Warning: attempted rape depicted in this chapter. Read with caution and at your own discretion.
Main theme: Let You Down by Dawid Podsiadlo
Chapter Theme: Everyone's Killing Graduation Ceremony from the New Danganronpa V3 Black soundtrack
There's something beautiful about the untamed wilderness.
Frazil ice sloshed through the riverbeds and half-frozen streams as the Winter birds rested their bodies in their cool waters and drink of their chilled nectar. Leafless trees swayed in the soft wind, leaving snow to flutter down from their frail branches and glisten in the heatless morning sun. The air was cold, almost still. Breath turned to smoke upon releases. The reds and greens of winter apples stood out against the whitened bushes and trees that they grew from. The world was covered in a thick and thin layer of white. Frost covered the walls, snow the floor. A fine layer of mist floated above the ground like water.
There was something beautiful about a cold winter's morning to behold, even if it was somewhat ordinary. In a time of constant strife and struggle, just after a long period of combat and relentless horrors, even the most mundane of events can seem extraordinary.
It was the stillness of the world that had enraptured Reese's attention. Everything since the beginning of the Second Great War had been nonstop, constant and trying and leaving her battered and bloodied and traumatised with each passing second. To see something so quiet and tranquil, like an impressionist painting imposed upon reality itself, was breath-taking to behold.
But then, her peaceful sight was punctuated by the violent world that she was planning on leaving behind.
The landscape was rough and parted like calloused skin, puckered by craters and swales and marked by mangled metal husks. The likes of tanks and jeeps and trucks and artillery pieces covered the grounds in ruined carcasses, their metals twisted and worn, melting under the heat of battle before solidifying as gored displays of the follies of war. Upended Bullheads and fighter craft laid belly-up in the dirt, leaving behind impact craters and furrows that stretched on for a mile or longer. In the far distance, an old Atlesian warship, covered in the colours of the Bandit Confederation, slumped on the ground, rusting in the sun and sporting three gaping wounds in its side. Old trees laid on the ground like corpses, burnt and reduced to uprooted stumps. Clumps of ground had been overturned and ripped up by a week of violent warfare, leaving shallow bowls of churned earth in the ground, filled up with puddles of ice and spilt engine oil and smoke.
The bodies of the fallen laid on the ground, torn to pieces and preserved in the snow. They were the lost lives of the last war, smothered in snow and soon to rot in the water, though they remained preserved in the cold for the days to come. The ground and ice around them was stained a musty dark red, slowly fading away into the mud below.
This was the Bandit Confederation's field during the Battle of Mistral, a bustling frontline of troopers and artillery pieces before the Ascendant Court washed over them and almost wiped them out to a man. This was a graveyard now, a statement of war made from its remains, like a crypt had been dug up and exposed to the world.
The dead belonged to the soils of Remnant now, and Reese didn't have the strength nor time, energy, or heart, to bury even one of them.
She had over places to be.
She jostled the heavy pack on her back, weighed down by cooking utensils, a sleeping bag, a map, and the other barebone necessities of outdoor living. It would take her around three months to walk from the city of Mistral all the way to Jewel, with the usual (and possibly unusual) hazards accounted for.
She started walking.
No time like the present.
A week into her journey, and Reese was wondering whether she had done the right thing.
She slept in the shallow crater of an old upturned Bullhead (the city of Mistral was a hundred miles away now, but its scars lingered everywhere she went), its burnt-out husk providing her with a modicum degree of shelter from the cold outside. Inside the rusting ship's hold, she laid out her sleeping bag and other camping gear on the roof and used her hands to iron and smooth the creeses on the floor that sat above them, pulling out any dangling wires and smoothing over curved metal. No need for a rivet to fall onto her face, or a screw or nail to poke her eye out.
Outside the old ship, a small campfire lit up the woods around her as the gentle sounds of a rushing stream filled the air with its soothing melody. A pot of water, caught from the stream and snow, boiled above it (she didn't want to be dying of dysentery, of course. Crapping yourself to death is a horrible way to go). To her side, a pair of freshly smoked fish, caught from the nearby stream, laid preserved in the snow, ready to be cut and boxed up once they had cooled down.
The years that she had spent with her family outside of the settlements and cities of Mistral had served her well. She hadn't forgotten any of the lessons that the constant travels had taught her, especially not around camping.
So that just left her with a lot of time to herself. Much of that time was spent reflecting, pondering about the choices that she had made, and wondering whether or not they were right.
Overhead, the shattered moon rested high above her, surrounded by a field of stars. In the distance, a mountain stood tall and proud, oblivious to the slanting corpse of a massive airship stabbed into it, bleeding rock and metal.
Was she right to leave Mistral? Was she right to leave behind the city that she had fought over, the people that she had tried to protect, for so long? Everyone that she had known and cared about in that place were all gone, the woman that she had loved with all of her heart was dead with them, and the city that she had abandoned was turning into something else, something... worse. All she had in that city was pain and the longing of old memories. There was nothing left for her there but misery?
But was she right to leave its people behind? Was she right to leave them behind, as if they meant nothing to her? Was she right to choose herself over them? Those innocent people, the men, the women, and the children, those who couldn't fend for themselves...
Was she right to leave them?
She didn't want to think about it. Made it easier to sleep that way.
She told herself that there was no real good decision to be made back then, but ultimately that didn't help to sooth her mind. The decision that she had made was ultimately a selfish one, but in the end what else was there left to do?
She had lost everything in Mistral. Her friends, her crush, and everyone else. She had given up parts of herself and allowed herself to be torn apart in the service of a city and people that would use her like a jackboot so soon afterwards.
She was owed this. She was owed this by all of them.
Right?
…
She tried to put her mind at rest by cutting and boxing up the smoked fish at her side before putting away the rest of her camping gear in the broken Bullhead behind her and throwing some of the snow around her into the fire. It sizzled out and she stamped on the burnt logs to cool it off. Letting out a sigh, she pulled the doors of the Bullhead closed behind her (with her metal arm) and sealed it tight behind her before climbing into her sleeping bag and trying to rest inside the cold metal hold.
Outside, the sporadic, distant claps of gunfire gently echoed through the room.
Even faraway from Mistral, the war remained a constant companion.
The mountains seemed to stretch on forever.
Reese sucked in another gasp of breath as she continued to scale alongside the rocky valley, blazing a trail along the stone path as she curved herself around winding paths, climbed roving hills, and clambering over trees poking out awkwardly along the path, either by rockfall or natural growth.
It was a tried and tested path, and one that Reese's family had gone on over a dozen times in her youth.
But she had never done it alone.
And it had never been so... abandoned.
She and her family had always been keen to avoid the Grimm that populated the path, and with Reese's Huntress training, she was confident that - even with the crap she was lugging around - she could fend them off, even beat them, even kill them.
But she never came across a Grimm along the path. Never came across a Human or Faunus either.
She had been walking across Anima for over two weeks, and she hadn't come across anyone at all. She had expected to at least come across a group of Grimm or two in the first couple of days - that was typical of going out into the wilds of Anima - but now? After spending two weeks in the wild? She'd come across no one. No one at all.
