Lewascan2
Izurich
Guardian Angel Haruki
Noctis
Sniblet
Letter Bee
Hedgehawk
Vampiretwilight
FernStoneW-what?
Kaitlyn couldn't say how the battle had been going. She was trying not to think about- to not think about the look of shock on a young soldier's face as one of her bullets found its mark. She tried not to think about the wail of pain one of her comrades unleashed when a bullet shot clean through her shoulder. She tried not to think about the Arms Masters and their terrible powers, and she tried very hard not to think about how there was a child on the battlefield, barely able to form complete sentences, and yet expected to take a life.
What she did think about were the missing bodies.
"S-sir?" She'd called over the radio, uncertain what to report. It soon became obvious that she wasn't the only one witnessing this odd anomaly. The entire battlefield had been cleared out... But for what reason? The implications made her shiver.
That's when the second sun appeared.
Now, Kaitlyn had seen the... Princess, was it? Some foreign official with powers over fire. She wasn't too fond of that particular method of murder, and she wasn't about to condone the exvuritating pain it undoubtedly caused. This... This was something different.
Something worse.
Before the existential threat that was an A-rank superweapon appearing could sink in, something else gripped her.
She was dragged, screaming, into a void- and then spat back out.
She sat there for a moment, knelt in the strange black liquid...
Oh God.
Tears prickled at the edges of her eyes. The strike of the sunbeam hitting the shield... They can't fight this, can they? There's a whole armada out there, and they're throwing the sun at them!
Then a thought occured to her, and she bolted upright.
Hannie!
Quelling the rising panic within, she swiftly located the corporal, stalwartly ignoring the wrongness of the... Enigmatic mass underfoot.
"S-sir, permission to... I need to find somebody. Make sure they're alright."
Corporal Castro was scrambling to his feet with the rest of the squad, his wary gaze all but burning holes into the roiling pitch-black ooze bubbling around their feet. After a moment , he seemed to give a bodily shiver before directing his gaze Kaitlyn's way. "Somebody...?" His brow furrowed deeply, as his gaze flicked briefly towards the white hot light of flames washing over the Noble Arm Barrier above them and turning the sands of the beach into molten glass. The sight elicited another shiver from the Corporal. "We were almost out there in that..." He clucked his tongue, looking back down at the ooze-like shadow that buzzed with a static charge, flecks of green whirling within. "I suppose we have you to thank then."
A portion of the ooze shuddered, before forming into a golden reptilian eye the size of a full-grown man's foot. It seemed to squint happily at the squad that was regaining their bearings, before dissolving gruesomely back into the shadow's mass. Castro shuddered in return. "Right. This is still her we're talking about, after all..." His gaze and attention returned to Kaitlyn properly. "The middle of a battle isn't the time to be letting sentimentality drive you, but if you think it's that important... At least make an effort to locate them visually before prancing off. The last thing we need is any more disorganization than we already have."
Kaitlyn went pale the moment she saw the eye, but decided to just ignore it for now.
Kaitlyn couldn't be the only one disturbed by Noble Arms.
"T-thanks you, sir. A-and sorry, sir! It's just... It's the child, Hannie. I need to make sure she's okay."
She didn't wait for a response this time, instead turning her attention towards the rest of the rescued army. It seemed everybody - or just about everybody - was caught up in the ooze.
It took a moment. There were just so many bodies in the way, but eventually she spotted her through her binoculars, huddled on the ground. The sight elicited a pang of regret in the private.
Don't worry, I've got you.
"S-sir, um... n-nevermind."
She shook her head then, making sure her own team was fully accounted for- and that the one that got shot in the shoulder was being tended to- she picked her away across the field to the little girl, careful not to get in the way of any of the other soldiers.
"Hannie?"
She knelt next to the girl, uncertain what to do. What to say. This was war... What could she do?
Hannie opens her eyes to a squint at sound of her name.
