Jean's head turned with the speed of a slug, fighting desperately through an air like molten lead: confining and unbreathable. It cruelly forced Jean to watch, making him powerless to react as the knife ripped out. Deep red splashed around it and fell to the floor, consuming his vision and filling his sight like a swarm. A flash of dark green. A flash of dark brown. After they disappeared there was nothing left to prevent Jean from seeing nothing but the scene.
They both collapsed. Mechanical grips reached out and tightened around Marco's shoulders but he didn't move. His face was shuddering, and pale, and cheerless. Blank eyes stared into nothingness, only finding that single answer. Jean pulled Marco closer. Everything was red. His tears, invisible to him, were hot and pooling down into the growing sea beneath them. Jean refused to believe what he was seeing. It wasn't true. It wouldn't be true.
"Don't you dare die on me!" The words were not soft or comforting. They were as jagged and forceful: an imitation of their old instructor's fierce tone. Marco quivered yet Jean only shouted louder and gripped him harder.
"DON'T DIE! DON'T DIE, MARCO!DON'T GO!" His scream trailed off and pitched into an immense, hoarse sadness unable to be heard by human ears. It reached a point where he was making no noise but the undeniable shriek had contorted every part of his face.
Jean was utterly, completely powerless. He could not stop the light fading from Marco's eyes. No matter how determined someone was, they could not take hold of the intangible. Marco's eyes dimmed and dimmed and no matter how much Jean yelled at him, screamed at him not to, the brightness disappeared altogether.
The stone below them was drenched and muggy, dyed a sickly crimson. If Jean had been physically able to wrench his eyes away he would have seen the stained knife laying a mere metre away from them, abandoned by its owner.
Fleeting life showed signs in Marco's rare heartbeat and bated breath but the space between them lengthened with each pulse. His hand rested on his stomach and his expression was screwed up in pain. The MP's lips were ajar with the ghost of his last words. Please. Jean couldn't look past him. His eyes were wide and blurred with water yet that didn't stop the image from branding itself into Jean's mind.
He stared, he did not know for how long, but he couldn't turn away. Marco's face was alien to him. It was not his, yet Jean could not move. For a countless amount of time he was petrified. Marco's heartbeat had been driving the life from him. Now it had finally completed its task. Now, Jean was alone. He was all alone...
"Oh, no...No, no, no!"
Voices gradually came but the choking fog surrounding Jean, blocking his throat and clouding his eyes, enveloped Jean and did not lessen. They could have been civilians or military, male or female, but Jean couldn't hear. The voices bled into each other and fused with the denseness until the buzzing finally blocked out everything.
There was a sharp crack and Jean stumbled. His hand shot to his paining face and he clutched the wide red mark now blemishing his cheek.
"What the hell!?" he shouted, but then Jean started to notice where exactly he was. For one thing, he was staring into Marlowe's eyes. They were puffy and dripping with tears and Marlowe himself was shaking under the force of his breaths.
"J-Jean! Snap out of it!" Marlowe cried, quivering at his own fierceness.
Every muscle in Jean's body locked again. That was the wrong thing to say. For a fleeting moment of joyous rage he had forgotten. That precious time had dissolved like salt in water.
The others sensed his relapse. Marlowe raised his hand like before, still shivering, but this time Boris caught it.
"You can't! He's been through enough already, Marlowe!" The choking emotion in Boris' voice would have touched Jean if only the latter could have heard him. The cloud was returning wisp by wisp and clouding his brain once more.
"I need to know what happened. I deserve to know!" Marlowe stared into Boris' eyes imploringly yet he did not relinquish his hand. Marlowe's expression was one of a broken man. Following that train of thought, Jean couldn't fathom what he was like.
The longer he thought about it and the further he drifted away from them, the more the memories sharpened. An invisible hand clenched Jean's insides at the reddened memories but pain was the only thing piercing the haze so he clenched his jaw and endured it.
The thief. They hadn't caught him. They hadn't caught him despite there only being two directions to go. The thief in his flash of green...
Rage filled Jean and shattered his stupor under its power. "Scout," he growled, attracting all the MPs' eyes. The confusion flashing inquired for context despite no words being said so Jean's voice grew louder and more hate-filled. "It must have been a bloody Scout! There was no way out of that alley except up! He must have used ODM gear!"
Hitch tossed her hair; she looked surprisingly angry. "Come on, Jean! I think we all know the truth here. It's obvious you're just trying to cover..."
"SHUT THE HELL UP, HITCH!" Jean bellowed, sending the girl back into one of the many chairs piled up in the Military Police headquarters. He blinked, suddenly realising where he was.