It was eerie. Where had all the grand battlefields from so long ago? Where were the large scale operations and massive troop deployments? Where were the fleets of Grimm ships and armed Bandit Confederation flotillas? Where were the trenches and the pits and bunkers dug out into the ground? Where were the scattered circles of AA guns and artillery pieces? Where were the burning forests and barren wastelands? Where were the patrols and the skirmishes and the conflicts and the skies streaked with smoke and tracer rounds and fire and brimstone?
Where the hell was everyone?
Remnant was at war, yet Remnant was as quiet as it could be. She had heard the occasional smattering of gunfire in the faraway distance, but that was as close to contact with anyone as she could get. Only the animals and insects had kept her company.
The world around her was largely unchanged as well. It was smattered with the ruins of war - crashed Bullheads and fighters, abandoned and burnt-out artillery pieces and vehicles, and the occasional corpses, smothered in ice and rotting in the snow (they were upsetting sights indeed) - and held in itself upturned trees, singed craters, and great gashes running across the ground puckering the landscape, but the lands around her still held the usual sights. Wide sweeps of forests in between grassy plains, swampy jungles smothered in winter wastes, smooth tipped hills and mountains rolling up into the skies and joining the scant clouds in the azure sky, spider veined valleys carving even the mightiest mountains in twain...
But there was no one around. No one at all.
And Reese felt so very alone.
She sighed, and continued to press on. She didn't have much further to go on this particular stretch of her journey. All she had to do was walk a few more miles, and then she'd meet the path leading her to-
Crap.
Ahead of her, she spotted a line of rubble that blocked her way. The path had been buried in a landslide. Not too far away, the wreck of a Verity-class fighter had stabbed itself into the rock and stuck there like glue, its front crumpled upon impact and its back singed and blackened by flame and blast.
The pathway had been almost entirely eviscerated. It would take her several hours to get over the landslide before her, and that was without all the crap that she was lugging on her back, not to mention if the subsidence was even stable enough to crawl over. She might shift a rock and end up falling into the ravine below for all she knew.
It's be safer just to go around.
Reese sighed and turned herself around, heading back to the beginning of the valley to go walk along the path on the other side of the ravine. Great. This only just added another day or two onto her, but hopefully it would be too much of a worry for her.
Kuchinashi was only on the other side of this particular collection of hills and mountains. She could stop to rest and resupply there.
Kuchinashi was on fire.
She could see the pillars of smoke rising up into the sky, the fires they trailed from lighting up the distant streets of the mountainside city in a Hadean glow. Shouts of gunfire and detonations sounded off at random as rapid-fire streaks of light flew off into the air like ribbons lost to the wind. One building collapsed into rubble and caved down the layers into a dozen different structures. A Bullhead in the air caught alight and flew into another airship, sending them both crashing down in a burst of fire and twisted metal.
Kuchinashi had fallen into civil war, and all Reese could do was watch.
She tucked herself away into the crevices of one of the sharpened mountains surrounding the burning city. The stone roof above her served her well as shelter from the cold as she watched the vast city in the distance be put to the torch.
But by whom? Kuchinashi was at war with itself, yes, but by who's hand was it being burnt by? Had the Ascendant Court or Bandit Confederation infiltrated the city and begun a new war of domination within its own scarred walls? Had one of the criminal gangs risen up to occupy the city and begin a turf war with its rivals? Had the refugees that had been brought into the city grown jealous of those already living in it and demanded what they had? Had the Human, Faunus, and Techion populaces in the city grown sick of each other? Had the Atlesian occupiers turned tyrannical and incited an uprising from the people? Had the people themselves turned violent for one reason or another?
Ultimately, there were hundreds of different possible reasons and explanations that could explain the hellish sight before her, but the fact of the matter remained unchanged:
Kuchinashi was being torn to pieces, and Reese could do nothing about it.
What was she to do? She was but one girl, and even with her Huntress training, she doubted that she could do anything at all to help anyone in that city without being killed herself. Instead, she might just make things worse. 'A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing', went the saying. If she went in with the limited knowledge of the situation that she currently had, then she would just be throwing herself into a catastrophic mess with no understanding of what was going on or how to make it better. On top of that, she didn't know who was fighting in that pit of fire or why, but considering the intentions of the factions inside of Mistral when she woke up from the battle weeks ago, it couldn't be anything good.
Plus, she had gone on this journey so she wouldn't have to fight anymore. She was done with war. She was done with fighting. She just wanted to go home. That was what this long trek was for. If she got herself involved in another conflict, then that would just defeat the purpose.
But then, her mind wondered to the people that would be trying to flee the carnage. The innocent people. The victims. The-
No.
No.
This wasn't her fight.
It couldn't be.
Swallowing down the shame caught in her throat, she hunkered herself down further into the crevice for shelter and tried to sleep, far away from the war in the distance.
In the morning, she would make a move, and the city would still be burning.
It just wouldn't stop.
There was something horrible about the untamed wilderness.
As January rolled into February, the snow and ice soon melted and gave way for cooler, more wet temperatures.
And then came the rain.
Reese tried to keep herself as far away from the bank of water along the side of the path as she continued to slog through the mud before her. The pathway had almost been completely washed away, and only the few dilapidated signs and thin trail lining her way were keeping her from venturing off the path and becoming lost in the woods.
The jungle around her was bloated with swamp water. The vast trees overhead kept her somewhat sheltered from the constant rainfall above, filling the air with a cacophony of pitter patters, rain falling onto leaves in a deluge of water. Streams of liquid streaked down trees and only added to the cysts of murky water surrounding her, fit to burst at any moment.
Reese shuddered. Her feet were sloshing through the mud and had begun to leak into her boots. She was cold and dehydrated, and she worried that if she kept this up for any longer, she might start developing trench foot. She needed to get to higher ground, out of the mud beneath her, and-
Behind her, she heard the sounds of a violent slosh of water. She looked behind herself to see her worst fears come true.
The river had overflown. The banks had burst. A wave of water and mud was coming right for her.
"Oh shit!" she tried to jump up to one of the thick tree branches to get out of the way of the flood, but the mud on and in her shoes was weighing her down. She tried another tactic – run to the tree and climb onto it by hand – but it was too late.
The wave caught her, and she was swept away.
Reese tried to scream, but a wash of muddy water got into her mouth and almost suffocated her as she was dragged along through the rushing river. Her head continuously bobbed up and down as she was pulled through the stream. Floodwater was beginning to fill her lungs in place of oxygen.
She was drowning.
Her metal arm was weighing her down, as was the massive pack on her back. She was being sucked further and further into the river. She needed to lose one of them. Through the storming currents, she pulled her arm towards her heavy backpack and undid the clip on her chest.
Her pack was sent swimming with the fishes.
And yet, she was still drowning.
The air in her lungs was getting lesser and lesser. More water was flooding into her. She couldn't breathe through the mud and water and muck. Oh god, was this how she died? Not in a great battle, not in some grand conflagration, not even trying to save someone's life, but from drowning in a muddy river in a muddy marshlands and swamp in the middle of who knows where?
She could feel the last of the air leave her lungs. Her eyes were growing droopy? She was choking. Her body was going limp.
Something tapped against her leg.