“I don’t wanna be here!” she whines. “I wanna go home!”
"Shhh shhh," Kaitlyn scooped Hannie up in her arms, holding her close. The rest of the battlefield faded into white noise and rushing blurs as the world narrowed down to just the two of them.
I need to get her someplace safe, but where?
"We'll get you home, but you have to be brave for me. Can you do that, Hannie?"
Hannie doesn't voice a response, but she closes her eyes again and nods almost imperceptibly.
"Okay..."
She takes a breath.
The corporal is going to kill me for this, if the Chinese don't kill us first.
"Corporal, permission to recruit Hannie Cavalet into our unit... T-temparily, of course." The radio shook in her spare hand.
Corporal Castro's expression twisted in restrained displeasure, but perhaps not for the reasons that many others might assume. As Kaitlyn well knew. His disdain was hardly for the child, herself, but the idea of being directly responsible for treating her like a soldier. Even so...
He grimaced and glanced at the ebony ooze. "Personally," he gruffly stated, "I don't think she's in any shape to be fighting at all." His words next seemed to address the ooze. "I don't suppose... you could do your little trick again and get her out of the way of danger?"
The ooze-like shadow's bubbling seemed to still, before a bulge in the surface almost gooily expelled an all too familiar female form. Rising up with a flick of emerald hair, Qingshe's upper torso seemed to float within the mass, stable, as though her feet were standing on the bottom of a shallow body of water.
Despite the rather... liquid way she had manifested in their midst, she seemed completely dry... if glistening with an odd sheen in the light blazing overhead. Her slitted eyes flicked to the Corporal and then to Hannie, before she broke her silence with an odd twist of her lips and a half smile. "Ah~! Certainly, I could protect her body... However, it seems the mind is what is truly at stake in this moment." Pursing her lips with a little hum, the ooze seemed to... almost reluctantly draw away from the area around Kaitlyn, no longer looming so directly beneath her and her charge.
Castro's next words were grit out through clenched teeth. "That's nice and all, but that doesn't mean she'll be weighing my team down any less. I need all hands on deck! There's no time to be babysitting with death overhead!"
"I-I can still contribute to this fight!" Kaitlyn exclaimed, feeling her pulse rise. "I'll... I'll keep Hannie closeby, but out of direct danger. I still have a gun... And..." She swallowed. "I can still fight. Just... Let me protect Hannie, too."
She eye'd the strange lady that appeared dubiously, vaguely recalling her features from the Auditorium. She seemed friendly enough...
"Private Price... In this situation, even a single distraction could be death, and it would be grossly irresponsible of me to even consider allowing that." Castro said lowly, his expression darkening. "This battlefield is no place for a kid... We can't keep her. Don't make me back that with orders."
"Oh~, now now, Corporal~" The oddly muted liquid noise of Qingshe rising further from her half-sunken position sounded out, as the voluptuous woman rose in somewhat staggered -yet steady- movements, as if she were ascending a staircase. Her legs moved accordingly, as her path brought her to the edge of her shadow's mass and the space it had cleared around Kaitlyn and Hannie.
Glancing down, she seemed to pout for a moment, before taking a step off the mass. Even as she did so, she did not fully make a separation. Needle-thin tendrils of ebony trailed behind the hem of her dress, remaining in contact with her and the larger mass both, as she sidled up in front of Kaitlyn.
Her pace was languid and approach almost gentle -if with an almost unconscious salacious sway to it, as reptilian eyes -currently a soft green- drifted down to the huddled Hannie... before abruptly bleeding into a hungry gold and snapping to Kaitlyn. "Mmm~! Perhaps the girl will be a burden, yes..." Her ebony-clad left hand, the one free of false claws drifted forward over Hannie... before ignoring her entirely and moving up past the edge of Kaitlyn's vision.
