Main theme: The Edge by Casey Lee Williams and Martin Gonzalez
Theme: Cloudy Day from the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack
One day later...
"I should send you back."
Ilia and the children looked up to the burly man who served as the commander of the newly established Solitan chapter of the House of the White Wolves, himself dressed in the closest thing to military apparel that they could find, that being a pair of white and grey camo-patterned trousers, a tattered bulletproof vest underneath a grey fur hooded coat, and an empty holster at his side. He was bold and bearded and Human, and he looked down at the children with cold blue eyes.
"You snuck onboard my ship like a couple of stowaways," he scoffed, "To what?"
"To fight," Ilia cut in with, "Like Sienna said."
Another scoff, "Hate to tell you this, runt, but you're six years too early for the soldier life."
"Hunters start training when they're five years old," Kira pointed out. Steph nodded alongside her.
The burly commander looked at her, "You're the Chieftain's daughter, niña," 'Chieftain'? That was a new one. Was he talking about Ghira? "You shouldn't even be here."
"And yet here I am," Kira shot back.
"Here we all are," Ilia continued, "We're here, now, and we're ready to fight. We always have been."
"Is that so?"
Ilia narrowed her eyes, "You ever been to Mantle?"
"No."
"Then you've got no idea what you're getting yourself in for," she continued, "But we do. We and I, we've been living on these streets for all our lives. We know every nook and cranny of the city, including the places that the men in the sky above don't. We know the people to talk to, and we know the ones to avoid. Without us, you'll get lost on the first turn and walk right into their guns, but with us? You'll know all the places to bury the bodies."
She would like to think that she was overselling the value of the children's knowledge... but she wasn't. She had seen things in Nicholas' Folly. Terrible things. The White Wolves had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They needed all the help that they could get.
"Look, I get that you're in charge here, and I get that you don't want to send people as young as us on there," Ilia eventually said, doing her best to make herself sound mature, "But Mantle's our turf, not yours. It's our stomping ground. You've never so much as set foot in the place, you said so yourself. You'll need someone out there that can lead you around the place."
"I can hire a guide, or recruit a local. They'd be more than willing."
"And they wouldn't know the things that we do. They wouldn't be as willing to fight as we are."
The commanding Human looked down at them.
"C'mon, man... please."
The man arched his eyebrow, and then sighed.
"Fine then, runts. Let's get you trained up."
Six months later...
"Aim down your sights- no, aim down them, not to the side. Keep your grip tight and mind the recoil."
Ilia looked away from the burly Human commander - of whom she now knew was called Chief David Martinez - as she set her eyes back onto the hastily assembled armoury before them. Chief Martinez had been teaching herself and the other children how to aim and shoot as many guns as they could, from pistols to larger hand cannons and even a few SMGs, for the last six months, as well as instructing them on both armed and unarmed combat outside of the mapping and scouting missions that they'd led the older, more experienced members of their chapter of the White Wolves through the streets of Mantle and identify every potential hideaway for themselves and checkpoints manned by the men from the sky, whom she now knew to be Atlesians.
The chief wasn't eager to send them out onto the frontlines just yet, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't ready them for it.
"Twitch! Either aim down your sights when not using your weapon and keep your finger off the trigger, or put the damn gun down! And for the love of Azul Primus, keep your safety on!"
"S-Sorry!"
Ilia shook her head, but couldn't help the smile on her face. Twitch was useless with a gun.
She looked over the sets of weapons racked up on the walls. Guns on one side, blades on the other, and more esoteric combat utensils on the other. None of them really spoke to her, whatever that meant. Chief Martinez said to her that those with aura - the forcefield stuff that Steph and herself had - tended to choose rather colourful weapons for themselves, really bizarre and out-there forms of combat. She knew that Steph had, for some reason, chosen a pair of batons alongside her (training) pistol. Ilia found it slightly odd, but didn't question it, even when Steph sent her a smile and a wink (and that just confused her even more).
At least Kira was keeping it simple. She'd picked a knife and a pistol combo for herself. Smart, practical, and-
Wait, no, she was asking about wielding them together.
Okay, maybe she wanted to put a knife onto the muzzle of her pistol and use it as a makeshift blade when she ran out of ammo. Okay, that was cool as well. Somewhat practical as well, if she was trying to-
Nope, she wanted it to turn into a katana.
She was really whining about it, actually.
Ilia turned her head away to scrutinise the walls of weapons. Nothing spoke to her. Nothing felt right. She looked over the pistols. They didn't feel right, but she still took one. It was standard issue for White Wolf personnel to carry one now, regardless of what their primary weapon was. She looked over the shelf of hand cannons and SMGs. Nothing there that spoke out to her either. She looked over the blades and swords. Nothing, nothing, nothing, still nothing, still-
Wait. There. Near the bottom.
A thin sword, with a needle-like blade and curved, cylindrical handle. The blade itself was coloured a dull silver, whilst the handle was a deep black. It reminded her of a rapier.
Ilia took it off the wall and ran the blade over her palm. None of the swords in the armoury were sharpened. They were all for training, and as such were dull and blunt.
This weapon... something about it...
It just spoke to her.
One year later...
Ilia bit on the pencil in her mouth, looking over the plain piece of paper on the desk in front of her, and then to the lines of squiggles on the board in front of her and the rest of the children.
This was... a lot more difficult than she had imagined.
One of the most important aspects of the children's' training was a topic that Ilia had thought would be (apologies if she offended Steph in any way): learning how to read and write. It was apparently an important skill when becoming a soldier, and while Ilia didn't really see why, she had forced herself not to complain and held her tongue.
She frowned, took the pencil out of her mouth and began to tap it against the paper on her desk. Next to her, Steph, who was concentrating hard on her paper as she slowly traced out the squiggles and lines on the board at the front of the class, turned to Ilia and sent her a scowl. Ilia did her best to ignore her.
Stephanie Brown's parents, when they were still alive, had done their best to try and teach her and the rest of the children of Nicholas' Folly the value of reading and writing, but all they had been able to manage in their busy schedules were the basics and values of numbers and how to apply them to anything that they were able to scavenge and sell for Lien. Apparently, most children supposedly learnt the basics on how to read and write when they were in their developing years, but Ilia and the others were eleven years of age now, long past their development. They'd never been given the chance at a proper education.
Chief Martinez had told them that he wasn't going to let them out onto the field without at least knowing the basics.
