dappledleaves | CICONIA: WHEN THEY CRY

[ The arguments among everyone build and build. Outside, Sinclair keeps trying to get out of range even as the gauntlet knights in white get closer. He's not getting support from the AOU brass, he realises with a chill. What were they waiting for?

He fires a rocket at another tower, sending it crashing down into the glass sea and cutting off his pursuers. He drops down low, skimming across the ocean floor in hopes the interference would protect him.]

I'm low on rockets!

[ And...oddly enough one of those knights look familiar]

[ He's not getting anything out of the Public Bath Order and he watches Sinclair try to avoid his pursuers. He clicks his tongue and goes after him. Oria knows he's not good at defense, but the only defensive maneuver he can reliably pull off is a counter, which is what he does when one of the Knights strike at Sinclair with something like a longsword. He blocks and sends the Knight downward into the ocean.

And stay there, he quietly breathes out before smacking another Knight down into the ocean. He zips to Sinclair's side. ]

How much shield you have left?

[ Yes, Oria is blatantly disobeying orders. He doesn't care about that right now. Sinclair is more important and he's getting a bad feeling that he knows why this is happening. ]

...maybe 30% left.

[ Considering how much Sinclair had been spamming his shield, it was a testament to his ability that he had managed to conserve that much. He looks at the knights, notes the look on their faces]

... maybe I should give myself up.

[ Will Sinclair note the look on Oria's face too, because he heavily disagrees with that suggestion. ]

Don't even think about it. I'll knock some down to the ocean and you can flee to the nearest land.

[ How can he argue when
Oria looks like that? ]

I don't want you getting hurt because of me.

Look, just because you're mostly the Defender of the squad doesn't mean that I can't defend myself.

[ But it's really the "best defense is a good offense" schtick. Kill them before they kill you. Etc. ]

I'm already going against orders by doing this, so I might as well go all out. I don't have any qualms of beating more down into the ocean either.

[His throat feels tight. He swallows and glances over.

Run

That voice keeps haunting his dreams. He's so very tired of running. But what else can they do?]

I know. I know. Just...stay safe, okay? [He reaches over to squeeze Oria's free hand briefly. There's no more time. He darts away, aiming for the glass sea below]

[ Sinclair leaves.

This is something important to Oria, but there's a lot more riding on this because of his actions. They have consequences. One of them tries to zoom towards Sinclair, but he intercepts them and swiftly smacks them down into the ocean. There's a crackle from the gauntlet and the look in Oria's eyes change.

It's the same look as before, whenever Sinclair didn't see.

Truthfully, it doesn't take long for him to wipe out a squad and it snowballs from there. Overpowered versus overpowered. He's making use of his high P3 levels, but it just makes him even faster that it's hard to keep up, even for actual Gauntlet Knights and the battlefield surveyors. Of course there's a drawback to deal with after all that, but that's Oria's problem, not the alternate personality's. It isn't Program K. It was a personality that Oria knew that he had all along--even converses with it in his head from time to time. The "scary one".

The AOU Knights watch, COU flees, and ABN is on standby. They scoop the Knights from the waters and surprisingly, there are no casualties so far, apart from the COU's single knight whose Dimension Container had exploded. Surely, the government will spin stories to fit their narrative later.

No one comes near Oria as he remains in the air, watching if anyone else goes after Sinclair. ]

[Sinclair doesn't look back, even as every instinct screams at him to look. There's a barrage of messages, frantic screaming but no one vanishes. No one is dead. He lands on a nearby island, panting as he disconnects from the Public Bath room, and tries to regain his bearings. There's a passing ship as the knights frantically swim to it - the ones Oria must have knocked down. Sinclair melts back towards a boulder, wishing for some kind of shade. But there was nothing living here for miles. Just the endless glass sea, and the ocean itself.

Don't send me back to them. Let me stay here with Oria and the others

Who was there to hear his prayers? Sinclair didn't believe in god.

Then there's a voice over the loudspeaker of a ship, an obnoxious whistle and a laugh that sends Sinclair straight to his knees.

"Ah~ What a show you put on~! Well done, well done."

Why...who...why is that voice here?]

[ After this fiasco, they probably wouldn't be welcome anywhere. That's fine, Oria thinks while still in the recesses of his own mind. He has never felt like he belonged anywhere except for his squad. A tiny thing, somewhere to call home. His head rings with incessant messages, private ones, chatroom notifications, alerts, Keropoyo blabbering about something.

It's so, so loud.

No one else goes after Sinclair. After a while, Oria's body zooms over to the direction where Sinclair went. It's still the other's time to play. ]

[There are no messages reaching Sinclair. Mostly, he doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to know why the AOU were so eager to throw him to the ABN, even as the ship that carried the ABN troops over was now leaving.

"It's too bad you ignored our request. Oh well~ We will come back for what is ours. We'll make sure to deliver a fantastic surprise come Christmas."

Ours? No. He didn't belong there.

His fist tightens against the ground, crushing bits glass beneath his hand. There was so much spiritium here. It made him dizzy. If he could use this in the Dressing Conversion...could he release them all from this hell?]

