Erwin had been on the alert since the warning klaxons went out and security was ordered to organize. He was running on almost no sleep (everyone was these days), but it was an unfortunately familiar feeling. At least it wasn't freezing. He'd grabbed his rifle and some of his other gear and he was looking for another member of security to team up with when the inky blackness rolled down the hallway towards him. He opened his mouth to yell and then staggered as all of his senses were assaulted by a flicker of things which should not be. Then the sound of pipes, high-pitched and fluting off in the darkness.
Tikeli-li! Tikeli-li!
And then everything was horrifically wrong again. A fine mist and light rain were tip-tapping off of his helmet and running off of the zelt he wore as a rain poncho. He shouldn't be here. He should be aboard the ship. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to shake the sense of dread that began to flow through him. All around him were the battered, broken shells of buildings and craters. Upturned automobiles and burned out tanks (some still smoldering, the sickly scent of burnt flesh making its way through the damp air). Twisted corpses wearing German and Russian uniforms and far away the dull thud of artillery, the sharper crack of small-arms and now and then the long, buzz-saw rip of a machine gun.
He ran a tongue over suddenly dry lips as he gripped his rifle and took a cautious step forward. Ahead through the mist and rain he could see shadowy figures and half-hear shouted commands in some language he couldn't quite make out. He knew what he had to do now. He had to find all of them and kill them all before they killed him. It was the only way out. He wasn't going to die here. He couldn't die here.
Kill them.
Rifle raised, he advanced into the cracked and twisted ruins, his heart in his throat.
Elsewhere, Robert cautiously peered around the edge of a burned out house somewhere in eastern France. It was raining there, too, and Robert had been seperated from his buddies. Never a good thing. Part of his mind wondered what was happening. The war had ended years ago...but that small voice was quickly drowned out by the urge to find the enemy. Find the enemy and kill him. Kill him so that he couldn't kill Robert. He took another quick look, then darted across the space between buildings, heart pounding in his chest as he waited for a crack from a sniper's rifle. Once across he paused a moment, panting, the helmet on his head heavy and cold, the spattering of water on the metal half-drowning out the sounds of the battlefield around him.
He could hear them moving, the commands in the guttural German language, a language he had come to hate, a people he had come to despise for being so sheep-like and weak, for dragging him into a war he'd never wanted a part of. Bastards! The cold rage welled up in him. He was going to kill all of them so there would never be another war like this, never another madman trying to conquer Europe.
Mud. Blood. Snow. Rain. It all blended together into a hellish cold and damp that seemed to seep into his bones. He adjusted his zelt, wiping a damp hand against his trouser's legs in a vain effort to dry them. He flexed his fingers and then wrapped them around his rifle, numb fingers gripping the weapon as he cautiously crept onward. He could feel cobblestones through the soles of his boots, the hobnails and heelplates clattering softly as he peered through the strange mist.
He squinted, freezing as he heard the distant clatter of boots. They were here. He raised his rifle, hugging the side of the street as he moved onwards. He'd find them. He would kill them. He'd finally be free of this hellish war, if he only killed enough of them. His mind was gibbering at him, fear and adrenaline mixed with a sense of duty to his homeland driving him onwards.
He could hear them getting closer. No choice now but to face them. But that's what he'd been planning on all along, wasn't it? He whipped around the corner and fired, squeezing off the entire clip of his rifle as fast as he could pull the trigger before ducking back behind cover, shoving more ammunition into the firearm almost as soon as the distinctive 'ping' of the ejecting clip filled his ears.
And just like that the battlefield around them erupts in a cacophony of gunfire and explosions. Erwin isn't alone anymore. There are other Germans - faceless, moving forward at a run, throwing grenades as they leapfrog forward. Erwin hurled himself down behind a pile of shattered rubble that had once been a building and took a moment to steady himself before he popped up to fire a shot. Keep moving. Keep shooting.
The thunder of gunfire surrounded the two men as they closed on each other, slowly but surely, through the ruins. Robert dived behind a pile of rubble, hugging the ground as he began to crawl forward, flinching as bullets cracked and whined overhead, an unlucky soldier behind him catching a burst from an enemy machine gun. He fished in his combat jacket (Wait, wasn't he wearing a shirt and tie earlier...?) for a grenade, pulled the pin and hurled it forwards before continuing onwards. This war, this damn war. He had escaped it. Left it behind. But it was never going to end, was it? He would be fighting it, fighting them forever.
