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Exciting. It grabbed my full attention by the first sentence and continued to keep it in stranglehold. 9/10 but only because I wish I knew what was going on and whet he did. I also didt grasp what was happening to Ru when he looked at the guard. Seizure?

((This is the climax of the story.. I know it's very confusing when I don't start from the beginning, but I'm not done writing the beginning yet))

"Lets go!" As if on cue, the officer's words were punctuated by the fall of a mortar shell on the adjacent dock, smashing through the wooden walkway and illuminating the dark ocean with a flash of cloudy light. Ru was absolutely bemused at the sight of dead fish rising to the surface, but didn't have time to examine this new phenomenon as the soldier behind him shoved him over the railings and onto the ship where he crawled away before the next pair of boots came down on his gut.

"Where the hell is Spierred?!"
"What?"
"WHERE IS SPIERRED?!"

"I won't make it.." He turned to Xi'in as the Lieutenant removed the insignia from his shoulder strap and clipped it to the jewelry he had taken off his ring finger. "I want you to take these.. You know what to do with them." Slowly, with shaking fingers, he unbuttoned his breast pocket and removed a small stack of folded papers, and anchored them under the rank and ring on the counter. They were in a bathroom, where Xi'in had attempted to replace the old torn bandages on his brother's leg with paper towels. "I... I know I'm not a good soldier.. I don't know where I would be without you Xi'in.. I would have never made it this far. I want to-"

The room was empty. He hadn't heard the door shut, but a large portion of the wall behind one of the toilets was missing and spraying water into the street behind it. It washed over the corpses of his men and was lifted up by the stomping boots of Panzer Grenadiers as they moved through the distorting spray in their heavy black armor like demons through a dream.

He forced his vision away, back towards the door in a sudden panic. "I can still run! I can hide! I-" Spierred was shocked silent at what he saw. It was Xi'in, but his eyes were dark and sunken to the point of being black hollows. The reflective helmet of the Grenadiers hung loosely from his hand and the armor on his body clattered with each each step, forcing Spierred back in turn. "No.. No.. You.." A light glow started in his pupil and Xi'in stopped in his tracks while it grew to a dull red. His armor melded with his body and consumed it in a fluctuating shadow. The edges blurred and sharpened as they grew and spiked, consuming his silhouette and changing his form. he was no longer a human, he was a sketched image that filled Spierred's sight with first the darkness of its form then the harshly contrasting glare of its eyes. "Stop.. Please.. Please.. Please.. Xi'in.. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" He stood to run, but his legs gave out below him, a piece of bloody paper towel sliding from under his boot as he attempted to scramble away. It was slow motion, but not a single thought ran through his mind aside from the realization of falling. The back of his head contacted with the edge of the sink, pinching the Vertebral arteries between the skull and the spinal cord. Blood sprayed in a single solid jet from the back of his skull and followed him to the ground. Drops of water now became polluted by the thick black splatters that fell on top of them and the final image that ran through Spierred Chaigeki's head as the water diluted blood flowed into his mouth

((I'll finish it later..))

October 6th
3rd Group Army Laohu SFO
Ryukyu, Japan

The Y-8 was an outdated aircraft, but the turboprop engines hummed at a lower frequency then the jet propelled monsters that had replaced them. They were timed with the oncoming of the Oceanic Combined 9th Fleet, and the area jamming would be pinned on them as the converted Russian Badgers drifted in that direction, away from the thousands of paratroopers landing on the southern part of the island. <********! ********!" The screams made everyone flinch and nerves rode up to breaking point for some. The paratrooper had been found kicking a tree and screaming incoherently, apparently attempting to jam the bone back into his leg. The medic shoved the stick back into his mouth as his squad sergeant tried to calm him. He had landed at the edge of a mud puddle and the tibula had fractured and torn out of his leg when he slipped, displacing the small saphenous vein as it did so. The medic had spent the last ten minutes moving it back into place and was now prepping to deal with the leg itself. He wiped a small stream of sweat and tears from his face with the back of his sleeve and looked up at the NCO. He stared over the wounded man's head in relative silence before finally snapping back to reality. "Sing.. I need you all to sing.." The men that crowded around sang after as the sergeant started a well known tune; the medic took the leg in both hands on either side of the break and shoved it down into the wooden splint.

But what remained?
Of the driving intent?
That led me to tract such watery depths
Many things have betrayed me
Between there and here
And my memory is so ******** unclear

Who was I with? What time was it? Where did you go?

Each verse rose in volume to match the soldiers cries, until finally he passed out by the end. They lifted him gently, passing his gawking comrades to the gathering area where they laid him down with the other wounded before grabbing their weapons from the nearby boxes and finding their units.

