiar clicking whine sound.

As the sound grew louder, she turned to face Lance, who was glancing in every direction out the window.

"Shit, there's a droid out there somewhere. One of the big ones," a member of the group said worriedly.

The whining clicks grew louder. Still, they could see nothing out the windows except for the Venomian soldiers and their landing craft, still working and patrolling in obliviousness.

"Alex, check the laundry room, see if you can see anything out the window," Wells ordered.

A short amphibian wordlessly rushed into the room across the hall.

"I don't see it!" the frog yelled back to them.

"Where the hell is it?!" Wells snapped.

Still, the whining clicks grew louder and louder. Beneath Fay's feet, the floor began to shake just slightly. Under the sounds of the approaching caterpillar treads, Fay could now hear the heavy engine's dull rumble and the servomotor's high-pitched whirr.

"It's right-on-fucking top of us!" someone yelled.

"Be cool!" Wells shouted down.

By now, the floor was shaking visibly. Dust was being softly shaken loose from the brick walls.

They all kept looking out the window for some sign of where the frightful machine could possibly be, breathing raggedly and shivering in fear as a group.

Out of nowhere, a humungous, cracking blast drowned out the sounds of the droid's approach as the ground below two of the landing craft outside erupted in a cloud of dust and fire. The building shook, the glass of the windows shattered, and everyone was knocked to the floor by the immense shockwaves of the blast. Fay hit the floor, stunned and half-deaf, pieces of broken glass sprinkled all over her body and the floor around her. A groaning whine and a crash could be heard as one of the landing craft tipped over onto its side from the blast. Another had fallen halfway into the huge trench dug by the seismic charges when they'd blown the top of the maglev tunnels out.

As the ringing in Fay's ears began to subside, she heard several distressed cries of horror, surprise and pain in the distance. Outside the window, dust obscured any view of the landing zone and whatever damage that might've been done.

Fay picked herself up, spotting Lance slouched against the wall next to the doorway out of the room. She got to her feet and rushed over to him, around the supine bodies of all the other stunned, disoriented people. Fay crouched down and put a paw on Lance's shoulder as he gritted his teeth in discomfort.

"Are you hurt?" Fay asked, distressed.

"I'll be fine," Lance growled, trying to get up.

Fay helped Lance to his feet as the other people in the group began to rise themselves. The very second that Fay remembered the whining clicks of the approaching giant droid was the moment that they stopped, and the room suddenly grew much darker than before. Someone let out a gasping scream, and Fay looked back to the windows.

Dominating the broken window frames, blocking out just about everything else was the tranquil, sinister shape of the upper half of a giant robot, peering into the building at them with its huge blue eye. Fay's heart stopped, her gaze fixed on the giant metal terror looking in at them indifferently. In the foreground, across the room with the others, Corporal Wells got to his feet, staring the giant mecha down.

"Run," Lance whispered.

The next few moments happened in slow motion for Fay.

The giant robot outside shifted, and the brick wall at the side of the room deformed and collapsed as a huge, four-fingered metal hand the size of a skycar tore through it like a fork through a slice of cake. The floor and the walls of the room rippled and disintegrated with practically no resistance at all, stone crumbling away into chunks and metal deforming as the massive claw swept through the room with an ear-splitting crashing sound that Fay could feel in her bones. Corporal Wells and almost every one of the group that they'd followed into the building crumpled like ragdolls and tumbled through the air across the room the moment the claw struck them. One of the pool tables flipped through the air, its wood splintering as the pool cues lain upon it were scattered into space like twigs. Everything that the claw had touched, the pool table, the pieces of flooring, the chunks of wall, Corporal Jack Wells and everyone else all smacked roughly into the opposite wall, barely even having time to come to rest before the titanic hand crashed into them and the wall, slamming into it without even stopping.

Time sped up as the claw plowed through the bricks, taking much of the debris and people with it, leaving a crunching, bellowing crash. Fay and Lance threw themselves against the wall in horror, beholding that half of the room was simply gone; floor, walls, roof and all. Below, the floor was warped and jagged and suddenly dropped off into a room on the next floor down. Above, the smoggy beige sky shown through as the giant robot began to twist back around.

Lance grabbed Fay's hand and dragged her through the doorway. Her last glance of the demolished room was a large splash of red on the remaining half of one of the walls; all that remained of Corporal Wells.

They flew down the steps, not thinking or feeling anything from what they just seen, running fully on autopilot, adrenaline and the instinct taking completely over. Above them, servomotors whined and another crashing was heard. The building shook and cracked, nearly knocking them off of their feet as they flew down the stairs. The whole building went past them in a blur, before Fay knew it they were sprinting out of the front doorway and onto the street. Less than ten meters from them were the huge treads of the giant robot, which was still tearing the building apart, fully occupied. Lance dragged her past the robot, through the streets towards the maglev tunnel entrance that the CP officer had gone into to detonate the charges. All around the streets, amongst the skycar wreckage was scattered debris and the unmoving bodies of several people from their group. Fay didn't have the time or the focus to look around for Wells, instead keeping up as Lance towed her down the stairwell and into the black recesses of the maglev station.

They slowed, out of breath, and broke off, stumbling through the darkness until they both encountered a wall, which they promptly slid down in exhaustion, collapsing into a slouch.

Gradually, the crashes and whining of machinery faded away, and they both sat there in darkness and silence, shaking with trauma.

Without warning, Fay suddenly burst into tears, letting out muffled, terrified sobs as she put her head in her hands. Her entire body trembled and heaved, her face stinging as she clenched it in agony, tears rolling down her muzzle and soaking her white fur.

They were all dead, just gone, in the blink of an eye, for no reason what so ever. It could've just as easily been her as it had been them, but it hadn't, she'd lived to watch them fly across the room like they were nothing. Wells had been living, breathing, smiling, flirting, and then he'd suddenly been destroyed like he didn't matter at all, just like all of the other people in that room and all the other thousands all over the city and the millions all over the planet that had already died and were going to die because of this war that Fay couldn't understand. It was all senseless, indifferent and easy, and it had happened right in front of her and almost taken her too, and now here she was in the dark and alone and Lance wouldn't even comfort her and tell her that it was okay even though she knew it wasn't.

