Getting closer and closer to the end my friends! I hope you enjoy this chapter and remember to checkout Grumpydrawer's stories and Hiddenwitch890's, They were the ones to get my started and they give me their input R&R!
With Love ~Dresner
The machine pistol fell out of Dusks sweaty hands and landed at her feet. Her hand was staking uncontrollably, as was her whole body, as she stared into Karl's eyes as he sat bound to the iron chair with blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Her knees gave way and fell onto Karl with tears of shame running down her face. Dusk placed both her hands on Karl's face and began to heal him with her own powers in hopes that Karl would forgive her. She frantically cut the belts that bound him to the chair with her en-charged hands of energy and healed his more serious wounds as well.
Through her tear filled eyes, Karl could see that Dusk despised herself more than anything. She hated everything about herself and her actions that she committed after her turning over to the hands of the man who seek to destroy the one man that she loved regardless of whatever she had done to him. But did he still feel the love that kept him going through hell and back? Did he to feel the burning passion that fueled his flame through out three years of war and conflict?
What Karl said to her was not out of hatred for her, but for what she became. The power corrupted her and her fragile and damaged soul, turning her into a cold killer. It fed her ego to the point where she began to lose her sense of humanity thus giving her, and her sisters, the ability to kill without hesitation. Dusk's heart burned with resentment towards Karl for the foul words and insults he battered her with, but Also burned with contempt for herself and the animal she became. The wounds her and her sisters caused him, the people they killed, and for what? Promises of vengeance and their deepest dreams?
Pipe dreams and angst were their fuel for their fire... A fuel that rots away like bleach to an automobile...
"What have I become..." She whispered to herself as she stood frozen in front of him. Karl said nothing and only grunted with disdain as the blood returned to his hands. Dusk turned around and walked to the table cluttered with tools and instruments of pain to gather Karl's gear. She returned with his shoulder holster rigs with his pistols and ammunition, his coat, cap, and blood soaked tunic in her shaking arms. Karl stood up from his chair and met her half way to the table. She handed him his stuff and stood in front of him with her head facing the floor in shame for what she did to him. He took his coat, cap, and rig but spared the tunic, "Keep that bloody thing away from me, It's ruined." He said with a scowl as he draped the coat over his shoulders and took out his personal nickle plated Mauser pistol. Loading a twenty round magazine into his pistol shoved the pistol into Dusk's stomach, "Look at me." He side forbiddingly as the barrel of the pistol was pushed tightly into her stomach.
Dusk refused to listen and began to sob, her tears falling onto the pistols heavy frame.
Karl's hand gently lifted her chin to eye level...
From his beaten tattooed chest she could see a scar left from Luna's Iron .50 Cal round in his shoulder as well as the Iron cross with Oak leaves and the flags over his heart. His Goat-T was unkept and wild, as was the facial hair growing without cavil over his face after days of captivity. His jackboots and trousers were splattered with blood from the daily beatings and his whole body bared the metallic smell of his own and others blood. Through her tears she could see his green eyes calmly staring down at her with a mix of pity and contempt.
"Do not weep..." He told her in a warm conversational tone, "That time as passed..."
With those words he pulled the hammer of the pistol back, the click of the hammer locking into place forced Dusk to her knees and began to sob loudly.
"Please Karl... Please..." She cried loudly as she grabbed his legs and buried her face into the blood soaked tunic that laid at his feet. "Please!"
Karl said nothing and held the pistol firmly in his hands as Dusk threw her head up with grieves of pain and torment. "Baby.. Please... Please Klokateer..." She whispered as she rapped herself around him, placing her face against his stomach.
As he held the pistol in his hand he began to have flashbacks of when Coelian ordered him to deposes of the little Dark one, Dani Phantom, just a few months before... Was this apart of Coelian's plan as well? To turn the girl he loved against him so that he will do the unthinkable?
"That time has pass..." He whispers to her...
Karl pulls the trigger...
Meanwhile outside of the Mill...
Roddy drove the dreadnaught cautiously down the war torn streets of Birmingham with the spotlights and headlights turn off to hide it's almost unwieldy appearance. Even without the mobile fire base that was its modified flatbed trailer, which Roddy opted to leave at the scrap yard, the truck itself was hand to not to notice especially to the National Guards men who had rather unpleasant encounters with it only a few nights before. Due to the plan that his new, and rather appealing, friend in black brandishing a Vintorez rifle cooked up for him. The truck was need for one last mission...
"Rodrick do you copy?" Claudia asked over the radio to a unsure Roddy Dael.
"I copy," He replied hesitantly. "Are you sure we should be using our real names on this? I mean what if those guys who attacked the farm are listing in on us?"
