Backed into a corner...like a rat. Like filthy rats, ready to be exterminated. Though, you cannot dart one way or another, evade capture, enrapturing me further to find and kill you...I have you now. Dear boy, so fervent in your attacks...you look almost like him. Like Kliff...I see it in you, as I saw in him. That, despite your short comings as a human, and though I put no human on stature, as they are all pathetic whelps, you shine...oh how you do. Like Kliff, I see it in you, I see how you can come over your boundaries as a human and as a person, doing the extraordinary, going the extra mile, doing the last you could...

It almost makes me want to let you live. I would have liked to have seen us in the future, you and me Kiske, just us, battling, face to face or even through one of my minions, one of my Gears. I could see it...

Here, in Lyon. Then, in Venice. Maybe a little tour by Dresden-3, which I hear is slowly turning 4. A battle in the sharp sands of Africa, and maybe a small offensive stint over in the lower Asia, on the sands of the Philippines, you and me, dueling it out with water around our feet, blades mashing, your blood and sweat compensating for this body I wear...

But, I cannot let it. You will die, here, tonight, Kiske. I wonder who will succeed you, if anybody. If another young person of service will jump up into that blue uniform and lead the world to another round of death and destruction against me...or if it'd fall into peril. What would happen with the strength of man when its savior was killed, would it crumble under the structural posts made of its own hands, the fingers not able to hold the corpse of its salvation? I'll soon see...morning rise over your dead body, the strewn dead of Lyon, these buildings sitting as modifiers, playing light through cracks and holes blown through to either illuminate or cast you in shadow by the aging sun, waxing from its rise to its death, your death eternal.

What would they do if I let them have your body? Would they parade it in the streets of whatever city was most holy at the time, people crying, even Kliff showing up to pay his gratitude to his fallen successor...now twice. Women would be crying in the streets, holding children in fear of knowing they'd be short of time to ever hold again, people throwing themselves from buildings, conviction of death soon. The streets would be lined with believers of Christ, praying a resurrection, praying something, so that their lives would be saved, clutched bible and crucifix in hand. There'd be priests standing above crowds of people kneeling, all praying for God to save them, even the priest wary in words, hands trembling as he read scripture, unsure of even God's own existence in recent events...

Or, I'd let the body rot here, decay devouring it, blood drained and have it slung up over the north side of the town, for symbolic purposes, and for the next parties coming in seeing their savior hanging by his own sinew. Would they know of your death, Ky? Or would they send another team to save you, like at the Parisian Headquarters? Only time will tell, and your death.

Yet, I would have liked to have known you, Kiske. Asides from our previous encounter at the Parisian Headquarters, you and I had no real offensive together...you were in Tibet, I know that, part of the new recruits at the time, yet who you were, your importance...none of it mattered to me. Only after putting on that blue-lined robe and wielding that sword, the sword which is in every way a symbol of hatred and defeat of me...it's very existence both clarifying my own by nature and damning me...I knew it was you, you who would lead the war further. And unlike Kliff, who I had always seen to never know the end of the war, you had that look in your eyes on that elevator...you knew the war would end one way or another in coming time, and you'd make sure of it.

So, would you kill me, if I let you live? Lead an offensive against me, slay me down, save humankind, kill the Gear scourge, and do it all in the name of God? I am rather certain you could...you would stab me dead, looking over my corpse with finality, and you'd do it with the same glee I have when I stab down humans...I know you would, I see it. When you fight, how you move, your face...you love battle, you love Gears, you love the killing and the excitement of it, only entailing a personal grievance later in finding joy in it. You are not alone, dear Commander...I too enjoy it, I was made for it, I was entirely built for this, the killing, the bloodshed, the battle...you and I, I assume.

I, crafted from the hands of men to make men more powerful, but they made me too powerful for them, and I killed them all...those bastards who experimented on me, in that tube...for years, I can remember, halfway awake, halfway asleep...a burning tingle always keeping me awake, a stab that had no insurging point, a slow oozing wound that didn't exist, toying at me...floating in that tube of blue liquids, I could see you all sitting outside, tapping it with marked ardor, recording down the readings on clip boards, running to monitors and computers, talking amongst each other, then subjecting me to more tests...

