Chapter CLXXXI: Out

June 17, 2549 (UNSC Calendar)/three weeks later

Sparatus, Paris IV, Paris System

"You can't win all your fights."

Major Reyes, simply put, was full of himself.

To put things into perspective: Darbinian and I stopped snapping at each other in order to snap at him. He was that big an asshole. The fact that he never passed an opportunity that he saved all of our asses was also a big factor in our relationship. Plus he had shit personality, so there's that. At least I wouldn't have to interact with him just yet.

When the Army Airborne came in they brought with them a few dozen Pelicans. Some of those were packed with soldiers, but most of them were full of ammunition crates, fuel cells, medical supplies, food, and other equipment that had proved invaluable to our defense of Sparatus for the last couple of weeks. In addition they had also delivered a few additional Warthogs and Scorpion tanks to help make this shadow of a town impenetrable. Despite all of that most of the Marines that had fought here before those pricks arrived appreciated only one thing. The ammo. Marines were supposed to carry a lighter load in compliance with our more 'do the job quickly' mentality, but even now it was evident that absolutely every survivor was carrying as much ammunition as they could.

I myself had an additional bandolier strapped across my chest. While it did increase my overall intimidation factor and did in fact provide space for five additional magazines, it was heavy. It was just heavy enough that it annoyed me to have it on me at all times. Caboose and Sandor had two sets of bandoliers, one with shotgun shells and the other one with regular MA5 magazines. It was a pretty badass look. HW Squad, however, took the cake. Pavel and Lizzo had connected their M2747Ls to their rucksacks, giving them a nearly endless (for all practical purposes) supply of ammunition and the rest of the guys were almost completely covered in box magazines for their SAWs.

Pavel rolled his shoulders backwards and grunted slightly. With his helmet hanging below his rucksack I could easily read his expression. He had a frown that seemed to be eternally present when on deployment, but I knew him well enough that it would be hard for him to hide his feelings from me.

"Relax," I told him. "I'm sure d'Arc will be fine."

He shook his head. "I'm not five years old, Frank," Pavel said firmly. "So don't treat me like an idiot."

I nodded slowly and returned my attention to the door, running my fingers through my rifle's carry handle. "All right then."

Sarah d'Arc had been wounded back when we ran out of ammo. We all thought she wouldn't last more than a day, yet here she was, three weeks later. When it took her so long to die we all thought that it was good news. If you weren't dying from a fatal injury it had to mean that you were getting better somehow. That was not the case. Sarah fought and she fought hard. She wouldn't allow us to give up on her and wouldn't let the doctors to let her die despite how much pain she was in. Her kidneys hadn't been working for a while now and her stomach was basically mashed tissue. Her lungs had collapsed and Sutton hadn't been able to fix them all the way through. Every breath she took failed to provide enough oxygen to her body and taking deeper breaths only made the pain increase.

"Lieutenant?"

I looked up at the door to see a doctor in front of me. Surprisingly enough his scrubs barely had any blood on them save for a small stain on the bottom of his shirt. His gloves, however were another matter. The white latex gloves were almost completely covered with blood. Sarah's blood.

"Yes?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that PFC d'Arc has passed away."

I nodded slowly. "What was it?"

"Her organs couldn't support her body anymore. I'm surprised that she managed to stay alive this long."

"She was a tough one," Pavel said. "You said her organs failed?"

"Yes. The concussion from the blast in addition to the shrapnel turned most of her vital organs into a pile of mush, the shrapnel mostly severed blood vessels and caused internal bleeding, the concussion… well, it was bad."

"What are you writing down?" I asked the doctor.

"Critical organ failure," he replied, removing his gloves. "Her body is going to remain here for a few more minutes before it's bagged. Sorry for your loss."

As the doctor walked away I looked at Pavel.

"What?" he asked me.

Once again he couldn't hide his feelings from me. He felt very much like I did. Angry, frustrated, and sad. As an officer I really hadn't had the opportunity to interact with those enlisted men outside my squad, but I knew d'Arc well enough to be hurt by her death. The fact that she was under my command only made it worse. She had been killed while serving in my unit, but it had taken her until now to die. I felt the same way I had felt when Bamber died, the same way I felt when Han and Montri died. I felt as if I had failed them and my failure had cost them their lives.

