What's this? Me actually uploading when I say I'm going to upload? Holy Sh-
I really ought to warn you, shit gets pretty dark in this chapter. The only thing that comes close in PW is my first chapter...So 'insert trigger warning here' and all that...
Well, Thanks to the two of ya that favorited last chapter, awesome, and thanks Cornova for reviewing, as ye always do. Haven't written dark in a while...lets see if I've gotten rusty. Give me your thoughts, if you would be so kind, helps out more than a little bit.


From somewhere in his sleeve, a small scalpel fell into Scar's hand. He gave me one final look before drawing the razor-edged tool over the sheets that held the door shut. He quickly threw the door open and took a position facing the door, kneeling on one leg and gun held at the ready. All was quiet. No gunshots, no screaming, not even the sound of leathery wings bellowing in the air.

He gestured for me to move out. It seemed safe enough, though that was hardly an indicator of anything. I took a hesitant step out under the clear sky…And fell flat on my face.

A terrible, terrible high-pitched ringing permeated the air outside. It was not so intense that it had immobilized me, but the shock and pain of such a painful and irritating noise was enough to send me sprawling, dropping the soldier, who groaned in mild discomfort.

"So you hear it now?" Scar appeared beside me, scanning the skies warily "Then hopefully you understand. Rise."

As ordered, I rose to my feet and picked up the soldier "What on Earth is that noise?"

"Move" Scar ordered pushing me lightly in the back "It will not last forever. We head for the front gate."

Again, I complied "What is it though?"

"For one who asks no questions, you ask many questions." Scar said unamused "It is a clever trick. I had heard of an unfortunate fate of another town on the mountainside before arriving here, but I could not communicate what to be done about it, and the commander would have dismissed me as an idiot foreigner. Rui, Wes, and I… tampered with some equipment we got our hands on just in case."

We turned a corner, and suddenly the illusion of calm was gone. Where the field of tents once stood, bodies lie everywhere. Some were soldiers, some were civilians. Some were dried like prunes, cut to pieces, or swollen and purple- as though their entire bodies were dominated by sagging bruises, stuck in many places by purple needles.

All were gruesome.

To the credit of the dead, there was no shortage of dead zubat, and even a few golbat in the field of corpses. Shot or crushed or torn limb from limb.

It made little difference in the end. It would not bring them back from the dead. Nor would it make the memory any less haunting.

'If it wishes to haunt me, it will have to get in line.'

I looked down, next to my foot two dismembered arms- a child's and a man's, the latter's holding the former's from the wrist and lying on top of it, as if to shield the child. A cursory glance about the field of corpses yielded many potential former owners. Children weren't common in the camp from my memory, but they were not terribly uncommon. Wherever a child's corpse could be seen, a man or woman lay on top of it.

It was futile, of course. Both members of each pair were either dry to the bone or had long bled out. The armless pair was no different.

A force pressed against my back, keeping one foot in front of the other and Scar's calm voice registered in my ear "We also made many, many explosives, if another even would occur- not all of which could have detonated. I will attend to this, I must check the bodies for my comrades as well." Scar's voice changed slightly, offering the smallest twinge of sympathy "The scavenger's will not have them, and should the bats return they will not survive the encounter. Continue to the gate, I will meet with you there."

And then he was gone. I was free in every sense of the word. I took one final look at the carnage.

"Well, this sucks."

I continued to the front gate with the soldier in tow. There was nothing here worth anything.


Of the three hundred soldiers stationed at the base and the two hundred civilians under their care, only about thirty soldiers and forty civilians were gathered at the gate. Judging from the carnage, no more would be joining us.

I would have considered forty survivors a fortunate number, fifty a miracle, but the seventy before me defied my grandest expectations. Judging from the scorched Earth and shrapnel, as well as the many, many randomly assorted zubat parts around and beyond the fence, numerous bombs likely contributed to the large number of survivors. Scar's handiwork, no doubt, and his little gang of angry assorted Orrians.

Unfortunately, of the seventy survivors, if things kept going as they were, one group was likely to be wiped out by the other in the next few minutes.

I didn't entirely understand the situation. But the soldiers appeared to be holding a defensive line facing into the camp, the commander (of all the people to survive) at the head of the group, out of his element and staring down the group of civilians clamoring to leave immediately. The civilians weren't much more civil; most of the men stood at the head of the group, surrounding the women and children in a tight formation as they yelled angrily at the soldiers. Towards the back of the group a number of men and women stared at the debacle in an apathetic silence- clearly grief stricken and shell shocked.

