- Invitation Status
- Posting Speed
- 1-3 posts per day
- 1-3 posts per week
- Online Availability
- Whenever you're asleep, thanks time zones.
- Writing Levels
- Intermediate
- Adaptable
- Preferred Character Gender
- Male
- Female
- Genres
- Sci-Fi, Modern, and Horror.
Yamada Suzu "Rabbit"| Claw Country, Outskirts of the City of Yakurao
Suzu, heavily injured, slips in and out of consciousness as she recovers dreaming all the way. She then speaks with the Zero Team member Eros, who sheds a bit of light on the way that the remaining members of the Zero Team are holding up.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Suzu, heavily injured, slips in and out of consciousness as she recovers dreaming all the way. She then speaks with the Zero Team member Eros, who sheds a bit of light on the way that the remaining members of the Zero Team are holding up.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Her fevered dreams had sent her down an ever twisting rabbit hole. She'd seemingly flashed in and out of comprehension of the strange surroundings as she slept. A world full of trees hanging from the sky or a land covered in the webs of spiders as far as the eye could see. She'd forgotten them for the most part, a few fragments of a memory, the faint after thought of something having once consumed her focus but no longer perceptible as it simply faded into the distance. There was one dreamscape that she remembered well though. An ocean. Stretching as far as she could see and colored a deep blue like none she'd ever witnessed in her life.
Wind had whipped at the water's surface, growing white caps that frothed up against the side of her small rowboat and sprayed her with a salty mist. She'd sat in that boat for an eternity, the wind gusting up against her and the never ending ocean spray soaking her through to the bone, but she wasn't cold. No matter how wet she'd become and how hard the wind blew she remained warm. Comfortable where she sat dripping and battered by the wind. It had been unsettling, but it was nothing like what was to come next.
One moment she had been watching the white caps crashing against the hull of her boat, the next, the ocean was completely calm. The wind was gone and she was all but dry. Slowly she'd taken in her surroundings and noted the eerie calm that had settled over the waters surface. Clouds had rolled in over head, a deep gray that blocked the sun completely and left the water a mirror of obsidian from which she'd found her reflection staring back at her. She'd watched the obsidian waters, watched herself, for quite a while before she'd felt she wasn't alone anymore.
The girl from before, the ghost, sat on the far side of the boat, its legs dangling over the side of the boat and kicking backing and forth like a kid on the edge of a dock. Its feet didn't touch the water, though whether it was by design or coincidence Suzu couldn't tell as she watched the ghost.
"Can I do something for you?" Suzu had asked the ghost from where she sat, a small look of confusion growing across her face as the ghost appeared not to notice her just as the ghosts from earlier in the day had paid no heed to her. She stood up, staying low as she moved through the small boat to reach for the ghost, the small ripples her movement created the only thing breaking the perfect mirror of the water around her as she got closer to the girl, "Excuse me?" she asked again as she reached a hand out to touch the girl. Grasping at the ghosts shirt she tugged once and found her words unable to come as she realized who the girl was, "Why…?" she began before grasping harder at the cloth and tugging again, "Why are you here?" the ghost still didn't seem to notice she was being talked to. Suzu sighed and decided to call out it's name to try and get its attention, an old wives tale she'd heard about spirits only responding to those that proved to know their names.
"I know who you are, you'r--" the ghost looked directly at her for the first time and Suzu felt regret well in her stomach.
The world had changed suddenly. The boat was no longer beneath her, but instead she was looking up at the bottom of it as she sank beneath the obsidian surface of the water. She struggled to rise, to swim to the surface, to the air she knew was there, but it was as if she was being pulled further into the abyss. The dark water around her was becoming colder with every passing second, the boat becoming further away and harder to make out against the small rays of light that shone through the water and down toward her. She thrashed and swung her body in agonizingly slow motions as the water stopped her from moving as fast as she'd have liked. She spun herself around enough to notice the phantom of a tendril that had snaked up from beneath her and slipped itself around her abdomen like the tentacle of some giant sea monster. Stories that sailors told flashed through her mind and she began to beat her fists at the ghost of a limb wrapped around her only for her fists to pass harmlessly through it as it pulled her deeper and deeper.
She jerked awake to a sense of helplessness as she couldn't bring herself to move more than a few inches in any direction. The tendril at her stomach had turned into two arms holding her thrashing body down as Atlas worked at her side. From beneath her view Eros leaned up from holding down her torso to be above her face where she could see him clearly, "Rabbit you need to stop moving or Atlas can't work. And you'll get the attention of the guards, you have no idea how loud you're being so shut the fuck up and stop moving." he said calmly to her as he continued to hold her down. At her shoulder Atlas was working, digging into the gruesome injury she had been given by the man with the curved swords from the Resistance. He was holding a set of tools, plier-like things that were buried more than half way into her shoulder and seemed to be delving deeper with every second that passed.
There was a sound like scraping metal and bone followed immediately by a flare of pain so intense Suzu was blinded for a few seconds. When her sight came back to her in a rush she was just in time to see Atlas dropping the tip of the curved dagger into a small bowl of water by his side. He sighed and turned to Suzu, the look he gave her was a sorry one as he got to work suturing her shoulder closed.
