Chapter 24: Burning off loose ends before the escape!
Vignette was throwing away spent artillery shells into a ditch when she saw a figure stumbling towards her in the distance.
"It's...it's Rin!," Vignette yelled, shaking Hensky's shoulder. She dropped a shell on the ground and they started running towards her, although the hazmat suits they wore slowed their movement as if they were moving underwater. "RIIN!"
She looked up and smiled in relief. Her hand was applying pressure on the lower part of her torso, which looked like a bullet had punched right through it. She fell to the ground in a slightly exaggerated manner, but the two picked her back up and put her arms around their shoulders.
"Are you okay?! Where's Raphie?!," Vignette asked with concern.
Rin's face was pale and her lips were blue. She struggled to keep her head up. It nodded up and down like she was about to fall asleep. If falling asleep meant she would die of blood loss.
"Shot...head...," she breathed. "She's...she's..."
The dreaded 'd' word Vignette and Hensky feared barely escaped her mouth before she passed out and went limp. Vignette gave it her all in getting the girl to the med bay underground, all the while images of a dead Raphiel flashed through her mind, her eyes wide open but colourless, slumped over on the wall with blood leaking out of the bullet hole in her head.
She couldn't stop the waterworks. To think that the angel she had met so many years ago, the one who was smiling, laughing and the very definition of what being alive meant, was ended by a single bullet? To Vignette, it didn't make sense. She couldn't accept the idea.
The Raphiel she knew was immortal. She couldn't die; not by disease, not by an explosion, let alone a single bullet. Vignette wanted to scream her doubts at Rin, about how she was simply hallucinating and that Raphiel was still alive, until she remembered that she was unconscious. They almost fell getting her down the stairs, and the ever present crowd living in the tunnels parted like a river so that they could get through. Blood poured out of Rin's entry and exit wounds, leaving a Hansel and Gretel 'esque trail of blood from the surface to the med bay. The medical staff worked with swift and practiced precision, quickly injecting a tube into her vein and feeding her body much needed blood.
Henksy comforted Vignette from the side as she looked on, although she was not worried that Rin was going to die, not in the slightest. She had seen soldiers who were shot seventeen times get better before.
She fell to her knees and stared at the red on Rin's face, the details wet and muddied due to the tears in her eyes. Her mouth was agape in quiet agony and her back slumped over like she had lost all hope. Hensky knelt down, took off Vignette's mask and cupped her hands around Vignette's cheeks.
She understood what Vignette was feeling. What it felt like to lose a loved one.
The Russian girl stood Vignette back up, so that she would be able to see the one person Hensky knew she cared about the most.
The atmosphere in the medical bay had immediately lightened up after the medicine arrived yesterday and was administered. Most people including Gabriel, had received acute radiation syndrome from being outside when the nuke hit, but most were crushed by rubble and debris. Or were stuck under it long enough for the fallout to get to them. There was a very human reaction when the ICBM detonated in Osaka. First, a bright flash of light, and everyone stopped and looked. It was like the sun descended down onto Earth. Some of the more present ones knew what was going to happen next, and ran as far away as possible. The shockwave arrived soon after, and their world came crumbling down before them in one fell swoop.
The memory replayed again and again in Gabriel's mind, like a tape cassette stuck on loop. She was sat up on her mattress, moving her arm up and down to remind it of movement. Her eyes were open but no one was home; she was reflecting back on her memories, trying to piece together some kind of lesson for her to learn.
"I should've moved quicker," she thought with regret. "If only I got there quicker none of this would've happened. Why am I so...God...I hate being like this."
She tired quick and flopped back down on the human-sized indent on her mattress, being sure not to jostle her blood tube out of her other arm. She hated the feeling of being stationary. Of being powerless and at the mercy of everything else. The more she allowed the memories to take over her mind, the more her past self began taunting her. All those times when she would yell at her body for not being strong enough during training, and when she would ignore the muscle aches in her thighs by ignoring sleep and attention. What she wouldn't give to be able to walk again, let alone run.
