Ominae: I'm flattered; but seeing as the Valkyria Chronicles fanbase is pretty small, that there aren't many stories about the Imperials understandable (unfortunately) simply because there aren't that many stories in the first place. Waaaaaaa. The fact that the whole thing is presented as a book (On the Gallian Front, quite original) lends the thing to fan fiction.

DC20: Well, first I wrote "god" as a curse, realized that they never referred to that, and decided to put in the closest equivalent. Oh, and I fixed some of the booboos. That's what you get when you shuffle around paragraphs and forget to rename subjects.

Rotten-Kraut and Exum: Wrenching imminent.

Cloner4000: Yeah, I'm worried at the scope I've set up for myself, but I'll do my best to see it through.

To everyone who raised an eyebrow at Concentration/Ultimate Accuracy/Sniper, while the canon game may have people with strict weaponry, this is "real" combat where people use whatever they get their hands on. I chose the class of "sniper" for Lieutenant Karst because he seemed to be a slower, deliberate, precise sort of person – but as of yet the only weapon he has actively used is a handgun, not counting the super crazy carbine shot.

And so, I wasted Friday and Saturday going through some free visual novels online. Look up "Narcissu", "True Remembrance", and "May Sky". They're all free, in English, and pretty good. Don't let them distract you from this story, though… like they did for me.

I'm sorry! *dodges incoming angry reader slaps*

But now, we get to see what our favorite Darcsen is thinking about the situation…

******************************************************************************

Floating away in a haze of pain, a mist of grey, a miasma of unconsciousness. Time was measured in beats – and a foreign object gradually becoming more and more known within her chest.

She felt herself get picked up, the temporary relief of ragnaid before being rushed onto a table. Laid open for hours, before the cool kiss of ragnaid eased the burning once more. But the object remained, a hard spot creeping towards her center.

Instinctively, she knew that if it reached its destination, she would be gone forever. She wanted to say something, to protest her fate, to fight, but she couldn't bring herself to stir out of her limp state.

Picked up once more – the comforting smell of her brother – carefully guided up and down. The smell of metal and oil; comforting sounds of machinery. Fast, smooth, movement. The characterisitic hum of the Edelweiss, a pitch not heard in any other tank in Europa. She knew it well; she had been the one to tune it to those specifications.

Her only thought was that she had fixed the tread after all.

Up again in those concerned arms. She had to say something, struggled up through the depths of her agony. The hard spot was millimeters away now, her insides tensing up with every sluggish beat. She was going to die, without ever getting to say goodbye.

Every resource she had, every wish, every dream, for recognition, for the sight of friendly faces, for her Darcsen crusade, was thrown to the side just to accomplish her last goal.

And she opened her eyes. Her gaze found a person, crouching on top of metal. His head was level with a roof – ah, there was the cannon barrel. On the Edelweiss then.

She felt her eyes harden with resolve to say something, saw the strange man's eye – singular – widen. For a moment, a memory tickled in the recesses of her mind. Distracted, she turned to it.

But she in reaching for it, she lost her concentration. Her eyes closed, her mouth failed to say a word, and she plummeted into darkness again.

Darkness. The struggle of her heart. A sense of loss, that she would die in such an unmemorable fashion, bled dry and heart broken – in more ways than one. She reached for her dreams, to see humans walking side by side, everyone treated equally, no one denied their chances.

More activity, a prick in her arm. They fled from her. It was over. She was about to die.

Floating in darkness still. Well, this didn't seem too different than before. Somehow, she got the feeling that someone was busying around her, although why was beyond her. Maybe it was a coroner, or an undertaker, or something. That thought made her think, an action equivalent to a mixer in concrete – concrete that had had time to set. How could she know that if she was dead? Perhaps this was what happened after death. You were trapped in your body to rot, never to see the world again; and there was no other world to move on into.

Her heart stopped. In a detached manner, she waited. She was dead, then. Nothing to do about it expect see what happened.

More work. She thought her corpse was being touched. There was activity around her wound, anyways. But why would that matter? Wasn't it clear that she was in no condition to do anything, anymore, forever?

A feeling of warmth in the cold abyss. So this was the afterlife. It was certainly more comfortable than before. The late Isara waited patiently for when she could try and seize control of, well, whatever she could, since she was dead.

Ba-bump.

Oh. A heartbeat. That was unexpected.

Another one. And then another. And then another. And then another.

Five in a row, then a dozen, then a score. There was a weight missing from her chest, and she noted that such enthusiastic beats were not stopped by a strange weight any longer. The hard spot was gone. Death had fled like a thief in the night.

Isara stopped counting, and started trying to wake up again.

She felt something – actually felt, not was simply aware of.. It was a slight buzz in a line, over her wounded shoulder. The Darcsen girl jumped upon that sensation, pulled on it like a drowning man would on a lifeline. She didn't know how long she clung to it; her heart beat hundreds of times, a tempo to which she heaved her consciousness along the cord.

That line on her body went to burning, and then all at once Isara was aware that her body was working once more, in stark contrast to the hours before.

Someone touched her. Unsurprising, seeing as her body had worked on earlier, at any rate. If she wasn't mistaken, it was her stomach. A strange material – rubber? – on her bare skin.

That fact got her attention. Bare skin?

Awareness continued to rush back in, and it suddenly became quite apparent that her torso was naked – and being felt by someone very intently. Of all the emotions she could have felt after just coming back to life, in stark contrast to relief and thankfulness, all she could feel was embarrassment and immediate anger.

Isara, no longer late, took in a deep breath. At least it was deep in comparison to the ones she had been taking, so small as to not notice. Her lips opened with the intention of voicing her feelings.

"Let go of me, you pervert."

No response, and the hand stayed on her. The voice didn't sound like it belonged to her. A feeling of weakness beckoned her to give up, to let this hand have its way with her.

Her right arm retorted, scrabbling down to her thigh. The touch of cold steel welcomed her fingers, fingers that felt like logs of wood for all the sensation she could discern. But it was enough for her reflexes, and they closed around the metal handle and swung blindly.

A foot of heavy-duty steel in the form of a wrench, meant to adjust and repair machinery, given to Isara by her beloved brother-by-adoption, screamed through the air like a comet with the goal of demolition.

And so it was that Celes, leaning over Isara's supine form with the intention of healing it, found the exact opposite happening to his skull.

THWACK. There was a satisfying connection, followed by the sound of a form collapsing onto the floor, but the movement exhausted her. She still had the presence of mind to slip the tool back into its slot on her skirt, her mechanical instincts refusing to let her drop it forgotten – but the clouds were coming back, but at least they were free of pain, free of death. Even without a doctor, she knew that the possibility of the endwas over, that she could rest easy knowing that she wouildn't slip away again.

Her goals in life suddenly were back at hand; ready to be seized when she awoke. Inwardly, she smiled.

And for a time, both the Imperial boy and the Darcsen girl floated in that realm of the unconscious together.

******************************************************************************

Wrench count: 1.

I'm not very good at unconsciousness scenes. A lot of the writing is purposefully obtuse – unfortunately, I guarantee that some obtuseness will definitely NOT be purposeful due to the amount of confusion it will generate. Mention it when you see it.

And so Isara is awake! Okay, not quite, but at least she's on the same level as consciousness as Celes. Wait a minute…

Oh well. They'll all be awake and happy next chapter, I promise!

But I'll kill them all off if I don't get reviews! Click that button down there and leave me your impressions! Lives are at stake!