The Life of a Stalker I

Zaton

15:43

Louise de la Valliére ran.

Weaving through the trees and brush, she moved as fast as her legs could carry her, showing no sign of stopping even as her breathing turned ragged and heavy. Her gloved hands clutched her weapon tight as she forced her protesting legs to move faster.

She cast a wary glance over her shoulder, finding that only the trees greeted her vision. Louise pushed onward, her pace involuntarily slowing as her muscles began to reach their limit. Through the gaps in the trees, she could pick out a small collection of wooden buildings. If she could breathe a sigh of relief right now, she would. At least she wasn't lost.

Bursting through the treeline, Louise's run slowed further to a sloppy jog. She knew the small run-down village, having passed it many times on her way to other parts of Zaton. The village itself was comprised of only about a dozen ramshackle houses, and a small outdoor theater.

Wheezing, Louise came to a walk as she reached the theater. She weakly clambered onto the stage, backed herself into a corner, and unceremoniously let herself fall back onto her bottom.

Seeking ventilation, Louise pulled down the cloth covering the lower half of her face and peeled her hood back, sighing happily as a slight breeze found its way through her hair. She rested her head against the theater's wooden wall as she continued to catch her breath, her brow furrowing as her hand unconsciously sprung up to play with the end of her ponytail. Being that her hair would normally reach all the way down to her bottom, tying it up still created quite a long ponytail, which would occasionally get in the way, or in a more specific example, get caught in the Skadovsk's door and create quite a scene, so Louise had opted to shorten her hair to a much more manageable length.

After a few moments of rest, Louise's breathing returned to its normal state. She stared up through a hole in the theater's slanted roof, gazing out at the overcast sky. If it was going to rain, she hoped that it would at least hold off until they made it back to the Skadovsk.

Louise frowned. 'They' would imply that there was somebody with her, but as of right now she was completely alone and had been for far longer than she would have liked.

"Where is she?" Louise grumbled quietly to herself, tapping the back of her head against the wall a few times. She knew she was in the right place. This is where they usually arranged to meet in the event of separation. It was close enough to the Skadovsk, and was a known landmark.

Unless there was another run-down village with a stupid looking outdoor theater somewhere in Zaton, then Louise felt she shouldn't have been waiting this long. Worry began to bubble up in her stomach.

Just as she contemplated leaving and searching for her lost companion, she heard hurried footsteps approaching fast. Louise quickly rose to a crouched position, shouldering her AKS-74U in the event that the approaching footsteps were not friendly ones. She moved the selector lever off of safe and all the way down to semi-automatic, tightening her finger on the trigger ever so slightly.

Kirche von Zerbst soon stumbled into view, looking ragged and out of breath. Her lengthy red hair was messier than usual, and looked quite a bit dirtier than it should have. As she climbed onto the stage, Louise noticed that her coat and pants had a nice layer of mud on them.

Louise lowered her Kalashnikov, breathing a sigh of relief. "Jeez Kirche, you could have announced yourself. I nearly shot you in the face!"

Kirche let out a tired chuckle, dropping down to her bottom in the middle of the stage. She laid Siesta's AKM down, flopping onto her back with her arms out to her sides. "That would have been unpleasant."

The pinkette shook her head, rising to her feet and standing over the Germanian. "What happened to you? You look horrible."

The redhead huffed playfully with a tired edge to her voice, massaging her forehead with a hand. "I thought we were done badmouthing each other."

Rolling her eyes, Louise kneeled down next to the other girl. "Honestly though, you look like you lost a fight with a swamp."

"You could say that," Kirche sighed, rising to a sitting position.

"Do you still have all of those artifacts at least? If not, then all of this trouble would have been for nothing."

Kirche patted a satchel that hung from her shoulder. "I still have them," she reassured.

Thoroughly relieved, Louise nodded. "So what happened?"

"I got turned around in the woods," Kirche groaned, trying to brush the drying mud off her coat. "I ended up running all the way to the river bed, and then I tripped and fell in."

Louise scoffed and rolled her eyes at the Germanian's misfortune.