Seemingly taking full opportunistic advantage of Kaitlyn's arms being full of crying child, those fingers brushed a few loose strands of hair from the adult soldier's face and tucked them behind her ear... before guiding them up a smidge further to delicately loop over the top of Kaitlyn's hairpin. Qingshe's fingers seemed to play across the ornament's surface for an intrusively long moment, as her golden gaze bored into Kaitlyn's own with a sly smile.
"But who knows? Your subordinate might surprise you~"
Kaitlyn wanted to argue. She wanted to shout, she wanted to cry, she wanted to rip something in half and then drown it in chocolate pudding.
She did none of those things, because she couldn't. Because she couldn't disobey her direct superior's orders.
She wished she were stronger. For Hannie, and for herself. She should be able to stand up to him for what she believed in, but...
She shivered, and not just because she was watching what she was only half-sure was human rise from the metaphorical depths.
She bit her lip as she eye'd the lady sternly. She didn't like the look in her eyes.
"... S-"
She hugged Hannie closer as the lady approached, feeling her pulse rise. Her breath subtly quicken...
She twitched as the lady's hand went... To her hair.
A look of intense unease spread across her face as she toyed with her hairpin, resisting the urge to slap the offending limb away. She wasn't sure she would survive such an offense.
"... U-um..."
She swallowed, feeling sick, and glanced down at the little bundle of trauma in her arms. Then back up to the lady.
"I..."
Spit it out, Kaitlyn. Confess you're a coward. A lowly pawn. Little private Price.
"I have to follower my orders. B-but... I can't leave Hannie without care."
Steeling her nerves, she narrowed her eyes on the lady with her best impression of somebody not about to have a heart attack.
"I can't keep her safe, but you can. I... I want you to keep her near, but out of harms way. Can you do that?"
Qingshe's hand retreated with a final feather-light brush, as her golden gaze seemed to brighten in something like understanding, flecks of blue warming the surface of her irises to a brief green hue. "Hah~?" She smiled knowingly, pearly teeth briefly flashing in the light. "So, that's how it is?"
Her piercing gaze stayed locked on Kaitlyn's form, briefly running across the length of her body with an intensity that seemed almost out of place. Finally, a smirk took dominance amongst her demeanor, as she folded her arms and cupped her chin with her right hand. "Humans..." Her tongue flicked across her lips. "...are so often capable of far more than they believe. Rather-" Her gaze sharpened. "Belief itself grants power. Determination to overcome... and evolve. Humans truly are malleable..."
Her expression softened, the air of intensity muting itself somewhat, as she almost seemed to look past Kaitlyn. "But if circumstances can't be helped, I suppose... Mmm." She hummed. "Yes, we all do what we must to see another day. All that lives ultimately does so for itself, leaving others behind. That is the necessary tragedy of evolution..."
Abruptly she giggled in a breathy, musical way and twisted her attention away from Kaitlyn to the girl in her arms. "But look at me, getting sentimental with a tangent at a time like this~!" Her eyes had mellowed to a green-blue hue, as the lilting, whimsical tone of her voice took on a steadier, matronly cadence. "I could take her, but dearie me! It might not stick too well with a precious little teleporter like this, as jumpy as she seems..."
Her next words were finally directed at the bundled child, spoken as softly as was practical to be heard over the distant roar of battle. "Hannie, dear? Are you physically well? Can you walk? I'm here to help with the injured. You may remember me from the transport... It's Qingshe, dear. Or Miss Lei if you wish. Your friend, Kaitlyn, here has asked me to take care of you. May I?"
Hannie glances up at Kaitlyn, then turns over to Qingshe. Everything in her face and body screams fear and distrust, but she's quick to nod yes.
Kaitlyn gives her a full-body squeeze, resting her chin on her head... Then, with great reluctance, she releases the child from her embrace.
"Thank you, Hannie. And thank you, Miss Lei," she said, addressing the tall lady for the latter part.
"Remember what I said. Be strong."
Giving her shoulder a squeeze, she stood up and deliberately took a step back from her, slipping on the mask of a soldier.