She did feel uncomfortable being left with her own thoughts for such a prolonged period of time, but a part of her came to guess that this might have been what she needed. Besides, Vignette was back so she didn't have the trouble of her anxiety keeping her up at night. She also brought back various nick-nacks from the surface which she scattered around Gabriel's mattress, which she couldn't help but constantly smile at. Of course, her attention with the various toys were limited by how much Gabriel could move, but the thought itself seemed to motivate Gabriel to heal faster. She turned her head to the right, which wasn't as hard as it used to be.
The stuff closest to her head was her constantly full vomit bag, a metal tripod with a blood bag hanging from the top and an assortment of medication which she had to take twice a day. Next to the lower area of the mattress was a polaroid picture of Vignette and Gabriel, a rubix cube, a teddy bear, a very thick novel, a pamphlet of Germany and an origami set. Gabriel believed that Vignette had returned with more toys in her bag than she did medicines and equipment.
Still, she found that twisting the sides of the rubix cube or flipping the pages of the novel over quickly tired her out, so she remained stationary. At least the extra plasma and medicine were healing her body up. She was able to speak now, albeit very, very quietly.
"Three pm," she thought, checking the time on her watch. "Annnnd I'm dead bored."
If there was one thing she wished Vignette had brought back, it would have been some kind of video game. If somehow she could magically bring back her laptop as well as an internet connection so that she could heal people in her MMO, then Gabriel would forever be in Vignette's debt. Although at this point, anything with a screen would be good. She missed absent-mindedly swiping her thumb up to read the next page of her manga on her phone. She missed having some kind of device in her hand and a blue light in her eyes to pass the nights when nightmares would keep her awake.
Over the past few days confined to her mattress, Gabriel had found that fantasizing was an okay substitute for manga and video games. Often they would consist of her and Vignette going on all sorts of adventures together, some real and some made up. Although she did like the made up ones slightly more than she did the real ones. After all, her daily life before the war wasn't all too interesting.
She closed her eyes and picked up where she left off from last night, a twilight forest and a beast with three heads. The creature smelt of rusted metal, a familiar smell to Gabriel after working around blood for so long. It hid in the shadows behind the large trees, eerily stalking Vignette and Gabriel who were standing still back to back.
"Remember," Vignette whispered. "The eyes. Aim for the eyes."
The purple haired blood mage sounded confident, but Gabriel could hear a slight quiver in her voice. She was scared and so was Gabriel, but they had been in tougher situations than this. At least they had potions and plenty of blood and ammo this time.
"...where should we eat tonight?," Gabriel asked, her eye looking down the holographic sight of her MK18.
"Dumb angel. Just try not to die alright?"
"Roger that."
As if on que (which it was considering it was just a fantasy), the three headed hound charged towards them. Their movement upgrades they had enchanted earlier that night allowed them to quickly dodge its charge, but not quick enough apparently. Gabriel took her eyes off the sight and noticed a large cut on her right bicep.
"GAB!," Vignette screamed amidst the magical runes she was casting.
Gabriel pointed her rifle towards the beast and held down the trigger, her legs never daring to stop running because she would die if she didn't. The beast was flailing its three heads around wildly, hoping that its horns would bash against either one of the two fleshy beings who were killing it. It had one of its six eyes closed, the left eye of the middle head having been turned into goop by one of Gabriel's jacketed bullets.
With one jump she climbed up onto the branch of a tree to reload, and Vignette raised her staff up high. The forest around her turned crimson red as the crystal in her staff drew in power from her surroundings, only to let it all out when she pointed it at the beast's side. The energy released like an uncoiled spring, and burning white fire violently erupted to scorch the area in front of Vignette. A loud, agonizing roar accompanied further gunfire.
It felt the napalm-like fire burning its sides. Within the blink of an eye, it turned around and pummelled Vignette with its horn, sending her flying onto a nearby tree. It didn't stop there. Like a creature straight from hell, it charged towards the downed Vignette with flames on its back and a furious look on its faces.