With the little strength that she had, she reached her metal arm down and grabbed at whatever had hit her. The thick root of a slanted tree, leaning into the muddy current as the ground that it had grown into was quickly being eroded away by the speeding waters. With as much effort as she could will from within her, Reese threw her other hand onto the root and climbed, reaching the submerged trunk of the tree and, right before the last little bit of life left her body-
{SPLASH}
{GASP}
-She reached the surface of the muddy water and broke her head through.
She hacked up water and mud from her weak lungs and sucked down greedy gulps of air. The tree that she was clasping too for support was about to be swept away with the current. She needed to find solid land and-
The ground underneath the tree gave way. The tree toppled into the rushing water and she lost her grip on it, sailing back into the washing stream.
She was thrown under the water once again and her back crashed against a rock. Her aura protected her, but for only so long as the water slammed her body into another hard surface, then another, then another.
Then she hit something soft. Somewhat soft. Something strange. She was rushing through the water along with it.
The currents separated and the water became shallower. Nearby, the floodwater divided into a dozen rivers running through the bogs and she was sent down one of them. So was the soft object as it was sent rushing through the stream and into one of the murky pools of muddy water. Reese landed in the slop with a-
{SPLASH}
-Her back landing on the bank of the swamp pool and her hands (organic and metal) finding purchase in the uneven ground underneath the sloppy water.
She was safe. She wasn't at risk of drowning anymore.
Yet it still felt like she was already dead.
Further up the stream, the old tree that had fallen into the flash flood had crashed into another bog not too far away from her with a splash of its own before resting in the junk. Her body was wracked with exhaustion and fatigue, and yet she forced herself to climb up from the mud and water and into the soft shore. She doubled over and vomited up a torrent of water and mud, all of it having been lodged into herself from the rapids. She spluttered and coughed up more and more muddy water before turning over onto her back and landing against the ground, her head resting on the soft thing that had been rushing through the waters with her (it must've washed up onto the shore whilst her metal arm kept her weighed down) as she tried to catch her breath.
Her body was caked with mud, seeping into her clothes and weighing her down. Her limbs felt like they were made of lead. Her eyes felt heavy. The soft thing underneath her head felt cold, yet comforting. Like fabric. Like cloth over rugged bumps.
Cloth.
Rugged bumps.
Like a ribcage.
Her eyes shot open. Her head slowly turned to the side.
Hollow eyes, rotting flesh, and a screaming maw greeted her.
Reese didn't even have the energy to scream. She just scrambled away from the thing that she had been resting on, all sense of lethargies leaving her body as she stared in horror at the sight before her.
A dead body.
How long had it been there? How long had it been resting and decomposing in the bog? She couldn't get a hint as to who it used to be. The mud had stained its skin and clothing so much that it would've looked like a fat lump of mud if it wasn't for the arms and legs and head splayed out onto the ground.
Reese looked across its body. It was slightly bloated. Whoever this person was, they must've fallen into the water and drowned. That must've been how they died.
It was almost how Reese died.
She shivered at both the thought and the coldness that was running through her exhausted body. The sounds of rushing water disturbed the silence around her before she forced herself to get up and rip her eyes away from the ugly shrivelled corpse beneath her.
Her pack was gone. Her map was gone. Her sleeping bag was gone. All the provisions that she had with her for her travels were gone.
And now here she was, lost in the middle of a jungle with no idea where she was or where she was supposed to go, with no equipment to help her survive and standing next to a corpse.
She looked up to try and see the sun. There were too many trees for her to make out where the sun was setting, therefore no way for her to tell which way was South, which was where she needed to go, and she was way too tired to even consider climbing up one of the trees without immediately losing her grip and splashing back down into the bog below.
All she could do was pick a path and continue onwards, doing her best to banish the memory of her dead companion from her mind.
She spend days walking.
Days trekking through what seemed like an endless jungle of trees and swamps, days trudging through murky waters and slogging through thick mud and sludge, days without any food or water, and days of her body running on nothing but inertia as she walked and walked and walked.
Her body was covered, from head to toe, in dried and wet mud. She felt sick. She wanted to throw up, but had nothing but stomach acid left inside her. She was tired, hungry, thirsty, and her feet hurt to hell and back. Her bones were stiff and cramped. Her metal arm was rusting and waterlogged, and the mud that had got between the joints and circuits made it hard to move. It felt more like dead weight now than ever.
Her feet were beginning to blister and her soles were developing ulcers. They were beginning to bleed from all the steps she'd taken. Her body was growing taunt and pale from dehydration and starvation. Infections ravaged her cuts. Her skin was marked by bruises.
She hadn't slept for days. She'd just kept walking ever onwards. Her aura had run out a while ago and hadn't recharged at all. Probably from all the walking she'd done. She was starting to feel the symptoms of a lack of sleep. Her eyes felt heavy. She was swaying from side to side. At every corner she could see a bloated corpse covered in mud staring at her with shrunken eyes and a gaping jaw, its head of mottled and rotting flesh following her every step.
Her legs finally stopped and she fell into the mud. It was cold and wet and horrible. The rain was finally beginning to pour through the gaps between the trees and onto her. She felt like she was dying.
Oh god, she just wanted to die.
She couldn't move. Everything was heavy. She was starving, thirsty, and sapped of all her strength. She felt like she was sinking into the mud.
Her eyes were closing. Her conscious was leaving her. Her life was too.
Oh god, leaving Mistral really was a mistake, wasn't it?
The bloated corpse was standing over her. Staring at her. Mocking her. Not saying a word.
Stop.
Just stop.
Please.
She just wanted to be with her family again.
She just wanted to be with Arslan again.
She just wanted...
For it all...
To end...
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
She woke up to a metal hand holding her head up. Her eyes opened, and a bright blue visor stared back at her.
"Ah, so she is alive. Do be kind to her, will you? She looks like she's been through a lot."
As it turned out, the kind stranger who had saved her life was a lithe green and blue Techion by the name of Backlash, who had been passing through the jungle alongside his chapter of Techions-
Techions chapters were essentially wandering groups of Techions that travelled the world with each other, similar to the Faunus Houses of old. They were nothing more than loosely connected groups of people, and the title of Techion chapter was more of a title than an official designation, like a sorority house or college frat dorm, but many of the scattered collections of Techions liked to use the term to designate themselves with, even if many other Techions chose not too.
-On their way to the southern coast of Anima. They were refugees, fleeing from the carnage that had been the Battle of Wind Path-
And from what she had heard of the Battle of Wind Path, it hadn't been good. The entire city had been flattened by the Ascendant Court. Not ravaged. Not destroyed. Flattened. There was nothing left of the city but faint rubble and a series of craters, slowly being overtaken by nature.
Millions of people had lived in Wind Path. Millions. Many of them had been evacuated beforehand and replaced by Atlesian soldiers and Mistralian Hunters and everything and everyone in between who could hold a gun, but the rest... they had either been killed or stolen away by the Grimm.
How could... how could a... an entire city... just gone? Gone? Just like that? How could that just happen? How could they lose an entire city?
How could so many people just... die? Just like that?
Just how much more could this war take from them?
-And heading towards the coast to try and catch a ship to Menagerie.