Fay's sobs turned to screams, and she wailed into the darkness until her throat felt raw, her shrieks echoing through the depths. She eventually found herself drained of the energy to cry, her throat sore and her stomach tight, her eyes puffy and stinging. She sat on the floor, somewhere between sobbing and heaving, until she didn't have the ability to do that anymore, and she just stayed on the floor in the shadows, her emotional reservoir drained of its contents.

She dragged her knees up to her chest, hugging them as she breathed in and out in ragged, trembling breaths. Fay looked over to Lance, whose outline she could just barely see, staring down, his jaw quaking, his breaths coming out as wheezes.

Fay sat looking at Lance's shocked, speechless form, wanting to say something but her mouth too dry to vocalize anything.

"I—it all hap—pened so f—fast…" Lance stammered quietly.

Fay swallowed in sad trepidation.

"We're done for…" Lance murmured, "We—we're finished… aren't we?"

Fay's lip quivered, and she rested a paw on Lance's knee, the other wrapped around her pendant.

"Oh God Lyla, eternal rest grant unto them, the souls of your faithful departed. May they and all the children of your pack be welcomed into your loving arms, amongst your perpetual light," Fay whispered, "Please deliver us safely through this peril that we face. Guide us through this dark time, so that we may see your light. Though I walk through the hall of shadows and death, I shall fear no darkness, for thou art with me. Armen."

Lance let out a hissing, incredulous scoff as she finished her prayer. She expected him to say something, but he didn't.

Fay found herself surprisingly calmed, her tears drying on her face. She then remembered the glow rod that Wells had given her, and she unclipped it from the belt around her dress, pressing the button on the handle. The diodes inside the glow rod lit up, projecting a bright beam of light out from the end. Fay shined the light onto the wall near Lance, illuminating his face. The ram's golden eyes had a haunted, dejected look in them. Whatever she'd seen back at the hotel when they'd first run into Wells, it was gone now, replaced by an unstable hollowness that she had never seen in anyone before.

Lance's eyes closed softly, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out the bottle of whiskey that he'd taken. He opened his eyes and unscrewed the bottle, taking a large swig of the liquor and grimacing before taking it away from his lips and staring off into the distance.

"I'll be fine," Lance whispered, even though Fay hadn't asked.

He offered her the bottle, which Fay refused with a nervous shake of her head. Lance smiled grimly, then screwed the cap back on and stashed the bottle in his pocket.

He stared back at her emptily, silent and unresponsive for a few minutes. Fay stared back with concern.

"We should go," Lance groaned, gently taking the glow rod from Fay's hands, shining it out across the room. The beam of light exposed the empty maglev station, white tiles and columns with small kiosks and turnstiles and flights of stairs and escalators leading down to the various tunnels. Lance got to his feet, walking over to the turnstiles and peering over at the different escalators. There were three different escalators, all inactive but leading in different directions, with signs above each that read 'BLUE LINE', 'RED LINE' and 'PURPLE LINE'.

"The purple line leads towards the landing zone," Lance reasoned hoarsely, "It's probably the one that got blown up, so let's not go that way. The blue line leads to the center of the city. Maybe we can find Central Precinct, and some other CPs, that way."

Without telling her to follow him, Lance stepped over the turnstile and began walking towards the escalator.

Fay got to her feet and followed after, climbing over the turnstile and quickly catching up to Lance.

As they walked down the dark, empty escalator that was now a staircase, Fay inquired hesitantly, "What's the plan, now?"

"I don't…know right now, Fay," Lance breathed in an exhausted tone, "Let's just…let's just walk a bit, okay?"

There was a pleading, desperate look in his eyes, like a frightened child. Fay decided to just go on, and nodded. Lance turned and continued to venture down the escalators, disembarking on the platform and walking up to the edge, where the bare, smooth maglev tracks lay below.

Lance hopped down into the track area, waiting for Fay to join him. Fay carefully dropped down into the smooth trench, and gazed down the dark, endless tunnel ahead, which the glow rod offered little ability in penetrating. They began a quiet, eerie walk through the dark, with only their little beam of light to guide them through the hall of shadows.

Their footsteps echoing around the abyss of the tunnel, Fay stayed close to Lance, trying to keep the thought of the massive cockroaches that infested the maglev tunnels out of her head.

"Why is this happening, Lance?" Fay suddenly inquired, desperate to hear another voice amongst the smothering darkness.

"Hey, it's not your fault," Lance growled, "Maybe this is just God's way of punishing all the faithless little shits like me."

"Don't talk like that, you know what I mean," Fay replied in frustration, "Why are they doing this? What did we have, what did we do to them, to make them do all of this to us?"

"Oh, you want to play the blame game, huh?" Lance sneered, "Everyone's got a theory for why it was going to happen sooner or later. Let's see, there's speciesism; we've got more resources; they've got a shitty planet; they want to 'free all of the oppressed people of Lylat'; they want to 'make Lylat their Lylat'; or, they just want to rule the galaxy. Pick a card, any card."

Fay tried to brush off the acid, hostile tone in Lance's words, but she found it hard to stop his demeanor from going right to her heart and bringing it down with him.

"You wanna know what Ithink? I don't think they really have a reason," Lance snapped, "You know, maybe they're just dicks! Total dicks led by an even bigger dick named Andross who's decided that the meaning of it all is to kill everything!"

His words were sharp as razorblades, even though none of them were explicitly directed towards her.

"You don't have to be like that, Lance," Fay growled, shaking her head, "I just wanted to know why--"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Lance roared, whipping around to face her, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!!!"

Fay took a step back away from him, and he turned away and kept walking.

"I don't know anymore…" Lance murmured, his undertones echoing through the tunnel.

Fay stood there in the darkness, unable to move for a moment as the glow rod's beam and the figure behind it got farther and farther away from her. She swallowed hard, touching her pendant and mentally praying that Lance would truly be alright, then carefully walked after him through the darkness and shadows. As she got in close, she heard the sloshing of liquid and a gulping sound, and she realized that Lance had taken another swig from the whiskey bottle. Fay shivered, closed her eyes and continued on down the tunnel.

