Shattered
I now sat a mile away from the city of Vultan. On top of a small mountain where most of the survivors gathered. The city looked like a giant spear pierced was thrown at and dug deep into the ground and exploded; creating this crater that blasted all the ground and cracked the earth.
The city of Vultan has been annihilated. A god shattering spear was thrown and it killed the God that was born down there. The spear is the greatest weapon wielded by the Otherside Bureau. It is a spear that had put down demigods and the one that caused the end of the Shanghai Risk Event.
The spear once again had solved the problem.
I was expecting a nuclear weapon… but I guess they sincerely thought it wasn’t enough when it comes to being like this.
City’s been wiped out. People are dead and all we have to earn from that is misery and a reminder how awful the lives we live are.
I… can’t find myself to be miserable. I didn’t know Marvin that much other than he was expecting. As for Eta she was a colleague that I worked with for a few months and honestly would have been a great friend.
They are memories now. Just among the many people I die. It’s so frustrating sometimes, but this is how life is in this kind of world.
You live for a few scraps and eat like shit. Maybe the last few months have been so good to me I forgot that this was how life was here. I forgot that in the end we were risking our lives for the sake of whatever benefit comes of it. All for the sake of a paycheck.
Even if I lash out here and act like a child and just quit now. I’d end up risking my life in some flesh-pit or raising my hands if some asshole tried to rob a store.
It feels like shit. Like my chest was just tight and all I could think of was how tired and grateful I was that I managed to get out of that pit alive. I’m still here. Living and breathing this air.
Never gets easy losing people. But you don’t have to be distraught. You can’t think about them and all you can do now is wipe your face and solve what comes next.
That’s all you can do. That's all I can do now. Throw it on the back of my mind and maybe let those memories come to me into a dream. It’s hard to swallow. Too tiresome to stomach losing people like this. It burns through your soul and yet you understand somewhere deep in your heart that this is how life is in this era.
I wonder how long I’d keep saying that.
This is how life is in this era.
Thinking about it frustrates me.
And yet the thought of being always grateful I survived again never seems to go away.
“You up?”
Kei sat on the side and took a drag of her cigarette. Her eyes sunken and eyes lacking any light. She got her cool back after waking up about it.
“I am.”
“Good. At least we got out alive.”
“How’s Vaun?”
“He’d have to peel his kin, the bastard.”
The venom in her tongue was clear. But she also begrudgingly admits Vaun’s doing his job. You can blame Vaun for everything else, but you can’t deny he’d save our lives.
Captain Hawke… he made the wrong judgment sincerely. But in the end Vaun will only interfere if Kei’s in danger. No amount of what if’s can’t change that fact.
“Guess our luck ran out.”
Kei chewed on her cigarette.
“Yeah.”
“Called Sato. Told him what happened. He’ll be the one who tells Marvin’s wife about this. He’ll try to get her a job at least. She can survive and maybe the 7S will get another sucker who wants to become a spellblade.”
“Vaun already left?”
“He got hit by the heat of that shit. He needed to recover or else he’d have to join Eta and Marvin on the other side.”
“I see.”
Below us were the residents of the city holding on to what they have left and are now being told where they might go. Certainly not Changye and I don’t think the other node-cities are going to take them in when it’s all over the news now how Vultan was a host for a large number of Pawns and Ghouls. No one would want them. Hell, if it wasn’t for the fact we were accompanied by a Graded Agent of such rank like Vaun. We’d have to go through another bullshit of proving that we aren’t Pawns and we’d have to be quarantined again.
“Eta got any relatives?”
I had to ask. Kei looked at and then shook her head.
“No. None. I don’t think she had any. Even if she did. I doubt she’d talk to me about it. Kinda pisses me off actually.”
“A shame.”
“It is a fucking shame isn’t it? But this is the world we fucking lived in, Akun. This is the world we have to continue on persisting. I have known Eta for years and then she’s gone like that. Fucking dead because of a bad move. I saw that bitch get mutilated hard and replace her parts with metal and yet it didn’t come to me she’d die like that.”
She turned herself into metal and yet that didn’t save her from an Elder like that who can do so much damage. It should have been clear that the one standing before a god would have been that kind of bastard.
“But you know what? It’s not that a bad way to go. I can fucking brag that a friend of mine fought a servant and his god and won. Sure, she fucking died, but it’s still the truth. I survived. We survived to tell the tale.”