Still, I had absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Pavel felt worse than I did. She had been a member of his squad under his direct command. He would blame himself for a while and then snap out of it when he realized it wasn't his fault.

Pavel sighed when I didn't immediately reply. "I'll go get the men," he told me. "Wait here."

I nodded and then walked inside the operating room as soon as Pavel left. There were still a couple of nurses inside the room. They cleared a few of the surgical implements and then showed themselves out. I moved up to the operating table and dragged a stool behind me.

"Damn," I said quietly, examining d'Arc.

Whenever you read about a dead person or see a funeral on a movie the dead guy always has this peaceful look on their face or the author goes out of their way to describe how the corpse looked 'at peace' or some other shit like that. Most of the time that was the case in real life too.

Most of the memories I had of my dad were good ones, the typical stuff that you'd expect of a childhood. Throwing a football or kicking a ball were frequent ones, I also remember wrestling with him, he'd let me win most of the time, tickling me occasionally. But I also remembered the last time I had seen his face. It had been during his funeral. His expression was certainly calm and peaceful, but I doubt that it had been when he saw those headlights coming up to meet him and the pavement rushing up.

The undertakers usually did something to the bodies' faces. I'm not exactly sure how they did it, but every corpse looked like they had died a peaceful death in their sleep.

Not so with Sarah. Even despite the anesthetics the pain couldn't be completely countered. Her face was contorted in a grimace of pain, even if she was supposed to be unconscious. Her brows met in a frown and her jaw was tightly clenched. It was an easily recognizable expression, one that you adopted when you were trying to bite down pain.

"Hell of a way to go, eh Sarah?" I said. "Most of us die quick deaths out there. Maybe not so quick and definitely not clean, but not like this. Never like this." I looked at her and shook my head slightly. "I'm sorry you know. We try Sarah, but we're only human."

I reached underneath the light blue sheet and felt around for the dogtags that should be on her neck. Protocol dictated that you remove the patient's dogtags during an operation, but tradition dictated that you leave them there. I grabbed the chain and yanked softly. The two metal pieces felt light in my hand.

01996-67882-SD

I grabbed one of the two dogtags and put it in a special pouch. It clinked when it went in. That made for a total of five dogtags on my pocket. Five men had died in as many months. What made it worse was that they had been fighting alongside me for years now. I had gotten to know them and make friends with them.

"I'll see you soon enough," I said finally, standing back up and leaving the room.

When Pavel and the rest came through I handed him the other dogtag and patted him in the shoulder. The rest of my platoon entered the room to pay their respects to their fallen comrade-in-arms and I left the building, trying to get myself to think about something else.

The bombed-out town didn't help matters. Even after our victory everything was still collapsing. The downtown area was massively fortified, but the rest of Sparatus was on the verge of becoming an oversized pile of rubble. The valley was ours, but most of our vehicles and equipment were all stored inside the town. A few Warthogs made patrols and scouting runs day and night, and two tanks were kept on either end of Sparatus in case we needed to stall an enemy raid or small-scale attack.

The town hall still stood. Miraculously enough. I sighed and walked towards it, trying not to look as tired as I felt.

I met Darbinian in the lobby. He was carrying as much ammunition as I was.

"Trying to break the record for most consecutive rounds fired?" he asked me.

I gestured at his bandoliers and ammo pouches. "I don't believe you're in any position to judge."

"I'm your superior officer," he said. "I'm in whichever position I want to be."

"Please," I scoffed. "You think too highly of yourself."

"I don't believe you're in any position to judge."

I shrugged. "Fair enough."

We both kept quiet for a few moments.

"Major Reyes in there?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied.

I groaned. "I'll hold him."

"And I'll rip his fucking head off," Darbinian finished. "Let's go."

Whenever something important happened the officer in charge would usually call a conference. When you say it that way it sounds very civilian, but perhaps it's the other way around. This time we would be discussing a topic that Mayor Peterson had been tiptoeing around for the past two days. Ever since we had established a decisive hold on the valley the Covenant had been hesitant to attack us here, but they had been massing their numbers and deploying small units in the mountains around us. An attack was imminent, and the only question here was whether we would be more valuable here or back in Udinia, with the rest of the UNSC forces.

Major Peterson had seniority over Major Reyes, but the Airborne commander used his rank in an attempt to pull weight here. He had found Darbinian and me a lot more stubborn than the regular officer, besides, he was not in the same branch that we were, so his rank didn't count as much as you'd otherwise expected.