I don't even know what they made me from...was I a human? Was I some field animal, brought in and manipulated until my brain could remember...the neurons bombarded until they had super-human qualities? Or, was I like Frederick, a test patient human, who then became something more...I dwell on it so often. Yet, Ky, you are a mere human, crafted from the hands of God, born to a mother and father unknown, and yet rising above your human limits...leading the offensive against Gears world wide as only a child, sixteen years old...the weight of the world on your shoulders, yet you aptly hold it up, staring back at the world who presses down harder upon you, your legs in iron, not budging.

But, your creator...you serve with interest, with love. Mine, I dealt them their toll. That one day...it was in 2074...I knew it had to be, since later, soon there after, by days or weeks, I took control of the small outpost, the computers wiring them to me and my suit, and I assumed control over the Gears...I started the war. That day though...they all were gathered, faces distorted by the mucus like liquid and the convex of the glass, and slowly, the liquids emptied from holes in the bottom of the tube, my feet touching ground for the first time I can remember, my body slowly crumpling against one side, muscles never used before, my eye sight terrible from never having truly used them...and the tube slowly slid down too. I was suspended in place by the wires and ropes that had me strung to the ceiling of the tube, suspending me like a doll...I looked up, their faces burned into my memory, joyous and laughing, popping bottles of wine and enjoying their success: me.

Slowly, I gathered my strength as they socialized and were unaware that I was more than a reason to get drunk...ripping wires from my flesh, I fell to the ground, slowly stood. One lady noticed me, screamed, but I quickly grabbed her entire face in my palm, crushing her bones together, and threw the obese women in a red dress into three other scientists...killing all of them, as they smashed into an electrical switchboard. The lights went off with that...my vision, acclimated by them, showing me their frantic running at the situation, going for doors and escape hatches, but I killed them...everyone of them, and they deserved it. I loved it...their deaths were justified, what they did to me, and I took pleasure in killing them, ripping parts off of their bodies to examine...look at the human body, think, learn...and soon, I found the suit, found their experiments, and foolish of them to leave it all for me...and then, I assumed command...I started this war you fight, Kiske.

What am I saying...I'm trying to talk to you, though I cannot...tell my words, tell my story to who, a human? Ha, pathetic...not dignified, especially not him. Maybe you, Kliff...but not him. And, what have I done? Left Siren to dictate a battle...not a terrible idea, but neither a good one. You are a trusted companion, Siren, though I do not trust you as far as I should or can, being written by humans and you thus being faulty...yet, I have tried, many times, to write a better battle A.I., a more useful and overall helping integrated program, but you are the best, my love...a constant reminder, even after the last human is slain, that I will always be a part of their race, unavoidable, from you...

Switch units 679B to 198O to manual control, offensive pattern Q. Re-route subdirectories of Gear soldier instincts to overclocked procedure 8P. Forget the caution, do it. Yes, encircle...kill them all. Take the aft rows, pull them back and around...bring them across the buildings behind the cul-de-sac, close them in from all sides...initiate protocol 12-41G. Come on, Kiske...let me see what you have, show me your life, show me all of it, give your very best, fight your bones raw, fight till your soul has to be pried from you...because this is your night to die, and if you were smart, you'd fight with it all, instead of spending an eternity regretting it...

Bolts of electricity jumped through the Gears, one Gear taking the initial attack, falling dead as the blue rose out of it and jumped to three near it, the uholy sparks taking with it as many Gears as it could, the magic infused into their DNA acting like a conductor to the equally magically-created electricity, drawing it near to them, the bolts being not like the true bolts of electricity, but more so the abomination of Frederick, Gear killing weapons through and through.

Ky took one slash horizontal, turning to another set of Gears and another horizontal slash, drips of sweat cascading off of his face as he suddenly jerked side to side, swinging without hitting Gear, but knowing that he didn't need to. The cries echoed in the night, filling the empty hallways and rooms of the city in ruin, falling on dead ears of both man and Gear, the cul-de-sac only shooting the death back at them.

