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Day 3

It has been a little while between you and I.
Is it Fortune or Fate that decides these things- who is put before their enemies or friends? It may attest to much Reason to all of it. As though there were any higher power at all.
We make what law and safety we can out of this shitshow. He entered the room, and found her laying. He spoke with the same even, gravel-ridden voice as he did when calling role for one of his classes. "Captain Zircon."

Her arms were held with chain to one of of the old fashioned reinforced pipes to handle fluid in and out of the individual cells. Her wrists looked raw-red in the dim against the cream of the rest of her hands. She looked well off for a captive in an ill organized mission that had garnered neither a roll count nor regular duty roster of who was to guard, provide provender, or mess out the prisoners. There was no records, either, of who was visiting who. None of this will last long. Word will get out, sure enough, as it is planned to I suppose. I wonder if any will have gathered useful information out of this. Or if there will be any wins of morale, motivation, thought in any actions for theirs or ours.

"You still serve the Negaverse?" He crossed the small space with slow, deliberate steps. There was no rush, no need to stomp or to be silent. "Why?"

"So follows still the will of the tyrant, perpetuated of cruelty and malice behind a flimsy skrim of law and in the paper name of justice. It is not either. Exploitation and oppression, for who but the Negaverse take the soul from the breast of the civilian? Eat souls to heal wound, expending all the promise of a life for a break in an arm? Put forward the hungers of youma in legion? Make ash-borne monsters of their own? Who benefits by all the energy and harvests- the Earth? It's people? It's plants and creatures? Or is it Metallia alone? Who is the threat, then, to the Earth? Who murders the life on the last world in the stars?"

"The end, therefore, is to prevent the murderer, the harvester, from doing further injury to society. To ensure that the crime cannot be perpetuated, healing away the damage, with little thought or consequence. It must be a mode of inflicting chosen for lasting impression on yours and the minds of others to warn off the same offense. " Thraen drew near, where her arms extended near the pipe. "You will be well bandaged. You will heal."

Another that I should just kill. Will sending a message really serve any purpose? It must be tried. Lives not taken, but allowed to try to learn. To think about why what they did was so horrible- a world where it was wrong when it was done to their enemies can only be possible when it was wrong if it was done them. They don't even understand the wrong. I'll reset the bones myself. They might convince you to re-break your hands to heal. But after that pain, you won't dare face more. Who would. It's terrible. He took the index finger of her right hand.

A rapid, firm shift of his own grip, his wrist, his stone-sculptor's hand. The finger was ajar and angled wrong.
One down.
Nine more, in patient, deliberate succession.

((Trigger Warning for Torture, Broken Bones Ahead))


"Ultimately, no. There's no real counting the number of lives that you've ended- starseeds you've harvested, you've eaten, broken, stood by and allowed to be harvested, or actively been accomplice to the taking of from living, free beings. True justice would be to count each one of those and somehow, someway, pay out your life into each one of those so that they could live their full lives. "

"It is easier to take lives than to give them back. " What a funny, tragic thing that for all the magic in the world, all the mysticism and alien souls and reincarnations, greater crystals and parallel universes there was no magic found, spoken of, remembered or hinted at that could give back life. Only take it- sudden, vitriolic, violent as a hand plunged into a chest and tore out all the light from behind the windows of a body.

"Executing you would ensure that you could not murder, or accomplice murder, ever again. But it is easy to die for a cause. It is easy to convince yourself, without any thought about your motives or those of your organization, that you're a martyr. " He stood by her, looking down at her legs that had thrashed this way and that in her pain.

"It's harder to live than to die." He brought the full strength and force of his heel down on the Tibia of her leg.

((Trigger Warning for Injuries))

He left her to her wails for some count of breaths. More merciful had it been permanently- to leave shock to set in and take her life, or to pass the time by until inevitable rescue in complete delirium. But that was not the aim here.

She has learned now, moving is pain. Pain inside which cannot be escaped. Thraen returned with supply - sterile bandage, splint, ice packs and a crate for elevation, padded straps and rope for slings, blanket and heat pack for her core. He had time to spend to do this right-wrong. Her position was fine for the initial wrapping and setting of her fingers.

You will have to relearn to rule yourself, beyond the regulations and manipulatoins masked by the Negaverse. Then, you will see all of it as mastery and domination. Like Alois saw when he was brought to his lowest and there was nothing else there. The puppet with cut strings. Maybe. Maybe it will work.
Maybe is a horrible chance. Ten fingers affirming the value of nothing? Ten of her fingers set and wrapped carefully so that they were not blue, so that they had an ice-pack that would melt over a small period and keep the swelling down.

"Breath. Steady and deep."

IV rehydration bags from the Emergency Survival 72 hour kit. She was dehydrated, which would make all her veins difficult insertions. The arm of her jacket would have to be cut off with the med kit scissors. 'Bid low to high' was the rule for the most chances. A twenty needle and a macroset for 100mL per hour. I feel like a sociopath. Burke and Hare. Smother breath and there's no damage and evidence on the body. Burking. A resurrection man. Bury the negaverse and pull out the senshi and knights from under their beds? Isn't that romantic. No, this is no comfortable, idealized fiction. Listen to the warble of her throat on every breath. It's terrible. Every note is the needles, nails, of bone driven wrong under her skin.