"I guess this is it," Vignette thought, as she closed her eyes and waited for her torso to be crushed.
She felt both the impact on her ribcage, and bits of wood shrapnel in her left cheek. She opened her eyes noticing that she was still breathing, and locked eyes with Gabriel who had pushed her out of the way. It didn't last long however, as the beast had already shook his heads back and forth to remove the bark, and was now charging at them once again.
Her staff. Vignette had dropped her staff after colliding with that tree. She dived down to the right alongside Gabriel, narrowly missing sharp teeth from skewering their necks. Gabriel pulled out her knife, punctured multiple holes in her smoke grenade and pulled the pin, which created an instant cloud of smoke in her hand.
Before the smoke completely enveloped their vision, Gabriel grabbed Vignette's hand and pulled her behind a tree. All that was heard now was the heavy, guttural breathing of the beast stumbling around in the smoke.
"You dumb dora!," Gabriel whispered angrily at the purple haired girl. "You almost died!"
For once Vignette backed away, fully realising that she was a bit reckless, choosing to fight with fire that both limited her vision past it as well as angering the beast even more so. She was just scared that it would knock down the tree that Gabriel climbed up.
"Sorry," was all Vignette replied, looking down. "That was dumb."
They heard the heavy stomps of the beast running and ran away with trees falling behind them. It had caught their scent. Luckily, it was enough time for Gabriel to retrieve and arm the spare brick of plastic explosive from her backpack. She was going to get this inside of that.
But it moved too fast. There was no way either one of them could throw the C4 into the beast's mouth without them getting chomped in the process.
"Split up!," Gabriel yelled over the guttural roars, and now it was only chasing her. "Vignette! Stall it for a sec!"
Vignette nodded. She drank a vial of shining liquid, threw the empty glass away and held out her hand in a menacing manner. Her eyes began glowing red as the space around her began pulsing in and out, as if she was radiating power. Thin gusts of smoke appeared from the ground and converged into one point on the centre of her palm, before escaping to wrap itself around the creature's legs.
It fought back, but the magic kept it restrained. Already it was beginning to weaken, stretching in and out like it was made out of rubber. This was enough time for Gabriel to jump onto its side, where she would begin performing surgery. In one motion, she stabbed into its belly with her rapier and made a small opening which was wide enough for the brick of C4. She shoved it in just in time, before it got up and threw her tumbling onto the grass.
Vignette screamed as it opened its mouth to tear her apart, but Gabriel was quicker. She managed to trigger the detonator just in time, and it blew up inside of the beast's stomach. The explosion happened in an instant. It was relatively quiet, considering it was contained by a powerful creature, but it did some damage. It managed to tear its body in half, the lower part separated from the upper by ten feet.
Gabriel laid there motionless, her hand still gripped tight around the detonator. She was covered in a thick, black liquid, which was the blood of what they had just fought. She turned her head to the right, and let her hand loosen up, making the detonator reset with a loud click.
"Gab!," Vignette yelped, running over with her book tucked under her arm. She practically collapsed to her knees and began checking Gabriel for injuries. "Here! You've been poisoned!"
Gabriel moaned as she sat up. She gave a glance at the cut on her right bicep, which was turning black, almost like it was disintegrating. She took the orange vial from Vignette's hand and knocked the liquid down her throat, never getting used to the rubbery taste of it.
"Thanks," she exhaled, coughing up smoke from the explosion. "Who knew the inside of a Hellhound could stop a brick of C4?"
"You did apparently. Are you okay?," Vignette asked. She extended her hand out which Gabriel graciously took to get up.
"A-ok. Unlike our friend over yonder..."
They walked over to the upper half of the hound, it's front legs still kicking and chest breathing up and down. One of the heads noticed the two, and as if it communicated with the other heads, they all began chomping and snapping their jaws in response.
"You have enough for a disintegration spell?," Gabriel asked as she picked up a dropped magazine.
"Just enough. But if we run into any bad guys on the way home...," Vignette replied.