It went on this way for a while. They traveled down the dark, cavernous path, wordless to each other. Every so often, they would pass the empty platform of a train stop on the blue line, however Lance would always continue walking without pause, so Fay proceeded to follow. Occasionally, they would hear a dull, abstract thump or a buzzing rumble from above, but the source of such sounds could not be determined. More often than not, they would hear the distressed hissing sounds of several cockroaches that would see the light of the glow rod and skitter panicked into a crevice or hole before they reached them. The smells of the tunnel stayed the same, the vague odor of industrial metal and cleaning products intermingled with the occasional rotting garbage. Other than this, however, their journey was silent, dark, and devoid of stimulus.

Fay couldn't be sure how long it was, though she had a feeling that at least an hour had passed on their journey through the maglev tunnels before a new, distinctive smell reached her nose. It was the smell of burning tinder. As they pressed on, Fay noticed smoke particles caught in the glow rod's beam, and her eyes began to hurt as smoke flowed into her eyes.

"We might have to turn back; if there's a fire in one of these tunnels, it's likely eating up all of the air and giving out carbon monoxide that's getting trapped in the tunnel," Lance mentioned, but kept going, "Let's see what's going on first, and then we'll make a decision."

They walked down the tunnel, into the smoke that stung their eyes and made it hard to breathe. Just as Fay lapsed into a serious coughing fit, they rounded a broad corner in the tunnel and saw some ten meters away a crackling fire made out of various pieces of wood and paper. A lone, long-eared figure was sitting down next to the fire.

"We should see if he's okay, shouldn't we?" Fay whispered.

"Yeah," Lance admitted reluctantly, "Yeah, we should."

They waded through the smoke, holding their hands over their mouths in an effort to shield themselves somewhat from the smoke and fumes from the fire.

As they approached, the figure next to the fire started and looked up at them.

"Stop! Who are you?!" the figure, a rabbit, demanded.

"We're friends," Fay said.

"There are no 'friends' anymore," the rabbit growled.

Lance stared at the rabbit and his navy blue and black uniform.

"Shit, it's the corporal from yesterday!" Lance remarked.

Fay's eyes lit up, and she coughed, forgetting about the smoke as she breathed in.

Indeed, it was the black-furred rabbit from the day before, the one that had frantically warned them about the first drop-pod and what had come out of it. Fay couldn't recall his name, remembering the rabbit only as the corporal. His arm still looked badly injured (it didn't look as if it had been treated), and he was considerably scruffier and dirtier than yesterday, but it was the corporal nonetheless.

"Hey, it's you," the corporal mused, slurring his words slightly, "The nice lady and the tough cop!"

"We thought the battle droids had gotten you," Fay remarked.

"I thought the monsters had gotten you," the corporal returned.

"What're you doing down here?" Lance inquired.

"It's the safest possible place," the corporal shrugged, "Everyone was running away from the monsters. I went right underneath 'em, where they won't look for me. I've got everything I need. I'm warm, there's a water main…somewhere…around here…and my food… presents itself."

As the corporal finished his sentence, Fay heard the hissing of one of the cockroaches in the tunnel, and tried not to imagine what the corporal meant by food 'presenting itself' down here.

"Soldier, that fire's eating up your oxygen and the tunnel is trapping all of the smoke and fumes in here," Lance growled, irritated, "It's a wonder you're not dead."

"You've got your way, I've got mine," was the corporal's shrugging reply.

"You should come with us. We're headed…" Fay trailed off, looking at Lance but receiving no answer, "To the surface."

"If you want to die, that's your prerogative," the corporal shrugged again, "Me? I'm staying right here. I've got a plan."

"And what would that be?" Lance inquired skeptically.

"There's no more living on the surface," the corporal replied, "That game's over. Soon the monsters are going to be rounding people up, killing 'em systematically. People livin' on the surface, anyway."

Lance and Fay looked at each other oddly.

"We're going to build a WHOLE new world!" the corporal cried, his eyes to the tunnels ceiling, "We'll build a whole new Macbeth underground!"

Fay and Lance stepped back awkwardly.

"We'll build schools and workshops and factories, all underground!" the corporal proclaimed, "We'll raise kids and teach 'em science, so we can get everything working again! Maybe one day we'll build our own monster! Learn how to make 'em our selves, and then it'll be our turn to do some wiping out! BAM! We're on top again! Can't you see it?!?!"

Fay and Lance's faces formed worried, dismayed expressions, and the smoke became somehow thicker, the shadows from the fire playing more intensely off of the corporal's face.

"It's civilization! Starting over again, from the beginning! All we have to do is build it! We just have to build it! And then everything will be right again!!" the corporal cried, tears streaming from his eyes as a mad grin leapt across his face.

The corporal gave off a huge laugh, then started to sob, "Then everything will be right again…everything will be right again…."

"We should go…" Fay whispered, listless.

"Yeah, let's go," Lance nodded.

They turned and continued on, leaving the corporal, who sat, rocking back and forth, repeating his line over and over again. He didn't seem to notice that they'd left.

They hurried down the tunnel, through the smoke until they could no longer see the fire's glow behind them or smell the choking odor of smoke.

They slowed, continuing their pace from before, with Lance in front, leading the way with his light.

Fay broke the silence by saying, "He's going to die there like that, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is," Lance growled without a touch of emotion.

"There was no way we could've helped him, was there?" Fay inquired.

"No, there wasn't," Lance answered, his voice at a bass, guttural tone, "If he wasn't already nuts from what he saw up on the surface, then the carbon monoxide from the fire did the rest. He wouldn't have come with us willingly. If we'd forced him to, he probably would've gotten violent."

"Only God can help people like that," Fay whispered, "I guess that's what you'd call a lost cause."

"Wake up and smell the ashes, Fay," Lance huffed, gravelly but soft, "We're all lost causes."

Fay didn't have a rebuttal. Lance took another swig of whiskey with a sloshing of liquid and a grimacing gulp. Fay touched her pendant, disturbed. They continued on down the tunnel.