"I found the road after," Kirche continued. "Then I ran all the way back here."

"Well, it didn't turn out that badly then," Louise commented, gesturing to Kirche's legs. "You could have gotten worse than some muddy trousers."

"A-Actually, that's not all," Kirche sighed, frowning. "I had a bit of a... um, an accident."

The pinkette gave Kirche a questioning look. "What do you mean?"

Reaching into her coat, Kirche pulled her wand out from one of the inside pockets, although it looked much shorter than it should have. In fact, it was only half of her wand. She pulled out the other half, holding them together with a weak smile.

"Oh my God," Louise breathed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Seriously? How did that happen?"

"When I tripped into the river bed, I fell on it."

Louise stood. "That's just brilliant, Kirche," she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

Kirche clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Like I said, it was an accident! Those happen."

A deep rumbling groan drifted through the air, cutting off anything Louise had been about to say. Louise and Kirche both frowned deeply as a distant clap of thunder reached their ears.

"Emission," Kirche groaned, receiving a nod from her pink-haired companion.

"Come on," Louise urged, moving to the edge of the stage. "We can beat it back to the Skadovsk if we run. We may as well tell Beard about the zombies too."

The zombies had been the entire reason Louise and Kirche had both been running blindly through the trees. In wake of the destruction of the bloodsucker lair, the population of zombies had drastically risen in Zaton. Unbeknownst to any of the stalkers, the bloodsuckers had almost been performing a necessary service in the area in using the zombies as their main food source.

Thus far, the zombies hadn't wandered too close to the Skadovsk, but during their artifact gathering Louise and Kirche had stumbled into a sizeable hoard that was frighteningly close. The number of armed zombies was simply daunting, and after inadvertently alerting a few stragglers to their presence they had opted to simply flee through the woods as the bullets began flying.

The rest of the stalkers had to be warned that the mindless shufflers were getting closer.

Louise and Kirche reached the Skadovsk seemingly with time to spare. Arriving on the heels of another group of stalkers, they entered through the door that had been left open for them with Kirche heaving it closed. The two girls automatically navigated the moderately populated bar, making their way over to Beard, who sat in his usual place behind the bar with his face leaned onto his hand in a bored manner. Kirche simply removed her satchel and slapped it down on the bar surface.

"You find something interesting?" Beard idly asked as he opened the satchel. He looked up when he didn't receive any

response, finding that Kirche was distracted by something else in the room, while Louise just stared at him intently. He shrugged, returning to appraising the artifacts that the two girls had brought in.

Louise was sure that Beard thought she probably couldn't understand most of what was being said, and that was understandable since she usually only ever spoke to either Kirche or Siesta, and it was always in Tristainian. In light of recent events, however, both she and Kirche could easily understand everything being said around them.

Finished with his appraisal of the artifacts, Beard placed a single roll of banknotes on the bar which Louise quickly pocketed with a nod of thanks. Kirche scooped her satchel from the bar and quickly made for the stairs while Louise remained.

About to question Louise's lingering presence, a chorus of groans and obscenities suddenly caught Beard's attention. He looked to his side, finding that the television's picture was displaying only a snowy static screen. Grunting, he gave the top of the VCR a few hard thumps in an attempt to correct the issue.

Then, in the tiniest voice, he heard it: "The zombies are getting closer."

Beard sighed despite his success in getting the VCR back on track. "So I've heard. Everyday it's the same-" He stopped dead, his head snapping to stare at the pinkette, or rather, where she had been just a moment before. Looking around, he barely caught the hem of her coat disappearing up the stairs. He stared after her in silence, furrowing his brow. Did Louise just actually say that to him? Beard had gotten the distinct impression that she was unable to speak any language he could understand.

Beard turned his attention back to tending the bar, sighing and shaking his head. The only way those girls could get any weirder is if they all decided to grow an extra pair of arms.

Upstairs, Louise found that neither Siesta nor Kirche were in their usual place across from Owl's, but she could easily hear Siesta having a conversation with somebody nearby. She made her way past Owl's and a large bunk-filled room into Cardan's workshop.