"You can siphon some of mine. Come on. Put him out of his misery."
While Gabriel sat down against a Cortadira tree whilst wiping the blood off herself, Vignette began reading from a long paragraph in her book. With each word she said, the aura around her increasingly grew more ominous and dark. Eventually, with the end of the spell, it culminated into a beam of dark magic which disintegrated all living beings it touched. The Hellhound disappeared alongside the magic, leaving behind only a glowing sphere in the dirt.
Vignette picked it up. "Here it is!," she exclaimed, holding it up to the moonlight. "After all this time! The Runic Blood Orb!"
Gabriel looked up dubiously, tying off the bandage on her bicep. "That's the last one right?"
"Ehm...no. We need one more. I kinda had to sell one for some potions and better spells," Vignette chuckled awkwardly.
A loud groan of tiredness escaped Gabriel. "Vignnnnette...this Dark Wyvern Sword you're making..."
"It'll be worth it. I promise." She picked up her staff and Gabriel's bag. "Come on. Let's call it a night here. Drinks?"
Gabriel smiled at the idea. "One hundred times yes. Throw in some celebratory victory sex in there as well and I'll be happy."
Vignette blushed furiously and the two of them began walking north towards the Jade.
At that point, they would both have gotten slightly drunk and stumbled back into their inn for some 'private' time, but that scene was interrupted when Gabriel saw Vignette walking towards her. She slowly sat up and embraced Vignette for a good ten seconds before she sat down next to her.
"Hey you," Vignette whispered, booping her girlfriend on the nose. "What have we been thinking about all day?"
"Well, I was getting to the part where we had just defeated the Hellhound and will have post-victory sex," Gabriel mundanely stated, leaving Vignette speechless. "And this time we'd actually stacked up on pots and upgraded our gear."
During what little free time Vignette had down in the tunnels, she would always visit Gabriel and chat with her. Last night, Vignette had managed to get her to talk fairly normally again by discussing their verbal fantasy MMO that they were adventuring across.
"Did you give me that black and purple robe I always wanted?," Vignette asked with some cheer. It was as if the devastating news hours before never even made it to her ears.
"No. That comes at the end. Good looking gear has to be end-game loot, ya know."
"Aoww, but what's the point then? I wanna look good as I fight from level...where are we at?"
"I'm level 14 and you're 10."
"What? Since when was I 10?"
"Since you spent your XP making that arcane escanillator to level up your staff instead of your character."
Vignette wasn't the least bit surprised that Gabriel could remember this stuff. "Well...yeah. Anyway, I want to look cool as I fight from level 10. It matches with your yellow and white, don'cha think?," she suggested.
"We wake up the next day, slightly hungover, and we accept a job from a quest guild. We go into an ancient dungeon to find a relic, and there you find a black and purple robe that's just your size," Gabriel describes.
"Jackpot!"
"But it's totally useless. It only serves cosmetic purpose. In fact, because its a robe, it gets caught on every where you walk, so the ends become tattered."
"I'm a blood magician," Vignette announced, holding her hand to her chest. "I work from afar! Hand-to-hand is more your thing."
Gabriel smiled at her lively girlfriend. "Say, Vign...what's the sitrep? I don't like the sounds up there."
"I heard from Sophie," she said. "We leave tomorrow, six in the morning. We'll be deep in the tunnels when the explosives go off half an hour later, sealing off all entrances to the metro."
"Sounds like a plan. Do we have light? I'm guessing it's real dark down there."
"Well if all goes according to plan, our retrieval team should be bringing back flares and flashlights along with the semtex."
Gabriel looked down, thinking the plan over.
"What's wrong?," Vignette asked quietly, lifting Gabriel's chin up between her thumb and index finger. "You don't have to walk. I'll carry you."
She locked with Vignette's deep purple eyes. "No, I can walk. Its just...the sceptical side of me says that this is a trap."
"Yeah. The far end of the tunnel does seem like a good place to put a machine gunner. And we would be trapped too."
"What should we do?"