"Majors," I said neutrally, offering Peterson a small nod.

Darbinian simply walked in without saying anything and didn't even bother to shoot a quick salute. Reyes frowned slightly at his evident show of disrespect, but Peterson didn't really mind. He wasn't exactly fond of Major Reyes, our so-called rescuer.

"Good, we're all here," Peterson said. "You all know that Command wants us to move back to Udinia, but if we do there's nothing keeping the Covenant from actually getting there."

I examined the holographic map we were standing around. It showed the valley, our troops, and the known Covenant units in the ranges on either side of us.

"If we stay we risk encirclement," I said. "There's a small trading post right here, we could relocate the majority of our troops there and hold the main highway easily."

"For once I agree with him," Darbinian said grudgingly. "I do not like it, but the Covenant's numbers swell while we stay an under strength battalion and change."

Reyes shook his head. "My men and me didn't come here and rescue your asses just so you could fall back two weeks later."

"I don't exactly recall it that way," Darbinian muttered.

"We didn't need any rescuing," I said. "And bravado won't do us any good here. There are plenty of men here who will tell you that. My vote is we move to the trading post."

"It's alright to be ashamed," Reyes told me. "But there's no need to be ungrateful."

"Listen you cu–"

"Easy," Peterson interrupted, looking at the map with a pensive expression. He didn't even seem surprised or offended by my would-be outburst. "Staying here could mean suicide. I don't have any doubt that we'd make them pay for it, but I don't want to die just yet and I'm certain my men feel the same."

"Words to live by," Darbinian said in agreement. "This rock is as good as lost. Pull back, buy some time for evacuation and then leave this goddamned place."

"This goddamned place is home to millions," Reyes said. "And only a coward would abandon a UNSC colony world."

"Then we're the biggest amongst cowards," I said. "Because we've fought in more worlds than you've heard of."

That struck a chord. Major Reyes was a veteran of a single campaign while Darbinian and I had been fighting for a very long time. A vein in his forehead swelled and a red flush started creeping through his neck before he got it in control. His face went from anger to cool detachment in a matter of half a second. Reyes crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Darbinian and me with pure contempt in his eyes.

"Your words, not mine," he said.

I clenched my fists and Darbinian almost jumped him, but we both managed to restrain ourselves. Peterson looked up from the holographic map and gave us a strong glare before returning his attention to the fake troops and landscape.

"Please be so kind as to fucking shut the hell up," he said. "Your presence here is merely a formality, yes, yours too Reyes. The final decision rests on my shoulders."

"Sir," I muttered at the same time Darbinian did.

Peterson then went on to mention the pros and cons of staying against leaving. As he spoke on it became clear that he didn't want to stay here a second longer than he had to. Major Peterson had been in command of three times as many soldiers as I had been at the beginning of the battle, then he had been in command of every last Marine in Sparatus. If he was anything like me then the deaths weighed heavy on his shoulders. This place reminded him of those that had fallen while under his command.

"You would have us leave then?" Reyes asked angrily. "My men helped defend this town and–"

"Do not make the mistake of believing your men suffered nearly as much as mine did," Peterson interrupted calmly. His voice might've been the epitome of professionalism, but there was a fire in his eyes that gave Reyes a pause. Green or not, he was still Airborne, and that in itself meant that he was a hard man. To take him aback with a glare was not unworthy of praise.

The room's atmosphere became tense, but Peterson didn't seem to notice, instead keeping his usual aloof façade. After a few more moments of awkward silence he uncrossed his arms and slapped his thighs.

"I'm radioing Command," he said finally. "We're not staying here."

I nodded gratefully.

"We have enough Pelicans to evacuate all of our troops and most of our equipment, but we can't leave all at once. Standard evacuation procedure, wounded and non-essentials go first. Special Forces stay behind and evacuate last."

"Sir, if I may," I said. "My men have suffered quite a bit, I'd appreciate it if you could avoid having us as the last ones here."
Peterson nodded. "Very well."

"I do not like saying it, but my company is at little over half strength," Darbinian spoke. The words sounded as if they had been yanked from his tongue, but he was worried enough for his men that he spoke them without stuttering.

"Reyes?" Peterson asked.

"My men will be the last ones out."

"It's settled then," Peterson said. "Dismissed. All of you."

"Sir," I said.