She found Siesta with her back to her leaning sideways on a wall with her arms folded and her left leg cocked slightly to prevent it from resting on the floor. A long coat was thrown over her t-shirt and shorts so as to not reveal too much skin, and while the shorts she wore wouldn't be considered remotely revealing anywhere else, things in the Zone were different. She was talking to Cardan, who was hunched over some weapon that Louise couldn't see due to Siesta being in the way. She also found Kirche, standing just within the room leaning her back onto the wall.

Just as Louise had been about to announce her presence, Siesta looked over her shoulder, smiling when she noticed who had entered the room.

"Hey, how did it go?" Siesta asked in Tristainian, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes.

Louise was silent for a moment, casting a glance at Kirche who only shrugged. "You didn't tell her?" She asked.

"I didn't want to interrupt their conversation," Kirche reasoned, to which Siesta raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't even know you were in the room, actually," Siesta half-laughed, drawing a snort from the redhead.

"Right, well," Louise began, stepping forward and simultaneously raising an eyebrow at the partially disassembled PKM machine gun lying on Cardan's workbench. "We got a good price for a load of artifacts, but Kirche had a bit of an..." Louise gestured to Kirche's dirty clothing. "...accident."

Siesta snorted. "An accident?" She turned to Kirche. "Looks like you went jumping in mud puddles."

Louise motioned to the door with a flick of her head. Siesta nodded in understanding, bidding Cardan a quick farewell before hobbling after the two mages. She hissed and cursed under her breath with each step, resorting to hopping on one foot the majority of the distance to Tremor's old office.

"So what happened?" Siesta asked, plopping down on the bunk bed.

Kirche said nothing, only extracting the two broken halves of her wand from her coat. Siesta watched as Kirche placed the two halves of the wand together. She looked up from the broken wand, and after registering the absolutely forlorn expression on Kirche's face, she promptly burst into laughter.

Kirche's jaw dropped. "How can you laugh? This isn't funny!"

"Your face!" Siesta began, barely able to contain herself. "Oh man, your face! It looks like somebody kicked your puppy, or-or-or took your candy! Ha!"

Feeling a little anger bubbling up inside her, Kirche was about to retort when a loud clap of thunder literally shook the Skadovsk, causing the lights to flicker. Shaking her head, Kirche set the AKM to lean against the wall and then let herself fall into the wheeled chair behind Tremor's desk, causing it to roll backward a few inches as she crossed her arms in indignation.

"I kind of see it, actually," Louise began, standing close to Siesta while playing at her chin as if she were thinking hard. The pinkette smirked. "Definitely looks like her candy's been taken away."

Kirche glowered while Siesta let out another hoot of laughter.


"Are you positive that this is safe?" Kirche asked loudly, looking down at the rusted metal catwalk before her. "Because honestly, it was making some unhappy noises when you were on it."

She didn't receive a response.

Swallowing, Kirche tenderly stepped out onto the catwalk, her stomach flipping when the metal groaned in protest. Now, looking down through the steel grating of the catwalk, Kirche realized just how high she was off the ground.

"Okay... okay," Kirche breathed, slinging Siesta's AKM onto her back. She turned to the ladder, glancing upward to find Louise's hooded head poking out over the railing.

"Are you afraid of heights?" Louise asked simply, curiously observing Kirche's movements.

"Not... particularly," Kirche replied, staring down once again. "It's just the falling bit that gets me."

"It'll be fine," Louise said, flapping a hand dismissively in an attempt to encourage the Germanian.

"If you say so..." Kirche sighed, reluctantly mounting the ladder. She had never felt fear for heights before, so this was a new sensation for the redhead. Normally, she had her wand, and in any event of a fall she could easily cast levitation and float gently to the ground. Now that her wand was in half, if she fell off this monstrous bridge she was as good as dead.

After waiting out the emission and filling their stomachs, Louise and Kirche found themselves trekking through the Zone once again. This time they purposefully avoided the zombie-plagued areas of Zaton, and instead were now on Preobrazhensky Bridge. Louise had forgotten all about it, but Siesta had reminded her that one of the derelict UAZ's had a couple of crates of 5.45mm ammunition sitting in the back.