Perhaps another half hour passed uneventfully, and they came to an empty platform station. Up ahead by about thirty meters was a large white maglev train, sitting motionless on the electromagnetic tracks. Though the bedrock above had likely shielded the train from the pulse, allowing its emergency brakes to safely engage, the train was still immobile without the city's power grid to energize the electromagnets that would levitate and propel the train over the tracks. Thus, aside from a difficult-to-reach maintenance path, further travel down the tunnel was blocked.

"I guess this is where we get off," Lance muttered.

He walked to the side, sliding the glow rod up onto the surface of the platform, then climbing up onto the platform himself. Lance looked over at Fay, wordlessly extending a hand. Fay took Lance's hand and allowed him to help her up onto the platform. As soon as she caught her balance, Lance let go and picked up the glow rod, continuing into the station without waiting for her. Fay straightened herself and began to follow behind, noticing that Lance had stopped at the platform's exit, near a set of escalators.

"Fuck…" Lance breathed.

Fay came up behind Lance and followed his gaze into the escalator room, her eyes growing wide with dismay.

At the foot of the escalators lay a group of dead bodies strewn about in various supine positions. They were members of all species, and though most looked to be around younger adult age, Fay could see the body of someone much younger, around his preteen years. All of them had scorched black holes in their backs, their faces contorted into expressions of horror and pain. Surrounding the bodies were various pieces of luggage that they'd dropped as they fell.

"They were trying to get away," Fay uttered, "They were just running away, and they shot them…"

"Brace yourself; you're probably going to see more of this and worse," Lance droned hoarsely.

"Can we go back in the tunnel, then?" Fay pleaded, "We can take the maintenance walkway."

Lance looked around, spotting a directory poster on the wall. Normally, the maglev layout map would be shown around in holographic displays; however a hard paper copy was always posted up on the walls of every maglev station, in case the holodisplays became damaged or nonfunctional. He shone the light of the glow rod onto the poster, examining the map for a moment.

"We're around center city," Lance explained monotonously, "The Brandenburg district isn't far from here. Central Precinct and the Yutani Memorial Bridge are pretty close to here, too. This is where we should find more CPs, maybe even some military units. Hell, if we get lucky, we might run into the Chancellor and the Republican Guard. If there's any order left in Wayland, it's up there."

The way Lance said it, it sounded to Fay like he was pinning his final hope on there being some order left in the city. She prayed that he would not be disappointed, but underneath her mental prayers, Fay felt the sense of uneasy dread that she'd experienced prior to many of yesterday's disasters. She didn't know why, but something told her that among the things waiting to be found on the streets above, law and order was not one of them.

Fay didn't know how to convey this to Lance, who was already walking up the escalator without her, indifferent to whether or not she came with him. Going against nearly every instinct in her heart, Fay decided not to dissuade Lance from going to the surface, and instead jogged up the deactivated escalator behind him.

Later in life, Fay would look back on that moment with particular regret, as the exact instant that she could've averted what would soon occur, and failed.

Reaching the top of the escalator, Lance swept the beam of the glow rod through the air above him, revealing the sweeping cathedral-like ceiling of the terminus.

Far across the room, beyond the waiting benches, kiosks and turnstiles, they could see the bland sunlight shining dully onto the stairwell leading up to the streets. Even from the depths of the maglev station, they could hear the echoing calls of a voice, enunciating a monotonous command over and over again through a powerful loudspeaker. The acoustics of the station garbled the voice's commands into a series of droning, inarticulate honks.

Lance turned off the glow rod, passing it back to Fay, who clipped it to her belt once more. He led her slowly through the shadows of the station, glancing from side to side in search of an enemy that was nowhere to be found. Even though the terminus was empty, Lance still drew his blaster pistol, keeping it at the ready and aimed towards the ground.

They strode past the rest benches of the station, lined up like pews, through the menagerie of kiosks and up to the turnstiles and fencing near the front of the station. Lance stopped and listened, for now the sounds of the loudspeaker's voice could be heard clearly.

"All Macbeth Civil Protection officers and soldiers of the Republican Guard are advised to surrender. The Chancellor and Executive Council of Macbeth is advised to surrender," a dull, primate voice echoed throughout the city, "All canines, felines, leporids, and avians in the center city district of Wayland must report to InGen Plaza before sunset today for processing. They are to bring with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes. Any canines, felines, leporids or avians not carrying out this instruction and who are found elsewhere will be shot. Any civilian caught stealing abandoned property or disobeying soldiers will be shot. All lupines need not report for processing. All Macbeth Civil Protection officers…"

The loudspeaker voice kept repeating the order in the same flavorless loop, echoing loudly amongst the buildings.

"Processing?" Fay inquired.

"I don't know," Lance growled, "Maybe they're going to resettle them in labor camps. In all of their propaganda, the Venomians talk about how dogs, cats, birds and rabbits are the enemies of the 'oppressed races of Lylat'."

"What're they going to do if they come across us?" Fay whimpered.

"Just stay close to me. I won't let anything bad happen," Lance assured her.

She gave off a nervous half-smile in affirmation.

Lance stepped over the turnstiles, Fay tagging along close behind. They made their way to the stairs leading up to the streets, seeing a pair of heavy, vaguely cross-shaped ballistic shields planted into the ground at the top of the stairs, with lengths of old razor wire woven between the two.

"Looks like they didn't want anyone hiding down in the maglev," Fay remarked.

Lance carefully walked up the stairs and examined the shields, inching his face up to the razor wire.

"We've got shields like this for raids and stuff," Lance explained, carefully inching his arm through the razor wire until his hand touched the back of the shield.

"Careful," Fay warned, not sure what Lance was doing.

"Same basic design. Blaster-proof, projectile-proof, explosive-resistant, lightweight, and… collapsible," Lance trailed off, clicking a button on the back of the shield.

Suddenly, the four cross-like 'arms' slid into the center of the shield with a sliding of metal, clattering to the ground as Lance yanked his hand back to avoid getting caught in the razor wire.