"I'll come find you when the battle is over. I promise."
Kaitlyn couldn't say how the battle had been going. She was trying not to think about- to not think about the look of shock on a young soldier's face as one of her bullets found its mark. She tried not to think about the wail of pain one of her comrades unleashed when a bullet shot clean through her shoulder. She tried not to think about the Arms Masters and their terrible powers, and she tried very hard not to think about how there was a child on the battlefield, barely able to form complete sentences, and yet expected to take a life.
What she did think about were the missing bodies.
"S-sir?" She'd called over the radio, uncertain what to report. It soon became obvious that she wasn't the only one witnessing this odd anomaly. The entire battlefield had been cleared out... But for what reason? The implications made her shiver.
That's when the second sun appeared.
Now, Kaitlyn had seen the... Princess, was it? Some foreign official with powers over fire. She wasn't too fond of that particular method of murder, and she wasn't about to condone the exvuritating pain it undoubtedly caused. This... This was something different.
Something worse.
Before the existential threat that was an A-rank superweapon appearing could sink in, something else gripped her.
She was dragged, screaming, into a void- and then spat back out.
She sat there for a moment, knelt in the strange black liquid...
Oh God.
Tears prickled at the edges of her eyes. The strike of the sunbeam hitting the shield... They can't fight this, can they? There's a whole armada out there, and they're throwing the sun at them!
Then a thought occured to her, and she bolted upright.
Hannie!
Quelling the rising panic within, she swiftly located the corporal, stalwartly ignoring the wrongness of the... Enigmatic mass underfoot.
"S-sir, permission to... I need to find somebody. Make sure they're alright."
Corporal Castro was scrambling to his feet with the rest of the squad, his wary gaze all but burning holes into the roiling pitch-black ooze bubbling around their feet. After a moment , he seemed to give a bodily shiver before directing his gaze Kaitlyn's way. "Somebody...?" His brow furrowed deeply, as his gaze flicked briefly towards the white hot light of flames washing over the Noble Arm Barrier above them and turning the sands of the beach into molten glass. The sight elicited another shiver from the Corporal. "We were almost out there in that..." He clucked his tongue, looking back down at the ooze-like shadow that buzzed with a static charge, flecks of green whirling within. "I suppose we have you to thank then."
A portion of the ooze shuddered, before forming into a golden reptilian eye the size of a full-grown man's foot. It seemed to squint happily at the squad that was regaining their bearings, before dissolving gruesomely back into the shadow's mass. Castro shuddered in return. "Right. This is still her we're talking about, after all..." His gaze and attention returned to Kaitlyn properly. "The middle of a battle isn't the time to be letting sentimentality drive you, but if you think it's that important... At least make an effort to locate them visually before prancing off. The last thing we need is any more disorganization than we already have."
Kaitlyn went pale the moment she saw the eye, but decided to just ignore it for now.
Kaitlyn couldn't be the only one disturbed by Noble Arms.
"T-thanks you, sir. A-and sorry, sir! It's just... It's the child, Hannie. I need to make sure she's okay."
She didn't wait for a response this time, instead turning her attention towards the rest of the rescued army. It seemed everybody - or just about everybody - was caught up in the ooze.
It took a moment. There were just so many bodies in the way, but eventually she spotted her through her binoculars, huddled on the ground. The sight elicited a pang of regret in the private.
Don't worry, I've got you.
"S-sir, um... n-nevermind."
She shook her head then, making sure her own team was fully accounted for- and that the one that got shot in the shoulder was being tended to- she picked her away across the field to the little girl, careful not to get in the way of any of the other soldiers.
"Hannie?"
She knelt next to the girl, uncertain what to do. What to say. This was war... What could she do?
Hannie opens her eyes to a squint at sound of her name.
“I don’t wanna be here!” she whines. “I wanna go home!”