They were a kind group of vagabonds though. At least she had that much going for her. They had given her new clothes and let her shower the mud off herself, had given her food (in the form of Techion nutrient pastes) and drinking water, helped repair her robotic arm, and had even allowed her to travel with them to the south of the continent until they needed to split up and go their separate ways. For that, Reese was eternally grateful.
So, she spent the next two weeks walking with them across miles and acres of hills and forests and swamps and stretches of land throughout Anima, getting to know the group that she had come to call her companions as they travelled the lands and picked up any waffs and strays that they came across, their little troop growing from a few to a few dozen in the space of days.
Soon enough, she knew the names of the four Techions who had helped her - Backlash, Pathfinder, and the twins Dirge and Deluge - and a few of the stragglers that their travelling crew had picked up - an Cat Faunus called Selena Korva and her little sister Helena, a married pair of Humans by the names of Mitchel and Greg Bleu, a former member of the Bandit Confederation called Steven Red, and a mute figure in a cloak and mask by the name of Ash and their girlfriend(?) Nera Pullman.
(Ash never removed their cloak. Never took off their mask either. She remembered trying to ask them as to why they wore them so much, but Nera had shot her off. They had their own reasons, and Nera tended to do the talking for the both of them. Ash never seemed to mind, and so they never pried. It felt more comfortable that way.)
They spent days walking as a group. Days weaving through thick jungles and boggy swamps, days foraging for food and water, days living off the skin of their teeth...
And days passing by countless ruins of war.
Buckled husks of vehicles, arching craters and furrows, ashy fields of burnt trees and cindered grass, and blackened ruins of old settlements, now bombed out and abandoned, remote and lifeless.
They had made camp in one of the old settlements for the last night that they shared together, setting up in what looked like an old public park since the few buildings that were still standing around them were unstable from bomb blasts and half caved in, and thereby not suitable to rest in. Reese could see the faint traces of life that once lingered in this town: the abandoned clothes rail strewn across the ground, an old bakery sign cracked on the ground, a collapsed market stool...
A cloth doll laid on the ground, its pink dress made of fur, its eyes tiny little dots, its smile wide and innocent. Reese did her best not to think about the possibility that children had once lived in this place and that they might be de-
Stop it.
Only a few of them went to go look for and bury bodies. The rest of them didn't have the stomach for it.
So she stayed with a few of their group - the four Techions that had picked her up before, as well as Ash and Nera - around the campfire that they had set up, dusting off the dirt and mud that had collected on their boots and bodies. They had to be careful with how much of their water they used for anything other than drinking, so showers and clothes washes were a rare luxury. Not too far away from them, Steven was trying to keep the little Helena cheery by reading her a story from a book that they had scavenged from one of the old buildings nearby (in his own awkward, uncomfortable way) whilst Selena watched, and Mitchel and Greg were on the other side of the camp, laying in their shared sleeping bag and holding each other in their arms.
"That's nice," Backlash broke the silence with as he looked away from the sleeping couple, "That they're able to find comfort in times like these."
Reese knew what he meant, "Love, even."
"You have to look for them wherever you can, love and comfort, whenever you can as well," Nera said as Ash nodded along, "Helps you remember what you're fighting for... or even just surviving for."
"True that," Pathfinder grunted, the beige and cyan coloured Techion absentmindedly kicking a stray piece of wood off her metal boot into the fire. It left a sudden smattering of ash on her sole.
Reese felt herself suddenly become heavier from all of the dust that now dirtied her clothes. She wasn't as caked in mud as she was when the Techions had found her, but her skin was still coloured in shades of grey and brown, and her newish clothes (a simple pair of brown walking boots, black trousers, white shirt and a black hoodie. Much simpler and utilitarian than her previous outfit, but she wasn't going to complain) were stained in several places by (what she hoped to be) mud. She smelt of sweat and old musk that hadn't been washed away in days, and all she wanted to do right now was take a long shower. Hot, cold, didn't matter to her.
"True that too," Nera said, and Reese realised that she had been speaking out loud.
"Sorry."
The older woman waved her off, "Don't worry about it. Really, I think we all need a bit of a top-up, don't we?" the Techions nodded, as did Ash.
"A bit of oil for the joints would be nice," one of the blue and red Techion twins, Dirge, said, and Reese couldn't help but agree with him. Her metal arm was beginning to slow down as dirt got between the metal plating, and flakes of rust were beginning to form around the steel skin. The joints were beginning to jam from mud as well, and the reflexes of the arm were slowing down- she could feel it slowing down through the Black Ether that coursed through her. She clenched the iron fist, and the pinkie finger took a second longer to close than the others. She dared not try to take it apart and clean the metal muscles underneath less she break anything. They didn't have the parts to replace it if she did. They'd used them all up the first time. She'd just have to make do.
She winced as her stomach growled, "Some real food would be nice as well," something other than the few stray animals - Rabbits and Fish and Birds and whatnot - that they could catch and find the stomach to kill and eat (Rabbits were adorable, sue her). She absentmindedly ran her (Human) hand down her chest and felt her ribcage behind her breast. A little further down and she could feel the shallows of her stomach underneath her thinning skin. How much weight had she lost since leaving Mistral more than two months ago? She was starting to consider herself anorexic. She felt tired nowadays more than ever. This couldn't he healthy.
The others nodded (save for the Techions) and Nera said, "Yeah, something other than a few scraps of game-" a Hunter's term for hunting animals "-And nutrient pastes," she looked to the Techions apologetically, "No offense," they shrugged in turn. None taken.
Reese's stomach growled again, "Gods, I'd kill for a burger," she paused, "Not actually kill, of course, but just... a pork and apple burger. In a toasted bun. With ketchup. Fuck, I'd do anything to get my hands on one."
"Girl, stop talking about food," said the other one of the red and blue Techion twins, Deluge, "You'll make me hungrier than I already am."
"Yeah, fatass over here will eat anything that he can get his hands on."
Deluge looked to his twin, "You got something that you want to say?"
Dirge laughed, "Yeah, that your fucking overeating is the reason you became a Techion in the first place."
"What the fuck? No, the reason why we became Techions is because we were almost mauled to death by Grimm," (Reese only barely noticed Nera and Ash's flinch at that. Strange).
"Yeah, and the doctors said that the only reason that you survived was because the Grimm had got too bored of ripping through all your blubber to get to your heart."
"Oh yeah, and how the fuck did you survive?"
"Uh, because I'm a badass. Obviously?"
"Is that so?"
"Okay, maybe I hid inside of a closet for a bit while the Grimm ran around-"
"Maybe you ran away screaming when the Grimm found you and realised it would take more than a broomstick to kill a Beowolf!"
"And that children, is why you always bring a gun to a Grimm fight!"
"That's why you don't talk yourself up and get into fights you know you can't win!"
"Oh, you little-"
"Aaaand, now they're wrestling," Backlash sighed as the group around the campfire watched the two thin framed twins grapple and brawl in the fat loam beneath them, "Great."
Ash tilted their head to the side and nudged Nera, whispering something into her ear. She then asked, "Is this normal for them?"
Having been alongside the four Techions for the last two weeks, all Reese could do was say, "Yep."
"They do this a lot," Backlash continued in her place.
"Every time they get into a fight..." Pathfinder muttered, "Every damn time..."
They fell into silence once more.