Each flat wooden crate contained two sealed cans of ammunition, totalling a whopping 2160 rounds. Being that Louise was the only one of their group using that particular cartridge, a large portion of the ammunition would be traded to Owl for cash. That is, if the crates were even still there.

"There are worse ways to die around here than falling off of this bridge," Louise commented as Kirche reached the top of the ladder.

Despite being relieved to be on a solid surface once again, Kirche gave Louise a look that made the pinkette feel as if she had said something extremely odd. "I'd rather not die at all, just so you know."

Louise whirled around, throwing a brandished bolt straight across to the other side of the bridge. It seemed the path over the fallen pipe that she and Siesta had used before was still clear. "Oh, don't get me wrong, I definitely don't want to die either. Honestly though, if I had to choose between having a bloodsucker latch onto my face, or falling off this bridge, I know exactly what I'd choose."

Kirche grunted as she clambered over the rusted pipe after the pinkette. "You've got a point there, I'll admit."

Sacrificing bolts to probe for anomalies, Louise soon found that the area remained largely unchanged from her last visit a few weeks before. Nevertheless, Louise approached the convoy carefully; walking into a newly spawned anomaly would make for a bad day.

Kirche eyed the first BTR in awe, running her hand along its rusted surface as she passed it by. She had been told that these vehicles could move own their own if they were in proper working order. Judging from the state of the eight- wheeled beast, she doubted that it would ever move again.

"So this is where you found that nerve gas?" Kirche asked, eyeing over the cargo truck as she strolled past. Louise had already moved on, coming to a stop at the lead vehicle.

"Yes," Louise nodded an affirmative, moving to rummage through the back of the open top UAZ. "Honestly, that was one of the weirdest days of my – ugh!"

"What is it?" Kirche asked worriedly, swiftly approaching the pinkette.

"This thing is just a lot heavier than I thought it would be," Louise groaned, using all of her upper body strength to heft the wooden crate out of the back of the UAZ. The weight of the crate high on her body, Louise began involuntarily stumbling backwards. "Uwaah!"

Kirche roared with laughter at the sight of the pinkette as she landed hard on her bottom. "I wish you could have seen your face just then! Your eyes were like two big saucers!"

"Shut up!" Louise growled, hefting the crate off of her body and onto the road. The crate of 5.45mm 5N7 cartridges was quite heavy, and Louise had the problem of having almost no upper body strength.

"Here, let me," Kirche offered, wiping tears from her eyes. She bent down to lift the crate from the road surface, finding out first hand just how heavy the crate was. "Bloody... hell!" Kirche grunted, hefting the crate up into her arms. She moved quickly, setting it down on the UAZ's hood with a resonating thump. Like Louise, Kirche didn't have a remarkable amount of strength in her arms. "Okay, so there's no way were going to be able to carry that all the way back to the Skadovsk."

Louise nodded, climbing to her feet. Carrying this one crate back to the Skadovsk would be an ordeal, so it seemed the second was going to have to wait for another trip. "Yes, I realized that fairly quickly when it put me on my bottom."

Kirche huffed. "So then what do you propose?"

"Well, I've seen these opened before," the Tristainian began, approaching the crate. She bent down in front of the UAZ, drawing the knife sheathed in her boot. "There are two sealed cans in there. I suspect it'll be much easier just to carry those on their own."

Feeling a little wary of the metal strap tightened around the wooden crate, Louise quickly brought her knife down on it a few times before the metal band separated with a surprising amount of force. Lifting the hinged lid, she quickly got to work at removing the first can with the string provided.

"You take the other one," Louise said, testing the weight of the sealed tin of ammunition in her arms. It had some weight to it, but was definitely easier to carry than the entire crate. Kirche nodded, sliding the other can out of the crate and looking it over.

"How do they even get things inside of cans?" Kirche asked as they began to retreat to the ladder. "It baffles me."

"I have no idea," Louise admitted, allowing herself a tiny chuckle. "Canned food is disgusting."