He was back in it again...back in the war. It wasn't Iraq though, not the Middle East. It was rainy, damp, more like Europe or some parts of the US. Booth didn't have time to look and think though, he only had time to shoot. He was wearing protection, though he didn't know where it had come from, and he had a rifle. He fired, as fast as he could, his gaze flicking around as he searched out a place and then dove for cover. He fell back fairly easily into Ranger mode, but his heart was still hammering in his chest, his brain still screaming at him to wake up, that this had to be a dream.
It has to be, because in none of these wars (not where these men fought them, anyway) did an 8-foot tall winged creature join the battle, leaping from the ramparts of a nearby castle to lay waste to artificial soldiers with a claymore.
The gargoyle roars at the panicking soldiers, sending the men scattering and scrambling to ready their guns, from which Goliath takes cover. He regrets, now, not having taken a shield from the castle as well.
Germans scatter as the gargoyle sweeps through like a hurricane. Erwin barely manages to get out of the way as he scrambles for cover. His shaking hands try to load his rifle - he has to kill the enemy before they kill him. It's the only way out of here.
A warm glowing hand comes to rest on Erwin's shoulder, the energy soothing and healing. Danny stands next to him, calm and composed in the midst of the chaos.
"Hey, relax." Danny says softly. "Calm down, clear your mind. Don't you think there's something weird about Goliath being here, Erwin?"
Goliath...? The name and the gargoyle are familiar. Familiar in some strange way. Robert shakes his head, trying to clear his mind of the tendrils of the Nightmare King. That's right. He's on a ship. Stacy. He's not in France. This is a nightmare. A horrible, deadly nightmare.
Booth definitely thought there was something weird about it. But, whatever this was, Stacy was responsible for it, and weird seemed an unchanging constant anymore. He shook his head, wishing he could wake up. He knew this was that Nightmare Guy or whatever his name was. However, the bullets flying around him seemed very real.
Elisa falls from the dam again. Her hand slips from his talons and the water swallows her up.
He wakes on an unfamiliar roof, and though the clan has revived with him, Hudson remains stone. Macbeth swoops in, mace in hand, and smashes the statue. Blood leeches from the stone to the snow of the unfamiliar rooftop.
The Hunter kisses Elisa. She does not stop him.
Conscious in sleep, he feels his heart stop. He feels the inner workings of his body immobilized.
Most importantly, through the veil of his dreams, he feels his wounds knit together again.
The pain recedes. And in the quiet, senseless calm, his nightmares before him, where only his mind is mobile – he takes that, and he bends it as he would the weapon of an enemy against them.
Angela revived in time to see the sun rise. She lived to fly another night.
Hudson was never the statue on the rooftop. Another one of Xanatos’ tricks better forgotten than harbored.
Elisa returned, rescued by the Hunter. And perhaps he did not deserve her forgiveness. But she gave it.
At no point in time – in no world not a nightmare – would this not be true.
Goliath explodes from sleep, roaring over the sound of the battle that has come to rage around his castle. Healing, or perhaps simply the Nightmare King’s machinations, has left him weak.
He takes the stairs. There’s a claymore on one of the walls. He takes it with him, conscious of the weapon’s exaggerated weight. He’s been reduced to a strength closer to what he had when he was briefly a human, and that will make this battle harder.
But he recognizes those uniforms, and he has no love for this army, and that will give him strength.
Danny stands on a roof top in Queens, looking down as the people in the streets riot. He had tried to help this city, to help the poor and weak as best as he could, but it seemed as though he had failed. Danny's money hadn't solved anything, and right now it seemed as though there was little his fists could do.
Danny clenches his fist and it glows with power. This was a big blow to his spirit, but still, he wasn't about to just give up now. Danny leaps into the fray, and the world around him changes. Danny would make sense of all this as soon as he could clear his head.
Close by, a girl hidesin the shadows. She knows all too well about war - being a Commanding Officer in a group bent on world domination will do that to you. She would have preferred mountains, but for some reason her powers weren't working well tonight...and in fact her mind seemed to tell her something else was very wrong. Like a tiny voice telling her this was all so wrong.Survival! the louder voice screams out. You or them!
The technology was primitive, but she didn't even question it. She was holding her gun like her life depended on it, and for all Lash knew...it did. Soldiers ran all around her as she stayed silent. Then screams of pain and the crack of bones and she's forced to look farther to the left of her...oozium 238.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!
There is no Hawke to save her this time. No one but herself. Alone. She gets up and begins to run, but where, she has no idea. She needs something, like a rocket launcher to fight that thing. Lash has never sworn so much in her life. There are tears in her eyes, but she ignores them. Get away... get away!
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no subject
Tikeli-li! Tikeli-li!