Unfortunately, the needs of the many were beginning to outweigh their own, making them the few. Atlas and the SDC had ramped up security on all their operations in response to the last few attacks by the White Wolves, and were beginning to sponsor retaliatory strikes against their outposts and the settlements that were friendly to them. Their fighters needed all hands on deck, and all she could do now was wait for the moment that she was called up. She'd been training with a pistol for a year now, and half a year with her new bladed weapon that she had nicknamed 'Lightning Lash' (if only to get Steph off her back about naming her weapon like Hunters did. Her friend was all in on this Huntress nonsense. She always had been). She was as ready as could be, now, and she would be damned if she wasn't impatient for it.
As much as she could logically understand the reasons that they were being kept behind, she was still vexed by it.
She looked back up to the board once more. Chief Martinez had said that the words on the board were 'Hello. My name is'. After that, she was supposed to write down her own name, of which she had also been practicing for the last week. All she had to do was trace the lines on the board onto the page before her, and then write out her name following it.
She tapped her finger against the desk before her.
This was difficult.
This was also stupid.
Why did she have to learn this? She was learning how to be a warrior, a soldier, not a novelist or writer. She was training on how to fight, not read. Wasn't this all just getting in the way of that? Wasn't this all just... what was the phrase? Busy work. Wasn't this all just busy work? Something to keep them distracted from the fact that the people in charge weren't letting them do anything?
It irked her to no end.
She sighed, earning a few annoyed glances from the other children in the room. The only one of them who hadn't had to participate in this... lesson, was Kira. She had the benefits of a full education (at eleven years old, at least), and had been called back to Menagerie by her parents. For the time being, at least. These little intervals of hers out of Solitas back to home had so far been quite common, and when she came back she would always complain about it. Apparently her parents were constantly trying to dissuade her from joining the fight. All it took from Ilia and the others was a gentle reminder that none of them had parents anymore themselves, and she silenced herself.
She looked down at the paper once more. This was pointless. She needed to learn how to fight, not write. This was useless to her in the field of battle. Less than useless. Nothing more than needless lip service to the idea that they were ordinary children and nothing more.
They weren't.
They weren't ordinary children.
They had never been given the chance.
And yet here was here, pretending that she was something that she was not.
Ilia frowned, and stared at her desk for a long time.
Eventually, she groaned, and put her pencil to paper.
One and a half years later...
Today was the day.
For the first time since they'd arrived back in Solitas, they were on a mission. Not a scouting operation in and around Mantle and under direct supervision like before. This was a proper, actual mission...
To one of the prison mines that she had been forced into over a year ago.
The Divider Labour Camp. It was a similar setup to the Compass Labour Camp that fell when Ilia and the others escaped from there, except now they'd improved security on it. Extra patrols, cameras in the hallways, automatic turrets lining the tunnels, even hardlight shields around the hangers to keep the Grimm out and prisoners inside. This was to be expected, after all. Atlas hadn't made public the breakout when it happened, but they had made sure to learn from as many mistakes as they could, whether it be through their own hands or their corporate contractors.
But the mines were still privately owned by the SDC, and that meant that, even with the SDC revamping its hiring process for its private security forces, their guards were still mercenaries to the core. It had taken a long time, considering how steadfast many of them were to their contracts (the most of them now being ex-Atlesian military and special forces), but they had managed to find someone that could be bribed in the prison guard staff. Someone that they could pay off to go along with their plan and do whatever they needed him to do.
In this case, it was to turn off the turrets and cameras, send them over lists of cargo shipments, prisoner counts, air patrol times, and staff manifests, and unlock the electric collars on the prisoners in a short period of time before they landed.
This was a day that had been over a year in the making. The White Wolf commanders, some of them veterans of the same breakout that Ilia had been a part of, had learnt from their mistakes as well, and had been sure to try and cover every basis as they put their plans into motion.
Now it was time for it to show its dividends.
And so, when the commandeered Deluge-class box freighters (she knew their designation now) landed in the hanger bay, so far unnoticed and unimpeded by the SDC's Verity-class fighter overflights due to hijacking the prison's flight schedules and slipping in with the appropriate time and codes-
Stolen from a dead SDC corporate executive after White Wolf insurgents had stormed his home and slit his throat in his sleep. Ilia, Steph, and the rest of their group were unsure of how to feel about that.
-They were greeted by a raucous crowd of prisoners, all of them armed with weapons that had been smuggled into the prison by their bribed cohort, and all of them under fire from the guards and droids that were still up and running.
As soon as the ramp went down along the sides of the freighter's cargo holds (not the one at the front, though. Chief Martinez had been insistent on telling them that that would just needlessly expose them to incoming fire when they'd been running practice drills for over a week), Ilia's group allowed Chief Martinez and his fighters, all dressed in irregular and scavenged military uniforms, to poke their heads out and begin to lay down suppressing fire on the guards at the other end of the hanger. Tracer rounds flew across the hanger bay as bullets bounced off the automatic locking of the hardlight barriers around the hanger bay doors behind them. Prisoners screamed and shouted as they ducked for cover, but Chief Martinez and his men were precise with their shots, always making sure to avoid the prisoners that they were trying to save.
Unfortunately, the guards and droids had the same level of accuracy to them, and the prisoners were forced to keep themselves ducked to the ground and bullets flew out over their heads. Two guards tried to flank the transports by their sides and fire into the holds, only for Martinez and two of his men to spin their sights onto him and hit them with two bullets in the chest and one in their heads. Steph looked away. Ilia didn't. Kira did nothing but stare.
Soon enough, the surviving guards and droids were forced to duck down for cover as the White Wolf operatives continued to lay down suppressing fire, and Ilia watched the guard that they had bribed, another Techion that called herself 'Starlight', run up to the box freighters with her arms up and called out, "Everyone onboard now! Go go go-"
A lance of light pierced through her head and sent her down to the ground with a splatter of Black Ether, blood, oil, and shards of metal and brain matter. She was dead before she hit the ground. Whilst Steph screamed and Kira stepped back in shock, Ilia scanned their surroundings outside the freighter hold. Where had that shot come from? One of the guards. It almost looked like it came from their side of the hanger. Friendly fire, maybe? Chief Martinez did say that it was possible, especially in any intense combat scenario if they weren't paying proper attention, and not a lot of people actually knew that they had a spy inside the Divider Labour Camp for operational security.
(Behind them, Adam hid his smile as he lowered his smoking pistol.)
It didn't matter. Not at the moment at least. Near them, Chief Martinez cried out, "Shit! Starlight's down! She was supposed to shut off the hardlight shields!"