When you think about it… it really is. All we can provide now is the information about what we saw and relay it to Sato. Get some compensation and we’d have a priceworthy information about what it was like to stand in front of a man-made god, its servant, and then watch the spear of god shatter said god. We’re going to get censored, but I know Sato can find a way to get some cash for our silence either.
But before all of that.
I have to ask just in case.
Even though I know this job is much better than the last jobs I have for the years I’ve slaved away as a debt-slave. I still had to ask this no matter what.
“How are you doing?
Kei locked her gaze at me.
“I’m fine. I think I am at least. It’s fucked losing Eta like that. I spent years with that woman and now she’s gone. I feel like shit and like someone punched my chest repeatedly until it caved in. That answer for you?”
“Yeah.”
Kei stood before me.
“I ain’t an amateur. I know what we’re up to. We lost people all the time. I had four friends before you and Marv came alone. I lost them too. Friends I’ve spent years with. Suffered with. And now I have fewer. You know how it is. This is how our world works and they know the risk. Eta knows it. Marvin knows it and you know it too. I’m hurting, but that’s just how things are. Whining about it won’t change it. We still have our lives to live. I’d mourn her when I can. Right now… I just can’t.”
“Glad to hear it. Let’s get to it.”
She sneered and then laughed cynically.
“You’re a sick man, Akun.”
It somewhat gives me confidence that she has this attitude. But I don’t want to work with people who can’t bottle it in. I can’t just work under someone who’d fuck us over. Her having this composure however is enough for me at least.
“But it’s better than thinking I’m asking for some pity.”
And this is probably why she got an office at her age. No person would have this kind of composure after losing people. She still prioritizes what she can and then thinks about what she needs to think after she's done with what’s in front of her.
“You got to hire people?”
“No. I don’t want any people in the office right now. Doubt anyone would want to be hired by people who just lost two people. We’ll have to take it slow. It’ll hurt our profits, but it’s best we slow it down. Sato fucked us over with this. We have to remind him we aren’t fit for shit like this. We’re street-level and all this bullshit about supernaturals and whatever the fuck schemes they have can fuck off. Honestly, I thought we might, but now? I don’t think I’d want to do this unless I want to join the military again.”
Indeed. Not to mention being involved in this kind of thing had cost us too much.
We got into a smaller armored train compared to what we came here. Got a nicer cabin too since we’re only traveling for two. It’ll take time for us to arrive in the city since the train's not going to enter the same route after what they did to the previous armored train.
It was quiet. No Marvin chanting spell. No sounds from Eta’s armor and Kei trying to chat her up. Kei’s just chain smoking and sipping on beer while staring at the blurry landscape.
Kei throws me a can and then leans back.
“Fucking quiet, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
I took a sip. I took out my smoking pipe from my dimenbag and puffed smoke.
“Shit, we could have at least recovered Eta’s dimenbag.”
“Yeah. She probably had a lot of equipment on that bag of hers.”
“Mostly workshop shit. Spares she keeps just in case her two-handed is dulled.”
“What about her things back home?”
“I’ll have Sato sell it. We’ll use the cash to give her a spot on the monolith. Have it titled ‘the machine girl and her two-handed sword’ on her epithet.”
I took a sip of the beer. My head’s a buzz and all I could think of was how tired and glad I was to be sipping beer and out of the fight.
“It’s going to a bloodbath.”
“Oh, it will. These Vamps trying to pull this shit means the Templars are going to call the Grand Inquisition’s for a hunt. It doesn’t help that the animal-heads have allied with the lycans which can only mean that some of their kin is going to become labeled as part of the monsters. If you think that it was bad before, then it’s going to be very bad for them. If they think they can play sides with their current rep. Then they aren’t thinking straight.”
“Glad we don’t have to deal with that.”
“Yeah, but it’ll affect us in some way or another. Shit like this affects everyone. It’s a headache. This is why I don’t go out of the city too much.”
Changye’s a shithole… but at least it’s a controlled environment. A regulated one where you can try to earn money without worrying about the supernaturals. Sure there are corpos, syndicates, and gangsters roaming the city. But I’d prefer them than fighting organized vampires and an Elder trying to create a god of his own.
We survived, but we haven’t found any clues as to what method they used to make a God of their own. And even if we did become extra stupid and try to investigate. I doubt the Otherside Bureau or the Church Union would be kind enough to tell us what kind of anomaly it was. They threw a god shattering spear at that god after all.
But all of this can wait.
After all, this is the time for mourning our losses.