Towards the front of the angry men, a somewhat short woman with short black hair and a pale complexion exercised her lungs and vocal cords to the greatest extent she could manage, furious and each word she uttered shaved another inch off the man's ego- the only thing the distressed man had to prop him up. He ignored the group at first, but as he weathered their words he found himself goaded into first calming the crowd, then yelling. From my place off to the side the situation seemed dangerously volatile, and felt the urge to inch away from the expanding conflict.

Then the tension snapped. The woman in the front said something- I couldn't make out exactly what, but it was most likely something incredibly stupid. The commander's face immediately went slack. Two of the men in the front- both relatively young, probably in their mid-twenties- yelled next, gesturing wildly, and the commander's face twisted in contempt and fury. One of the men, his baggy clothes hanging loosely off of his scrawny limbs, stepped forward, the top of his bald head nearly hitting the taller soldier's nose. My teeth gritted together and quickly silenced the small part of myself that urged me to look away.

It was stupid, completely and utterly stupid.

Regardless of how competent or incompetent of a commander he might have been, he was still six inches taller, forty pounds heavier, and a soldier. By comparison, the man blowing his top so close to the commander that he could smell his breath looked like exactly what he was- a gangly young man with too much heart and not enough brains.

Two loud cracks ended the stand-off, both belligerents stumbling away from each other. Myself and several others dove to the ground, many of those in the crowd forcing children down in the same motion. The two were standing too close to tell who had fired the shot, but the soldiers- whose weapons pointed in any direction that would hit a civilian- were hesitant.

Four civilians in the front of the crowd lacked their restraint, in a bid to prove that they too were rich in brawn and short of brains, charged the nearest soldiers, armed with only hands and balls of steel.

The staccato of gunfire greeted them immediately- two of the aggressors were mowed down in an instant. Of the remaining two, one of them was shot struggling to take a gun from one the soldier's grasp. The final one delivered a swift kick to crotch of the nearest soldier, and then tackled him to the ground, wrestling his weapon from his hands. He rose, pointing and yelling demands at the other soldiers, only for several lines of red dots to paint themselves across his torso. The man, still high on his victory over the soldier rolling on the ground, staggered as each of the bullets slammed into him; each one striking a vital spot. For a second he nearly righted his stance, even as he accidently fired the weapon in his hand without thought.

Two more cracks followed, then two red holes erupted in his head- one above his right cheekbone, and another above his right eye. The man died before hitting the ground, but not without pulling the trigger again, pinning his finger against the trigger as he fell on it. For six seconds, the gun released a steady stream of gunfire, the man's body convulsing as it was struck with the vast majority of bullets.

And with that, everyone with any will left to fight was dead.

The carnage was terrible. The four belligerents were very, very dead. Add in the soldier on the ground that the final aggressor had kicked in the balls and was shot by the final wild release of gunfire, as well as the belligerent woman that was lying on the ground with her hands pressing against deep red stains on her pants to no avail, many men and women in the second row that were caught in the crossfire, a couple people in the back that didn't have the sense to duck, and a man stupid enough to get up in the face of a soldier having a very bad day.

The commander stood again at the head of the group of soldiers, dropping his pistol and falling to the ground. Blood caked his leg, whether it was his or someone else's I could not tell. Screams erupted from the group of civilians, terrible, haunting, terrified screams that drowned out the sound of the hypersonic radio waves assailing my ears. The soldier's appeared equally horrified- chances were not one of them had ever seen actual combat before, and while training could make it easy to point a gun in the direction of a roughly-human shape and pull the trigger, no such magical training existed to help good people deal with the aftermath. The Commander rose to his feet unsteadily, falling once, only to rise again, utterly silent. He looked around at the carnage, and threw his head back, his scream mixing with the chorus of terror.

I rose to my feet carefully, leaving the soldier I had been tasked with carrying where he lay. When I stood completely I gagged forcefully, a sudden wave of nausea leaving me unsteady. The nausea faded quickly, burned up by a great fury in the pit of my stomach. Someone was to blame for this. The woman for goading the men on, the man for provoking a shell-shocked soldier having a very bad day, the commander for shooting first. Someone was to blame.

The feeling fled nearly as quickly as it came, replaced by a cold cynicism. It was stupid. Stupid and pointless. No one was to blame. Everyone was at fault.

Suddenly, a very different feeling, more painful in a more literal sense. I stumbled forward, holding the back of my head, feeling as though a hammer had driven a nail into the back of my skull. Again, I stumbled, as the pain came again, and when it returned a third time, I fell to my knees. All but a single scream had gone silent. Glancing around, I found I was not the only one suffering from the sensation, almost everyone had fallen in some way or another and clutched their head in silent pain.