A soldier next to Ky contended with his own Gear, their swords bashing together blow after blow, blocking and side stepping. It took one vertical slash, which the lieutenant side stepped, a quick jab to its face sending it stepping back with its hind foot, then a stab through its torso, it only looking up at him grunting and then raising its arm to attack again, impervious to the pain. The soldier tried removing his sword to attack, but the Gears free hand wrapped around the edge of it, the open and haggard jaw dripping with saliva, hitting on its flesh-rotten knees, cascading off of torn and shredded muscles below. It tugged harder on the blade, ripping through its own back, as to make sure the human would be in its trajectorial swing, the soldier tugging on the grip as hard as he could, eyes switching back and forth between his sword and the enemies, who was coming down upon him.

There! He'll die! Do something, Kiske! Don't let another soldier die you could save...no, we can't do anything, we'll get killed, he's five feet away and a second of time...think, move, do something! Have faith, hope! Ky took one more quick slash, the brilliant blue illuminating the hidden faces of Gears in front of him before he sprinted to his left, lowering his shoulder and smashing into the lieutenant, sending him to the tar ground, his arm a battering ram as he hit. The Gear wasn't quick enough to respond to the new query, its blade coming down equally vertically, hitting Kiske who know was lying on the ground from where he had tackled the other soldier out of the way. Kiske held his right fore arm up, trying to shield his face, the blade cracking into the poly-carbon plastic blue armor plate, the Seikishidan issue gauntlet the two halves held on his forearm by a belt, it cracking inward with a sickening split, the blade still digging into his flesh, only partially because of the armor, since if it were absent, he'd have no hand.

Ky gasped in pain, grunting, then brought up his sword, in left hand, the Gear reeling back from the lifting elevator of electricity sending it hurling backward, flesh eaten off of bone before it ever landed, ashes sprinkling the heads of Gears behind it.

"Thank you, sir!" the lieutenant gasped in wide eyes.

"Fight!" Ky yelled at him, swinging at another Gear as he stood. The soldier nodded, finding a sword attached to a now dead Seikishidan, prying the fingers off of the hilt, and then running head first into the crowd of Gears to fight again.

The stagnant offensive had the Seikishidan spread thin in an arc across the cul-de-sac, the Gears on offense pushing them inward, buckling from the soldiers being killed and the numbers dwindling. The total that had come to the cul-de-sac before being picked off must have been not much higher than a hundred and fifty, of roughly five hundred and fifty who made the trip...it was a quick massacre. Here, the Gears, probably numbering over thee hundred, were trying to drive humans from their abode.

Lyon didn't need the sort of large scale attack force of over ten thousand, like the Seikishidan H.Q. did, merely because it was destroyed. Lyon had been recolonized by radical fundamentalists trying to find a new home, build their own, maybe Lyon-2. They came through the ruined Lyon, only setting up life in the center of the city, leaving the outskirts as destroyed as they had sat for years and years. They were a peaceful colony, living free of the U.N. jurisdiction and Gears, neither parties seeing a few crazy Mormons as anything to monitor. They slowly grew, maybe about 1500 before the Gears came, and with no Seikishidan to help them, it fell, about three or four weeks before the siege at the Parisian base.

Obviously, the Gears took Lyon as a pinnacle strategy point in Western Europe, able to send attacks to many places from there, and the offensive to Paris stemmed from there. They were gaining passage to Lyon rather effortlessly, having slaughtered all resistance on the way, Lyon being kind of an alcove for Gears to stagnate in until they were needed. Most had been sent to the Seikishidan H.Q., and most killed there, the thousands of bodies, human and Gear, people counted by the U.N. in the previous few days. So, Lyon was weak, but still, not that weak.

The inner city had more carnage than the outskirts, when they entered, simply because it was the hub of life. The more people and procreation, they slowly expanded outward, rebuilding ruins and finding new homes, but staying close to the center of the city with the rest of the town folk, mainly for protection. Though, the Gears slaughtered them without much fuss, and now we find the Seikishidan fighting back for strategic positioning. No body wants a Gear settlement in the heart of Western Europe. In plus, if there was a Gear settlement there, it means that they'd have to be coming from somewhere close by, but still out of the way enough where Lyon was a better warfare hub...maybe across the Mediterranean or somewhere in Africa? I know the answer...history does too...do you, reader?