Shattered
I now sat a mile away from the city of Vultan. On top of a small mountain where most of the survivors gathered. The city looked like a giant spear pierced was thrown at and dug deep into the ground and exploded; creating this crater that blasted all the ground and cracked the earth.
The city of Vultan has been annihilated. A god shattering spear was thrown and it killed the God that was born down there. The spear is the greatest weapon wielded by the Otherside Bureau. It is a spear that had put down demigods and the one that caused the end of the Shanghai Risk Event.
The spear once again had solved the problem.
I was expecting a nuclear weapon… but I guess they sincerely thought it wasn’t enough when it comes to being like this.
City’s been wiped out. People are dead and all we have to earn from that is misery and a reminder how awful the lives we live are.
I… can’t find myself to be miserable. I didn’t know Marvin that much other than he was expecting. As for Eta she was a colleague that I worked with for a few months and honestly would have been a great friend.
They are memories now. Just among the many people I die. It’s so frustrating sometimes, but this is how life is in this kind of world.
You live for a few scraps and eat like shit. Maybe the last few months have been so good to me I forgot that this was how life was here. I forgot that in the end we were risking our lives for the sake of whatever benefit comes of it. All for the sake of a paycheck.
Even if I lash out here and act like a child and just quit now. I’d end up risking my life in some flesh-pit or raising my hands if some asshole tried to rob a store.
It feels like shit. Like my chest was just tight and all I could think of was how tired and grateful I was that I managed to get out of that pit alive. I’m still here. Living and breathing this air.
Never gets easy losing people. But you don’t have to be distraught. You can’t think about them and all you can do now is wipe your face and solve what comes next.
That’s all you can do. That's all I can do now. Throw it on the back of my mind and maybe let those memories come to me into a dream. It’s hard to swallow. Too tiresome to stomach losing people like this. It burns through your soul and yet you understand somewhere deep in your heart that this is how life is in this era.
I wonder how long I’d keep saying that.
This is how life is in this era.
Thinking about it frustrates me.
And yet the thought of being always grateful I survived again never seems to go away.
“You up?”
Kei sat on the side and took a drag of her cigarette. Her eyes sunken and eyes lacking any light. She got her cool back after waking up about it.
“I am.”
“Good. At least we got out alive.”
“How’s Vaun?”
“He’d have to peel his kin, the bastard.”
The venom in her tongue was clear. But she also begrudgingly admits Vaun’s doing his job. You can blame Vaun for everything else, but you can’t deny he’d save our lives.
Captain Hawke… he made the wrong judgment sincerely. But in the end Vaun will only interfere if Kei’s in danger. No amount of what if’s can’t change that fact.
“Guess our luck ran out.”
Kei chewed on her cigarette.
“Yeah.”
“Called Sato. Told him what happened. He’ll be the one who tells Marvin’s wife about this. He’ll try to get her a job at least. She can survive and maybe the 7S will get another sucker who wants to become a spellblade.”
“Vaun already left?”
“He got hit by the heat of that shit. He needed to recover or else he’d have to join Eta and Marvin on the other side.”
“I see.”
Below us were the residents of the city holding on to what they have left and are now being told where they might go. Certainly not Changye and I don’t think the other node-cities are going to take them in when it’s all over the news now how Vultan was a host for a large number of Pawns and Ghouls. No one would want them. Hell, if it wasn’t for the fact we were accompanied by a Graded Agent of such rank like Vaun. We’d have to go through another bullshit of proving that we aren’t Pawns and we’d have to be quarantined again.
“Eta got any relatives?”
I had to ask. Kei looked at and then shook her head.
“No. None. I don’t think she had any. Even if she did. I doubt she’d talk to me about it. Kinda pisses me off actually.”
“A shame.”
“It is a fucking shame isn’t it? But this is the world we fucking lived in, Akun. This is the world we have to continue on persisting. I have known Eta for years and then she’s gone like that. Fucking dead because of a bad move. I saw that bitch get mutilated hard and replace her parts with metal and yet it didn’t come to me she’d die like that.”
She turned herself into metal and yet that didn’t save her from an Elder like that who can do so much damage. It should have been clear that the one standing before a god would have been that kind of bastard.
“But you know what? It’s not that a bad way to go. I can fucking brag that a friend of mine fought a servant and his god and won. Sure, she fucking died, but it’s still the truth. I survived. We survived to tell the tale.”