Lance looked back down the stairs at Fay, cocking his head and horns in the direction of the streets. Fay traveled up the stairs, carefully stepping over the razor wire and onto the sidewalk, as Lance followed.

Fay looked up to the new surroundings, the familiar center city district of Wayland, considerably different from the last time she'd seen it. The tallest skyscrapers in the city loomed overhead, some stretching just over two kilometers high, with hundreds of floors worth of ferroconcrete, durasteel and transparisteel. Just above them was the Wolfram and Hart foundry building, one of Wayland's largest skyscraper factories, with dozens of smoke stacks, antennas and catwalks around its upper levels like the bastions of an ancient castle. Stretching just over the street, high above was the outstretched hand of the 200-meter tall Statue of Freedom. Aside from these familiar features, center city was almost completely different.

The piles of fallen skycars were much denser, piled high into the middle of the street. Down the street, Fay could see a huge, massed heap of wrecked skycars, as if they'd all been bulldozed out of the way. The familiar beige-cream colored smog appeared to have thinned out somewhat, however it was still substantially thicker than the worst pollutant haze Wayland had ever experienced before. Fay couldn't see the sun, either because it was blocked out by the tall, dead buildings all around them or blocked out by the immense saucer craft that was visible just over and in between several of the buildings far ahead of them. Aside from themselves, there was no one on the street; in fact the only other movement that they could see was a fire blazing on the upper floors of one of the skyscrapers around them, sending thick clouds of smoke out through the broken windows. Except for the constant, repetitive orders of the loudspeaker to surrender and report for processing, there was no sound. The entire city all around them seemed totally devoid of life.

"Central Precinct is across the Yutani Bridge," Lance muttered, "This way."

They ventured up the street, traveling along the dusty sidewalk.

Fay absentmindedly looked into the window of the building next to her, seeing a dim department store with dozens of high-end fashions, jewelry and beauty products. Most of the items in the store had been taken by looters, but the few that remained were sad, useless reminders of another time; one that had ended less than twenty-four hours ago.

Her focus shifted from the things behind the window, instead locking on her own reflection in the glass.

The red bow in Fay's hair was tousled to the point that it didn't even resemble a bow anymore, her pale taupe dress was ripped up the skirt, and her snow-white fur had been grayed by soot, dirt, and dust. The female spaniel looking back at her was not the same one from yesterday morning. There was much more fear and confusion in her blue eyes, but there was also a gentle resoluteness in her face that hadn't been there before, either.

She glanced over to Lance's reflection, examining his profile.

The ram's mouth was expressionless, his golden eyes hollow and desperate. After slowly but steadily nursing the whiskey bottle for what might've been two hours in the tunnels, Lance didn't look intoxicated, which Fay was thankful for. His steps were somewhat less steady than usual, though, and his face was dulled just a bit. She prayed that he wouldn't drink anymore.

As they came to an intersection between their street and another, Fay instinctively looked both ways, and suddenly halted, disturbed. Lance did the same, following her gaze, and froze as well. Down the street to their left, stretching six blocks until reaching a dead end at the bank of the River Tyrell, the road was covered in clothes. Though it had been cleared of skycars, the street itself appeared to be paved from side to side with clothes for five blocks down. To say that the road was littered with discarded garments didn't capture the point. The street was coated with the stacked, piled outfits and belongings of hundreds, maybe thousands of people, so many that they blanketed every inch of pavement and sidewalk. Hundreds upon thousands of shoes, boots, shirts, pants, jackets, skirts, undergarments and coats of every size and color, too many to count, were laid out in a fashion that was almost systematic, organized in a way that it drew instant attention. It was as if thousands of people had all gathered in the street, undressed, put their clothes in a relatively neat pile, and then vanished without a trace.

They stood on the street corner, staring at the vast field of deserted garments and outfits, breathing waveringly in nearly-frightened puzzlement.

"Lance…" Fay breathed, "What is this?"

Lance stared at the piles upon piles of clothes, his golden eyes wide as his mind raced.

"I don't know," Lance murmured.

Just under the reverberating calls of the loudspeaker's voice, they could hear orders being barked in the distance, up the street ahead of them.

The uneasy dread in her gut was stronger than ever, telling her despite her confusion that there was something terrible going on, something horrible and inconceivable that could not be understood, grasped or explained.

"Lance…" Fay begged, shuddering, "Let's leave. Let's get away from here, right now."

"Don't you want to find out what's going on?" Lance demanded.

"There are some things better left unknown and unseen," Fay quivered, "I have a feeling that this might be one of them."

"Oh, is that a Tome quote?" Lance mocked.

"You may not believe in God, but you believe in instinct," Fay shot back in a fast, neurotic tone, "Whether instinct is a gift from God or a gift from nature, we were meant to use it. And my instincts are telling me that there is something very wrong here. We should go."

"I guess that's the difference between you and me, then," Lance snarled, "Your little superstition makes you afraid of the truth. I don't have that problem. You do what you want,"

Lance coldly turned away and cautiously treaded across the street, in the direction of the voices barking orders. Fay stood there at the corner, shaking with fear, the fur on her neck standing on end. She couldn't be sure what she was more afraid of, whatever it was that might be going on or being alone. There was no way she could imagine making it without Lance's help.

Fay gritted her teeth and charged forwards after him, hugging herself to stifle the chill going down her spine. As she approached Lance, he looked back at her snidely.

"Couldn't resist, huh?" Lance sneered.

"What have we seen so far today? Huh?" Fay demanded, "Have we seen anything good? What makes you think this is going to lead to a happy ending?!"

"Because this is the only way to Central Precinct and Brandenburg, now shut up," Lance growled.

Fay clutched her pendant, reciting a hymn in her head in the hopes it would calm her down.

Up ahead, through the smog, they could hear the droning buzz of thousands of hushed voices, adding up one by one to create a composite hum. Above them all, a sharp voice could be heard yelling, "Left! Right! Right! You three, all of you to the left! Move faster! MY left, dumb bitch! Left! Right! You two go to the right! Left! Left! Faster, you fucks!!"