Well, that complicated things. The hardlight shield needed to stay up to keep the Grimm out whilst they loaded up the ships with the prisoners. Out of the corner of the eye, she could see the shadowy forms of Beowolves, Saybrs, Centinels, and so on clawing at the glowing blue wall of light, doing their best to dig their way in. Starlight had the automatic codes to the shields that she was supposed to send out from her helmet systems when they were ready to lift off (herself fleeing as both the designated sole survivor and their spy within SchneeFall and the SDC), but with her dead now, the only way to shut off the shields so that they could take off was to flip the manual switch on the far wall of the hanger, but that would mean that someone would have to be left behind so that the others could flee.
Shit. No matter what Chief Martinez had said, Ilia was not willing to leave him behind, or any other members of their chapter. They'd find a way to shut off the shields without leaving anyone behind. She'd make sure of-
Adam took off running.
What the hell? Was he trying to shut off the shields himself? But it was too soon! They were still under fire, and they hadn't even loaded any of the prisoners yet! What the hell was he trying to do? Ilia moved to shout at him, to try and ask as to what he was doing, only to pause and stop in silence as he jumped up onto a box and thrust his red sword into the air, all without any cover and perfectly in sight of the shooters on the other side of the hanger if they weren't already supressed.
"What the hell is he doing!?" Chief Martinez shouted as he let out a burst of fire into the head of a droid that had popped out of cover, scattering oil and mechanical shards across the wall behind it, "It's too soon! He's got no cover!"
"I don't know!" Ilia called out in response as she helped Sammy and Twitch drag a wounded White Wolf fighter into the hold and propping him against the wall. She was about to say something else before she heard Adam call out:
"Brother and sister Faunus!"
"...Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Martinez muttered, "He got impatient."
"I'm... not sure if it's just that," Ilia said as she watched the crowds of prisoners turn to Adam in surprise, standing tall as if he were immune to the bullets flying around them, as if he didn't care about the monsters banging on the hardlight wall behind him, as if he stood above all the danger as it were nothing to him.
"You have been beaten and bloodied!" Adam called out to the crowds, and they all listened, "You have been defiled and degraded! Now is the time to strike back! Now is the time to take back what is yours! Join us, and help us turn your tooth and claw against those that have oppressed you! Come with us, and we will show Atlas your fangs!"
The crowd roared, and once more Martinez swore as he fired two rounds into a guard that had ducked out of cover to try and take a shot at Adam as he... what? Preached? It certainly seemed like it.
Suddenly, as soon as Adam had finished his speech, the crowd surged forward and began to pile onto the freighters, shoving, pushing, and even trampling over each other as they sprinted onto the ships. Some of the Human and Techion convicts in the crowd hesitated somewhat due to Adam's words and his highlighting of the Faunus, but either forced themselves to move or were gunned down by the guards as the mercs lost all pretence and began to fire upon the crowd, trying to stop as many inmates from fleeing as they could.
"Goddammit!" Chief Martinez swore as Ilia and the others rushed into their positions under the cover of the crowds, waving them to the ships and trying to filter them through in as calm and orderly a fashion as possible, which wasn't thanks to the panicked fervour that they'd been whipped into. Some of them looked down at her and the rest of the children with distress or discomfort, and Ilia didn't make her own discomfort at their looks visible.
There it was again. The condescending compassion. She knew why they were looking at her like that logically... but it still angered her that no one was taking them seriously. This was supposed to be their chance to gain the respect that they were due, but even now...
"D-Do we try and fi-filter them?" Twitch asked, "Try to m-m-make sure that the peo- the people that are inno- innocent? That a-aren't, like, m-m-murderers and- and stuff?"
"They've been locked away in this hell, Twitch," Sammy responded as he helped a pair of bruised women, one of them sporting a bloody nose and busted eye, into the freighter next to them, "They're all innocent."
"H-How do you know?"
Sammy said nothing in response.
Behind them, the Grimm were still throwing themselves against the hardlight walls of the hanger bay, clawing at the glowing surface, breaking their own fur and flesh and claws and leaving trails of black blood sliding down the luminescent cerulean projection from how hard they were trying to dig their way through to slaughter everyone inside, uncaring to how much they hurt themselves in the process. It was like they were drunk on their own hatred. Unnatural, ungodly.
The crowds, or at most of them seeing as the rest were now dead in the scrum, were now piled onto the freighters. The hardlight shields were still up. Guards were still shooting at them. And now the person who was supposed to lower the shields for them automatically was dead.
As Chief Martinez always said: 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy'.
"Shit, we're boxed in!" Chief Martinez yelled out as the engines to the freighters began to power on, "Start lifting us off!" he called to the pilots in his freighter's cockpit, "When the Grimm bust down the shield on their own, we bail!"
"That's a no-go!" called back the pilot, "It'll take the Grimm seven minutes to break through the barrier! Air patrol from the Verities pass over the prison in less than five! By the time the barrier breaks down, they'll have already figured out what's going on and send interception flights to pick us off!"
"Dammit!" this whole ruse hinged on the SDC thinking that everything in the prison were operating normally thanks to Starlight fixing the communication networks to a loop of repeated communications until the moment that the Grimm burst through the hardlight barrier and overrun the facility thanks to the automatic turrets being offline, which they could pin on a glitch in the system. At soon as the barrier went down, they'd switch to a boatload of distress signals and allow Starlight flee into the wild. There was no way that the SDC would bother to try and reclaim a mine that had been lost to the Grimm, especially one that had been manned mainly by convicts. It was too much of a waste of time, and Starlight's testimony would be enough to convince the authority that reclamation wasn't worth it. That'd keep them from finding out that all of the prisoners had fled.
But this? If the patrol flights pass by and see a horde of Grimm clawing away at the barriers while radio traffic reads as normal whilst they were still inside, they'd figure out their plan, send for interception flights and shoot down any ships that were attempting to flee once the barrier went down.
The situation was rapidly deteriorating, and they needed a way out of it.
"...Fuck."
Ilia turned to Steph, "What?"
"Cover me."
"What are you- STEPH, WAIT!" Ilia called out as Stephanie suddenly ran down the side of the rising box freighter and leapt off, "Steph, what the hell are you doing?!"
Steph didn't hear her over the din of chaos around them, or maybe she just wasn't paying her any mind. Instead, she landed on the ground with a {THUD} but recovered quickly with a blue shimmer as she sprinted across the metal ground, puckered by bullet holes and stray shards of shrapnel, a cerulean trail of light flowing from her back as she sped across the hanger bay, dodging tracer fire all the way.
"What the hell is that little brat doing?!" Chief Martinez called out as he looked through the opened hold of the box freighter and to the skittering eleven-year-old darting across the hanger bay floor.