Absentmindedly, Vignette leaned forward to hug Gabriel and began stroking the back of her hair as she thought. "What's the alternative? They're coming fast and we're running out of munitions. Either we can stay and face Ares to get shot or turned into POWs or worse, or we can take a risk and follow the tunnels."
"I just wanna get out of here," she whimpered, feeling more vulnerable than ever. It was uncharacteristic for her to rely on others, but she had to. She was cold, weak and especially hungry.
"We'll get out of this. I promise," Vignette reassured. "And after we're out we'll be in the countryside, so there'll be lots of food too. Rice, carrots, potatoes..."
"Ramen...?," Gabriel gushed quietly to herself. Vignette gave a small giggle.
"Yes. Plenty! If we can find flour, we can make homemade ramen!"
Amongst other things the two talked about, Gabriel was starting to get concerned because she hadn't seen Raphiel in a while.
"Vignette?," she started with a worried look in her eyes. "Where's Raphiel? Still on duty?"
Vignette's face dropped. Rin's words came back to haunt her again. Her mouth opened but nothing came out, except for stammers and hiccups.
"Vi? W-What's wrong?"
"R-Rin came back. This morning. She came back shot and half bleeding to death."
"And Raphiel? Oh no. Don't tell me."
"Rin said Raphiel was shot."
"Well we can't just leave her!," Gabriel yelled, ignoring the pain in her throat. "Christ Vign, she could be bleeding out by now!"
"...said she was dead."
"What?!"
"Raphiel was shot in the head."
Gabriel sputtered in disbelief. "Says who? Rin?! Let me go talk to that bitch!"
"Gab!-"
Vignette couldn't stop the furious girl from stomping away. Her legs were shaking like it was made out of jelly, but she was too angry to care at the moment. She had to go talk to the spotter if she had got Raphiel killed. A nurse jotting down data on her clipboard noticed the two making a beeline towards her patient, so she walked up towards them and put her hand out defensively.
"Can I help you?," she asked, her voice muffled by the surgical mask she was wearing.
"Rin. Need to talk to her," Gabriel growled, not bothering to make eye contact with the nurse. "I can see she's awake."
"What's this about?," the nurse inquired towards Vignette while Gabriel walked up to the bed. Rin sat up, her eyes widening at the sight of a furious Gabriel.
"Raphiel. Where is she."
Rin felt her skin crawl after hearing Gabriel snarl at her. She considered lying to get herself out of the sticky situation she was in, but remembered briefly telling Vignette that Raphiel was dead right before she passed out. It would only make things worse if she lied. Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth.
"She's dead," Rin simply replied. She was looking down at her lap, not wanting to show her façade towards Gabriel. "It was a quick death. She was shot in the forehead after encountering an enemy sniper."
"And you...you didn't see it? Isn't that what spotters do?!," Gabriel said through clenched teeth. Tears were rolling off her cheeks at this point. She didn't know whether to crumble onto the ground to cry or dump 15 rounds into Rin's chest. Maybe she would do both.
"...I'm just as miserable as you Gab! H-How do you think I feel?! I should've seen it coming, I should've!," she cried, hiding her face in her hands. "Gabriel. I can see you're barely keeping it together. Come on. Break. Do it."
She let out a guttural scream and practically dragged Rin out of the bed, despite Vignette and the nurse holding her back. The blood stand tipped over, the bed tipped over and fragile equipment fell to the concrete and shattered. It was chaos. Gabriel began deforming the spotter's face in seconds, using her entire body mass to punch down on her cheeks and nose. It was only after she had tired after the tenth punch when Vignette and the nurse could tear her away, her knuckles red and bloody.
"FUCK YOU!," she roared. "YOU GOT HER KILLED! YOU...you...got her killed..."
Gabriel slammed her head down on the ground as she clutched her chest in agony. The loud screams of grief escaping her mouth echoed multiple times for all to hear, and soon several people came to the scene.