The back row of Gears suddenly snapped to attention, new orders received, and they split around, the center buckling either left or right, and each respective sides following, leaping about the backs of the road and around. The soldiers in front though could not see, their vision obscured by three rows in front of them, and the heat of battle, to notice about fifty missing Gears. Though, it would prove a very bad mistake.

As the battle waged on, Gear bodies lying down dead on the tar, followed by the slap of a corpse of a human, their equal bloods pooling and mixing on the ground as boots and rancid feet trampled over and around them for footing, continuing to mutter cries of battle, echoes of clashes and merges of sword richocheting through the graveyard of Lyon as a ghastly reminder.

The Gears made haste around each respective side, where the cul-de-sac looped around to a normal street behind, flowing through the alleyways, up the sides of buildings, some pushing through walls inside of the old diner, busting over tables and walls, to merge behind, a small alley seperating the buildings of that street from the back of the buildings in the cul-de-sac.

And, they came over. They slowly started to climb over the small bazaars and homes, making their presence not known, red eyes perusing the battle in front, the white coats kicking up by feet jumping back and forth with agility to dodge attacks. The Gears put their bodies flat, all four legs being used as props, slowly progressing over the one story buildings, down to the street, where they slowly approached, like a locust storm taking time to fully blot out the sun in the sky.

"You stupid sons of bitches...I know what you got planned Justice..." Sol muttered with a grin, his boot on the skull of a Gear, legs broken and toppled over, its last few breaths cut short as his boot crushed in the bones on its face, the breath escaping through bloody orifices that it could meander. He suddenly turned, his sword transferred to his left hand, his right in a punch with his entire body weight behind it.

The slow crawling Gear had rose off the ground, ready to stab him from behind, when the sudden and lightning quick, no pun intended, punch hit it, its ribcage buckling in under the force of the punch, his fist covered in a slimy sinew of bone and rotten blood, the Gear falling dead flat over his fist which he removed, the body splatting down the ground, the rest of the enemy now surging to life knowing that their secrecy blown, reverting to other optional battle routing.

He quickly shot up his left hand, the blade following in tow, spurts of flames jumping off of it as it sliced through one Gear, its wound blown open by a trailing plume of flame, the fire surging through bone and organ until the body lay as a lifeless skin, smoke rippling through the holes in its outer layer. In quick succession, he took another stab, a swift kick, and a downward stab, killing three Gears with a lethal precision in each blow, completely contradictory to the unrefined style and panache that one would associate with Sol Badguy. Brutish, yes. Unrefined, yes. Unskilled, no. He may have had his own, lazy style in his fighting as he had in life, but he was precise in the unrefined manner of it. There was a skill to being a lazy type of person, and a very arrogant, apathetic one also, that he had mastered even in his fighting.

The splashes of red and orange, contrasting the blue piercing of night, gave a few soldiers, notably Rivarez, reason to turn, after dispatching his current Gear, seeing the foe behind him.

"Watch your back!" he screamed to the soldiers around him, then entangled in their own affairs, everything else in the world completely useless to them...only the battle in their minds...fatigue, gone, tiredness, gone, a breathless exhaustion, gone, just to kill the Gear, anticipate its move, counter attack, continue fighting...

Rivarez was quick to dodge an oncoming Gear, the now sprinting enemy being sidestepped, the blade coming down low, its ankles being chopped off, the Gear alive, but now tumbling forward, hitting into two other Gears who trailed Rivarez since he turned, the arced offensive now breaking inward, leaving no buffer of space from the buildings of the cul-de-sac to the Seikishidan's backs. They all stood up, even the ankle-less one, with wavering balance, and attacked Rivarez, who after taking another slash at another Gear running at him from the same direction of coming from the buildings of the cul-de-sac, quickly turned, facing them, seeing the small fifty-Gear sneak attack merging with the white coats.

They quickly ran at him again, him returning the run, both hands gripped tight, a yell emitted from his Spanish lungs, like the conquistadors of his past and the glory of a people long gone, stories his grandmother would have told him as a child as he sat on a rug she had knitted herself, before she gave him to the Seikishidan at 10 to be trained, her already dying of terminal illness, his parents long since dead. He never saw her again, and knew she died, but held onto hope maybe she wasn't.