The three of us left the town hall without even looking at one another. Reyes immediately broke off towards his men, leaving Darbinian and me to walk side by side another couple of streets. The men he commanded had had it as bad as mine. Their numbers meant that they had suffered more casualties, but about the same percentage was wounded or incapable of fighting. Ironically enough, I had seen a few of them stop to chat with a few of my men occasionally or help each other out.

Their cooperation was a good sign I guess. No fragging or friendly fire.

"Good news?" Pavel asked me as soon as I met up with him. "We could use some for once."

"We're leaving," I said. "Back to Udinia and with some luck we'll be on our way to Reach from there."

Pavel nodded and sighed with relief. "That is some good news. The men will be happy to hear them."

"Good," I said tiredly, sitting down. "They deserve some rest."

"So do we for that matter," he replied, letting himself fall down next to me. "It's been a long month."

"Too long," I agreed. "To many of us have died."

"At least they died well," Pavel said, stretching his neck. "And at least we haven't joined them yet."

"Our time will come," I told him. "We'll go out in a blaze of glory."

"I don't plan on going out if I can avoid it," Pavel said. "I have a family to look after."

I shrugged. "Guess I'll have to go out in a blaze big enough for both of us then."

"That sounds like something you would do Frank," he said. "Just don't forget that death is not a requirement in this line of work."

"It's just a guarantee," I grunted. "Even if it shouldn't be."

Pavel was silent for a few seconds. He tended to do that on occasion. At times he'd just sit back and remain quiet for a long time, saying nothing. I never asked him what he thought about during those moments, but my guess is that he held his family in his mind.

"I got a message from Amber," he said finally. "She's doing well."

"Good," I said. "That's good. Lavvie?"

"She's good too. She misses me apparently."

"Of course she does, you're her father."

"She looks a lot bigger than when I left her. She's going to be a beautiful girl."

"Let's just hope she takes after her mother."

Pavel laughed and took off his helmet. "She's worried, you know? Amber is. We've been here for too long."

"This place was my home for a while Pavs, I don't want to see it burn any more than the next guy."

"It's too late for that Frank. You've got to admit that this place was as good as gone the moment the Covenant landed here. Udinia is the last major city under our control, the other two continents have been abandoned to the aliens and we only have a small area of this one under UNSC control." He stopped for a breath. "It cannot last much longer either. They outnumber us in orbit and there are now more alien troops on the ground than humans overall."

I nodded slowly. "I've never known you to be so grim, Pavel."

He grunted something intelligible. "Must be rubbing off on me."

"Sorry about that," I apologized, squeezing his shoulder as I stood up. "I'll try to be more idealistic in the future."

"I don't think that'll help," he replied, dragging himself up by pulling my arm. "We need some crazy in this unit if we want to stay alive."

"Sometimes I think there's too much crazy here," Schitzo muttered under his breath.

"Too much crazy," I echoed quietly. "Pavel, get the men to pack up their things, we leave before the day's over."

"All right then, do you want anything? A memento?"

"A jar of dirt maybe."

Pavel laughed. "Yeah right. I'll get you something fancy if I can find it. A table leg or something like that."

This time it was my turn to laugh. "Make sure it's sturdy enough to bash someone's skull in."

"I'll try."

A few moments later I heard the relief and happiness of my men from upstairs. My men were happy. After having lost a friend a few minutes ago, they were at least happy that they would leave this place and all the memories that it had created behind. I immediately heard the noise of furniture moving as my men started grabbing whatever personal equipment they still had in their possession. Mostly they had spare clothing and some food that they had scavenged from the town. Candy most like. Everybody liked candy.

"El-tee," Caboose said, climbing down the stairs with some difficulty. "So we finally leave this godforsaken place."

"Yes," I said. "Funny, I don't think a lot of people would've called it that before the Covenant came."

"It doesn't matter anymore," he said. "Nobody will ever live here regardless. Even if by some miracle…"

"I know," I said. "Caboose, how are the men?"

"Tired, but they still have some fight in them. If anything this retreat will buy them some time to recover."

"And psychologically?"

"Same thing. They're pretty upset over Sarah, but who wouldn't be. I think that it's the mounting up of the dead that's hitting them. I'm not sure that they have realized that they lost five friends yet."

"And you?"

"I'm good at this El-tee, I've lost a lot more men than I care to remember. I'll be fine."