Behind her, Louise heard Kirche let out a noise of disgust. "The worst," she agreed.

They reached the ladder, and Louise immediately removed her backpack.

"What are you doing?" Kirche asked, confused for a moment until she realized the obvious.

"Do you plan on holding that in your arms while climbing down the ladder?" Louise asked dryly. She opened the backpack, and motioned for Kirche to put the ammo inside. "Put it in here, and I'll just pass it down to you."

Kirche stared for a moment. "Are you sure?"

Louise returned the stare, before she realized something as well. "Actually, I'll go down first and then you pass it to me. You've got longer arms."

Agreeing on their method of moving the ammunition down the ladder, Louise quickly descended the ladder, all too aware of the groaning the metal was releasing.

She still hated ladders with a passion.

She reached the bottom of the ladder quickly, and motioned for Kirche to pass her backpack down. Kirche got down on her stomach, letting the pack dangle from one of its straps. The ladder wasn't particularly long, so Louise had figured that she'd be able to easily reach the hanging bag. It turned out that it was just out of her reach.

"This is heavy, Louise," Kirche grunted. "Take it before I drop it on you!"

"I'll catch it, just let it drop."

The Germanian eyed Louise, unsure that dropping the bag into her hands was a good idea. "Are you sure about that? I mean..."

"Yes, Kirche. I'll catch it! Just let it drop, okay?" Louise urged, already tired of standing on the precarious catwalk.

Kirche mentally shrugged. "Whatever you say."

Kirche let go of the backpack, and was surprised when Louise actually did catch it, though, the sudden introduction of the weight caused Louise to stumble backward into the railing, which consequently bent outward under her weight.

"Okay I'm done with this!" Louise yelped in fright, practically leaping onto the concrete underbelly of the bridge. "Done with this bloody bridge! Absolutely done!"

Kirche breathed a sigh of relief. She had thought that Louise was definitely going over the railing for a moment there. She made her own way down the ladder, finding Louise breathing heavily on the underside of the bridge.

"R-Remember what I said about falling off this bridge?" Louise rattled quickly. "I take it back. I-I-I definitely take it back."

She wanted to laugh, but Kirche had been just as scared as Louise in that moment. "Yeah, I really don't blame you there."

After dividing up the ammunition once again, with Louise opting to keep her own can inside of her backpack, the two girls quickly made their way back to the road, eager to return to the Skadovsk and forget that Preobrazhensky Bridge ever existed.

For Kirche and Louise, today hadn't been a great day. Between running through the woods from a hoard of zombies, Kirche breaking her wand, and almost falling off of a massive bridge, Louise certainly thought that this was about as much bad as the Zone could throw at them for one day.

As it turned out, she was quite wrong in that regard.

The two girls walked along the outer wall of the ranger station, making their way back to the Skadovsk along the road when they both froze after hearing a distinct noise come from behind them.

It sounded like somebody had just cocked the hammer on a gun.

"Don't fucking move, either of you."

They didn't.


Another fist connected solidly with Louise's stomach, sending her crashing to the grimy floor. Clutching her midsection, Louise let out a shrill cry of pain as a boot grazed across her face, sending her head spinning.

"Shut up!"

Another blow to Louise's body, this time a swift kick connected with her side. Still stunned from the blow to her head, she only managed a weak groan in protest of the physical abuse.

She was inside the ranger station, in the large building with the furnaces. She could still comprehend that much during her mind's current state. She and Kirche had been ambushed by a group of four bandits, who had promptly separated them, stripped them of their weapons and equipment, and had set to letting out some anger on their bodies.

Lying on the floor in a room that had probably been an office at some point, Louise had never felt so alone despite there being others in the room with her.

"Don't you think that's a bit much dude? She's just a damn kid," a second voice spoke up, laced with the desire to be doing anything but this. "Let's just take her shit and leave."

"No way," the first voice grunted as if this were business as usual. "These bitches are with those stalkers on that stupid boat. They killed Viktor and all his boys, I'm making sure they pay for it."