He swung his sword in a forward arc once, gaining momentum, the second forward vertical arc slashing into the hands of a Gear, who brought its sword up to block horizontally, but him not hitting the blocking blade, instead his own slash angled as to take off three fingers holding up the blade. He continued running though, the forward slash only wrapping around his body as he quickly turned, making it a horizontal follow up to the next Gear who had not anticipated his continuing forward from the living Gear he had immobilized as far as it weapon had gone. It was quickly killed, the third Gear, without ankles, trying to attack, but stumbling on top of itself, quick to feel a stab through its back for penance. The now fingerless Gear tried rushing on Rivarez, who smirked with his position, a fourth class sergeant, absolute highest in the Seikishidan order, short of being commander, kicking it in the gut with a quick twist of his body, followed with a diagonal slash, separating the Gear into two halves, it falling down dead. He stood there for a moment, blade at the tip of its slash, the globulous blood dripping from the sword, his hair dropping over his face, a smirk of satisfaction at battle, the Seikishidan allowing him to be and do what he loved, indulging in it a second, before turning to another few Gears, and running at them with fervent battle cries, the sweat dripping off and into the night darkness behind him.

Hearing the screams to watch his back, Jaygus quickly stabbed his own Gear in the neck, removing the sword as quick as it entered, the Gear dropping its sword from the lack of a functional spinal chord, falling to its knees, choking out a double voice, a whine of liquidy death, before falling dead, the last breath drowning in its own blood. The oncoming Gear from behind's slash was quickly parried off of his own sword, three small slats finding way into its torso as the succession stabs found soft flesh between the ribs, it taking a step back for each stab, though not dying. After the three, Jaygus took a deep breath, his slicked back black hair in front of his eyes now, the gray out of his sight, on the roots, feeling the sweat off of his head and hair falling down to his own suit and the ground, absorbing into the dark hair and dripping in front of his gray eyes.

It trotted forward now, a sense of anger in it, the attack it had readied, a stab back, dodged. Jaygus quickly jumped to the side, nimble despite age, the Gear turning as it saw Jaygus jump, but its weapon not following, and the successive slash ending its life, falling flat and dead.

Taking a brief second from the kill, staring down at it, then at the Gears ahead, surveying his next adversary, he noticed something.

"Sir!" he screamed to Ky, whose head he could not find in the darkness, only by the blue flashes that were there and gone in the same moments, knowing he heard it despite looking at him. "Their numbers dwindle! God shows us His graces!" he said with a smile and a hoarse voice, not able to truly tell the depth of Ky from his waning eye sight, slowly itching from the sweat trickling into it, but not primary to him, since his vision had been slowly deteriorating on his left side for years, the next Gear who had found him as a target, coming up. He raised his sword again to attack, and merged with the Gear.

The words went to the ears of all humans, whether or not they knew they heard it, it was there, subliminally. It gave them hope...a renewed strength, them holding their jaws tight from the open and gasping position to attack with another hard slash, killing another Gear, yelling as they engaged another, thinking that if they killed this Gear..it'd be the last, they'd be alive, then after it was lying dead at their feet, the next. And, if they died, they really didn't, no slash, no stab, would hurt them, they felt it, then they pushed it out of their mind, attacking their attacker, then finding another Gear, only falling dead when their legs wouldn't raise them to fight and arms wouldn't hold sword, last breath defiant to the end of God's willingness to grasp soul from flesh.

The humans had dwindled, but not as much as the Gears...sixty humans left, probably about less than fifty Gears, their numbers had been shot down by Ky Kiske and his weapon, as well as Sol Badguy, both being amazing soldiers on the battlefield. Also, the help of soldiers as talented as Jaygus or Rivarez surely helped ascertain these staggering statistics, the arc that they were holding Gears off from, now breaking into small sections and pockets of humans and Gears, four or five Seikishidan soldiers, back together, killing anything that moved, knowing inherently friend and foe, the damned Gears face emerging from shadow to the wraith like slats of silver to be shoved back to darkness with their swords.

Ky was shoved back as well by an onslaught of a few Gears, circling him, each of their attacks being fended off by a spark off of his own sword as they bounced off of the triple tempered steel, his boots sliding across the small rubble, pushing him back. One more slash blocked, he fell backward because of the impact upon him, falling backward onto his face as he turned mid air, then sprinting forward, hearing a smash of a sword on the ground in the wake of where he was a moment ago. A few steps and he turned, seeing the Gears in pursuit, knowing what was to his back as well...a small shop.