"...Hey Reese?"
"Yeah?"
"Chicken broth."
"Oh fuck you," Reese said to Nera as she leant back with a groan.
"Oh come on, just imagine it girl."
"I don't want to imagine it, because if I do then I'll just get even hungrier than I already-" she suddenly remembered that the others in their group had left them a while ago, and looked around their camp and asked, "Where is everyone, anyway? I know that getting game takes a while," and burying bodies went unsaid, "But we should've at least heard from them by now. They should've sent someone back to tell us what's going on."
Backlash hummed, "If they're not back soon, I'll go out to look for them," Reese heard him set a timer inside his helmet as he pressed a hand to the side of his head, "Fifteen minutes. If they're not back by then, I'll go out looking for them."
"I'll go with you," Pathfinder said as she gestured her thumb to the two twins still wrestling in the mud, "Anything to get away from those two."
Reese couldn't help it. A chuckle slipped out of her throat, and soon enough all the people around the fire were laughing. Ash still wasn't making a sound but their shoulders were jostling enough for her to tell that they found it funny as well.
Soon enough, the twins ceased their skirmish and took their places back around the campfire, and a comfortable silence fell over them.
After a while, Backlash said, "Ten minutes left," and then asked, "There anything else you guys want to talk about? Because I might just head off early if we don't."
A pause between them, before Dirge, wiping away the mud that had collected on his red armoured hide, asked, "How'd everyone get here?"
"...We walked here," Pathfinder said.
"No no no, I mean, how did everyone," he gestured to the group around the campfire, "Get here? Into this group? Where'd you all come from, why'd you leave, stuff like that?"
"Blimey, bit of a personal question there, isn't it?" Nera asked, an uncomfortable expression coming over her.
"Is it? I mean-"
"It is," Pathfinder cut him off with, "And don't you start either Deluge. We all know you're as much of a glutton for gossip as you are for food."
"Aw..."
"It's a personal question, and no one has to answer it if they don't want to," Backlash added in, "Seriously, if you want to keep it to yourself, then by all means. In our group, there's nothing here but understanding."
There was silence for a good few moments, maybe even a full minute, until finally, someone spoke.
And Reese was surprised to find that it was her own.
"I came from Jewel," she began, catching everyone's attention, "I mean, I wasn't born there. Me and my folks, we were wanderers, like I am now. Spent the first few years of my life travelling from settlement to settlement, fighting Grimm and meeting people and all that chuff before we eventually settled in Jewel (great place to live, by the way. 'A little slice of heaven', that's what everyone calls it. A little piece of utopia. You should visit, it's great). Made some good friends there, but they left soon enough for Beacon."
she decided not to tell them about her brief friendship with Jaune. Seeing as he had been on the big screen a few months ago, she had a feeling that they might not believe her.
"I left for Haven, in Mistral. Was there to watch the Initiation Massacre play out on the screen. I was in the city when Atlas took over and watched it turn into a dystopia. I tried to help the people, but... but I couldn't. They wouldn't let me. I watched people suffer and be browbeaten by those... those assholes, just for it to mean shit all in the end."
No one spoke for a while before one of the twins, Dirge, asked, "What happened next?"
Reese blinked, "You know, don't you? Everyone knows."
"Maybe... but I want to hear it from you."
Bachlash sent him a look, "Dirge-"
"No, it's fine," Reese said, "I want to talk about it... I want to."
She paused for a good while, before continuing.
"The Grimm came for us. So did the Bandit Confederation. We were at war for a week before the Arc boy's-" Jaune "-Message came through. I lost... I lost so many of my friends. People I knew. People I..." loved, "...Mistral was ravaged. Almost completely destroyed if the Grimm and bandits hadn't backed off. Got this robot arm here for my troubles, got a bunch of dead friends as well. Last person who I really knew there had joined with the Mistralians when they started turning fascist, and..."
Reese sighed. This was going to sound stupid to them, but...
"They started using the Grimm as slaves, alright? They were using our mortal enemies as slaves and I just... I know I'm suppose to hate the Grimm, but I... I couldn't stay... I just couldn't stay in Mistral anymore," she shook her head, "There was nothing left for me there. Not anymore."
She leant back, and soaked in the looks that everyone was giving her. The Techions' faces were as blank and impassive as ever, but the others... Ash was wearing their mask, so she couldn't make out their face, but Nera... hers was one of sadness. Like she had been expecting the answer and yet was still disappointed by it. Not exactly what she had been expecting when she was telling them her story.
She'd expected scorn when showing sympathy for the Grimm, not silence.
Ash shook their head as their gaze fell to the ground. Nera held their shoulder comfortingly.
"...We're deserters too."
Reese blinked and looked to the side. Backlash had looked away from her and towards the campfire, his hands laced around each other as he steadied his breath.
"Guys… are you alright if I talk about this?"
None of his Techions objected.
"We were conscripts. For Atlas," he began, "We were just passing through town up near Wind Path before some Atlesian recruiter – or analysist or inspector of whatever – hey-you'd us and told us to get in line on the ships. We refused and got manhandled into them."
"They pressganged you?" Nera asked the question that was on Reese's mind.
"Me and everyone in our chapter," Backlash rumbled, "Wasn't always just the four of us, you know? All one hundred of us got thrown to the wolves, along with so many others from Wind Path and the like. Got holed up in Argus, we did-"
Argus. Reese remembered that Jaune had a sister, Saph or something, living there with her wife and kid. She prayed that they made it out before the city fell.
"-When the Grimm came down on us, they came down hard. Threw everything they had at us and flattened the city. Most of our chapter…" the rest of his sentence didn't need to be said, "We weren't fighters, you know. We were wanderers and explorers. Even if we could protect ourselves from the Grimm, we didn't know how to wage a war. We still don't."
Backlash shrugged.
"So, we ran. I got up, and I ordered these three here to follow. We tried to set up a transmitter outside Argus to radio anyone from our chapter, but…"
Pathfinder, never one to mince words, finished Backlash's sentence for him, "But there wasn't anyone left to hear it."
Backlash nodded, "Yeah… either that or we didn't have the time to look for them. The Grimm were stomping all over the city. Argus was gone, and Wind Path was under siege. We ran, and we never looked back."
He let out a synthesised breath.
"And I'm still trying to figure out whether we did the right thing or not."
"No one survived the battle, Backlash," Pathfinder added, "No one could've. If we stayed there, waiting for anyone to pick up, we'd be dead too. Or worse, dragged off by the Grimm."
"Yeah," Dirge said as Deluge nodded with him. It was probably the first time that Reese had seen the two twins actually agree about something, "You did what you had to do, boss."
"Did I?" Backlash questioned, "Did I do what I had to? Did I do the right thing? If I had stayed at the transmitter for only a few seconds longer, would I have been able to pick up and lead people to safety? If I had stayed on the battlefield with everyone that was dying, could I have saved someone out there? Could I have made a difference?"
"You can't live your life thinking about the what-ifs, man," Reese felt a little hypocritical, but it still might help him out at least, "It's not healthy."
"Yeah," Deluge pointed out, "What's done is done. All we can do now is keep moving forward."
Backlash sighed, "Easier said than done."