Before she could even think about arguing the fact that she had done no such thing, she distinctly heard what sounded like the clinking of a belt being undone. Staring up at the ceiling, her eyes widened slightly and her stomach knotted as her head began to clear.

Oh no no no no...

Louise began to wonder if this was it for her, violated and then likely shot afterward. She tentatively craned her head upward, expecting to see something beyond disgusting, only to find that the man she had expected to be advancing on her with lecherous intent had actually completely turned around.

The two bandits in the room with her had begun arguing. Louise didn't care to pay attention to subject of their argument, probably over who would get to go first. Her eyes had fixed themselves on something much more interesting.

On her would-be rapist's back, a revolver was tucked into the waistband of his pants. Louise's eyes widened into saucers, eyeing over the curvature of the gun as the bandit pushed his friend into the wall, shouting in his balaclava covered face.

Louise knew she had to decide then and there what she was going to do. If these poor excuses for human beings were going to try and bring her down like this, she was at least going to put up one hell of a fight.

As the taste of blood rolled over her tongue, Louise leapt to her feet and quickly closed the distance to the bandit, wrapping her hand around the revolver's grip and ripping it from the man's pants.

That part had gone a lot better than she had expected.

Ideas of what to do next flew through her head like rapid-fire. She had immediately contemplated forcing the men into giving up their weapons, and then making them walk back to where ever they had come from in only their underwear. That seemed like something she and Siesta could laugh about as they laid down for bed at night.

However, despite her thinking that was a rather funny idea, her body was already reacting. In the back of her mind, she knew that one little girl with a revolver wasn't enough to force four men into surrender.

With time seeming like it was passing at light speed, Louise pressed the revolver's muzzle firmly into the bandit's upper back vaguely where his heart would be as he let out a noise of surprise. That was about all he was able to do as Louise's index finger rocketed through the revolver's double-action pull in an instant. The muzzle exploded against the man's worn coat and the revolver itself nearly flew out of Louise's hand, jolting upward and back with an immense amount of recoil. The sound of the gunshot echoed off the walls and the bandit's back, leaving the pinkette's ears ringing.

The bandit slumped to the floor, revealing his comrade against the wall clutching at his own chest. The bullet, or fragments of it, had passed through the first bandit and ended up wounding the other man. He slid downward against the wall, coming to a rest on his bottom. He looked to be attempting to convince Louise not to shoot him, his free hand held up and his eyes desperate.

Louise couldn't hear whatever the man was saying to her, her ears were still ringing painfully, and even if she could hear, it wouldn't have changed what was going to happen next.

Her face blank, she raised the revolver so that the muzzle was nearly touching the man's forehead, and swiftly pulled the trigger. The bullet crashed through the bandit's skull, creating a large exit wound out of the back and painting a foot-and- a-half diameter section of the wall with blood and brain matter.

Louise let the revolver hang at her side as she stared down at the two bodies, temporarily deaf to the world around her. She wasn't thinking about what she was doing now, it was as if her body had been switched over to auto pilot the moment her fingers had wrapped around the gun. However, there was one thought that did manage to seep through her clouded mind.

She had to find Kirche.


In the massive room where the furnaces were now snarled and twisted shadows of their former selves, two bandits were frozen after hearing the gunshots echo through the building. One bandit, wielding Kirche's Kalashnikov, glanced down at his partner who straddled the redhead in question, pinning her to the floor.

Turning his head back towards the doorway he last saw his friends disappear through, the bandit called out. "Hey! Did

you guys shoot her already? What gives?"

He was met with no response.

Glancing back down to the bandit pinning Kirche, he shrugged nervously.

"Just go check it out, I'm sure she just got fucking out of hand and they had to put her down," the bandit pinning Kirche suggested, keeping his grip on her arms tight as she once again struggled to get free.

"The hell with that, like I'm going in there," the bandit with the Kalashnikov shot back. "Yeah sure, I walk into that room and then I get my friggin' head blown off, that's a great idea, Yuriy."