Through the obscuring smog, a pair of hover tanks barricaded the street, their turrets aimed in the opposite direction of Fay and Lance. They crept closer down the street, able to just make out through the haze, behind the tanks, a group of armed Venomian soldiers directing a long line of people that stretched down the street as far as they could see. Lining the sides of the street, monitoring the line of people was another pair of hover tanks and dozens of soldiers. The line fed up to the group of soldiers behind the tanks ahead of them, where they were split into one of two other lines, one going to the left, in the direction of the River Tyrell, the other going right and leading back into the depths of center city.

Up ahead, an adult male feline with a teenage daughter reached the front of the line. The barking soldier ordered the father to the left, while the daughter was forced to the right.

The female cat yelled frantically, reaching out a hand to her separated father, who protested and reached out to his child.

"Back in line!!" the soldier bellowed, "Grayson, fuck him up!"

One of the soldiers stepped over to the father cat, and then in one liquid movement smashed his face with the butt of his gun.

The daughter let out an anguished shriek as her father fell backwards, his face bleeding profusely.

"Fine you little cunt, have it your way!" the soldier roared, "Put her in the left!!"

The soldiers grabbed the teenaged feline and threw her into the left line, shoving father and daughter down the queue, then moving on to the next group of people in the main line.

"This is what they meant by processing them," Lance said bitterly, "We have to go the other way."

Fay nodded, happy to be heading back.

For some reason, the overriding dread that something awful was happening remained with her.

Lance took Fay back up the street, back towards the intersection with the piles of thousands of clothes. To their right was the field of clothes, to their left stretched the empty street into the distant smog.

"Where do we go now?" Fay inquired, trying to suppress the anxiety and unease that wouldn't leave her.

Lance gasped, looking down the street that they'd come out of the maglev station on, where the silhouette of a giant robot could be seen rolling in their direction, crushing the fallen skycars under its treads.

"Not that way," Lance ordered, and suddenly took her hand and dragged her down the street to the right, over the field of abandoned clothes.

Fay tried to keep up, stepping on the soft folded piles of hundreds of outfits and shoes, her eyes wide. The dread feeling in her heart was reaching a peak, making her blood rush with terror as they quickly bounded over the forsaken clothes.

They passed another intersection after one block, and Fay could see down the street the long line of people being fed towards the River Tyrell, standing single file under armed guard surveillance, heading slowly but surely in the same direction that they were. They kept going, tripping and stumbling over the piles of clothes more often than maintaining a steady pace, passing three more blocks and each time seeing the line simply continuing on. As they began to reach the fourth intersection, the piles of clothes beginning to grow thinner, Lance slowed down tiredly. It had been difficult to run over the shifting, soft garments, and both of them were already aching as it was. They persisted down the street towards the river, approaching the fourth intersection. Lance reached it first, glancing down the street towards the line and letting out a gasp. Fay reached his side, looking down the street, and her blood ran cold with what she saw.

The line of civilians met another checkpoint of soldiers, all of whom were yelling and ordering the people at the front of the line to get undressed. The first ten civilians in line were taken by the soldiers, who roared insults at all of them as they ordered them to take off their clothes faster and faster. The ten members of the group all quickly stripped down to nothing, naked and shivering as they put their clothes into a large bin in the hands of a yellow bipedal power-loader droid. They were then ushered roughly by the soldiers behind a pair of hover tanks, closer to the River Tyrell.

Fay looked down the street towards the River, and that was when she noticed something odd. The Tyrell's normally dark, bluish green water had taken on a different shade, one more similar to the color of the Venomian soldiers' uniforms.

The river ran red.

There were things floating in it.

Fay put a hand over her mouth, shaking her head in horror, refusing to believe it.

Lance stared down at the river himself, his face dropping and his eyes growing huge with despair. He grabbed her by the paw and dragged her along with him as he sprinted further down the street, panting in alarm.

They passed another block and Fay's eyes darted down the street to see the line continuing, this time all of the occupants naked, shivering and scared.

For some reason, she never even thought of asking Lance to stop, to prevent what the both of them might see.

He dragged her that one last, final block, up to the edge of the River Tyrell, where they stopped and beheld the atrocity they had feared.

Floating down the river were dozens upon dozens of bodies of males and females, children and elderly, dog, cat, bird, and rabbit, all naked and facedown, carried along the currents of the river. They looked downriver, unable to see the point where the flow of corpses began or ended; so many had been dumped into the Tyrell that the river had been dyed a shade of blood red. Fay's heart stopped, unable to take it all in, then she heard an echoing command barked from upriver. She followed the sound to its source, observing as the guards led the line up to the entrance of the Yutani Memorial Bridge, taking the first ten people in line in between a pair of tanks that blocked view of the bridge, leading them to the bridge's apex and lining all ten of them up on the edge.

"No…" Fay gasped, "Please God, no…"

A group of ten soldiers approached from behind the nude civilians, leveling semiautomatic blaster rifles to their heads.

"Oh fucking God," Lance choked.

Fay's attention was drawn to the tenth civilian lined up on the bridge's edge, a nude orange-furred vixen with something in her arms. The blood drained from her face as she realized that it was a baby, wailing and nestled between the vixen's breasts.

Instead of putting the barrel of the rifle to the back of the mother fox's head, the soldier lowered his aim to the vixen's lower back, lining the rifle barrel up with the mother's heart and the cub's head.

An eleventh soldier stepped forward, shouting something and raising one of his arms. Fay let out a wail as she saw the soldier's arm come down, forcing her eyes shut. She couldn't block out the popping crack of blaster fire, and the series of splashes as eleven bodies plunged into the river.

Fay kept her eyes clenched shut, letting off crying sobs that resounded in the distance. She clutched her pendant, reeling in anguish as she cried, her eyes burning. Her stomach suddenly churned, and she felt the sting of warm bile in her throat. She clamped a hand over her mouth, trying to keep it down, but in the end coughing up a mouthful of vomit that splattered onto the pavement at her feet. Fay gasped and choked out her pealing cries of disgust and horror, barely able to stand. She grabbed a hold of the railing at the edge of the river, pulling herself up and sniveling as tears continued to gush from her eyes. She looked back at Lance, trying hard not to look at the bridge or the river or anything else but Lance.