"It always is," Nera said, before she looked to Ash and then back into the campfire gathering, "I'm a deserter too, actually. Former Atlesian- no no, I see the look you're giving Backlash. I wasn't near Wind Path or Argus. I was stationed at Kuchinashi. We weathered the storm, but then the city turned against itself."
"I remember passing by Kuchinashi," Reese said, musing that she had looked surprisingly muscular for a civilian (which she had garnered from casual observations and not from spying on her when she was changing), "The whole city was tearing itself apart."
"I was born in Mantle. Lived and breathed the stale air, and I thought that signing up for the Atlesian military meant that I could give something back to the city that raised me. I didn't sign up to get sent halfway across the world, and I certainly didn't sign up to kill the people I was trying to protect."
"So you left?" Nera nodded, and Dirge pointed to the ever silent Ash, "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he's a deserter too."
Ash tensed up, but Nera saved him with, "That's their story to tell, not mine."
"They don't tell anything, they don't say much of anything."
"Oh they do. You just don't hear it."
That only raised more questions in Reese's mind than answers, but she stopped that thinking by going, "Look at us, then. A motley crew of defectors and deserters. I know that Steven over there-" she pointed to said man still awkwardly playing with the child in his care, "-Is a former Confederate, and if I had to guess, then so are Selina and Helena, as well as our resident lovers over yonder," she chuckled as Mitchel and Grey shuffled in their shared sleeping bag, "Kind of funny, in a way."
"Kind of a disparate crew, if I have anything to say about it."
"You don't, Deluge."
"Shut up, Dirge."
"I think it adds character to us," Nera leant back in her seat, "We were all part of a cause, the cause let us down, so we left. Bit of a story behind it, isn't there?"
"That depends on which way you look at it," Backlash said, before tilting his head to the side, "Timer's up," and stood up, "Alright Pathfinder, with me. Let's go find our wayward-"
{CHOOM}
A beam of red light slammed itself into the back of Backlash's head. The Techion jolted, shivered, and then went still.
"Ah… I think something nicked me."
He then fell over, right into the campfire and smothered it, painting the world in darkness. A smoking hole wept Black Ether from the back of his head.
All hell broke loose.
"Shit!" Reese cried out as she hit the deck, a dozen bolts of light and bangs of sound flashing off above her as the screams of the people around her and the desperate cries of marauders joined the cacophony of screeching noises attempting to assail her eardrums. A mangled scream next to her as a body dropped to the ground. She didn't know who it was, who it used to be. Blood splattered against her form as an animalistic roar approached her on scuttling feet.
A Reaver.
The one-eyed monster, covered in bony armour, covered in scales like armour, leapt onto her and began to bite and pull at her arm. Her robotic arm. The beast was expecting flesh and bone, not wires and steel. For the brief moment that it was distracted, she thrust her organic arm forward and-
{SQUELCH}
-Stabbed her fingers into its single eye.
The Reaver howled and let go of her, limping away as it shook its head in pain. She only had the briefest of windows needed to pick up a rock with her metal hand and chuck it at the figure approaching her, gun in hand and pointed at her. The rock hit the figure in the centre of the head and sent them falling to the ground. Smoke lifted upward from its form.
Behind her, the Reaver recomposed itself, somehow looking at her despite its inability to see (it must've been figuring out where she was based on sound and smell) before it charged forward and knocked her to the ground, biting deeply into her fleshy arm.
Reese screamed in agony as the monster bit so deep into her skin that it punctured the bone, but right before it could tear any of the bloodying flesh from her and consume her like a wild animal would a slab of lifeless meat, she wheeled her metal fist back and punched it in its unarmoured throat.
The Reaver yelped in pain as it let go of her bloodied and punctured arm, coughing up a wad of thick red blood as it did so, but that didn't stop Reese as she wheeled her metal fist back and slammed it into the armoured jaw of the beast. The Reaver's poor excuse for a bone hide buckled under her blow just as much as the steel skin of her arm did, and the beast was sent to the ground with a whimper.
But that wasn't good enough for Reese, however. In a blind fit of rage and adrenaline, she threw herself upwards and slammed her iron fist back into the monster's hide, cracking bone and drawing blood. It wailed in pain, so she hit it again. This time it punched through the bone and into its flesh. She hit it again. And again. And again. Each blow drawing blood and ichor that covered her in splatters of red. She was lost in her own rage.
Again, she punched it. Again. Again. Again. Again-
Someone grabbed her shoulders. Pulled her away.
"Reese, that's enough!" she recognised that voice. Pathfinder, "It's dead."
She looked down at the Reaver. Indeed it was. It's chitinous armour had been smashed, torn opened and peeled like a fruit. It's insides had been pulled out and gored, ribbons of flesh littering the ground as blood poured from its gaping wounds. The thing (because it was too bloody and ravaged to be anything other than a thing now) let out one last pathetic whimper before it expired, one last twitch of the leg before it went still. Blood pooled on the ground. The collar around the Reaver's neck (when did it get a collar? She hadn't ever noticed that) was stained a deep crimson. Reese could taste blood in her mouth, or was it her own? Both her hands were covered in red, one was her own and the other was the dead thing on the ground.
It was horrid to look at.
Her breath began to slow down and calm. The adrenaline rushing through her veins began to temper and simmer. The world began to flood back to her when once it had been blacked out. She had done that? She had killed that Reaver? And so violently as well? How... how did she do that? How could she do that?
"It's... it's over."
Pathfinder let her go, "It's over."
It was over.
The violence was quick, sudden, and had ended as soon as it had begun.
Reese let her body uncoil with the ease of tension, so much so that she almost fell to the ground before she caught herself. Her senses finally caught up to her once more and her sight was cleared. She looked around herself, at the once empty village, to see-
A graveyard.
About a good two dozen bodies were strewn across the ground, all of them in various states of disassembly. She saw the bodies of the ones that had attacked them. Raiders. Their clothes were haggard and their knives were bloody. They must've killed the ones sent out to find food. They must've been desperate. Or eager to kill. Half of the bodies that composed their number were Human and Faunus in Bandit Confederation garbs, their blood staining the muddy ground below. The other half were Grimm, their bodies dissolving like clay under water and turning to smoke in the air. These bandits had been both Human, Faunus, and Grimm? That was a potent relationship if she had ever heard of one. What the hell could've compelled such disparate species that had hated each other for so long to put aside their differences and work together, even if only for a short while?
Then she looked down at the rest of the bodies littering the ground, and any previous thoughts that had been in her head were banished at the sight before her.
"Oh god..."
Most of the group that she had been travelling with for so long were dead.
They were all dead.
Mitchel and Grey were still laying in their cot as still as stones, arms wrapped around each other and covered in their own viscera. They hadn't even been given the chance to get onto their feet. Selina laid on the ground as well, her face locked into a scream as the hole in her head trickled red. At her feet, Backlash laid stomach first on the floor, their campfire extinguished under his weight. Steven laid on the ground, huddled over something, as if he was trying to protect it. That same something, now covered in Steven's blood, wormed its way out from underneath, and Reese understood immediately. It was Helena. He'd been trying to protect her as the bullets came down on them. He'd given his life to save hers, and now all she could do was kneel beside the corpses of her protector and sister and cry her eyes out.