"They just can't hear you," the other bandit replied in annoyance, spreading his arms out to his sides to gesture the obvious. "There's no way that girl killed both of them, just go in there and-"

The bandit pinning the Germanian to the floor hadn't realized at that moment that he had actually let go of her arms, allowing them free range of movement. Kirche's hands both shot out desperately, searching for anything that she could use against these men. She quickly found that something.

A short length of rebar on the debris covered floor, complete with a fist-sized clump of concrete still desperately clinging to the end.

She swung ferociously, cutting the bandit off mid-sentence as the concrete hanging on the end of the metal bar crumbled against the side of his head. The man slumped forward onto Kirche with a groan, now barely conscious.

"What the fuck!?" The AKM wielding bandit cried out, approaching Kirche with the weapon at hip level. "You fucking bitch! I'll-"

BLAM!

The Kalashnikov clattered to the floor as the bandit stumbled forward as a result of a gunshot wound through his midsection. He cried out in shock, until a second bullet tore through his back and into his chest cavity. He hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, gurgling blood for a few moments before he became still.

Kirche rolled the semi-conscious man off, genuinely surprised to see Louise swiftly striding in her direction, revolver in hand and her face an emotionless mask. The redhead shakily rose to her feet, the bruises she had received throbbing painfully. She wiped at her bleeding nose, her eyes stuck on Louise as she grew closer.

On the ground, the single living bandit in the building began to regain himself despite the agony occurring on the inside of his skull. The first thing to greet his cleared vision was a pink-haired girl that was holding what he knew to be his friend's revolver.

"Shit!" He propped himself up, shuffling backward a few feet. The revolver was raised as Louise came within the final few steps, leveled directly at his face. "J-Just wait a-"

The last thing Yuriy the bandit ever saw was the revolver's cylinder spinning over onto the next cartridge.

Kirche stood with mouth agape, her eyes fixed on the bandit's cracked open and profusely leaking cranium. "L-Louise... you... you just..." Her gaze moved over to the pinkette's face, which still remained a stoic mask. "Are you...?"

The weight of what Louise had just done seemed to have hit her all at once, welling up in her like an angry storm. Taking a few wobbly steps to the side, the revolver hit the floor as Louise collapsed to her knees and promptly began vomiting everything out of her stomach.

"Louise!" Kirche exclaimed, stumbling on a twisted ankle as she rushed to her friend's side. She crouched next to the heaving girl, finding that there was blood leaking from the corners of her mouth with an unhealthy amount mixed with the bile and semi-digested food on the floor. "Oh God, Louise are you alright!? Louise!"

The pinkette turned her head to regard the Germanian as she placed a hand on her shoulder. Breathing like she had just run a marathon, Louise couldn't think of a single thing to say to the girl next to her.

She was most certainly not alright.

After a few moments of opening and closing her mouth in attempts to get a word out, Louise opted to wipe at it instead, smearing the blood on her face.

"Kirche..." Louise finally managed to croak out, weakly gazing into the redhead's eyes. "Let's..." Another dry heave hit, cutting her off momentarily. She took a few deep breaths before continuing. "Let's just get our things, a-and put this place behind us."

Glancing back at the two bodies in the room with them, Kirche nodded to the pinkette, easily getting on board with Louise's newest idea.


The first thing Tabitha noticed when she woke up, was that it was rather breezy compared to when she had fallen asleep. She could also hear the sound of something hitting against metal.

Her eyes snapped open, realizing that she didn't remember when she had last settled down to sleep. Her eyes open, the world was a blur around her. She was missing her glasses. She began feeling out around her, running her hands over the strange metal surface she had been lying on.

The glasses were quickly found, and Tabitha eagerly returned them to her face. The world now clear, Tabitha's eyes widened slightly as she looked down. Through the grated steel surface, she could see that she was definitely over one- hundred feet off of the ground. The wind gusted, and the sound of something smacking against a metal surface reached her ears once more as Tabitha stared out at the landscape around her.

Tabitha had woken up on top of a radio tower, by herself, in the middle of a forest.


A/N: Aaaand we're back. Yay. Not much to say other than if you've been wanting more Zone adventures with Louise and friends, well, here you go.

Also, we've got a new cover, which I think is awesome.