"Shhh shhh," Kaitlyn scooped Hannie up in her arms, holding her close. The rest of the battlefield faded into white noise and rushing blurs as the world narrowed down to just the two of them.
I need to get her someplace safe, but where?
"We'll get you home, but you have to be brave for me. Can you do that, Hannie?"
Hannie doesn't voice a response, but she closes her eyes again and nods almost imperceptibly.
"Okay..."
She takes a breath.
The corporal is going to kill me for this, if the Chinese don't kill us first.
"Corporal, permission to recruit Hannie Cavalet into our unit... T-temparily, of course." The radio shook in her spare hand.
Corporal Castro's expression twisted in restrained displeasure, but perhaps not for the reasons that many others might assume. As Kaitlyn well knew. His disdain was hardly for the child, herself, but the idea of being directly responsible for treating her like a soldier. Even so...
He grimaced and glanced at the ebony ooze. "Personally," he gruffly stated, "I don't think she's in any shape to be fighting at all." His words next seemed to address the ooze. "I don't suppose... you could do your little trick again and get her out of the way of danger?"
The ooze-like shadow's bubbling seemed to still, before a bulge in the surface almost gooily expelled an all too familiar female form. Rising up with a flick of emerald hair, Qingshe's upper torso seemed to float within the mass, stable, as though her feet were standing on the bottom of a shallow body of water.
Despite the rather... liquid way she had manifested in their midst, she seemed completely dry... if glistening with an odd sheen in the light blazing overhead. Her slitted eyes flicked to the Corporal and then to Hannie, before she broke her silence with an odd twist of her lips and a half smile. "Ah~! Certainly, I could protect her body... However, it seems the mind is what is truly at stake in this moment." Pursing her lips with a little hum, the ooze seemed to... almost reluctantly draw away from the area around Kaitlyn, no longer looming so directly beneath her and her charge.
Castro's next words were grit out through clenched teeth. "That's nice and all, but that doesn't mean she'll be weighing my team down any less. I need all hands on deck! There's no time to be babysitting with death overhead!"
"I-I can still contribute to this fight!" Kaitlyn exclaimed, feeling her pulse rise. "I'll... I'll keep Hannie closeby, but out of direct danger. I still have a gun... And..." She swallowed. "I can still fight. Just... Let me protect Hannie, too."
She eye'd the strange lady that appeared dubiously, vaguely recalling her features from the Auditorium. She seemed friendly enough...
"Private Price... In this situation, even a single distraction could be death, and it would be grossly irresponsible of me to even consider allowing that." Castro said lowly, his expression darkening. "This battlefield is no place for a kid... We can't keep her. Don't make me back that with orders."
"Oh~, now now, Corporal~" The oddly muted liquid noise of Qingshe rising further from her half-sunken position sounded out, as the voluptuous woman rose in somewhat staggered -yet steady- movements, as if she were ascending a staircase. Her legs moved accordingly, as her path brought her to the edge of her shadow's mass and the space it had cleared around Kaitlyn and Hannie.
Glancing down, she seemed to pout for a moment, before taking a step off the mass. Even as she did so, she did not fully make a separation. Needle-thin tendrils of ebony trailed behind the hem of her dress, remaining in contact with her and the larger mass both, as she sidled up in front of Kaitlyn.
Her pace was languid and approach almost gentle -if with an almost unconscious salacious sway to it, as reptilian eyes -currently a soft green- drifted down to the huddled Hannie... before abruptly bleeding into a hungry gold and snapping to Kaitlyn. "Mmm~! Perhaps the girl will be a burden, yes..." Her ebony-clad left hand, the one free of false claws drifted forward over Hannie... before ignoring her entirely and moving up past the edge of Kaitlyn's vision.
Seemingly taking full opportunistic advantage of Kaitlyn's arms being full of crying child, those fingers brushed a few loose strands of hair from the adult soldier's face and tucked them behind her ear... before guiding them up a smidge further to delicately loop over the top of Kaitlyn's hairpin. Qingshe's fingers seemed to play across the ornament's surface for an intrusively long moment, as her golden gaze bored into Kaitlyn's own with a sly smile.