His jaw was slackly open; his eyes vacant like those of a blind man.

"Oh…" Lance stuttered, "Th-this is-n't hap—pening. They—they can't be f—fucking doing this. Tell me i—i—it's not happening. Ughhh…Oh fucking God…Oh fucking God…"

Fay's tears began to drop down to the ground as she bowed her head down, unable to stand again.

There was another shouted order from the bridge, and Fay gagged in horror.

"No, no, no, I'm not watching it again!" Lance wailed, and he took off down the street following the river's flow.

"Lance!" Fay screamed, stumbling after him and trying to see through the tears in her eyes, "Lance!"

Lance continued to run, Fay barely keeping him in sight.

Without warning, Lance turned down another street, heading back away from the river. Fay sprinted down the street after him, screaming with terror at the sight of a giant robot facing down the street at them from less than six blocks away. Lance kept running, oblivious to the killing machine that was rolling forward to meet him.

"LANCE!" Fay howled, and he seemed to slow down, but still ignorant to the death that was driving towards him.

Fay scratched the tears out of her eyes and darted down the street, running faster than she ever had before as the giant robot's blue eye began to glow and charge up.

"LANCE!" Fay shrieked, catching up to him and grabbing onto his shoulder, pulling him to the side of the street. A blue beam of energy leapt from the droid's eye, searing into the street where they had just been a split second ago, following them and leaving a trail of fire and heat in its wake.

Fay could sense the heat from the particle beam on her back as she shoved Lance through the door of a small office building, collapsing into the carpet on top of him as they fell through the doorway. She rolled over, her eyes locked on the glass door as the particle beam faded away and the droid's massive treads rolled right in front of the office building. There was the whirr of servomotors and a crumbling crash from above, and Fay screamed as the ceiling caved in on the both of them.

---

The first sensation Fay felt was the bruising ache at the side of her head. Her eyes slid open, and she glanced around her surroundings. She was lying on the floor in the lobby of the same office building that she had dragged Lance into before blacking out. Where the front doors used to be, the warped ceiling instead slanted down roughly, blocking almost the entire exit. A further glance revealed to her that the ceiling had actually collapsed that way, with the metal supports, electrical wire and ceiling tiles cracked and horribly bent.

Fay slowly sat up, looking around the room.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw Lance crouched against the wall, staring at her with an empty expression.

"How long have I been out?" Fay asked.

"A few hours, I guess," Lance shrugged breathlessly.

Fay noticed the empty bottle of whiskey lying next to Lance's leg. Through the dim light, she could see that his eyes were bloodshot.

"You got hit on the head when the ceiling came down," Lance breathed, "I bandaged your head up with your bow."

Fay put a hand to her forehead, feeling both the sting of a sensitive cut and the blood-soaked fabric of her hair bow.

"Thanks," Fay said.

"Why?" Lance demanded.

Fay looked at him, confused.

Outside, they could hear the reverberating calls of the loudspeaker. This time, the voice was giving a different message.

"Attention, attention," the primate voice called, "The Chancellor of Macbeth has surrendered. The planet of Macbeth has surrendered. Macbeth is now the property of the Venomian Empire of Andross. Attention, attention…"

Lance let out a defeated chuckle of disgust, his eyes narrowed in disconsolate loss.

"Sons of bitches…" Lance growled, "Throw in the fucking white flag after twenty-four hours. All that this planet ever stood for… it was all bullshit all along…"

Fay let out a sad breath.

"It was all for nothing when it came down to it," Lance moaned, "All of the power, all the knowledge we had… It didn't mean a goddamn thing, did it?"

"Lance…" Fay soothed, her breath wavering, "Don't speak like that. It's not over yet."

"I mean, these people had laws and rights and safety…" Lance whimpered, ignoring her, "And they didn't even fight for it. They just ran and gave up on it the second it was threatened. And if they didn't run, they took advantage of what was going on to do whatever the fuck they wanted… And those that did actually stand up and try to defend their fucking home… what the fuck did they actually do? Blow up a tunnel? Go off on some crusade to save a small fraction of people, when they could've saved so much more down here? And after that failed, they're spent, too. They can't go the distance either. And then, the very people that are supposed to be leading us… the ones that represent those laws and rights that make sure we've all got a fair chance… they give up on it, too! That's their advice! That we just let them destroy everything we've built."

"Lance, it's not their fault…" Fay whispered.

"You're right," Lance glared, "Maybe this is a test… from God. Maybe She fucking sent them here to test our faith. Well, we failed!! So now, this is our punishment!"

Fay winced, shaking her head disappointingly.

"They came from Venom…" Fay answered calmly, "Not from God."

Lance scoffed.

"You're right, Fay," Lance sneered, "They did come from Venom. And maybe I was right back there. Maybe Andross is just someone who's decided that the meaning of it all is to kill. Well guess what? I'm starting to think he's right! Look at what all of our laws and loyalty did to stop them. Nothing. Look at what God did to save us. Nothing. Meanwhile, here they come with their enlightened perspective, and what happens? The whole world just bends over backwards to their every whim. Maybe that's a sign telling us who's got the right philosophy towards life here!"

"No, Lance, that's not true!" Fay protested, "It doesn't matter that they've violated your laws and my God. It doesn't violate what those things stand for. They're the same principal, Lance! A law isn't given power because it's written down in a book somewhere, its given power because people like you believe in it. I don't know that God is there because it's a proven fact; I know She's there because I feel it in my heart. Because I have faith in Her, Lance! That's why She's always with me!"

"Oh for fucks sakes!" Lance snapped, "Don't you get it? It doesn't work like that anymore! The rules have changed! None of that matters anymore because the new rule is that nothing matters! It never did! Neither the law, nor God could save any one of those people out there, and they won't save us when we need it either. When it comes down to survival, believing those things means we're the odd ones out, here, because the only thing that really matters anymore is survival!"

Fay shuddered in denial, holding back tears.

"That's not true…" Fay sobbed, "I know it's not."