The shop had a cloth valence up over the top, a table and chairs sitting under it, where people would have come to sit and have coffee on an afternoon day, looking out upon the cul-de-sac. The table was sitting against a wall, buckled inward, chairs strewn about. The glass window to the store had been completely broken, a force thrown at it from the outside buckling it inward from the shards littering more inside than out, the body barely visible in a faint corner, maggots eating through his clothes.

One of them rushed at him, swinging and its sword blocked, momentum not stopped though, Ky hearing it hit into the wall of the shop, bricks bending inward, it pushing off of it again to rebound attack at Ky. Though Ky had slashed his sword at the Gear who had slid past him, turning as he did, sending a long arrow of electricity, feeding off of his own sword to the Gears, whose first step forward was shot backward into the wall again, bursting through it into the shop, the counter ripped apart by the Gear's body as it found a solace in the darkness, smoke rising from the bones, next to the human body it could have thrown inside the building on a day prior.

Another Gear came at Ky, this one taking an approach with a second in tow, to try and overwhelm Kiske. The first stopped short, not wanting to overshoot the enemy as its predecessor had, Justice learning to adapt his forces, its swing's tip barely grazing Ky's block, who took the moment he had for it to stop the momentum of its weapon to attack again to rush in with a quick shoulder tackle, the Gear moving only one foot back to compensate. Atlas rolled off, his own shoulder taking a battering from impacting with bone, but the second Gear in tow only targeting Kiske, and seeing it so close to its kin, slashed at Ky, who bouncing off of his tackle to the outside, was no longer there, the Gear sword slicing through its brethren.

Ky's free hand massaged his shoulder, looking at the Gear who now approached with a slight malicious grin on it, or maybe he had only thought he saw it, either way, it was approaching. He made quick work of it, waiting for it to approach, leaning on his back leg, and when it was a foot from him, leaping forward, trailing his sword in an upward arc with him, his feet leaving the ground in a jump by a foot at most, the Gear's hunched position as it ran catching the upwardly-arced slash full, the electricity ripping through its chest all the way to its back, flying backwards a few feet, off of its own feet, tumbling when it hit the ground, rolling as it did, the smell of rotten flesh burning and smoke rising from the carcass better left for darkness to consume.

He ran up to another pair of soldiers, fending off the attacks of Gears on their bilnd sides, catching the Gear each had from behind, both side to side, human and Gear. Hs slashed horizontally for one, splitting its spine, vertically the other, the electricity covering what inaccuracies he had with his blade. The two fell dead, the soldiers now seen to Ky, instead of the blocking Gear bodies both stunned and thankful of Ky, then jumping over the carcasses to the next few humans.

And so it went, the few humans banding together, mopping up the last of the Gears, teaming up and dealing with the last. Though, no soldiers ran to Sol's help, none had dared to go to his aid, and in plus, he didn't need it.

Three Gears surrounded him, none posing a threat as they cautiously circled him, his back against the wall of an old public library, arms crossed, watching the Gears. They were each methodical in their steps and movements, programming assessment and calculation of how to handle him. His blade rested downward of one of his hands, sitting crossed, the tip touching the wall he was leaning on also, the brick melting slowly.

"Enough of this horse shit" he spat out, hitting a Gear who seemed impervious to the mucus. He followed the spitting with a slash of his sword, so quick that he was leaning to attacking that the Gears couldn't even calculate his speed or a counter-measure, find adequate battle programming and definition to reroute it to, only left stunned for a moment as to what to do. And a moment was their fate.

In that moment, the one falling down dead, flames rampaging over the incision, burning off the flesh like it was fuel to the pyres, he quickly made one slash to the opposite one, the blade ripping through its kidney, or where it should have been, the flames entering its abdomen and ripping out through the slats in its ribcage, the billowing flame unable to be caged, especially not by a cage of bone.