"Quit worrying about who's listing, You ever heard of voice recognition software?" Claudia snipped at him. "Even if you had your vocal cords swapped for another, the software still picks up on your pattern of speak. If they were worried about us then they would have had my daughter and her friends slaughter us like pigs. Just keep the truck on course I set for you and everything will be fine. Check your glove compartment, I have a present in there that might change your mind about me."
"Better not be some bomb or something!" Roddy snapped back.
Claudia grunted into the radio annoyed at the stupidity and lack of trust coming from Roddy, but she couldn't help the lack of trust on his part. She had came to terms on that a long time ago... "If I was going to kill you I would have done it in the scrap yard or when you were running away to the yard. Just open the glove box. Marlin out."
Roddy grudgingly hung up the radio and checked the glove box. Inside was his Stubby .475 BFR next to a crown royal bag full of carriages. "Damn..." Roddy says as he takes his beloved side arm and shoved it in his belt.
Claudia watched through her scope as Roddy turned the massive truck down a long street heading for the barbwire fence of the Alabama Steel Mill. She took a deep breath and leaped through the air toward the mill in hopes of finding her daughter, her friends, and Karl before Coelian grew tired of them... But a strange energy filled the air around the mill. An evil malevolent energy that seemed not only to cover the mill, but radiate from the whole city itself. The scent in the air was fowl and reeked of the bayou...
It was then that she realized that the situation itself was graver than she could ever imagine...
In the interrogation room...
The barrel of Karl's Mauser poured smoke from its muzzle as remaining powder burned from the shot he took. The hollow pointed 9x19mm Parabellum round raced out of the barrel with a awe inspiring thunder as the remaining powder burned caused a fire ball to bloom from the barrel of his pistol as the bullet left the barrel...
And crashed into the concert behind Dusk...
She opened her eyes as he puts away his pistol into his rig and fixes his coat. She didn't understand what had happen to her... At one moment she staring down the barrel of a gun with the eyes of death looking through to her very soul as she begging for her life, Dusk was begging for the first time in her life! Then she was staring at the same figure as the echo of the gun shot sang through the metal room around them.
Dusk let go of his wast and sat on her knees looking up at Karl with eyes full of wonder and confusion as he looked down at her with a straight face with his hands open. The year had been hard on Karl, Dusk could see it in his eyes as he gazed down at her with a conflicting glare. "Karl... You... You..." Dusk said in an innocent tone before he knelled down to her eye level.
"I spared you... Yes. Because you are not evil, you were only corrupted because they took advantage of you." Karl said as he gazed into the beauty of Dusk's eyes. "I do not hate you because they toyed with your soul, I hate what they made you... But even you know why you turned on me."
Dusk bit her tongue and tried not to say anything in embarrassment to admit that he was right, but he was... She gave a half hearten smirk and thought to herself 'He knows me to well'. She was a vengeful person, it was in her nature to do so as it was how she grew up, After all she did get it from her father. Lucky for her that was the only thing she got from the bastard besides cracked ribs and mistrust for any man that came her way, unless you count Karl and the various other one night stands she collected over the years.
"You are heart broken, rightfully so but you just don't know the whole story behind it all." Karl said with a regretful sigh as he remembered standing on that hill side as the girl's drove away in the bus that fateful day. "After the emission, I found myself with both without purpose and with it. I had gained on my journey the strength and knowledge that I could have only gathered through a lifetime. Knowledge of life, death, war, and even love... In my months in country, I served with men who in this day and age are none existent, Men of a long forgotten breed who died in the fires of pointless and bloody wars of petty rivalries and misunderstanding. Men who died because their leaders were to blind to see the evil in front of them and instead of coming together as brothers, they looked at each other as foe and then the rivers of blood began to flow. But in this world... The war... The war was different, the war had meaning, the war brought together two different people under one banner and together they fought for, not only their kinds, but for their existence on their world. They fought bravely against odds that would seem impossible to over come, facing death with a smile knowing that tomorrow could be their last day on earth, and never let the destruction, the death, or the decay corrupt them. Those men answered the call of their homeland... For pride, love, and for the Fatherland they faced the icey winds and blistering sun without a second thought... They were gods among men... Those men, and their war, became my comrades and their war was my war. In Verusea I fought with the elite of the Estovakian forces, or should I say Belkan armed forces, The Iron Guard." Karl voice became tight as he spoke of his comrades. He cared for his men and Dusk respected that as it was, more or less, the same way she cared for her sisters.