Outside, the message from the loudspeaker had changed again.

"Attention, attention," the ape's voice droned, "All former Macbeth Civil Protection members that surrender and collaborate in occupation efforts will be under the protection of the Venomian forces. All former members of Macbeth Civil Protection that assist in restoring order will be given special protection…"

"Don't be so sure about that…" Lance murmured, his jaw trembling but his eyes hard.

"No…" Fay whispered, "You can't be thinking of--"

"Of what, Fay?" Lance demanded, "Of going out there and helping them in their 'occupation efforts'? Listen to the blaster shots, there's your occupation efforts! The only way to be safe anymore is by joining in on them killing all of those bastards that wouldn't stand up for all the good things they had. Realizing that nothing really matters. That's the new law and order for you."

"That's not law and order, that's evil, Lance!" Fay begged, "You can't!"

"You just don't understand, do you?!" Lance hissed, "The presence of random injustice means that there is no justice! The fact that they abandoned all their values so quickly and easily means that there never were any values to begin with! They're all worthless and don't deserve to be saved!"

"No, Lance, that's not true. I know it all seems hopeless, but it's not, I swear!" Fay urged, grabbing Lance's hand, "Here, let me show you. Pray with me for a little; just let it all out."

Lance shrunk back and yanked his hand away.

"Get the fuck off me!!" Lance yelled, "You're the most pathetic of all! Your whole fucking way of life is based around believing that there's someone up there that actually cares and knows what they're doing, so that you don't have to face how fucked up the universe is!"

Fay clenched her teeth, tears streaming from her face.

Lance took a breath and shifted in his position, his own eyes watering.

"Remember what you asked me that first time we met?" Lance inquired hoarsely, "What do you do when you get that feeling that something bad is happening? You pray."

"You do what you have to…" Fay whispered.

"Let's see what helps more," Lance resigned.

He walked over to the collapsed ceiling, ducking under it and climbing out of the building.

"Lance…" Fay sobbed.

"Don't be here when I get back," his voice replied with a touch of tenderness. With that, he was gone.

Fay cried herself a river, until she didn't think there was anything left.

She got up, stumbling and confused, and ventured out of the building through the same crevice Lance had used. Fay tumbled out of the wrecked building, onto the empty street.

She didn't know what to do or where to go, so she just took off running, as fast as she could down the street.

Her feet pounding into the pavement, she almost didn't notice the repulsorlift hoversled floating outside of the entrance to a convenience store.

A scream from inside the store caught her attention, and she stopped, looking into the shadowy, abandoned store.

Huddled against the shelves near the back was a male and female rabbit couple with a child of about ten years old hiding behind them. Bearing down on the three was a single Venomian soldier.

"You're supposed to report for processing," the soldier snarled to the terrified family, "Any of your kind caught trying to hide are to be shot on sight. Now what do you think I should do?"

The rabbits let out mutual gasps of terror.

Fay's face dropped in despair, and she clutched her pendant. A part of her told her to run, so that she wouldn't see what was going to happen to them. Another part, though, was telling her to do something else. It was telling her that things did matter, that nothing had changed and all that she believed in really did stand for something. It was telling her that there was something more important than just survival.

Keeping one hand on her pendant, Fay leapt into the store, trusting that God would be with her.

Oh God Lyla, protect and watch over me, as the hound watches over its pack.

Her feet slammed into the tile floor as she came up behind the soldier.

Guide me through this dark time, so that I may see your light.

The soldier began to turn around, and Fay could see blaster pistol holstered in on his hip.

Though I walk through the hall of shadows and death, I shall fear no darkness, for thou art with me.

Her paw shot forward, her fingers wrapping around the blaster pistol and yanking it out of the holster. The surprised soldier was looking at her dead in the eye.

Armen.

Fay shoved the blaster into the soldier's helmet, pressing the barrel against his visor.

There was a moment of silence amongst all of them, Fay, the rabbit family, and the Venomian soldier, all waiting for the other to make the next move.

"Shoot me if you can, little girl," The ape soldier dared.

"Lord knows you'd deserve it," Fay murmured quietly.

Her eyes were hard. Her hands were steady. Her pose was confident. She could feel the touch of God leading her.

"But that's not my place to decide," Fay said, backing away and lowering the pistol.

The ape soldier regarded her with dismissive arrogance.

"Get with the program," the soldier growled, "I would've killed you."

She remembered all of the things that Lance had said.

About how the rules had changed, how everything had failed.

About how she couldn't deal with how fucked up the universe was.

Lance was wrong.

She had seen how fucked up the universe was.

The difference between her and Lance was that she wasn't going to let it change her.

"That's what separates me from you," Fay shook her head.

She raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.

A red laser bolt shot out from the end and blasted into the soldier's kneecap, knocking him to the ground as he screamed in pain.

"Come on," Fay said to the rabbits, who quickly got up and followed her out of the store.

Fay awkwardly straddled the soldier's hoversled, getting a sense of the controls. The father, mother, and child all looked at her from the sidewalk.

"There's room, get on," Fay instructed, and the two parents squeezed onto the seat behind her, grasping their son tightly.

Fay's foot pressed down on the accelerator pedal, and the hoversled zoomed through the air, hovering over the streets.

As the wind whipped through her fur and fluttered around her ears, she remembered telling Lance why she wanted to be a priest: "I can't really think of anything else in the universe I'd like to do more than be able to help people and give them hope. It's the most Lylatian thing you can do."

It remained true.

Fay would help people.

She would give them hope.

After all of these years, Fay had received her divine calling; not to preach to the people of Macbeth, but to fight for their freedom.

She would show them that things still mattered, that they were worth fighting for.

God as her witness, she would show them all.

---

Wow. Poor Lance. I hated having to do that to him. I had to, though, he was always supposed to, even though he was originally much more of an asshole. For those of you that liked Lance (I did), you may see him again in a future story. And you know you're going to see Fay again sometime. For now, though, it's a pretty tragic arc, as all of Lylat is consumed by war, until a certain mercenary group is called in to fulfill their heroic destinies. Stay tuned.