For the other he kneeled down, then jumped up with his free fist, essentially upper cutting it, his massive and sometimes inhuman strength launching the augmented creature, of weight excess of 250 pounds, off of its feet. It flew up about three feet before heading back down to the ground, where in the span of only another moment, Sol had readied a mid-level kick, knocking the body of the Gear in a flying downward-spiral until it connected with the outside wall of the library, cracking the brick and stone inward, the top floor of the two-floor building crumpling slightly street ward, a shelf of books falling into one of the walls, a glass window that had amazingly not been broken, suffering that fate, as the tip of the shelf pierced it, raining down shards, as well as a few loose books on its shelves falling streetward.

Sol only smirked at his handiwork, the shards of glass bouncing off of his shoulders, hitting the ground as it littered the small burning corpse, the flames reaching out to the books littered on the ground, engulfing them in flame also, a small camp fire in front of him, his work magnificent.

He turned slowly, a devilish smirk on his face, seeing Ky slash down the last Gear in his way with a feral scream of anger, the legless Gear looking up in defiance before the blade was brought down to kill it. Kiske sat there for a moment, hunched over himself, breathing hard, seeing the corpse ridden with the infesting blue electricity, peeling back on itself, a light hiss as it did so, taking in the morbid smell. He slowly stood, looking around at the thirty or so Seikishidan soldiers left, all of them equally looking for more Gears, then seeing Sol.

"Yeah, we won" he said, words echoing among their returning senses. The few remaining soldiers looked around, sensing more Gears, unable to see them, gloves gripped firm on swords, at which Ky had to grab them by their jittery shoulders, calming them. They slowly sheathed their swords, unable to think or move now that the adrenaline was removing itself from them, further enhanced by a fading darkness. Then, they each took to what roles came to them.

A few soldiers walked together, talking, joking a little as if the battle won seconds before, the wheezing of the dead Gear behind them like nothing out of the ordinary. A few other soldiers crowded together, sitting down on rubble, leaning against pieces of walls, huddled around a small fire, burning on the skeletal frame of a small shop, providing some warmth. Others just simply fell down, eyes scanning the horizon of bodies littered everywhere, blood lining the streets like a reflective ribbon, draining down to the sewage hatches they had walked not earlier than a day ago, dripping solitary in as it had three weeks prior, but this time, it was different. Humans stood looking at that flowing blood, not Gears. Splats of it were seen in small spots on their uniforms, a few long splats from the bursting of a Gear on cut, blood marks of other humans bloods, from holding a dying friend earlier that night, or of their own. And, a few soldier cried, death and life catching up to them and sitting on them with the weight of the world.

A small thunk echoed as a piece of rubble was sat up, an old table, a Gear sword stabbed through it, lined with brown blood. One of the four soldiers gathered round slowly pried the sword from the wood, tossing it aside with a lifeless clank, sitting on a big rock boulder near the table. He reached into his boot, and brought out an old deck of cards, worn at the edges and yellowed by the touch of hands over the years, the other three crowding around, him dealing, echoing the words "Texas Hold 'Em". Ky, upon seeing it, remembered the small card in his own boot, the three of hearts.

The sun rose over the buildings slowly, the darkness of night now fading as the moon's qualm with the encircling clouds being swept under the rug of a lifting purple, the sky shooting the purple and orange rays like chariots racing through the heavens in anticipation of the real show to happen, the golden sun spilling through the wrecked buildings and bodies of human and Gear alike, shining uncaringly, just rising over them, without either a hint of favor in either side, just seeing Ky staring back up at it, victorious, and congratulating it, as it would have congratulated Justice, had he won, simply and invariably giving a shake of hands for posterity, no real feeling or real indulging sense of victory or not.

But, they were victorious...Lyon was theirs.

Zeronova's Notes:
More of the sun symbolism and characteristics (I love using the moon/sky/sun as good symbols and modifiers as the story, if you didn't notice). Also, we have the finale of the Lyon battle, which turned out pretty damned well, and actually took me from middle of the night until dawn to write, ironically. Yet, it worked out perfectly, I think...and should be a good read to you to. Now, the original DG ended after Lyon was won, or slightly after, which means this is the official end of the scripted DG (not story wise, but I never posted a chapter after it)...going into uncharted territory, wow. It feels wonderful...and I feel great about the upcoming, ain't stopping here, we have so much more, readers...we have a story to wrap up, and in no less than another 100k words!
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