When you think about it… it really is. All we can provide now is the information about what we saw and relay it to Sato. Get some compensation and we’d have a priceworthy information about what it was like to stand in front of a man-made god, its servant, and then watch the spear of god shatter said god. We’re going to get censored, but I know Sato can find a way to get some cash for our silence either.
But before all of that.
I have to ask just in case.
Even though I know this job is much better than the last jobs I have for the years I’ve slaved away as a debt-slave. I still had to ask this no matter what.
“How are you doing?
Kei locked her gaze at me.
“I’m fine. I think I am at least. It’s fucked losing Eta like that. I spent years with that woman and now she’s gone. I feel like shit and like someone punched my chest repeatedly until it caved in. That answer for you?”
“Yeah.”
Kei stood before me.
“I ain’t an amateur. I know what we’re up to. We lost people all the time. I had four friends before you and Marv came alone. I lost them too. Friends I’ve spent years with. Suffered with. And now I have fewer. You know how it is. This is how our world works and they know the risk. Eta knows it. Marvin knows it and you know it too. I’m hurting, but that’s just how things are. Whining about it won’t change it. We still have our lives to live. I’d mourn her when I can. Right now… I just can’t.”
“Glad to hear it. Let’s get to it.”
She sneered and then laughed cynically.
“You’re a sick man, Akun.”
It somewhat gives me confidence that she has this attitude. But I don’t want to work with people who can’t bottle it in. I can’t just work under someone who’d fuck us over. Her having this composure however is enough for me at least.
“But it’s better than thinking I’m asking for some pity.”
And this is probably why she got an office at her age. No person would have this kind of composure after losing people. She still prioritizes what she can and then thinks about what she needs to think after she's done with what’s in front of her.
“You got to hire people?”
“No. I don’t want any people in the office right now. Doubt anyone would want to be hired by people who just lost two people. We’ll have to take it slow. It’ll hurt our profits, but it’s best we slow it down. Sato fucked us over with this. We have to remind him we aren’t fit for shit like this. We’re street-level and all this bullshit about supernaturals and whatever the fuck schemes they have can fuck off. Honestly, I thought we might, but now? I don’t think I’d want to do this unless I want to join the military again.”
Indeed. Not to mention being involved in this kind of thing had cost us too much.
We got into a smaller armored train compared to what we came here. Got a nicer cabin too since we’re only traveling for two. It’ll take time for us to arrive in the city since the train's not going to enter the same route after what they did to the previous armored train.
It was quiet. No Marvin chanting spell. No sounds from Eta’s armor and Kei trying to chat her up. Kei’s just chain smoking and sipping on beer while staring at the blurry landscape.
Kei throws me a can and then leans back.
“Fucking quiet, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
I took a sip. I took out my smoking pipe from my dimenbag and puffed smoke.
“Shit, we could have at least recovered Eta’s dimenbag.”
“Yeah. She probably had a lot of equipment on that bag of hers.”
“Mostly workshop shit. Spares she keeps just in case her two-handed is dulled.”
“What about her things back home?”
“I’ll have Sato sell it. We’ll use the cash to give her a spot on the monolith. Have it titled ‘the machine girl and her two-handed sword’ on her epithet.”
I took a sip of the beer. My head’s a buzz and all I could think of was how tired and glad I was to be sipping beer and out of the fight.
“It’s going to a bloodbath.”
“Oh, it will. These Vamps trying to pull this shit means the Templars are going to call the Grand Inquisition’s for a hunt. It doesn’t help that the animal-heads have allied with the lycans which can only mean that some of their kin is going to become labeled as part of the monsters. If you think that it was bad before, then it’s going to be very bad for them. If they think they can play sides with their current rep. Then they aren’t thinking straight.”
“Glad we don’t have to deal with that.”
“Yeah, but it’ll affect us in some way or another. Shit like this affects everyone. It’s a headache. This is why I don’t go out of the city too much.”
Changye’s a shithole… but at least it’s a controlled environment. A regulated one where you can try to earn money without worrying about the supernaturals. Sure there are corpos, syndicates, and gangsters roaming the city. But I’d prefer them than fighting organized vampires and an Elder trying to create a god of his own.
We survived, but we haven’t found any clues as to what method they used to make a God of their own. And even if we did become extra stupid and try to investigate. I doubt the Otherside Bureau or the Church Union would be kind enough to tell us what kind of anomaly it was. They threw a god shattering spear at that god after all.
But all of this can wait.
After all, this is the time for mourning our losses.
