Attending to Reality A Pride, A FallThere was a darkness. A darkness so deep as to be blinding. There was a silence. A silence so quiet as to be deafening. There was an emptiness. An emptiness so devoid of substance as to be crushing. Then the universe woke up and definition began to appear at the edges of creation.
There was a sea, or, at least, something like a sea. It stretched beyond the edge of the infinite horizon. The sea was not calm. Great eddies formed. The sea was not empty. Each cresting wave contained within it a continent worn away, a civilization scoured clean, a reality undone by the all consuming waters. All of this flotsam churned within the great sea. All of it carried to a singular destination. At the heart of the sea, no, the entirety of the sea was a part of it, a whirlpool. A maelstrom. A great consuming vortex into which the endless sea eternally flowed. Churning walls of water formed a funnel of unfathomable depths, retiring downwards beyond even universal perspicacity. Everything was consumed by that hungry maw. There was a force more purposeful and certain than gravity at its core, an inevitability that drew the waters and the entire worlds they contained down into the hungry pit.
The waters were black. No, that wasn't quite right. Not black. Devoid of color, lacking even the notion of it. Yet they could be seen. Illumination still existed in this place, it had yet to be devoured entirely by the hungry void.
A star hung over the all consuming maelstrom. A blazing beacon of light in the vacuum above. But perspective shifted. Definition sharpened. Not a star. A thing in the shape of a man or an Angel. The being was wrapped in wings of fire, from whence the light shone. Perspective. Definition. Not wings of fire. Wings
on fire. A flame so intense it burned until only the flame itself remained and then it burned some more.
The figure fell from that height. The blazing fires around it radiating towards the walls of the maelstrom, as if to arrest itself. But there was no resisting the pull. The figure plunged through the emptiness that separated it's decent from bottom of the maw. The figure fell forever.
There was no distance that could measure how long the angelic being fell. It simply continued to tumble deeper into the maelstrom. It fell, it's fires burned, and all at once, the light went out.
There was a blinding darkness. There was a deafening silence. There was a crushing emptiness.
A Boat, AdriftRemiel's eyes open to a new reality, the old one collapsing into the ephemeral fog of dream. He blinked and breathed several times as his senses adjusted to the more tangible and cogent world of wakefulness. There was warmth. Softness. Emily's back pressed against his chest. His arms wrapped around her middle. Their legs entwined. Remiel breathed in her scent and took a moment to come to bear with this new found reality.
Gently extricating his left arm, Remiel half-turned to lay on his back, his right arm and leg still beneath the body of his sleeping companion. Resting his freed hand against his stomach, Remiel turned his gaze to the ceiling. He breathed deep. The air was cold and smelled like the sea. His eyes danced across the features of the ceiling, as though the corrugated iron sheeting had some vital secret to impart. Only one fragment remained of the dream reality. A thought.
Icarus was not killed by the Sun, but by the Sea. Remi frowned.
Emily stirred. Her body shifted towards Remi adjusting itself against him, her hand meeting his on his stomach as her cheek rested against his chest. He regarded her still sleeping face for a moment. She really was extraordinarily beautiful, but that was not the thought that dispelled the last vestige of the dreamworld from his mind.
What had he done? The previous nights events were not unique, or even that uncommon. It had been happening with some frequency and for some time now. But last night had been the first time Remi had been the one to initiate it. That worried him. It worried him even more than he could not entirely fathom why. It was pleasurable sure. Though he was certain of little in regards to his relationship with Emily, he was quite sure that they were physically, very compatible. But that wasn't it. He had struggled to understand if there was more too it than that. He had always reciprocated when she had called upon him, as much out of a sense of propriety than sensuality, and precisely what his feelings were or were supposed to be had joined the voluminous list of quandaries that occupied so much of Remiel's anxiety.
But last night he hadn't simply been reciprocating. Trying to please her. To do the right and proper thing. He had wanted something from her. Something primal. A need to be fulfilled. Had it been? Remi didn't know. Perhaps it had.
All Remi really knew for certain, he was hungry.
A Battle, In ProgressRemi skirted the edges of the field. Once again finding himself on the sidelines of battle. But this time, purpose, not trepidation, dictated his actions. Remi watched the combat flow and unfold, noting the movements of enemy and ally alike. Some moved with purpose; others, trepidation. Still he could see patterns arise from the melee. The Nautilus soldiers were well trained and well equipped. But none of them really could stand against a WARG Guardian Squad. As the mech fell, he knew that none of them were in any real danger. Remi frowned and settled into a comfortable lop across the battlefield. Combat doctrine would dictate that the remaining Nautilus soldiers would break combat when reduced to half strength, and indeed the three remaining Storm Guards moved to make a fighting retreat towards the rest of the invading Nautilus soldiers. Remi would not let that happen.