"I need you to be," I said. "The men know me as headstrong and emotional. They can forgive my outbursts, but if you were to suddenly start punching walls then they'd know something was wrong."

He raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Something is wrong. Very, very wrong."

"Yes, but they don't have to know that. Not just yet."

"Fair enough lieutenant," Caboose conceded, tightening a strap. "I'll go pack my things, make sure everybody's fine. And I'd have a talk with Sutton if I was you."

"Will do," I told him. "When I have the chance."

Caboose climbed back up and barked a few orders, telling my men not to lose focus, that they were still in a combat zone. While he berated them for their lack of professionalism in a situation like this one I grabbed the sole surviving chair in the entire house. We liked to joke that any and every god that existed protected it. Despite concentrated small-arms fire, plasma cannons firing on us, grenade explosions, shrapnel flying around, men crashing into furniture, men using furniture for weapons, and even direct mortar hits that cleaved right through the entire house the chair was perfectly intact. Not a single scratch was on it.

It was a dire contrast to the condition of our armor, our bodies, and our minds. Part of what made us Helljumpers so great was our extensive psychological training. Sergeant Gabuka had made us go through hell and back, he'd physically and mentally tortured us and made us believe that we would die. The things we went through during training were supposed to rival most of the stuff that we would experience in a battlefield at a psychological level, and most of the times it succeeded. Not this time. I had seen my men sporting the dazed thousand-yard stare, looking at something in the distance that only they knew was there. More than once I had heard my men wake up in the middle of the night, breathing hard and occasionally even crying softly.

They weren't the only ones that suffered. Schitzo was something I had gotten used to, but the visions of dead men walking behind a corner were not. The first time I thought I saw Atkins I ran through a street and turned a corner, following a man that wasn't there. The next time it happened it was Jonah, the man that had become my best friend during training only to die during our first deployment, unable to ever see any actual combat. I hadn't given him a serious thought in years, yet here he was, haunting my dreams and every waking hour as well.

"You don't often hear me say things like this," Schitzo said, sitting next to me, "but we've gotten to the point where you and I will be forced to stop caring about anyone."

If I keep losing my mind at this rate, it won't be a problem.

Schitzo stood up and looked at me with a sad expression on his face. For a moment I believed I recognized him and even stretched out my hand to touch him, but I realized what I was doing and yanked it back down before anybody saw. Having hallucinations was one thing, talking to them was another, believing that they were real…

I stood up and dusted myself off quickly. I grabbed my battered rifle, examining the scratches and grooves that it presented. I tried to remember where they came from, and I could remember a few of the incidents that had caused them, but most of the time I had no idea how a particular mark had gotten there. It happened with my own body sometimes as well. A big-ass nasty scar on my back was hard to forget, the painful spike scars all over my body were pretty etched into my memory too, but some of the minor burns and smaller scars had unknown origins. A mark might clearly be a needle scratch or a plasma burn, but some of them I couldn't even remember how I got or even when I got.

"Don't look so grim, eh El-tee," Sandor said cheerfully from behind me, jumping down the stairwell with his duffel over his shoulder. "We finally get to go back to Udinia and from there we hop back home."

"We're only going back to Udinia," I said. "Not back home. Not yet."

He shrugged and threw his duffel at the door. "I don't plan on dying here Lieutenant, not after all we went through. If I die it's going to be with plenty of Covenant dead around me and having fought for something that was worth it."

"We should all be so lucky," I muttered.

"Sir, you are sounding particularly grim of late," Hoff said from behind. "But maybe it's because we're all happy now. Well, happier. I think that calling our current state of mind happy would be a little bit too much."

"How is everybody taking it?" I asked him, lowering my voice. "Sarah's death."

He shrugged. "I can't say I was close to d'Arc, but she was a pretty good girl by any standards. Hell of a soldier too… It hurts to see a comrade die, sir, but it hurts to see other friends hurting over it too."

Sandor nodded slightly as he walked over towards us. "The girls are particularly beaten up over it, they were all close in the platoon. I think Sutton has it the worst. He cared for her during the beginning and maybe even believed that she would be able to pull through at the end."

"I'll talk to him," I assured them. "You two keep Andy up to standard, ok?"

"That's more in Marv's area," Hoff said nervously, scratching the back of his neck. "I'll see what he can do."