It was a lush and elaborate room. Everything from the wallpaper with its wooden panelling to the low polished tables told the story of their owners' arrogance. A pile of playing cards were splayed over one of the latter and somebody's jacket over one of the former. The lamps were all cold but the styled glass still managed to serve a purpose as decoration at least.
"There was no Scout, Jeany. We would have found them if they were anywhere near our city. What would a Scout be doing in Stohess anyway?" Hitch rested a pair of fists on her hips and stood with her weight pushed to one side in a haughty gesture.
"Who cares!?" Jean threw up his hands in frustration as he threw himself from his chair. "WHO THE HELL CARES!? MARCO IS DEAD!" The words were piling out before he could stop and he paid sorely for it. The invisible hand was joined by an invisible foot which slammed into Jean's gut.
His hand flew up to his forehead and he clutched it, clenching his eyes shut as if that would somehow block out the terrible images haunting the forefront of his mind. He hurled a swear into the air and took no notice of anyone's dissent. He took no notice of the pain. He took no notice of his tears.
Jean felt a hand on his shoulder and reacted before he even recognised it was Marlowe's. Jean seized it and twisted Marlowe's arm over his shoulder. Marlowe cried out as his head smashed into one of the low table's sides. He writhed around on the carpet and flittered in and out of consciousness. A small spot blemished the edge. A small red spot.
No-one budged while the bowl-haired boy rolled around, moaning horribly like the wounded animal he was. Jean should have felt some guilt, some remorse to bite him back, but his anger had hardened into a shield protecting him from that.
"Jean..." Boris said warningly.
"NO! Just...Everyone shut the hell up!" Jean turned his back on the others and kicked the door almost off its hinges. The doorknob on the other side cut a deep hole into the wall.
It didn't take much time before Jean broke into a sprint. He wished he could lose his volition again, allow the cloud to make him forget, but his vision was sharp and clear. For once he understood Pixis and all's love of alcohol. It was less painful to forget, but he refused to give up. If he forgot now, the monster would escape. It was his task alone and a task he could not give up on.
There were two MPs guarding the exit but neither of them gave a damn about Jean leaving. Nothing about Marco's...murder was set in stone, it was too early, so Jean had the authority as an MP to do whatever he wished before the suspicion inevitably fell onto him. And he would be long gone before that happened.
Jean surged through the tight crowd, shoving anyone who didn't move in time firmly out of his way. Eyes locked on him as he went but the atmosphere of Stohess was as ambivalent as ever. None of them had any idea what had happened under their noses and that sickened him.
He passed the small enclave and the pit in his gut expanded. The proximity to the scene ate away at Jean like an infestation but instead of backing away, the brunette put his foot forward determinedly and celebrated the clarity brought on by the pain. He needed to muster all the concentration he had if he was going to take down the Scouts.
Jean's eyes turned to the alleyway entrance and, just as he'd expected, it was being guarded by members of the Military Police. In retrospect, Jean actually had no idea how long it had been since. The sun above was only barely beginning to set but it felt just as warm and bright as when he went off to get some rest. It could have been many hours or only one for all Jean knew.
"Hey, you!" barked one of the three MPs leaning against the house walls. He was a particularly long-nosed and shrew-looking one. Jean's fists clenched but he tried to hide the burst of anger from the soldiers; appearing suspicious would definitely not be helpful at that point. However, he couldn't hide the spike of irritation no matter what. The three of them bore identically bored expressions, as if a murder of one of colleagues was nothing! Jean thought that even their selfish minds would be able to process the notion that they could be next.
"What is it?" Jean growled in reply.
"What are you doin' here, boy? This is a crime scene. That means you gotta scram or else." Long Nose brandished his rifle and Jean stared it down. He tugged at the collar of his jacket pointedly.
"Well, if you weren't blind then you'd be able to see my uniform. I'm Military Police like you three and I'm trying to find out what actually happened here. Wouldn't surprise me if you never realised there was a point to all this."
A red-head narrowed his eyes at Jean. "Who do you think you are, talking to us like..?" She was interrupted with a clap on the shoulder from the barrel-wide MP to her side.
Barrel cocked her head and grinned impishly. "No, no. Let's let the little one in. I'm convinced that he can find the killer faster than any of the professionals we could bring in," she chortled. Jean scowled, much to the amusement of Barrel.
"Come on, kid. Lighten up."
"At a crime scene?!"
She shrugged. "People die every day, kid. That's the truth we all have to accept as we grow up."
Jean slapped her hand away as it reached out to ruffle his hair and pushed his way past them. Like the others, they didn't bother to stop him, but the other two were lit with suspicious fire. Jean nodded to himself. He couldn't stay any longer. If he dared then he would be arrested within the week. He was in too bad a situation to get out of it unscathed. Jean knew he had to find the truth since his own life depended on it.