Kim downed one of the guards, displaying a remarkable level of restraint when compared to the rest of the combatants. Perhaps it would be for the better. In any event it pushed any thoughts of needing to reign in his own tactics aside. Remi broke into a run around the dock pillars. The hunger remained.
The two remaining Storm Guard had reeled about, focusing on an overturned vehicle that provided the only cover on the field. Remi couldn't tell what was beyond, but there was a corpse a few feet away from it, and he had heard Emily shouting from that direction. It didn't take much to put it together: She could be pinned down.
Remi touched a finger to his ear thumbing the microbead nestled within.
"Emily. Situation?" His voice was flat and even. The line crackled. There was the sound of close gunfire.
"Oh...you know, just filling up my dance card." Her voice sounded strange over the comm. Remiel made up his mind.
The field was too open to hope to catch the soldiers unawares now, so Remi trusted to his spirit enhanced speed to carry him. The soldiers were about to open fire on Emily's position again - he had to get between her and them. At this range, the low-caliber bullets of the soldiers guns could not do significant harm against Remiel. At best their bullets would bruise, perhaps cause more significant injury if they struck a vulnerable location like the eyes. Remi raised a hand before him as he rushed into the wall of bullets. Most missed him, he felt a few thump into his chest armor. One grazed his neck. None of them managed to slow him down. He didn't have time to look, so he had to assume his efforts had bought Emily enough cover.
At twenty meters the fire abated as the soldiers readied for melee engagement. Disciplined. Ultimately unhelpful. Remi drew his blade as he came in, the first soldier lashed out with her baton, but far too slowly. Remi sidestepped the strike, his free hand coming up to intercept, grabbing the wielding arm at the wrist. Pulling with the woman's momentum he overextended the soldier's arm, his blade coming down at the elbow. Severance. Blood. Remi turned on his heel before the soldier could scream, driving all of his force into an elbow strike to her flank. He felt the breaking of ribs and the collapse of the soldier's lung. Before the opponent dropped, Remi advanced towards the second.
Discipline evaporated. Faced with an inevitable confrontation with an opponent he could not meet, the remaining soldier tried to backpedal away from Remi, scrambling to bring his rifle to bear. He was about to fire as Emily emerged from her cover and ran forward, swinging her staff into the air over her head. It landed in the soldier's abdomen, pushing him to the side; before he could recuperate, she was on him, pushing him to the ground, kneeing him in the groin, crushing his windpipe with the staff. As he struggled, she pulled back, raised the bo, and drove it into his throat, once, twice, three times. The moment he stopped moving, Emily lurched backwards and was violently sick.
There was a stillness for a moment at the conclusion. The frenetic motion coming to an abrupt end. Remi withdrew a cloth from his pocket, wiping wet, red blood from his blade. Then the bullets hit him.
While it may have been true that Remiel's enhanced fortitude could withstand inaccurate fire from a distance. A nautilus combat rifle would do much more than bruise at close range. It didn't even hurt. More it felt like someone just tapped their fingers rapidly on his back. But he knew the bullets had punctured his armor, and pierced the skin within. Slowly Remi turned to face his attacker, slowly, an ache in his body that he recognized as horrific injury. The first soldier he had attacked knelt behind him, her rifle braced against her hip. Her remaining hand clutching the trigger in a white knuckled grip. The barrel of her firearm smoked from the friction of unloading the entirety of her clip into his back. Remi looked at her. She looked at him. Both breathing in ragged gasps from their wounds. Remiel was hungry. Something other hand bullets migrated from her to him.
Nautilus, BeforeNatalia Drakka had grown up surrounded by the sea. Her father had told her that she had washed ashore in a storm, a gift from the Kami. She never liked the sea. She loved the taste of apricots. She hated the color purple. She thought that the dress she was made to wear during her coming of age party was nice, but too ostentatious for her taste. She dreamed of distant shores.
Her father died when she was eight years old, her mother had died a decade later. Both of her parents funerals were held on a Friday, the sky uncharacteristically clear. Natalia loved philosophy. She never remembered much of it that she learned in school, but she always held on to one notion. In a certain eastern civilization the soul was explained to be as a tangled mass of string. Each life began with a single thread. As the life occurred the string would move, entwining itself with the threads of others until it was a great twisting ball, attached to innumerable others. The metaphor was supposed to represent how a person's life was only as important as the connections it made with others. Natalia always liked that notion.
