skycomv2: Yeah, I looked it up. Jane hates the Imperials… for wrecking her flower shop? :D

For once, I didn't have an update for a day. SCANDALOUS, but for good reason. I couldn't decide what perspective to write the "battle" from, but eventually decided on this. It's quite amusing, despite the inherent atrocities (as opposed to atrociousness) in it.

Originally I had planned for a huge epic battle scene where our two heroes kill off each racist one by one, but then I realized the stupidity that that would require the racists to have – more likely, they'd run the moment resistance was put up. And so they do in this chapter, in quite the amusing fashion.

Also, it just occurred to me that Darcsen hair is a lot more blue than it is purple. o.0 I'm going to go and correct all of those references now… if I miss any, let me know!

And now back to our regularly scheduled battlefield drama…

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Sergeant James Rooney of the Gallian militia's Squad 2 was having the time of his life. Despite their gun breaking at the most inopportune time – they hadn't even scored a kill, just sprayed it a whole lot over those dark-hairs' heads and wrecked a few windows until it overheated and had its barrel randomly buckle, damned unreliable Imperial goods – he was still going to get to kill a whole bunch of dark-hairs today. He hadn't enjoyed a hunt like this in years, ever since that one time he and some of his friends had come across that traveling family and had some fun with them. It was a perfect gift for having to miss their normal Feast celebrations yesterday due to their operations on Marberry, operations that he'd made sure to stay back in. He couldn't die before this day, after all.

As normal, the Darcsens had proved to be a slippery bunch. At the first spray of stolen heavy weapon fire along the street, each and every one of them had suddenly slunk into cellars and behind locked doors. Rooney knew that this meant little, though – all it meant was that they'd get to prowl through the streets and clear each little home out one by one. The outcome was clear enough.

There was no chain of command, no plan of attack. Each of them simply dispersed into the hamlet with their own agendas. Of course, the fact that they were all here meant that they shared one trait – each was a die-hard Darcsen hater, handpicked by him for this entertaining mission, from Larry whose business had been bankrupted by the curses of a Darcsen competitor to Marat the bookworm who thought that those evil people still hadn't been punished enough for their catastrophic calamity that carved out the entire Barious Desert.

And to tell the truth, why more people weren't in loathing of the stinking rats was beyond him. They were only good for the jobs that real Gallians were above: mining ragnite for example, or processing it. Basically any job that had to deal with the stink of raw ragnite was only good for Darcsen hands, clumsy as they were. The Empire, for all of its grabs at Gallia's ragnite reserves, had one thing going right – they had the Darcsens completely underneath their thumb in work camps or mines. Those who weren't more often than not died in streets and shanty towns like the animals they were, and often enough were fittingly hunted down, more often than not being killed for great sport.

He watched Linde, beautiful with her face twisted in righteous fury, bound off into an alleyway ahead of him. Rooney smiled, watching that lovely rear swing left and right underneath her shorter-than-regulation skirt before it disappeared. He'd gotten some of that often enough as they'd mutually planned – and more – for this little escapade. The mere insinuation that they could kill entire villages of dark-hairs was enough to get that foxy body into his bunk in seconds.

Marberry had just been retaken, after all. The Gallian regulars were late – perfect work by that magnificent man, Colonel Nicholas, delaying the gathering of supplies so that his little squad could get these runs in. This was the first of them, but in the week or so that Rooney had before they got themselves back in action, he planned on there not being a single Darcsen enclave left in this entire region of Gallia.

Now and then, there was a scream punctuated with the sound not unlike ripping cloth as various scattered dark-hairs, not hidden so well, felt the bite of the stolen weapons. Grinning evilly, he marveled at the Colonel's guile – there might be inquiries if the bodies turned up with Gallian bullets in them and brass scattered around, but make the whole scene look like a regular Empire genocide? Brilliant.

Wanting in on the fun before the rest of his mates had it all for themselves, he went ahead and fired a burst into the nearest door latch, bullets pounding into the lock, popping it free of the frame. With a jump onto the doorstep and a mighty kick, he flung the shattered portal open, to reveal a homely little scene, table, chairs, couch, ornamented mantel, the whole nine yards. The foyer behind the house was empty, like he'd guessed – but it wouldn't take long for him to clear each room full of bullets. "No survivors," the Colonel had said. He planned on that.

Rooney took one step into the room, then stopped. Had he just heard the popping of a rifle? Impossible. The Colonel had only supplied repossessed those wonderful ZM MPs, after all. Suddenly he felt uneasy. What if these Darcsens had some stolen Imperial arms of their own? Darcsens weren't allowed under law to have weapons in their homes – they might decide to reenact the Darcsen Calamity after all and take over, except with no Valkyur to stop them this time – but this area had been under Imperial occupation, and they could have acquired some through theft…

Suddenly the empty room looked like a deathtrap. Cowering from the open doorway, hunkered over in a defensive crouch, the Gallian persecutor slowly took back his first step back outside, rifle jerking clumsily from side to side covering each door, expecting a crazed Darcsen to at any moment burst through with a Uranus in one hand and a grenade in the other.

Shockingly, he made it out alive, tripping when his foot met empty air and almost breaking his neck as he fell off the doorstep. Rooney cursed as he scrambled to his feet, kicking the small platform. Darcsen trap, it had to be one. Where were the snipers? Where were the mines? Valkyrur, there could be tripwires in the room right now!

His nerve shattered; he hurtled off after Linde. He had to get her, tell her it wasn't safe, get the men out of here. Running out onto the main road, he stopped. A Darcsen child was standing in the middle of it, next to her dead mother – and Linde, face heartachingly sweet as she milked the moment of the child's death for every last second of its worth.

"Scream for me!" she crowed, blissfully unaware of the ploy, the Darcsens were going to get them all!

Too late. He heard the fire, and Linde, poor Linde, his Linde, crumpled to the ground, brains scattered liberally in a meter wide radius.

The racist screamed her name – raised his ZM MP, cursed as the unfamiliar balance of the weapon literally flung it out of his hand far in front of him. As he clawed futilely after it, he then noticed the two crouching figures at the fenceline, weapons ready, a handgun and carbine. It had been a trap all along! Those pigs had known they were coming, and had the gall to use themselves – a child! – as bait!

With another wild scream, he raced back behind the cottage, fully expecting bullets to sheet out through windows, from behind fences, anywhere. When nothing came, he dashed away along his original path, out of the settlement, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"A TRAP! A TRAP! DARCSEN TRAP! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

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Oh, James Rooney, how much you suck. Deliberately a scrappy, he'll return to make his bold moves – and flee in cowardice the moment he thinks things are going badly. Of course, he's not dumb, just shortsighted, so expect him to make a reappearance the moment he realizes that this isn't what he thinks it is.

And if you think this is a little too farfetched, that's kind of the point of this character. You'll hate the way he's written – and hate what he stands for. Hopefully. (If you're somehow a Darcsen hater as well, why are you playing this game? For that matter, how did you play this game without becoming a Darcsen lover?)

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