Not too far away, the slain body of Ash laid on the ground, smoke leaving their clothes as they decomposed. The opened corpse of Nera laid over them, soaking the empty clothes in red.
Ash had been a Grimm. Nera had been (in love?) friends with a Grimm.
Reese blinked at the sight in muted surprise, but couldn't bring herself to process the revelation as much as she needed to. Not with all of the death around her.
"Hey..." her head tilted towards the ground, and she saw a battered Dirge, his body covered in sticky red, jostling the bisected corpse of his twin. Deluge had been cut in half from the waist down, spilling robotic guts and organic organs onto the ground like wires and leaving an inky puddle of black and red underneath it. He wasn't going to move for anything. Not anymore, "Dirge... get up... c'mon, man..."
"...How much more?" Pathfinder asked. Reese understood what she meant immediately.
How much more did they have to lose?
How much more were they going to lose?
She fell to her knees and cried. It was all that she could bring herself to do.
Like before, they didn't bury the bodies. Even if it was the right thing to do, none of them could stomach staying in that horrible place any longer. Surely someone else would come along to bury them.
Right?
…
Reese and the other survivors, after scavenging as much as they could from the scene, decided to split up after that, Pathfinder taking Helena under her wing and Dirge heading off to the east of the west of the continent to try and catch a ship to Vale. Reese continued on her way down south.
It was safer for everyone that way.
It was only when Reese was a few weeks away from Jewel, far away from the horror show that she had left behind, and the people that she had only known for a short period, that her mind finally began to catch up with her and the full weight of what happened to her and the group came crashing down on her.
Backlash was dead. Deluge was dead. Ash and Nera were dead. Mitchel, Grey, Steven, and Helena were dead.
They were all gone, like Scarlet, like Sun and Neptune, like Nadir and Bolin, like- like Arslan... and like Sage, the rest had gone their own ways.
Every time she got close to someone, they suffered. Every time she got close to someone, she suffered.
Every time she got close to someone, they died.
…
How many more did she have to lose? How many more of the people she knew and cared about had to suffer and die before the universe made its fucking point and left her alone?
She didn't know. She didn't want to know.
She just wanted it to stop.
Please.
Just let it stop.
There were strange sounds not too far away.
She was currently trekking through a wide stretch of woodlands near the south of Anima (almost there) and had expected to hear nothing but the chitters of birds and the clicks of insects. Whatever the sounds were, they weren't natural. It almost sounded like digging.
And crying.
She crouched down and set her small pack (much smaller than the gear she had started the journey with so long ago) on the floor, hiding behind the green foliage that served as her cover and peeked between the bushes to see what was on the other side.
A clearing. A Bullhead in its middle. Atlesians in tattered armour and with guns in hands. Below them, a collection of Grimm, Humans, and Faunus - the latter two in uniforms that looked like Bandit Confederation and Acolytes of the Ascended respectively - crying, sobbing, begging, digging with broken helmets and hands for spades.
They were digging their own graves.
One of the Grimm looked up. It was shaking with cold and tiredness, ache and fatigue. It tried to say something - was it going to beg? Plead? Ask for the simple desire to live? - before one of the Atlesians lifted their gun and sent a bullet through its head, dropping it dead to the floor.
The other prisoners screamed at the sudden action, and Reese could barely keep herself from flinching. They continued to dig, crying to themselves as they did. They were going to die, and they knew it. One of them began to hum to themselves, singing a sad song, but it only served to sadden them more instead of salving the wound.
She should help them.
She should.
But...
She looked down at her organic hand, still wrapped in bloodied bandages that she couldn't replace. Her aura had barely managed to heal her wound. The reflexes in her metal arm had slowed considerably.
She couldn't.
(Or was it because she wouldn't?)
She pulled herself away from the foliage, took up her bag, and kept walking.
And as she walked away, she forced herself not to look back as the gunshots became a distant echo.
Then, finally, as February rolled into March and the spring flowers began to bloom all around her.
The march up the mountainous hill was tiresome and exhausting, and it always seemed like her steps echoed as she climbed the ascent inch by inch.
But then, she soon reached the top of the rocky path, and looked out through a clearing of trees to see the vast landscape in the distant.
Stretches of plains and patches of forests, intermeshed together and going off as far as the eye can see, interrupted by craters, burnt-out husks of ships and vehicles, and old war wounds that were beginning to fill and be smothered with overgrowth and Verdigris and greenery and shawls of moss.
But she recognised this landscape. Despite its new cysts and spots and cuts and scabs, she recognised this overreaching stretch of land that stood before her. All she needed to do was focus her excellent vision and look all the way into the far distance and...
There it was. A single sliver of the shining ocean was within her sight.
She'd made it. She'd made it to the south of Anima.
She jostled the pack on her back with her fleshy right hand. Her metal left arm twitched awkwardly. A few more days. She needed to keep walking for just a few more days before she got to Jewel, and then she could reunite with her parents and put everything that she had been through behind-
She was tackled to the ground, the pack on her back arching her spine as she let out a loud grunt as her head rattled against the stones beneath her. A pair of rough hands harshly clasped around her shoulders and pinned her down. She shook the grogginess from her head and opened her eyes to see a bearded man with a nasty smile grinning at her, his body covered in violet robes. His friends stood above him with the same violet clothes and the same evil grin.
"Look here, Trevor," the man above her licked his lips, "A girl. Young too. Young and fresh."
"About time," said the other man, "Haven't had fun for a while."
Reese's eyes widened as she understood what they wanted. She tried to raise her metal arm to smack the man, but it was slow to respond from poor maintenance. It was dented and rusted, jammed with mud and dirt and bent internals. The man seemed to know what she was about to do though, as he pulled out a knife and jammed it into her shoulder, right between her flesh and the rusty grafted metal, peeling the broken limb off her and leaving her without an arm. Reese screamed in pain as Black Ether and blood leaked out of the twisted empty metal socket.
"Scream all you like," the horrible man smiled, "No one will hear you."
His hand began to reach down to her waist. Her remaining fleshy arm began to reach for a rock. The man caught her hand by the wrist and squeezed it tightly. He began to jostle with the buckle around his trousers.
"Now then, let's have some fun."
He leant forward and kissed her, forcing his tongue down her throat. It was her first kiss as well.
Reese wept as she felt his slimy organ wriggling around in her mouth. She heard him pull both his and her trousers down and press himself against her. It was cold and intrusive and horrible.
She felt his tongue touch her own as he pressed down further. Instinct took over, and she did the only thing she could do.
She bit him.
She bit him hard enough to bite off his tongue.
The man retched back and screamed as Reese spat out the organ that had once been invading her mouth. Blood tricked from between his lips as he snarled at her, only for Reese to grab the stone that she had been reaching for just a few moments ago and-
{BAM}
-Brane him over the head with it, drawing blood with the blow and sending him to the rocky floor beneath them. The man's friend tried to grab her and intervene, but Reese chucked the rock dead centre into his face, knocking him down to the ground and breaking his nose in a violent spray of blood.
Adrenaline had replaced the blood running through her veins. Everything was a blur of actions and instincts.