"I don't know, just keep her covered!" Ilia called out as she held her pistol in hand and fired at the other end of the hanger, forcing two guards to duck down for cover as the bullets panged off the wall behind them. Ilia had no intent on actually shooting and (directly) killing anyone. The best she could and would do was shoot at the bad guys and keep them pinned down so that they could accomplish their objectives without any additional bloodshed.
Chief Martinez swore as he let out a burst of fire and landed them in the chest of a droid, piercing through its armour and forcing it down to the ground in a spray of black oil. Meanwhile, Steph leapt up into the air, carried by her semblance's momentum, and then planted her feet down onto a guard's head, caving in his nose and leaving him tumbling down to the ground with a crash and a concussion.
Steph twirled in the air as she landed on the ground, slipping underneath the legs of a droid and jamming her electro-batons into its shins, shocking it and sending it toppling over another guard before she ran to the wall, jumped up in place with a cerulean line trailing from behind her-
And grabbed onto the hardlight shield manual switch, pulling it down.
Behind the ships rising up from the ground, the hardlight shield flickered away, and the Grimm came surging in.
The guards screamed, the ex-convicts and their liberators aboard the ships screamed, the droids opened fire, and Steph started running.
She leapt upward, carried by the momentum of her semblance as a Beowolf sprinted into the hanger and lunged for her, hitting a guard where she had once been standing and settling for tearing the man's throat out instead. She bounced onto and then off a low-flying Teryx as it was swooping down to find new prey in the line of panicking guards, and then landed on the ground and rolled under the swiping paw of an icy Ursa, jamming one of her electro-batons into the beast's eyes and turning it on, popping the Grimm's eye like a grape and causing it to let out a roar as Steph used the monster, blinded by its pain and wails of agony, to begin hopscotching over the Grimm to the box freighters still hovering above the ground.
Behind her, the guards were overwhelmed and slaughtered. Ilia found herself both disgusted and relieved about how she felt no remorse to their demises.
Steph leapfrogged over a curling Centinel before using its body as a springboard to launch herself up into the air, carried by the momentum of her semblance. Ilia pushed her psitol into its holster as she watched Steph bury her electro-batons into the eyes of another Ursa, killing it, before she clipped them both to her sides and leapt back up into the air. Ilia then-
"What are you doing?!" called out Chief Martinez.
-Scurried herself onto the edge of the box freighter's open hold, right down the ramp as it hovered above the ground, and thrust out her arm to her friend, "Take my hand!"
Steph landed on and barrelled over a small Nevermore that was flying into the hanger, running over its wings and leaping off the Grimm, landing on the head of a Teryx and throwing it off balance, before she jumped finally to the box freighter, stretching her hand out to grab Ilia's hand and-
The Teryx, in anger of being used like a trampoline, swiped one of its claws at Stephanie's back.
Steph screamed as the claws broke through her aura and drew blood from the freshly dug canyons of skin in her back. She was jostled and swung out of the way of the box freighter's landing ramp and Ilia's waiting arm, and the latter, in a panic, jostled herself further down the ramp to try and catch Steph as she fell, the two of them screaming as they did-
Ilia toppled over the edge of the ramp.
She caught Steph's hand.
Another hand caught her leg.
"That was dumb, kid-"
"Chief!" Ilia called out as she felt Chief Martinez pull her up by her foot-
"-Now hold on tight!"
-And then tossed her into the box freighter's hold, her arm still latched onto Steph as the two girls landed hard on the metal ground of the ship's holding bay.
Chief Martinez slammed his hand against the wall of the ship, "Get us out of here!" and the ship's ramp doors folded into the walls.
A split second later, the commandeered box freighters rocketed out of the Divider Labour Camp hanger bay, their cargo bays bloated with ex-convicts and escapees of all sorts, leaving the site behind them to be swallowed whole by the Grimm.
Ilia and Steph laid on the ground, their hands still linked together as the people around them cheered and clapped at a successful escape. Chief Martinez hovered over the both of them before he pulled them both up onto their feet.
"That was stupid, you two. Real stupid."
He patted them on their shoulders.
"Good work."
Ilia preened.
"You disobeyed a direct order."
"You gave no order."
"Don't try to me smart with me, Taurus. You were briefed on the plan. You were supposed to help us keep the guards suppressed and the escapees controlled."
"I was."
"By waxing your own ego?"
"The guards were gunning them down. If we didn't make a move then they all would've died."
"That's not your decision to make, kid."
"So we should've just let them all be killed then?"
"No, we should've stuck to the plan and rescued them, which we were doing. But then you decided to run off and try to play recruiter, or be a hero, or whatever the hell you were trying to do."
"I was trying to speed things along."
"And in turn, you started a rush amongst the prisoners that almost trampled some of our men and probably got more people killed in turn. When we're on mission, we stick to the plan. Any deviation results in everyone dying."
"The plan was shot the moment our person on the inside was as well. Adaptation is key to surviving on the battlefield, you know that."
"True, but that wasn't adaptation out there, Taurus. That was you showing yourself off, that was you monologing. You're lucky that you weren't shot."
"All those prisoners that we saved? They've now all joined the White Wolves, joined us. Because of me. Because of what I said to them."
"Don't overestimate yourself, Taurus. You weren't the one to bring down the shields, you weren't the one to save us all. You're not as special as you clearly think you are."
"It was my words-"
"It's your ass that's on potato peeling duty for the next month, got it?"
"You're kidding."
"I'm not... you're right, Taurus. All those people that signed up for the White Wolves probably got in because of your fancy little speech, and because of that I can't just kicked you out for what you did back in the mines... but that doesn't mean I can't hand out disciplinary action. Like it or not, what you did in the mines was wrong, and you need to understand that. Maybe some time away from the mines will help you reflect on your actions. Got it?"
"...Fine."
Kira kept herself sheltered away in the corner.
Adam would later suggest to her that Chief Martinez's report to Sienna Khan about the Divider Labour Camp mission was biased, seeing as he was a Human, and that it needed some revisions to be more in line with reality. Kira would proceed to do just that.
(The next month that Adam was under punishment for would not teach him anything. It would only serve to heighten his resentment.)
Two years later...
The first time that Ilia killed someone wasn't during a grand battle, or a mission to save slaves or protect Faunus from persecution, or anything like that.
It was from a simple mugging.
She knew that Nicholas' Folly was dangerous. She knew this well. She'd lived there for long enough that the lesson had imprinted itself into her mind like a brand. That was why she always took precautions when moving through the streets. That was why she always checked her corners and peeked around walls to make sure that there was never anyone waiting for her.