[ He eventually finds Sinclair and zooms over to him except... he feels sick. Oria takes over again with a gasp. The spiritiums are so abundant here. He should have known that, but it feels like he's drowning in air. Being a project that enabled a factory-born to be created with a blueprint of the Dreissig Conversion apparatus offshoot takes its toll. All this spiritium isn't his, but he wants to convert it into energy anyway. Convert it and he'll no longer have to feel like he's drowning.

He barely lands on a place where he can stand once he finds Sinclair. ]

Emil!

[ He feels so dizzy and warm at the same time. The apparatus part of him collects the converted spiritium to store it. Oria feels so full and sick. Anyway, he stumbles his way to Sinclair. ]

We gotta get outta here. This place is super bad for me— what happened to your hand??

[Sinclair snaps to attention the moment Oria lands]

Oria.

[Oria. Oria. Sinclair stands up, and then nearly falls over. He's pale now and shaky, with the effects of the Dreissig Conversion kicking in. He looks down at his hand, the bits of glass embedded through the leather]

I don't know. I was just thinking how stupid it was we're all fighting for...this.

[His shield is back at 100% and Oria...]

We shouldn't be here if it's bad for you.

[ Two kids in the Glass Sea, drowning in something like vitamin water. Oria runs over to Sinclair to help him stand with his support. ]

You look awful. Here.

[ That's the only warning Sinclair gets before Oria shoves a whole peep into his mouth before eating one himself. He feels less sick, but still sick. ]

There's probably an uninhabited island somewhere near here. Come on.

[ He tries to get Sinclair to straighten up so that he can carry him. Time to fly!! ]

Where are we going? [Ooph--but he eats the peep automatically. He feels awful. How did he get to this point? He straightens at Oria's prompting]

[ Oria is now carrying Sinclair bridal style and flying off to whatever other nearest land there is, away from the Glass Sea. ]

I dunno. Some island, preferably uninhabited. I saw a blotch of land on the way that didn't look like anyone touched it.

[Sinclair could fly, probably. But his head is pounding and he feels sick so he stays in Oria's arms, tucking his head against Oria's shoulder. Warm. Soft.]

Oh, there are islands that weren't destroyed? That's good...

There are new islands being made everyday from volcanos and stuff.

[ But the problem was the pack of 8MS for air filter. Well, they'll only stay for a moment anyway. He tucks Sinclair closer to himself. ]

... We'll have to go back to base eventually, but I don't want them to take you away. Do you think Limbus will do something about that? AOU caving into ABN's demands by ordering a ceasefire probably already lowered morale and the general trust of the government.

I think so. Limbus has invested a lot of money into me and it's not like they can work in the ABN.

[He presses his face against Oria's shoulder, feeling a strange sense of panic]

I...I just need to prove I'm not someone they can hand over. Right now, I'm not very valuable because I'm not doing what I'm meant to be doing. If I can do that...

[But he doesn't want to do that. He doesn't want to be the AOU's ticking time bomb]

Huh...? What are you meant to be doing? I thought that was being some super soldier for AOU. That's not it?

[ He doesn't have a good feeling about this. Anyway, they finally land on a beach of some sort. The ocean is kinda murky and the sand is just. Sand. Nothing fresh here though, not even the air. ]

It's that, but...[He wiggles out of Oria's arms as soon as they land and then wobbles a little. He looks out onto the ocean and clasps his hands together. He needs to be standing tall for this]

I...saw footage of what happened a few years ago. Involving me and Shion's family...his friends. [He squeezes his eyes shut. He has to talk through this] I understand why he wants me dead. I blew up an entire district by using the Dreissig Conversion. All those people, their blood is on my hands. I think AOU wants me to do the same thing again. They don't just want a super soldier...they want to throw me in the middle of a battlefield and have me kill everyone that's in their way.

You can... what?

[ That's the first he's ever heard of something like that. ]

Hold on. You can convert it to energy, but you can convert it again to a different kind of energy? Like seismic? Sounds??

...yeah. It takes a lot out of me, but...I can turn it to heat and light.

[Hence, the explosion. The bodies. The dead...He dreams of a different set of screams now]

Or at least, I could.

[Had Sinclair been willingly defying the researchers all this time? Or had it been a trauma so deep in his psyche that his body could no longer remember the process]

[ All Oria can do is store an indefinite amount of converted spiritium into energy even if it makes him feel sick and full.

But wait. ]

What the fuck... isn't that basically what a 8MS does?

Yeah. I guess I was made to be like an 8MS. [Every implant was designed to keep his body from suffering from the backlash. His body healed faster than the average human. He has greater strength and endurance even after suffering from a glucose drop like this.] But, from what I read from my files...I could potentially create a bomb like this. Spark a nuclear reaction. Thousands of people could die in the process, but for the AOU and ABN that's something they're fine with.

[Sinclair would die. No matter how many implants had been put in his body, it wouldn't save him from the wave of heat energy from incinerating him on the spot if it went that far]

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