And then everything was horrifically wrong again. A fine mist and light rain were tip-tapping off of his helmet and running off of the zelt he wore as a rain poncho. He shouldn't be here. He should be aboard the ship. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to shake the sense of dread that began to flow through him. All around him were the battered, broken shells of buildings and craters. Upturned automobiles and burned out tanks (some still smoldering, the sickly scent of burnt flesh making its way through the damp air). Twisted corpses wearing German and Russian uniforms and far away the dull thud of artillery, the sharper crack of small-arms and now and then the long, buzz-saw rip of a machine gun.
He ran a tongue over suddenly dry lips as he gripped his rifle and took a cautious step forward. Ahead through the mist and rain he could see shadowy figures and half-hear shouted commands in some language he couldn't quite make out. He knew what he had to do now. He had to find all of them and kill them all before they killed him. It was the only way out. He wasn't going to die here. He couldn't die here.
Kill them.
Rifle raised, he advanced into the cracked and twisted ruins, his heart in his throat.
no subject
He could hear them moving, the commands in the guttural German language, a language he had come to hate, a people he had come to despise for being so sheep-like and weak, for dragging him into a war he'd never wanted a part of. Bastards! The cold rage welled up in him. He was going to kill all of them so there would never be another war like this, never another madman trying to conquer Europe.
They would pay.
no subject
He squinted, freezing as he heard the distant clatter of boots. They were here. He raised his rifle, hugging the side of the street as he moved onwards. He'd find them. He would kill them. He'd finally be free of this hellish war, if he only killed enough of them. His mind was gibbering at him, fear and adrenaline mixed with a sense of duty to his homeland driving him onwards.
no subject
no subject
Angriff!
no subject
He could never know peace.
no subject
no subject
The gargoyle roars at the panicking soldiers, sending the men scattering and scrambling to ready their guns, from which Goliath takes cover. He regrets, now, not having taken a shield from the castle as well.
no subject
Germans scatter as the gargoyle sweeps through like a hurricane. Erwin barely manages to get out of the way as he scrambles for cover. His shaking hands try to load his rifle - he has to kill the enemy before they kill him. It's the only way out of here.
no subject
"Hey, relax." Danny says softly. "Calm down, clear your mind. Don't you think there's something weird about Goliath being here, Erwin?"
no subject
"Shit...!"
no subject
Hey you damn Nazis, get off my lawn!
Elisa falls from the dam again. Her hand slips from his talons and the water swallows her up.
He wakes on an unfamiliar roof, and though the clan has revived with him, Hudson remains stone. Macbeth swoops in, mace in hand, and smashes the statue. Blood leeches from the stone to the snow of the unfamiliar rooftop.
The Hunter kisses Elisa. She does not stop him.
Conscious in sleep, he feels his heart stop. He feels the inner workings of his body immobilized.
Most importantly, through the veil of his dreams, he feels his wounds knit together again.
The pain recedes. And in the quiet, senseless calm, his nightmares before him, where only his mind is mobile – he takes that, and he bends it as he would the weapon of an enemy against them.
Angela revived in time to see the sun rise. She lived to fly another night.
Hudson was never the statue on the rooftop. Another one of Xanatos’ tricks better forgotten than harbored.
Elisa returned, rescued by the Hunter. And perhaps he did not deserve her forgiveness. But she gave it.
At no point in time – in no world not a nightmare – would this not be true.
Goliath explodes from sleep, roaring over the sound of the battle that has come to rage around his castle. Healing, or perhaps simply the Nightmare King’s machinations, has left him weak.
He takes the stairs. There’s a claymore on one of the walls. He takes it with him, conscious of the weapon’s exaggerated weight. He’s been reduced to a strength closer to what he had when he was briefly a human, and that will make this battle harder.
But he recognizes those uniforms, and he has no love for this army, and that will give him strength.
no subject
Danny clenches his fist and it glows with power. This was a big blow to his spirit, but still, he wasn't about to just give up now. Danny leaps into the fray, and the world around him changes. Danny would make sense of all this as soon as he could clear his head.
no subject
The technology was primitive, but she didn't even question it. She was holding her gun like her life depended on it, and for all Lash knew...it did. Soldiers ran all around her as she stayed silent. Then screams of pain and the crack of bones and she's forced to look farther to the left of her...oozium 238.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!
There is no Hawke to save her this time. No one but herself. Alone. She gets up and begins to run, but where, she has no idea. She needs something, like a rocket launcher to fight that thing. Lash has never sworn so much in her life. There are tears in her eyes, but she ignores them.
Get away... get away!