"Is there anything Marvin Mobuto cannot do?" I wondered out loud. "Mark my words, that man will outlive us all."

Sandor laughed. "We're gods among men, sir. But I've got to admit that Marvin does take the cake when it comes to fighting ability."

"Almost as good as you are, sir," Hoff said, slapping my shoulder.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," I replied dismissively. "We're slated to pull back in precisely two hours. Report to Gibs Street and hold position. Is the rest of the squad ready?"

"They should be soon," Hoff said, switching his tone from friendly familiarity to professionalism in a blink. "We had less stuff than the other two squads."

"Sir," Miranda said, Marv and Andy standing with her. "We're here."

Her smile was short of a grin, but only just.

"Wipe that smile from your face," I ordered. "We haven't finished this yet."

"Yes, sir," she said. Her tone draw eye rolls from Andrea.

"Head to Gibs," I repeated my order. "And await further orders. You are not to avoid confrontation with Airborne troops but don't actively seek it either. Insults to their mothers should do."

"Yes, sir," they replied.

"Marv, make sure Sandor doesn't get too carried away," I told him, placing him in temporary command. "If things get heated just be sure to remember them who fought the battle."

"Can we call them cleanup duty?" Sandor asked eagerly.

I smiled. "Yes, yes you can."

It was a cloudy day and the sun was beginning to set. Darkness was beginning to cover the valley, with only a few shadows still present. Most of those were man-made. I wondered how attractive a target we made to the Covenant on the valley and the pass in front of us. It must've been frustrating for the survivors of the initial battle, knowing full well how beaten up we were and still they were unable to attack us because of their own losses. Had I been the overall commander of the hingehead forces I would've hacked some heads off, the battle should've been a Covenant victory by rights.

"Ready men!" I shouted. "Pelicans are about to depart!"

Normally it would've required only one Pelican to carry my team, burdened with losses as we were, but Command wanted us to get as much materiel from Sparatus as possible. The Pelicans were all heavy with gear, and we wouldn't have a lot of legroom in the cargo bay.

"Come on, let's go," Pavel shouted as soon as our designated Pelican landed in front of us. "Move it!"

I climbed inside first of all and moved towards the cockpit. I didn't often recognize one Pelican from another, but this one I could tell apart.

"Well I'll be damned," I laughed. "Fightmaster."

"I've been known to go by that name," the pilot replied. "Some also call me Badass Ultimator, but whether you believe me or not Fightmaster is my real name."

"Good to see you again man," I told him, squeezing his shoulder hard enough to make him complain. "Fly us safe, will you? We… we haven't had it easy."

"I heard," he said quietly. "Things back in Udinia have been hell and I could hardly believe that they'd get worse than there, but seeing all this, the looks on men's faces… It's easy to believe that something horrible happened here.

"Something did," I agreed. "And we all just want to put it behind us."

"Sounds good to me," he grunted. "Let's go."

As the Pelican took off I walked back to the rear and took in the small, quaint town of Sparatus. What was left of it. I saw figures that weren't there as Fightmaster pulled up and away from the town. Men and women long dead in the war. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to make them go away. When I opened my eyes the faces were still there, haunting, blaming.

I can't. I can't lose sight of who I am. I thought about blaming ONI for what they had done to me. I had never had hallucinations before the procedures, and I was certain that those were the primary factor in my increasing madness.

I can't lose myself, not just yet. I can't lose what makes me human.

For the first time since Schitzo had first manifested himself his tone changed. It wasn't mocking or even concerned for himself. It was a tone full of warmth and understanding, one akin to that of my uncle or my father.

"One can lose his sanity, Francisco," he said, "but never his humanity."

Never.

This chapter is seriously not proofread, so forgive any mistakes. At least it ended on a relatively happy note.

Another chapter, another victim. Things are getting darker, and it certainly has nothing to do with the hour (ha...ha...). As per usual, there's not much to say about this chapter, we've got three assholes in a room and another battle lost, or maybe it was won at too high a cost. The point is that they're leaving because they can't afford to stay there any longer. I'm happy to tell you that I'm finally wrapping things up here in Paris IV, should take two or three more chapters, because I know that a lot of you are looking forward to Reach and whatever comes after.

On another note, I won't be able to post the next chapter until at least next monday, that's one of the reasons why I didn't proofread this chapter. Anyways, hope that you enjoyed reading it and as always...

Stay strong.

-casquis