But even so, sometimes she just got unlucky.
Someone got the jump on her. An older man, long beard, tattered coat, teeth yellow and looking like they were about to fall out. His skin was rough-looking and mottled with warts and scabs and boils and so on. He gnashed at her as he forced her onto the ground and held a knife to her throat. He screamed something at her, either in another language or just simply unintelligible. Spittle flew out of his mouth with each string of gibberish. His eyes were so bloodshot that Ilia couldn't help but wonder if he was on something.
She reached out to grab something, but the man just picked her up and slammed her back into the ground hard. She coughed and wheezed for air as her aura broke. A panic filled her as the raving, snarling man pressed the knife against the skin of her throat.
Ilia grabbed something sharp in her hand, and did something she'd never done before.
She shoved a shard of glass into the man's throat and killed him.
Ilia's face was covered in a splatter of blood as the glass split the man's throat wide open. The man gasped and spluttered as blood dripped out from his cracked lips, his eyes darting rapidly from left to right and back before settling on her, muttering something that she couldn't understand to her before his grip on the knife at her throat went limp, followed by the rest of his body.
He fell on top of her, deathly still.
Ilia let out a cry as she squirmed out from under the body, coughing up and spitting out the man's blood that had gathered in her throat before leaning up to look at the motionless corpse before her. Her face was painted a deep crimson, the same that was pooling on the ground beneath the man.
She stared at the corpse, lost in shock. Blood dripped down from her chin to the floor.
She'd just killed someone.
She'd never done it before. Indirectly killing someone, maybe. But directly? Getting her hands dirty? Pulling the trigger and doing the deed herself?
No. Never.
She had always prepared herself for when she had to take another person's life. Like she said, Nicholas' Folly was dangerous. It was not a kind place. You had to be ready to do anything to survive in a hellhole like this.
But now that it was done? Now that she had shed her first blood, claimed her first kill?
Now she just felt sick, hollow, unprepared.
It wasn't even for a good cause, this death. It wasn't in the name of the White Wolves and furthering their goals, or sticking it to Atlas, or promoting equality between Human and Faunus or something like that.
It was just over a mugging by one of the many homeless people of Nicholas' Folly. Just one of many cruel events that characterised everyday living for those who made their home here.
Ilia stared at the body, watching the dead man's blood pool on the ground. The crimson liquid on her face was beginning to loose its uncomfortable heat and dry or freeze up. She could taste metal in her mouth. Her vision was dyeing itself a deep shade of red.
Everything was becoming a blur. Her ears wouldn't stop ringing. Yet somehow, the sight of the dead man before her remained as clear as ever. Phantom sensations riddled her skin. She could feel the blowback of her back slamming against the ground. She could still hear the man's mad raving in her ringing ears. She could still feel his blood spilling from his mouth and neck and drowning her as he glared down at her like the murderer she was-
A hand placed itself on her shoulder. She barely had the energy in her to be surprised. All she could do was turn her crimson-painted head up to see Chief Martinez looking down at her. There was a strange expression on his face. She didn't understand what it meant. She didn't understand much of anything at the moment.
"Hey, kid," why was his voice so calm, soft, whatever? "We need to move."
"I just... I..."
"I know."
She looked down at the corpse on the ground. The falling snow was beginning to cover it, cover her.
"I just killed someone" her voice was as hollow as she felt.
"I know..."
How was he so calm about this?
She couldn't help but ask, "How do you... deal with something like this?" was that even the right thing to ask?
Chief Martinez sighed.
"I don't."
Oh.
"Oh..."
Ilia let herself be limply pulled away by Chief Martinez, her eyes never leaving the sight of the corpse, of the man that she had killed, even when the Chief covered her eyes and pulled her away to safety.
Later on, Adam would congratulate her for her first kill.
She decided that she was going to hate Adam Taurus.
Two and a half years later...
Ilia had watched her White Wolves commit their first massacre today.
They had been conducting an ambush on a convoy of SDC trucks running back and forth from the mines. It was a previously uncommon method of transportation used by the SDC. They used to prefer using Bullheads, shuttlecraft, and cargo ships to move above their dust and workers between Atlas and the mines as to avoid the Grimm, but had to cut down on using them due to the amount of shuttles that the White Wolves had shot down with small arms fire and RPGs.
Now, the SDC were using armoured jeeps and trucks to ferry their resources from one point to another, and the White Wolves took to mining the roads that they travelled on with IEDs and other improvised explosives (Ilia remembered the extensive amount of training that she'd had to do in order to try and make one of them, and that had been with just duds and smoke bombs. Chief Martinez had no interest in letting her or the other kids anywhere near live explosives of any kind).
There had been some close calls before, though. They were getting bolder in their attacks, and that only increased the risks. They'd almost been caught a few times, and a few of their contacts in Nicholas' Folly had ratted them out and given the authorities the locations of a safehouse or two, either through bribery (Ilia couldn't blame them for that, considering the shithole that they all lived in) or through, as they called it, 'Enhanced Interrogation'. Atlas was getting more ruthless.
It only made sense for the White Wolves to do the same.
Ilia worried that they were getting reckless, though. Sienna Khan had made it clear to keep their attacks focused on military targets only. No civilians were to be caught in the crossfire. That strict rule, while justified, was beginning to create a problem for them, as the SDC and their Atlesian cronies were beginning to hide their trucks in civilian convoys.
Human shields, essentially. They were using their own citizens as cover for their operations. Bastards, all of them. It had forced them to back off on their attacks for the most part.
However, today they had got lucky. A convoy of Atlesian trucks, sheltered within a group of civilian cars and travelling merchants, were moving through an icy road covered by a cliff face resembling an ice shelf under the cover of darkness. All Ilia and the others needed to do was intercept them at the canyon of ice that they were travelling through near the road's end, illuminated by the snow-growing moss and fungi that glowed in the pitch-black night sky around them (the only breeds that could survive in the harsh colds of the Solitan tundra, either underground in the damp, abandoned tunnels of the Transcontinental Train Network)-
A vain attempt by those who lived in the Victorian Era, Remnant's supposed 'Golden Age', to link all the kingdoms and various cities that had popped up (or at least the ones that weren't moving) together. However, when the Great War came about, the tunnels all collapsed in the ensuing conflagration. Now those old tunnels laid collapsed across the planet, nothing more than shallow craters and crevices in the ground where they once were. The few tunnels that hadn't been caved in during the war were either used by smugglers and criminals, shanty towns for settlers and pilgrims, or infested by Grimm. Most of the time it was the last one.