((Cope is a really hard character for me to develop, I'm still trying to figure him out... All I have is his death. Of course it never turns out how I imagined it.. I always feel disappointed right after I write these.))

They rang out in time, to the melancholy beat of a very personal song that rang through his head. Clang clang clang ka-ching. He was suddenly very distant from the battle, hearing the shots as an echo and seeing the scored hits as if watching from far above. Even watching himself. Alone, hidden. His 'friends', his fellow soldiers far below rushing through buildings as his holy bullets dropped their enemies to the ground like a guardian angel.

They didn't, in fact, know this. They did not even know where he was. As the distal screeching dropped in tone and the first screams of seasoned soldiers rang out, they all forgot about their sharp shooting sentry while falling shells scattered them like the rain that dropped onto Cope's rifle.

He watched through his scope, through the clouds. He was already in heaven, he was already dead as he felled another perusing demon. He lowered his scoped rifle, the weapon that taught you so much about your enemy before you ended his life. He dropped it on it's strap and saw the battlefield through his own eyes, saw what was really happened from the perspective of God as a shell landed on the roof above him. He quickly hoisted the weapon again and began loosing death into his enemies with this new sight. Another fell, then another, driven into the mud by an unseen, unexpected and unfair force. his pace matched only the ferocity of his rage. The growing hate for these people, for this view. They weren't human, they weren't deserving of life. He was God; this was his world. He was passing judgment, but only on those deemed unworthy; those who were unlucky. As his world fell around him, so did the structure he perched in. Falling to the ground and burying him in a resting place deserving of any holy creature. The church continued to crumble over him through the next year. No one mourned him; saints were always celebrated.

'This is it' she thought to herself as a figure appeared in the fog. Sandbags and other such fortifications barricaded the road on the left and right, funneling the contingent down the middle, straight towards the.. The lone soldier? She continued forwards, but flinched slightly as the figure started coughing. His body contorted as the fit reached its crescendo and the fleeting hope that God himself would strike the soldier dead forced her to realize just how afraid she really was. She had believed she was ready for this her entire life, but she wasn't ready for what she was expecting, much less the soldier addressing her by name. "Sup, Ai." Jack's hurt smile froze her and her followers as Lieutenant Fate stood himself up.

"He told me. He used to tell me all that 'stuff like this doesn't happen in the Empire' bull s**t, but when he told me this, I knew it. I knew it would be you. So this is it.." There was nothing. No sound or reaction, dead silence. It was peace, really. This is what peace was, and how simple it was to achieve it. Simply place someone in a situation where nothing could be said. It was like suicide. No one spoke, there was no argument, everyone agreed. It sucked, that's all anyone could say. "The wailing wall.. I remember you and Maria talking about this.. I remember you saying this was the way you wanted to go; the path you wanted to travel. I also remember you saying that you would just close your eyes and run... Astonishing, isn't it... Dumb founding.. Almost makes me believe He exists.." She looked at him blankly. Deep down she wanted to grab him, punch him, kiss him. Every possible thought ran through her mind at once and collided with each other, leaving her mute in shock. "I can't abandon my post.. This is who I am now. He said someone had to die; he said I couldn't let you pass without someone dying." Jack took a step forwards and his smile relaxed when Airi didn't back away. He placed one hand on her shoulder and the other on his pistol holster. "Ai, I want you to close your eyes and run.. When you start running out of breath, I want you to open your eyes again, but do not stop running." He stepped back again, and as he did his smile dropped from his face and his eye began to twitch. It wasn't a spasm so much as it was resistance, him forcing his eyes to remain open when any other man would have closed them. "The thing I remember most is telling you that I wanted to be with you forever.. And already knowing that I was lying... When I said forever, I guess I didn't mean the afterlife. Just keep running, when you're in heaven, it won't matter any more. You'll be happy."

Airi had already taken off. She started before his last sentence but he didn't even seem to notice. He just kept looking at the ground as she brushed by him, eyes clenched shut and already starting to heave for air. The sound made her trip. The crack that shot a pain through her body and turned her heavy breathing into sobs. She caught herself before falling, but paused before picking herself up again. There were more soldiers, but none of them watched her. They stood motionless like statues before her; great crying monuments with contorted faces. One of them finally knelt down, resting his chin on the barrel of his rifle and slowly applying pressure to the trigger. Again she squeezed her eyes shut and started running. She could hear crying, screaming, voices. The gun shots rose in volume, but couldn't compete with the chorus of cries that penetrated her hands clasped so hard over her ears.