"In my time with them I earned many decorations, but it was the brotherhood and the lessons I learned that I cherished most of all. I learned that war is fought between those who wish to die and those who do not want to kill them, that war itself was both a necessity to a state and to nature. War, in their world, had no losers for there are no losers in their war. It brings glory to the victors, it edifies the character of the noble defeated. And it makes extinct what should not exist in the first place as it is in a eugenics sense. But in the wars I fought here in our world, I soon learned that War in our land has no meaning. It teaches no lessons to either the victor or the loser, it only prologues the life of those who do not deserve to exist." He explained, referring to Coelian. "One of those reptiles gave me life when I had none, or should I say Claudia gave me life while Coelian gave me a paycheck. I did things to people, entities, and beasts that I can not explain to you without going into a long digression... But what I will say is it is things that you yourself should not even dream of. After I was thrown into another pointless operation by Coelian, I began to question everything around me as I stared at the line of corpses of some of the finest men I had ever served with, that was when I saw that all around me was death. But even in the Zone, their was one unifying ideal that unified some of the spirits with in its hellish environment... Love."
The word came off his tongue softly and his tone shifted from a hard and logical older figure, to a more soft and caring tone that Dusk knew the best.
"When I was in the Zone, I met a girl that reminded me of you." Karl said hesitantly as he began to let out a painful memory. "I... fell for her out of memory of you... We didn't do anything besides share each others company and a few slight embraces, but regardless I thought that I cared for this girl... Her name was Ember..."
"You tried to move on..." Dusk whispered to him in disbelief.
"Tired, yes. But I couldn't do it." Karl admitted to her and himself. "She was you in every way. I couldn't come to terms with it in my mind. Finally I did and then she moved on to another."
"She broke your heart?" Dusk asked as she took Karl's hands and held them tightly.
"No, I broke hers." Karl said regretfully. "But she understood why."
Karl took his hands out of her hands and placed them on her shoulders. He stared deeply into her eyes as he spoke to her in a meaningful tone. "You, Muffy St. James, were the reason why I went through hell and back. You were the reason why I walked on, the reason why my spirits were up, the reason for everything I did... She only reminded me of you, but it was that thought of you that drove me to come home."
"But why didn't you come home to me!? What was keeping you away from me?" Dusk pleaded.
"The powers... The death... This..." Karl said motioning to himself to Dusk. "I was, still am, ashamed of myself for becoming this... This tool of destruction. I couldn't bare to have a burden like this placed on you... Now look at us." Karl said referring to their current situation.
Dusk took Karl by the cheeks and pressed her lips against his in a spontaneous and passionate kiss. As she pulled off of him she gave the tired solider a lustful grin and took off his cap to brush back his hair. "I wouldn't have it any other way baby. I wouldn't have any other way..." She whispered before the two in braced once more.
"Does this mean we're... You know?" Dusk asked nervously as she cussed under her breath.
"Yes baby... Yes..." Karl replied with a smile.
"AWWW! Look at the love birds!" Thorn shouted to her sister Luna as she twirled Theodor Dael's Colt .45 on her finger while they leaned on the door frame.
"Their so cute Thorn! But wait she broke her contract with Master Amsel..." Luna said as the two girls eyes turned teal as the girls started toward Dusk and Karl. "Time to fix that..."
Dusk reached into Karl's coat at the same time he did and both drew his Mauser pistols at the two as they drew near them...
A figured lunged at them from behind and shocked them with a form of energy from behind, knocking Luna and Thorn out before Karl and Dusk. Karl stood up and put away his nickel plated Mauser as he recognized the figure in front of him...
"Claudia Marlin..." Karl said with a hiss.
Claudia smirked, "Karl Dael... I see you remember me." She said as she swaggered over to Karl and Dusk.
"Back off bitch." Dusk said as she shoved the Broomhandle Mauser in Claudia's face.
"Oooh, I see she's back to normal." Claudia chuckled before pushing the gun out of her face. "Not so much for my daughter and Luna, But they will be fine soon."
"What are you doing here? I thought the order was abolished by the Doctor." Karl remarked as he took back his Uncle and Father's pistols, tucking the .45 in his belt.
"Order is gone and I was left in Siberia until my contract was reopened by the Doctor himself." Claudia said as she handed him a small note book with Amsel and Coelian's picture. "Five hundred million alive for the cripple and my freedom for the demon." She said coolly as Karl flipped through the booklet.
He threw it back to her and scoffed, "Materialism has no bounds, does it Madam Marlin? Where's my brother? I know you got him in this."
"What makes you so sure that I brought Rodrick in this?" Claudia asked Aloofly.
"It's just you in so many ways." Karl remarked as he pushed her aside and headed for the door.
"A little brutish since we last met?" Claudia asked him. "Doesn't seem like you at all. Something the matter?"
"Nothing." Karl said as he cracked his knuckles and drawing his pistol. "Where are they?"
Claudia smirked and took her VSS off of her back, "Lets find out then, all together."
"Don't get in my way witch." Dusk scowled, pushing Claudia aside.
"No problem princess." Claudia chuckled as she tripped Dusk.