-And once the convoy had been halted (they'd mined the road enough for it), they would simply unload their guns into the convoy, force them to surrender, and then steal away all the dust and stuff that they'd been taking with them.
Soon enough, the convoy arrived, and the IEDs that they'd planted in the road detonated, sending on Atlesian jeep spinning off to the side, crashing into the wall of the icy canyon and bringing a torrent of snow and ice down onto it. The remaining cars and trucks in the convoy stopped as Ilia and the other White Wolves opened fire on the Altesian soldiers and SDC guards, killing several of them (Ilia had found herself becoming as numb to death as she was the cold. It scared her) and sending the rest to cover.
Soon enough, it was over. The Atlesian and SDC guards were on their knees, and the victorious White Wolf fighters standing above them, guns tilted to their captives' heads. Not too far away, the civilians that had been riding with them were huddled up together, shivering in the cold despite their thick coats. The cars and trucks around them were riddled with bullet holes. One of them was smoking from the engine, its hood opened up and filled with shovels of snow to cool it off.
Ilia, Steph, and Kira were ordered to open up the backs of one of the trucks, to check that all the dust they needed was in there.
Their aura was the only thing protecting them when the truck exploded.
When they woke up, groggy and with ringing ears, they found the walls pocked with bullet holes and steaming under the heat of three burning trucks, the dust in them cooking off and releasing bursts of burning plant growth and lightning and ice and fire this way and that. The icy floor was puckered in shrapnel and empty casings. Bodies were on the ground.
The civilians were all dead, scattered and with smoking guns in their hands.
As it turned out, the trucks had some sort of trigger in them, in case people without the proper authorisation passes of whatever Atlesian personnel carried on them nowadays tried to open them up. A new form of security. Not only that, but the civilians that had been riding with them? They had all been secret Atlesian agents, part of a new plan to protect their convoys.
That meant that the rules of engagement for the White Wolves had changed. Hell, they had now been broken and shattered. Now every civilian riding with a convoy was suspect, now every non-combatant was a possible target. Ilia felt enraged by this. It was an act of cowardice, and nothing more.
Adam felt the same way. He had been in charge of this operation, and he ordered his men, whom he referred to as his 'Acolytes' since they all shared his worship of the Faunus god Azul Primus, to line up all the Atlesian and SDC prisoners against the icy canyon wall, and drew out his sword, which he had called Wilt and Blush, and beheaded them all in a single stroke. A red line leeched out from his swiping sword (his semblance) and cut into their throats, leaving their heads landing onto the ground before their bodies drop and a fine spray of blood against the icy wall behind them.
Steph looked away. Ilia clenched her fists. Kira looked on in amazement.
Three years later...
"CHIEF!" Ilia screamed as she sent the thin blade of her rapier into the eyes of a frosty Boarbatusk. The Grimm released its sharp-toothed grip on Chief Martinez's torso and turned to smoke and ash before Ilia planted herself onto her knees and looked over the bloody wound at his side.
Chief Martinez's torso had been reduced to a mangled waist. His aura had broken and his skin shredded. She could see his torn intestines and punctured stomach, commingling stomach acid with his blood. Crimson was beginning to trail down from his lips. His eyes looked like they were beginning to grow heavy.
This wasn't meant to happen.
They had been engaged by a patrol of Atlesian soldiers and were locked in a brutal firefight, and had almost been surrounded by their reinforcements before Kira had run off and lured a pack of Grimm in to annihilate the Atlesians, wiping them all out in barely a minute.
(It was a sound tactic, and one that the Atlesians had done to them before. She and the others had called the Atlesians monsters for it. It was only when Steph pointed out to her that she and the other White Wolves were calling themselves heroes for using the same tactic did she become aware of the hypocrisy.)
However, naturally, the Grimm had then sicked themselves upon them, and soon they were engaged in a vicious fighting retreat in order to link up with their own reinforcements. Adam wiped out dozens of Grimm during the fight, and Kira, Steph, Ilia and the rest of her group had put in a lot of work as well, but it was hopeless. There were just so many of them. Too many.
And then a stray Boarbatusk jumped out of the snow to attack Martinez.
Even the best fighters made mistakes. Even the best of the best got unlucky, and Chief Martinez was the best fighter that Ilia had ever known. But it hadn't been enough to protect him from the Grimm as it broke through his aura and began to rip him to pieces, leaving a bloody mess on the ground below.
Ilia tried to see if there was a way to stop the bleeding, to heal the gaping wounds. She tried to apply pressure to his torso, but there was no way that she alone could stop the bleeding, not when his wounds were this extensive. She tried to see if there were enough bandages in her emergency first aid kit to try and cover them up, but the same problem applied. And his aura? It was broken, and needed to recharge before it could begin to heal him.
He was losing way too much blood, way too quickly. He looked like he was going into shock.
His hand shakingly planted itself on her shoulder.
"R-Run..."
"I'm not leaving you here!" Ilia cried out. Behind them, the roars of the Grimm were growing closer and closer.
"There's... nothing that you can do, kid. Now go. Save yourself."
"Not while I can still save you!"
Chief Martinez gave her a bloody smile.
"You're a good kid, Amitola, and a better soldier," Ilia felt the praise from him plant itself inside her heart before she succumbed back to the despair of watching her mentor die, "But there's one lesson that you and- and the others have never been able to learn...
"You can't save everyone."
Ilia felt her heart shred itself to pieces.
"Chief... please..."
"I'm done, kid... but you're not. None of you are."
"Ilia, we need to move!" someone called out from behind her. The sounds of the Grimm were getting closer by the second.
"This ain't me asking you, kid... this is me ordering you... run."
Ilia tried to wipe away the tears rolling down her eyes, leaving her face smeared in blood, before Kira grabbed her other arm and began to pull her away. Ilia let out a wet gasp of air before she turned around and ran, forcing herself not to look back as the Grimm descended on Chief Martinez and tore him limb from limb.
He didn't scream. Not even once.
When they got back to camp, Adam Taurus was elected to lead them from then on.
And that's when things really began to change.
Three and a half years later...
First Chief Martinez, and now Molly.
Ilia cradled Molly's body as she rocked in place behind an old dumpster. There had been a shootout in the middle of Mantle after she and the rest of her group, along with several White Wolf grunts pulled out from Nicholas' Folly, had gone on a spree of robbing and firebombing Atlesian-owned bunks and businesses. They'd gone out of their way to not kill any civilians, which had been difficult in of itself, but soon enough Atlesian military policemen had caught up to them.
One stray shot had gone through Molly's chest and killed her instantly.