"But who knows? Your subordinate might surprise you~"
Kaitlyn wanted to argue. She wanted to shout, she wanted to cry, she wanted to rip something in half and then drown it in chocolate pudding.
She did none of those things, because she couldn't. Because she couldn't disobey her direct superior's orders.
She wished she were stronger. For Hannie, and for herself. She should be able to stand up to him for what she believed in, but...
She shivered, and not just because she was watching what she was only half-sure was human rise from the metaphorical depths.
She bit her lip as she eye'd the lady sternly. She didn't like the look in her eyes.
"... S-"
She hugged Hannie closer as the lady approached, feeling her pulse rise. Her breath subtly quicken...
She twitched as the lady's hand went... To her hair.
A look of intense unease spread across her face as she toyed with her hairpin, resisting the urge to slap the offending limb away. She wasn't sure she would survive such an offense.
"... U-um..."
She swallowed, feeling sick, and glanced down at the little bundle of trauma in her arms. Then back up to the lady.
"I..."
Spit it out, Kaitlyn. Confess you're a coward. A lowly pawn. Little private Price.
"I have to follower my orders. B-but... I can't leave Hannie without care."
Steeling her nerves, she narrowed her eyes on the lady with her best impression of somebody not about to have a heart attack.
"I can't keep her safe, but you can. I... I want you to keep her near, but out of harms way. Can you do that?"
Qingshe's hand retreated with a final feather-light brush, as her golden gaze seemed to brighten in something like understanding, flecks of blue warming the surface of her irises to a brief green hue. "Hah~?" She smiled knowingly, pearly teeth briefly flashing in the light. "So, that's how it is?"
Her piercing gaze stayed locked on Kaitlyn's form, briefly running across the length of her body with an intensity that seemed almost out of place. Finally, a smirk took dominance amongst her demeanor, as she folded her arms and cupped her chin with her right hand. "Humans..." Her tongue flicked across her lips. "...are so often capable of far more than they believe. Rather-" Her gaze sharpened. "Belief itself grants power. Determination to overcome... and evolve. Humans truly are malleable..."
Her expression softened, the air of intensity muting itself somewhat, as she almost seemed to look past Kaitlyn. "But if circumstances can't be helped, I suppose... Mmm." She hummed. "Yes, we all do what we must to see another day. All that lives ultimately does so for itself, leaving others behind. That is the necessary tragedy of evolution..."
Abruptly she giggled in a breathy, musical way and twisted her attention away from Kaitlyn to the girl in her arms. "But look at me, getting sentimental with a tangent at a time like this~!" Her eyes had mellowed to a green-blue hue, as the lilting, whimsical tone of her voice took on a steadier, matronly cadence. "I could take her, but dearie me! It might not stick too well with a precious little teleporter like this, as jumpy as she seems..."
Her next words were finally directed at the bundled child, spoken as softly as was practical to be heard over the distant roar of battle. "Hannie, dear? Are you physically well? Can you walk? I'm here to help with the injured. You may remember me from the transport... It's Qingshe, dear. Or Miss Lei if you wish. Your friend, Kaitlyn, here has asked me to take care of you. May I?"
Hannie glances up at Kaitlyn, then turns over to Qingshe. Everything in her face and body screams fear and distrust, but she's quick to nod yes.
Kaitlyn gives her a full-body squeeze, resting her chin on her head... Then, with great reluctance, she releases the child from her embrace.
"Thank you, Hannie. And thank you, Miss Lei," she said, addressing the tall lady for the latter part.
"Remember what I said. Be strong."
Giving her shoulder a squeeze, she stood up and deliberately took a step back from her, slipping on the mask of a soldier.
"I'll come find you when the battle is over. I promise."