Natalia met her husband when she was twenty years old. Like her, he joined the military directly out of schooling. He was a little short. His hair was blond. He loved her more deeply than she knew possible. They had a child. Sarah. Her hair was blonde. Natalia come out to her husband shortly after Sarah was born. It amazed her how easy it was to lose even a love so deep. Now she was with Cynthia. They raised Sarah together. Sarah was now two. Cynthia was an engineer. She loved to dance.
Natalia's unit was deployed to a foreign front. Cynthia could not stop crying when she told her. Natalia could not tell her that she was actually excited to go. She would miss Cynthia terribly. She would miss Sarah even more. She kissed her daughters forehead as she slept the night the transports left. Cynthia cried as she waved goodbye at the port. The sky was clear.
The boat ride over, all Natalia could think of was a tangled ball of string.
A Battle, In ConclusionRemi blinked. So did Natalia. Both gasped at the transmigration between them. Remi could see the fear in her eyes. But more than that, he could see the subtle nuances to that fear. Corporal Drakka did not fear her end. She had accepted that inevitability long ago. She feared the end of her threads. How the tangled mass of her life would be cut from everyone she knew. She did not fear her end, but she did not accept it either.
The crippled Nautilus soldier dropped her spent weapon. She turned and struggled to rise. Her legs quivered and buckled beneath her, casting Drakka into the cold, bloody concrete. She crawled forwards. Her movements were slow, deathly. She would not survive this. But Remi knew she would still try. She would fight her end with everything she had left. That was the kind of woman she was.
Remi walked towards her. There was a soft metallic tinkling sound as the bullets fell from his back, Remi's reality reasserting itself over hers. He breathed deep with newly knit lungs. He flipped his blade in his grip. He would not apologize to Corporal Drakka. There were no words to sooth or absolve what he was about to do. He would not let her suffer either. Careful to keep is shadow from her sight, his footsteps baffled by the blood singing in her ears. She would die as she had lived, fighting. Remi's blade rose. Remi's blade fell. Threads were cut.
Remiel yanked his blade from the back of Corporal Drakka's neck, the body lifting slightly before falling back down with an unpleasant smack. Remi rose from the corpse. He wiped his blade again. He turned to look at Emily. His face was blank.
"You'll survive this," he said. His voice did not sound like his own. There was a hunger in his eyes.
Remi engages Beta and Gamma to support Emily. Remi sustains minor damage from both combatants on his approach before dealing severe damage to Gamma. Emily deals lethal damage to Beta. Gamma retaliates against Remi dealing CRITICAL DAMAGE! Remiel then reaves his opponent to heal and learns some rather personal information about Gamma. He then deals lethal damage to Gamma. Emily is not pleased about killing. Remi might be a monster inside.
A City, BesiegedRemi once again found himself at the sidelines. A silent observer of the act. He observed the wounded soldiers, noting their number in comparison to his best estimates as to Norton's standing forces and anticipated attrition. The number of wounded was great, but it was perhaps more telling that the number was not that great. Nautilus' forces had struck with unexpected ferocity. The number of casualties was certain to far exceed the numbers seen here. How many had been unable to be evacuated before Nautilus' sweeping advance?
Remi listened to the Norton General. He frowned at the confusion over the identity of the Captaincy. This would be an issue in the future. Conflict over command was not something the unit could afford in a full combat theater. Something would have to be done about that.
Remi thought upon that problem and so many others, hypothetical or otherwise, as the team followed Gunnery Sergeant Williams to the sewer entrance. He perked up a bit at Kim's uncharacteristic vocalization. Remi considered the man's garbled request. It was not his decision to make, but he could see the merits of letting the team walk among the wounded and not just for the Norton soldiers. Still, it was not his decision to make. That said...
"If I may speak freely Captain, I think it would be prudent if we acquiesce to the Gunnery Sergeant's request. These soldiers will need a moral boost if they are to stabilize against Nautilus' shock tactics. I could also use some time to try and draw up what intel I can for our next operation." Remi fell in step to Olivia's right, slightly behind. A small gesture, perhaps, but the meaning should have been clear enough. Deference for her authority. His words were not mere lip service though. While the decision lay with the Captain, there was much merit to the notion. As much as it might galvanize the fighting men, it could do the same for the team. They would need some stability and focus if they were going to fight effectively. Not to mention Remi's desire for more specificity regarding the upcoming operation. He needed to maintain a firm grasp over the situation. Without it, everything might fall apart. He needed control. He needed clarity. The hunger within continued to grow.