The Atlesian who killed her had been locked in a state of shock and horror at his actions before Kira (having refused to be pulled away one more by her parents back to Menagerie) shot him in the throat and killed him in turn. Four bodies on the ground later, and Ilia and her group had managed to retreat back into the alleyways, dragging Molly's corpse along with them.
They cried. All of them cried. Twitch rocked in place, his body shaking and his head cradled in his hands. Sammy was standing up, his clenched fists at his side and his face locked in sorrowful rage, looking away with red cheeks wet with fat tears. Steph was kneeling on the ground, sobbing loudly. Kira leant herself against the wall, her face covered in shadows as she stared down at the gun in her hands, contemplating Molly's death and her own first kill.
Ilia just kept herself silent, hugging Molly's body close to her as it lost its warmth and was covered by the gently falling snow. Her body was soaked with blood.
When did Adam Taurus appear above them?
"We need to move," his voice was as cold as the snow.
Kira was the first to move. For a while, she seemed like the only one.
"What about Molly?" Ilia asked quietly.
"...Leave her."
Ilia looked up to Adam in angst. They couldn't just leave her here. She deserved a better fate than being left here in the dirt and ice of an abandoned alleyway.
"She's gone, nothing you can do about that, and nothing more you can do for her now," Adam explained sharply, his voice a veiled attempt at stoic emotionless with a lace of something else (contempt, she would realise later) behind it, "And we can't risk leaving a trail," of blood, "Back to the bunker."
He began to walk.
"Don't waste energy carrying dead weight."
Ilia bared her teeth. Adam didn't even notice. He just kept moving, Kira following shortly behind.
Ilia looked down at the body in her hands, and then sighed sadly as she placed the body on the ground, folding Molly's arms together and closing her eyes. She picked herself up from the ground, and pulled up Steph and Twitch.
They ran, following behind Adam as they fled deeper into Mantle, and then into Nicholas' Folly.
(When they came back later to get Molly's body, they found it to be gone.
Winter Schnee had happened upon it, and given her a proper burial.)
Four years later...
"Starros?"
The girl that stood before Ilia, the gun in her hand aimed at the Chameleon Faunus' head, had an expression on her face that was as cold as the Solitian tundra. Her mouth was locked in a frown, her eyes narrowed. Her body was covered in armour. The hooves on her feet were covered in metal plating. Were they even still there? The Atlesian military stamp on her armoured chest stood out like a sore thumb.
"Put your hands on your head," Starros' voice was equally as frosty, "You're under arrest."
Ilia couldn't believe the words coming out of her old friend's mouth, "Starros, it's me. Ilia. You remember me, don't you?"
"I said put your hands on your head," she'd stopped referring to herself in the third person, then.
"Starros, what are you doing?" Ilia's voice was beginning to break, "You're- you were one of us, remember? You still are."
Starros put both hands on her pistol, "I'm not going to say it again,"
"Starros-"
"Don't give me a reason to shoot you."
"Starros, what the hell is this!? Why are you- you hated Atlas, remember? You hated them, we all did! You led us in stealing from them, in surviving against them, in spitting in their faces by living at all! And now you're working for them?!"
"...People change."
"This is what you call 'Change'?!"
"Ilia..."
She blinked, "You do remember me..."
"Ilia, just put your hands on your head and let me arrest you. Please," Starros' face became saddened, "My orders are to bring you and the others in alive. Don't make me disobey them."
Ilia shook her head, "When did you become a- become a fucking Atlesian bootlicker?"
Starros didn't look offended. That just made the betrayal hurt more, "Like I said, Ilia. People change. We do what we have to do to survive, don't we? That's the lesson that we learnt in Nicholas' Folly. Whatever it takes, right? This is me doing whatever it takes."
Ilia clenched her fist, "Our time back in Nicholas' Folly, in the orphanage... we grew up together, Starros. Does that really mean nothing to you?"
"It means everything to me, Ilia. That's why I volunteered for this mission before everyone else... because I'm the only one who won't try to kill you at the first chance I get."
Ilia took a step back, "Starros... please, don't."
"The same goes for you, Ilia," Starros sighed, "Just come quietly, Ilia. Please. I promise they'll treat you kindly."
"The Atlesians? Like they have before? I'd rather die than-"
"You're not dying, Ilia."
Suddenly, Starros was no longer beyond arm's reach.
"I won't let you."
Ilia suddenly remembered Starros' power. Her semblance. She could mind control anyone so long as she had one of her hands on them.
"I'm sorry."
Before Ilia could react, Starros placed a hand on her cheek and-
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
And then Ilia woke up. Starros' hand was still on her cheek. They hadn't moved. Not an inch. Starros' eyes were wide, and her face was locked with an expression of pain and surprise.
She coughed up blood onto Ilia's face, and the Chameleon Faunus looked down to see a sharpened chainsaw sticking out from Starros' chest, the blade covered in aura, the only way a weapon such as that could pierce through armour plating without breaking.
The person behind Starros pulled the bladed chainsaw out of her chest, and she dropped to the ground, spluttering up blood as crimson began to pool underneath her.
"STARROS!" Ilia cried out as she fell to the ground at her side, clutching the dying girl's hand with her own as she watched the life leave Starros' eyes, "Please no, please please no..."
Starros spilled blood out from her mouth. She looked like she was trying to say something. Her head tilted back and rolled to the side. Her hand went limp in Ilia's grasp. She stopped breathing, and her body began to grow cold.
Starros laid on the floor, dead.
Ilia looked up at Starros' murderer. A burly Faunus with a bloody chainsaw, a gasmask covering his face. She remembered his name to be Grey Nomura.
"Grey..." she choked out through a strangled voice, tears blurring her vision, "WHY!?"
Grey just scoffed, hefting his chainsaw weapon over his shoulder, "She was an enemy... an' a traitor to her own kind," he lifted up his mask just to spit on the corpse, "Better her dead than us."
He stomped up next to Ilia.
"I saved your life, brat. Remember that, and you might live longer."
Ilia couldn't even find it in herself to look up at Grey with a spiteful glare.
"Now get moving. You know how Adam feels about us bein' late."
"...You're a monster."
Grey laughed, "An' proud of it," he didn't even try to justify himself.
Grey started marching, leaving Ilia in the darkness as she cradled the corpse of another fallen friend.
Four and a half years later...
Ilia looked at the village burning before her in sorrow.
All that these villagers had done was deny them entry. Said that they hadn't wanted to host the White Wolves, host a gaggle of terrorists. Terrorists, they had called them.
She knew that she should be shocked by the moniker, but she wasn't.