Tall, trapping walls burst out of the ground on each side but the changing sky above was visible and free. The road underneath was clean for the most part until Jean reached the part he was searching for.
For all his strength, Jean almost threw up right then and there. The smell of dried blood and the explosion of images inside his brain made it feel like a swelling balloon, pressing against the inside of a skull like high-pressured poison. The immaterial knife had lodged itself in his stomach and was held there.
Jean clapped his hand over his mouth and forced himself to calm down. His feet were swallowed by the road and immovable. That is fine, Jean told himself, although even inside his head, his voice was high with panic. All I need to do is look.
Someone had chalked two sets of white lines on the ground. There were two clear smudges in the spread of blood: where Jean had fallen and where Marco had died. His fists clenched as he attempted to restrain himself. There was absolutely no way to deny it.
The knife hadn't been touched for the sake of preservation but the largest outline was empty, so Jean chose to focus on the former. It was old steel though unlike the ones soldiers were trained with. It had a thirty-centimetre serrated blade and an old plain handle like one you'd use in a kitchen. He scowled and barely resisted the urge to pitch the knife across the whole city. That knife could belong to anyone in Stohess!
Jean swore and pounded the bricks by his side. How the hell was he going to do anything without anything to go on!? Even with ODM gear someone couldn't disappear into thin air..! His eyes drifted upwards and locked on something interesting. A triumphant smile cracked through the rage and Jean almost laughed.
"You weren't as clever as you thought you were, bastard!" he declared loudly, uncaring of the Scout' reactions.
Dents ruined the clean image of the surrounding buildings, clearly remnants of ODM gear hooks. It was proof.
"Oh, crap. Well done, Josephine, you let a freakin' psycho into a crime scene," Jean heard one of the MPs, Long Nose, say.
"C'mon, kid," Red said. "Get outta there. You've had your fun."
Jean's face fell back into anger at the sound of their voices. He turned and called down to them, confident. "Have there been any Scouts in the area?"
Long Nose rolled his eyes and edged forwards. "You're cracked. Why would a Scout come to Sina? This ain't their place."
"Have there been any Scouts?!" Jean demanded.
"No! Like we said; there's no way a Scout was in Stohess!" Red narrowed her eyes.
"You're wrong. If any of you opened your eyes then you'd see one was here! A Scout killed Marco!"
Long Nose crept further still, his face now creased in worry at Jean's rising anger. "Kid, calm the heck down."
"I will once you lot get some work down." Jean thrust his hand up at the cracks. "There are marks on the walls. They're from ODM hooks which means it must have been a Scout. No-one in the Garrison bothers with ODM so it has to be one of them!"
For a moment, the young man seemed to consider it. Watery eyes danced around until noticeably stopping at the dents Jean had pointed out. However the moment dissolved quickly at a glance to his colleagues. Long Nose shook his head.
"I don't know what you're trying to pull kid. No Scouts are, or were, in Stohess. None of them killed 'im. I mean, haven't you heard? Everyone's goin' down near Maria."
Jean's eyes flashed open with the flick of the mental light. Of course. He wouldn't hang around, not if he could use ODM gear. So Jean nodded.
"You're right," he said tonelessly.
Josephine sighed from behind the others. "Thank the Walls you finally understand. Now, back away, kid. This is our job, not yours."
"Ha." The brunette's voice held no amusement. "Your job? How much would you like to bet you won't do anything about this?!"
A fist flew out and slammed into Jean's jaw. His mouth blossomed with pain and blots painted his vision. He tumbled backwards, falling uncontrollably closer to the reddened ground, but then the MP snatched a ball of Jean's shirt inside his clenched hand and tugged the younger soldier to a stop. With ease, he pulled Jean closer and glared straight into his eyes.
"Know your place, newbie, or you might end up the same way as your little friend. I will not be spoken to like that!"
"Stefan!" Josephine barked, then Stefan let Jean go. The younger MP stumbled to keep upright and avoid falling but wasted no time in returning the glower.
Stefan's voice dropped to a sinister quiet and he leant over so only Jean could hear. "I'd watch out if I were you. You're actin' pretty suspicious; I doubt it'll be too difficult to make everyone see that." He straightened up and grinned mischievously.
Red spoke up. "Get going, kid. You've had your fun but it's seriously time for you to go."
Jean looked back to Stefan but soon wheeled away. His brisk walked became a run once he passed the alleyway entrance. He knew what to do now so, without wasting any time on explanations, goodbyes, or even collecting his things, Jean headed away. He made a beeline for the wall. If the Scouts were going to be at Wall Maria, then that was where Marco's killer would be.