The first man tried to get up, swearing wildly at her as he promised her great pain, but Reese only let him get halfway through his threats before she pulled the knife out of her shoulder in a spray of blood (the pain no longer meant anything to her. Not in this moment)and-
{STAB}
-Thrust it into the man's genitalia.
The man screamed as blood flowed from his groin in a wild splatter, but Reese shut him up by pulling the knife out and-
{STAB}
-Stabbed it into his throat.
But that wasn't enough for her. The man was still breathing. His eyes were still darting from side to side in a mad panic.
So she stabbed him again, this time in the eye.
Not enough.
In the stomach.
Not enough.
Right in the chest, where his heart should be.
Not enough.
The man whimpered, stilled, died.
Still not enough.
A groan of pain behind her. Her head craned back to see the second man pulling himself back up. She let go of the knife and left it deep in the dead first man's chest. The second man clutched his head. Her mind was still rushing with impulse and adrenaline and the rush of a first kill. The second man saw the corpse of his friend on the ground. She reached down and picked up the metal limb leaking Black Ether onto the ground and lifted it above her head.
He looked up at her, and started to plead. Her mind wasn't even registering the words. Besides, it wasn't like she was going to listen to them anyway.
She brought her Damocles sword down onto his head-
{CRACK}
-And cracked his skull in two.
Blood leapt out from the sudden impact and the man fell down. He was dead on the first impact.
Still.
Not.
Enough.
So she hit him again.
{CRACK}
And again.
{CRACK}
And again.
{CRACK}
And again.
{CRACK}
And again.
{CRACK}
Until finally, she stopped, and observed her handiwork.
(It was the first time that she had ever killed.)
The man's head was cracked open like a can, all the way down. His brain and skull had been reduced to a pulp under the metal. His eyes had been squashed. His jaw was caved in. His teeth were shattered. Brain matter covered the floor and herself.
She was painted in red.
Red.
So. Much. Red.
…
The tension and pressure in her body finally left her.
She dropped the metal stump in her hand.
What had she done?
What had she done...?
She spent hours walking.
Hours lost in a daze. Hours spent wandering down the path with an empty mind and hollow spirit, her body stained red and wet with blood. Every step was heavy, every motion that she made felt like concrete poured through her body and lined her bones.
"I'm not a murderer..." she repeated to herself in a daze, "I'm not a murderer... I'm not a murderer..."
Everything was blackness and silence. The entire world was muted. There were no sounds, no smells, no sights, no nothing. All she had left was the path in front of her.
"I'm not a murderer... I'm not a murderer... I'm not a murderer..."
She was growing weaker and weaker with each step. Blood and Black Ether leaked from the opened circuits and pumps that dangled out of the joint that had been embedded into her shoulder. She was losing blood rapidly.
She was dying.
She was going to die.
…
Maybe it was for the best.
She stopped walking and stood still. Everything froze. She froze too.
Oh, what was the point? Everyone she knew was dead, and everyone she would ever get close to was surely to die as well. That was just the way the world work for her now. It punished her for living. All she had wanted to do was get home, and it felt like the universe was toying with her, torturing her for wanting to commit the horrendous sin of wanting to be with her mother and father once more.
And now she had killed two men.
Whoever they were, and whatever they were, she had killed them. Her soul was damned to hell.
Just let it end.
Please...
She collapsed to the ground, and fell still.
She just wanted it to end.
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
A light filled her vision.
She barely had the strength to open her eyes, but somehow she found it. She tilted her head up and looked through the haze to see a white light hovering over her.
Her eyes widened.
Legend spoke of mythical creatures that had long since gone extinct. A race of animals(?) that had been sent into the throes of extinction long before the First Great War was ever a thought. They glowed in the night like lamps in the darkness, shining beacons for weary sailors lost in the ocean. They were naught but lights, spread out like a pair of wings as they hummed and hung over the unfortunate. They would be there for you when you died. They would be there for you when you were led astray. They would be there to guide you all the way back home.
They were supposed to be all gone.
But here was one right now.
An Angel.
Her mind must've been playing tricks on her. Her delirium changed the world around her. In the distance, besides the ethereal being, she saw a woman. She was beautiful. Bare blue skin, shattered golden chains, long black hair, kind eyes that looked to her with affection. Another woman besides her. A girl in a red dress, with short black hair and olive green eyes. Other angels gathered around them, like worshippers around their god.
"We am not gods, child. We are so much more."
What...? How did...
"We are observers, Reese Chloris of Jewel... we have no power here, but only for now.
…
"Go, my child... it is not your place to die here."
…
Reese obeyed.
She didn't know why, but she did.
She pulled herself upward, onto her feet, and the image dissolved before her. The world faded back into her vision. The Angel showed her the way.
One step. Two steps. Three steps. Between a pair of trees. Lumber over an upgrown root. Keep going.
Four steps. Five steps. The Angel passed through the bushes. She followed. Six steps. Seven steps. Lean under a branch. Taste the fresh air. Feel heavy. Keep going regardless.
Eight steps. Nine steps. See a clearing in the trees. Be blinded by the light. Keep going forward.
The Angel fluttered away. Out of her sight. She let out a wordless cry. No! Come back! Don't leave her! Go through the clearing.
Fall down. Roll onto back. Breath. Breath again. Begin to fall asleep.
Two faces greeted her. One was a pretty girl, with rosy hair, tanned brown skin, and heterochromatic grey-blue and silver eyes. The other a Faunus man in armour, head clasped in a helmet. Four arms adorn his body.
Go to sleep. Hear these last words.
"Welcome home, Reese Chloris."
Reviewer response time:
Guest: Aw, shucks, you'll make me blush, man. I'm not sure what to say other than thank you very much for the kind review.
Whelp, this got a lot darker than I thought it would get.
I mean, I knew this journey from Mistral to Jewel, especially one in the aftermath of one of the biggest battles that Remnant has seen in a long time, was going to be dark, but when I was putting it down to word, I was surprised by just how bleak the entire journey came out to be.
Still, I suppose that was the point that I was trying to make. A world in the aftermath of a great battle is bound to carry scars, and a world fractured in the face of war is going to make decisions and compromises that hurt people, both the self and others.
In a bleak world such as Remnant, people will do whatever they can to survive, or just take advantage of it all to do whatever the hell they want. I really wanted to show that off in this chapter.
Plus, I really wanted to hurt Reese when I was writing this. It's the same with all my characters: I just like putting them all into glass jars and shaking them until something breaks.
That might say more about me than I would like, but eh, not my problem. Now the characters, on the other hand...
There was also something else that I really wanted to communicate in this story: the outsider's perspective. I've included a lot of stuff in this chapter that have been going on in the background, such as Backlash and his chapter's backstory, the Kuchinashi Civil War, that whole thing with Nera and Ash, the grave digging scene, the crashed ships and vehicles scattering the landscape... they're not just background details. Not to me anyway. I wanted to communicate that there're more stories going on in the world than just Reese. There're more gears turning in the world than just the characters that we follow, and I really wanted to get that point across.
Also background events are fun to write about. Sue me.
So, with all of that said and done, I hope that you all enjoyed this chapter, and as always, please leave a review (or comment, depending on the platform that you are reading this on), follow and favourite, and I shall see you all next time!
Titanmaster 117 out!