"What the fuck is going on here?!," Sophie demanded, looking down at the two on the ground. Vignette had her arms around Gabriel trying not to cry alongside her, while the nurse was attending to Rin's injuries. No one answered her but it was clear to her. There was after all, only one situation in which someone would cry with such agony as Gabriel was.
Sophie let out a simple 'oh', noticing that there was someone missing by Rin's side. She did notice that those two were practically inseparable.
Gabriel felt like her chest had been hit by a truck. It didn't help that it worsened when she remembered all the memories she shared with Raphiel, especially during angel school. Right now, she couldn't hate herself any more for treating Raphiel like an annoyance; a needy side character who got in the way of her gaming. If only she were alive right now, Gabriel might've been accepting that her time was up. If only.
"You better give them both a big hug when you get better, you understand Gab-chan?"
She remembered Raphiel's last words. She remembered the hope in her voice. She always carried around hope in her voice. She was always optimistic. She was like a light in the darkness, making everyone's life just a bit brighter. But now she was gone.
"...she's gone. She's gone. She's gone."
Gabriel muttered incomprehensible nothings to herself, her mind devastated by the loss of her friend.
"I'm sorry. Gab, I'm sorry. I couldn't...protect her," Rin muttered, coughing up blood.
"...did you at least bring her back?," Gabriel whimpered. "Can I at least say goodbye to her?"
The look on Rin's face told Gab everything that she needed to know.
"...where is she? Where was Raphiel shot?"
"Gab. She's gone. Leave her."
"Where is she?!"
"You don't think I buried her Gab?! I was getting shot at while I buried her with rubble!"
Gabriel stood up and wiped her eyes with her forearm. "I need...I need to say goodbye. Just tell me where you buried her."
Rin looked down for a moment, as if she was trying to recall the buildings around her on the day. "I don't remember. We were at the top of a building. The right side of it was destroyed. I think it was a hotel."
Gabriel shot Rin one last painful glare, wishing that she could splatter her brains all over the ground under her boot heel, and walked back towards her mattress.
"...Gab-chan. Gab-chan."
The blonde angel repeated the words to herself, almost like she was trying to hold on to as much of Raphiel as possible. To anyone else watching, it might've looked like she was a child who had recently lost her mother, and was wandering around aimlessly.
One of those statements were true.
She wiped the snow off her gas mask and looked up. She didn't know what she was looking for. She regretted not grilling Rin for more details on where Raphiel's body might be located, but remembered that it would involve looking at her face again, which could cause her to lose it. She didn't even know if she was looking anyway. She just needed an excuse to get outside, away from the presence of other people, even Vignette. Away from the sounds of life down there which she had grown accustomed to but needed a break from. All that she heard up on the surface was the quiet sigh of the wind, and the occasional gunshot in the distance.
Without thinking of the consequences, she took off her gas mask and breathed in the frigid, radioactive but still refreshing air. She felt some relief from the feeling of her hair blowing in the wind and her warm cheeks against the cold. Like when everyone was living in the apartment back at Spirit base, and she would step outside on the balcony at 5 in the morning for a chilly, cigarette wake-me-up.
She suddenly craved a cigarette. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed down onto the snow, looking up at the night sky. While the stars were shining brighter than ever before due to the lack of light pollution, there was still no one home in Gabriel's mind for her to enjoy the view. All she did was focus on one particular star that was brighter than the others, and begin thinking about Raphiel.
"Raphie...I didn't even get to say goodbye. I wasn't even there when you...whatever. Whatever. You've been good, right? I know it. You're probably up in heaven now, doing who-knows-what. Playing practical jokes or some shit. Whatever makes you do that weird happy dance I guess."
Gabriel didn't even notice the tears rolling down her face begin to freeze.
"See you...Raphie. We'll miss you."
"Goodbye Gab-chan! Take care of your family for me, will ya'?"
After a long silence Gabriel's radio crackled to life. "Gabriel, you find her body yet?"
Gabriel sniffled. "No. I'll come back in 5. The snow's making it real hard to see."
"Roger that. We'll be waiting."