Adam, however, was. This was a village primary made of Faunus, sheltered away in the outskirts of Solitas near the coast. In his mind, they should've all been for sheltering them and fighting against Atlas, but they weren't, and this enraged him.
So he declared the villagers to be traitors, and ordered their home to be sacked.
Everyone who fought back was killed and tossed into a pile in the village centre. Everyone else was run out of town as Adam's Acolytes burnt it to the ground.
It was all growing out of control. Originally, under Chief Martinez's orders, they had kept their attacks focused on military targets, and as clean as they could manage, with as few civilian deaths as possible. Sure, it got messy at times, but that was war. She could accept that.
But now? Under Adam's leadership, things were getting out of hand. There were about three shrines to Azul Primus in every bunker. Not that she had a problem with that, but it only unnerved her when Adam's Acolytes started calling out his name and chanting his songs when they went into battle, calling that the deaths of their enemies were justified in a growing crusade. Adam himself was walking around like he was a messiah, the next coming of Azul Primus himself. Ilia never really believed in Azul Primus or any religious chuff, but Adam's followers were growing increasingly fanatical about it, using their beliefs as justification.
And that wasn't even considering the people that he was beginning to let into their ranks. Killers and mercenaries alike. Just recently, Adam had partnered their chapter up with a faction known as the Outcasts, ex-Atlesians who had turned mercenary. They were made up almost entirely of Humans as well, but Adam didn't seem to care. He just needed them to train his fighters into proper combatants against Atlas.
What he didn't care for were the Humans in his own ranks.
His followers agreed.
Twitch was dead.
Ilia couldn't help the tears rolling down her face. He hadn't died in grand battle, or sacrificing himself for their cause. He'd been found in his bunk, strangled to death. They found the culprit, one of the older members of their chapter of the White Wolves, and had him tortured to death. Ilia had refused to participate.
And now, things against Atlas, against the Humans, were growing more and more violent. Faunus prisoners who had sided with Atlas were tortured for their treason and had their traits, ears or tails or even limbs, cut off. Other POWs were beaten, tortured, and then executed in ritualistic displays and sent floating down the rivers and canals. Hostage films were made and released to the public, detailing captured Atlesian soldiers being beheaded. And as the White Wolves grew more and more violent, so did the Atlesians, who began to respond in kind as well. Execution of prisoners on both sides began to grow more and more common with each passing day.
It was all growing to be too much.
"This is the price of war, Ilia," Ilia jumped when she felt Sammy tap her shoulder, and realised that she'd been muttering to herself, "Of survival. You knew this all the way back in Nicholas' Folly."
"This isn't war," Ilia refuted, "This is monstrous."
"You can back down anytime you want."
Ilia could, couldn't she? She really could.
…But...
Chief Martinez, Molly, Starros, and now Twitch...
…
"I think I've lost too much to back down now..."
Sammy nodded, and went back to his work.
That wasn't the only reason, however.
For the longest time, she always tried to steer herself clear of the kind of behaviour that the rest of Adam's Acolytes seemed to be practicing. She had always thought to herself, As long as I'm keeping away from it, I can keep my hands clean. As long as I keep away from the maiming and the beating and the torturing and the pointless brutality, I can still say that I am the good guy.
Now she wasn't so sure.
And Adam... Adam...
She had hated him before, but now...
Now that hate just felt like fear.
Ilia turned her head to the side, spotting Kira looking at her.
The words slipped out of her mouth, "Are we the good guys?"
Kira smiled at her, the glow of the flames covering her face in an amber light, like hellfire wrapping over her.
"Of course we are."
Five years later...
Winter Schnee looked over the reports before her and frowned.
Execution of POWs, mutilations, torture, maiming of enemy combatants... the House of the White Wolves have been getting increasingly more ruthless over the last five years in their war against Atlas and the SDC, and so had Atlas and the SDC in turn. She hadn't read those particular reports, of course, but she could take an educated guess.
She sighed.
Trying to reform the system from the inside was getting increasingly difficult, especially with the White Wolves growing more and more violent with each passing day. She resented the amount of times that she'd had to throw her name around to even get anywhere, and yet there was only so much that even a Schnee could do to affect the system when the White Wolves kept giving the Atlesian council all the excuses they needed to keep things where the way that they were, and even pull back on their agreements as well.
The system was corrupt, and uprisings like the White Wolves weren't helping to clean up the filth.
She clenched her fist. It used to be so simple when she was training. Actually, no, that was a lie. It was never simple when she was training. Atlesian military boot camps had always been rife with regular propaganda broadcasts, but Winter couldn't say that she'd ever brought it entirely. She blamed her father. Living under the yoke of a tyrant like Jacques, trapped in his own personal kingdom for all our life, had a unique way of jading a person, making them suspicious of every authority figure around them. That feeling had never truly left her.
(She had to remember to make time to see how Weiss was doing up in the manor, and see if she can find some time to help in her Huntress training as well. In-between her own, of course.)
She was starting to wonder if even trying to work within the Atlesian Military was worth it. She'd tried, and for her efforts, her superiors had promoted her to Second Lieutenant within the army, but had stuck her in the middle of the Atlesian military training grounds within the floating island, and saddled her with pretty much all the most pointless and least important paperwork in the base. Busywork and nothing else.
Essentially, they'd kicked her up into redundancy. She wasn't high enough ranked to effect any change, and yet she was too high ranked to escape the notice of her superiors if she acted out of line.
The message was clear to her: you can't do anything to us, but if you screw up, you're done.
She gritted her teeth. Perhaps it was time to start on the paperwork needed to muster out. Then again, she doubted that they'd accept it.
At least she could look over the electronic reports that were filtered through the system. She wasn't sure why she could access these. All the important information had been covered in blank ink or deleted from the accounts, and it wasn't like she could edit or affect them. She was beginning to suspect a subtle dig, like someone knew that she could see them and didn't care.
But still, she was nothing if not resourceful. She could piece together the dots on the reports, and had found something interesting in one of them.
All she could see on it that hadn't been blacked out was something about a Bullhead being shot down, carrying sensitive information. The nature of that information was blacked out again, but she could begin to piece together names...
And she wondered if it had something to do with the fabled 'Outpost Orion'.
Ilia: We're a bunch of armed rebels and terrorists using child soldiers. Of course we're the good guys.
Adam: *Does a war crime*
Ilia: *Surprised Pikachu face*
But yeah, sorry this took so long to come out. Writer's block sometimes is less about not knowing what to write, and more not knowing how to write it, or even just finding the energy to do so.