All but the commander.

His scream had twisted somehow, into something bordering on unnatural, forget unhuman. His voice fluctuated multiple times, each peak of his scream annunciated by another round of punishment. I appeared to fare better than the rest, even those that had run behind me in the conflict. Again, I felt a sudden need to do something, anything to stop the pain that drove into my brain like a pickaxe to the against sand.

'Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop! Do something! Anything!'

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

The urge lifted me to one knee. I felt moreso than saw something in arms reach and grasped it quickly, throwing it at the only thing that I could think was the source of the noise-the commander. From the corners of my darting eyes I watched as a piece of concrete sailed through the air and struck the soldier on his blood-soaked ankle. Another, massive spike of pain struck me, but it persisted, I could not tell how long. All the other strikes had been like a hammer driving a nail into my head, striking every side but the top of the head. This new pain was more like a drill, before it warped again, now my head felt as though it were held in a vice, slowly, slowly cracking my skull in the least efficient way possible.

I rose to my feet again, somehow, and took two steps before faceplanting into the ground.

'How many steps was that? One? Two? Four? Or did I step backwards? He looks further away, so much further…'

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

Other, while the pain was more terrible, it held patterns, it could be anticipated, and it could be adapted to. Some others seemed to do so, trying with varying degrees of failure to stand themselves.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

'Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!'

Driven forward again by the need to do anything, I managed to rise into a crouch, looking for anything that I could use. My eyes betrayed me now, the quivered so much in my sockets that everything blurred and rearranged themselves in my field of vision. My right hand appeared on my left wrist, green, blue, and purple, interrupted by brief lapses of nothing at all. There was nothing nearby I could use, this I again felt rather than saw, a clear message somehow communicated despite, or perhaps in the pain.

I heard something, something loud enough to put itself before the screaming, if only for a second. A voice? Scar's voice? Yes. What did he say?

"I will handle this!"

Between flashes of blindness I watched as Scar ran into my field of vision, stopped, swayed like a drunk, and passed out.

'My hero'

Something changed in the scream from the commander's throat, it died, then resurged, then died. The scream ended, and for a moment, so did the pain. My vision returned, as did the feeling in my arms I had not realized I had lost. I rolled onto my back, and looked back to Scar, wondering if I had miss-seen, only to find him very, very unconscious, a pool of blood forming where his nose collided with the ground.

'Then what…'

I rose from my back looked towards the commander, less than two arms' length from me. He had collapsed to a kneeling position, his jaw wide and open, his eyes sunken and staring into nothingness, haunted.

His jaw closed, then opened, then close again. Saying nothing. He reached beside him where his handgun fell, and before I could react, stuck it under his chin and pulled the trigger. The gunshot was so loud and so close it echoed, bouncing around in my ears, leaving only a terrible ringing. Warm blood spurted once from the top of his head, and pieces of pink- gray mush pelted the ground around me as the crown of his skull cracked in a freakish manner. Some of his blood struck me in the eye, sending me again to the ground in shock, where I lay a moment.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH

I gasped and curled into a ball as another terrible pain started ricocheting in my head, this one distinctly different in every way from the three others before it. It came in a scream that I felt in the bottom of my head, but it was not a scream from anything that could have ever been heard. It was more the idea of a scream. It was painful, but it was not pain. My heart seized up, , I felt as though I had been on the receiving end of a lightning bolt.

I felt fear, in its purest, rawest form. Not terror as I did in the streets of Goldenrod, not worry and the need for self-preservation I felt in the sewers. I did not feel afraid, I felt fear, as though everything I had feared had come to pass, and all that was left was the horrible echo.

The feeling came and left in an instant.

I rose to my feet, surprisingly well balanced through the whole ordeal. I was still shell-shocked from…everything. Others were starting to come to. Nobody died from the deceased commander's screams, I knew this much, somehow, though I didn't consciously dwell on it.

My conscious made me run. Through the gates and into the woods. Over a bush. Around a tree. I just ran.

A small voice in my mind looked dwelled over everything I had just left behind, the scene of the carnage, painted vividly in my head with perfect detail, was fading quickly. Sixty three people made it to that gate, Scar's late arrival included. Of them, fourteen were shot dead for no other reason than people were afraid of being afraid.

'Forty-nine made it out though. More than I was expecting. A miracle.'

I waited for a long moment, expecting another thought to follow up, rejecting it, from the part of myself I did not quite understand. Long minutes and countless trees passed before I 'heard' a reply.

"It doesn't feel like a miracle."

It almost felt like a lie.