"That one's my fault completely. I missed it the first time around, hadn't expected it to be in there and hadn't looked. Careless of me." he admitted as he tied off a suture and cut it, "You might lose this arm. Worst case you die. That was in there too long God knows what sort of infection you might have brewing." he said solemnly, a tinge of regret evident in his voice and in the way he looked down at her with a lack of luster in his eyes, "I'll do what I can though Rabbit." he said as she slipped off into her fevered dreams once more.
The next thing Suzu knew she was standing at the center of a dirty cobblestone road. Buildings stretched on either side of her in both directions, and spoke of their origins by simply existing. She knew where she was, had been there a handful of times now, standing among the streets of Magnhild had always been a bit of a sobering experience when it came to scale, though this oddly empty version of Magnhild brought no sense of awe over the cultural icon, no sense of being among something bigger than she could ever be, instead it was wrong. The streets were too clean, too empty, the buildings uninhabited and desolate beyond their outer shells. She walked up to the closest building and placed her hands on the window as she peered through onto a small table set for dinner. Silverware and plates were laid out nicely and the chairs all pulled out to allow for someone to sit easily in them but there was no light coming from the lanterns. Everything was off inside except for the setup of the table.
She moved back to the middle of the road and looked up it toward the second wall of Magnhild, the second line of defense that separated the inner-citadel from the outer districts of the city. A howling started low from behind her as she studied the tops of the wall for any movement, any sign that she wasn't alone in the city. The howling grew louder until she was forced to face the incoming noise. Her hair was thrown out behind her and her clothes flapped in the wind that had set on her. The howling hadn't brought only the wind, but a new version of Magnhild for her to view now lived and breathed before her eyes, a version of the city she knew well.
The sky was mottled by the heavy streaks of black from the burning lower city. Arcs of fire screamed through the air and crashed into the buildings ahead of her with massive crashes, throwing debris up in plumes of smoke though these siege engines were not what scared Suzu the most about the barrage that Shoji's forces had unleashed upon the city. What scared her most were the new siege engines, things called "bombards" or "cannons" depending who you'd gotten a chance to ask about the weapons during the siege. They sounded their assaults with small noises barely audible over the sounds of the barrage around her, but ended them with a myriad of noises that set the mind alight in fear of what they heralded. Whooping shell falls foretold of the incoming projectiles, a strange high-pitched noise that simply came from somewhere "above" and ended in deafening detonations. So huge they pulverized parts of buildings, so loud they shook the very air in your lungs. Blinding flashes of flame and shrapnel meant to maim and kill the enemies, and for those that didn't die they were meant to terrorize. To shake the very will of a man to do battle against such an uncaring and relentless assault.
Suzu found herself instinctively ducking at the high-pitched scream of a shell falling somewhere high above her. She threw herself into the side of a building and watched with a strange fascination as the shell fell in slow motion in front of her. A large spherical shot, larger than the head of a man and spinning with nauseating speed as it hurtled into the cobblestones and detonated. A bloom of fire, preceded by the shattered metallic casing of the ball fanning out in all directions to kill with impunity. As quick as she had watched it happen it was over. The fireball had dissipated and the shrapnel had either found its way harmlessly into buildings or into the soldiers unlucky enough to be in their paths. There were soldiers now, ghosts, but soldiers still.
She almost shied away from the sight in front of her as men simply crumpled over from the weapon. Twisted and mangled into forms no human should be able to take, or maimed so badly they fell from ruined limbs and struck the ground screaming or completely silent and unable to process what had happened fast enough. There was a yell, or at least she could tell there had been one from the way the ghosts opened their mouths and brought their weapons to bare.
The group of soldiers, those that remained capable of combat, smashed into an opposing line of ghosts, these ones the enemy, the Shoji forces. Weapons flashed and men fell, and within it all she noticed the ghost from before, the girl she knew. Older than she'd seen her before, her mid-twenties was a good guess, and fighting an almost unwinnable battle for her very survival. For the very survival of a nation
Suzu stood and watched the brutal clash with a sense of dread, a sense of helplessness as the battle progressed to its ultimate conclusion, a conclusion she knew was coming long before it did. There was a whooping sound, one among many, low and short from somewhere off in the distance and none of the soldiers seemed to have heard it. Suzu raised her arms and pointed in the direction of the first wall, out towards the weapons on the other side of it as she screamed her silent warning at the ghosts but they didn't hear her, like every time before.
The whistle of the shell came suddenly, and without any second thought as to where it was going to make its landing it fell directly in the center of the clash. Soldiers from both sides found themselves dead so quickly they hadn't even the chance to realize the fact. Limbs were torn from bodies with the force of the impact, the crump of the detonation and the ensuing pressure wave so close to them pulped armor and men like a small child might crush grapes and the shrapnel, the shrapnel killed indiscriminately as it made its way from the center of the blast in straight lines of unavoidable death. Men far enough from the blast fell in showers of blood and limbs as the debris moved through them with such speed as to kill the next two men behind them as well. Suzu placed her hand over her mouth as she held her scream and watched the carnage come to its sudden conclusion.
She stared a while, surveying the damage the single weapon had brought upon the enemy and its own allies. She wondered if the operators of the weapon even knew they'd killed a dozen of their own, wondered if the commanders of the Shoji force had factored the indiscriminate nature of these weapons into their losses. Had decided to use such foul weapons to ensure victory? She wondered if they had had them, would they have used them against the Shoji force with the same effect if it would ensure their own victory?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden movement of one of the corpses strewn across the road. A small movement, as if whoever it was wasn't entirely sure they were still alive followed by a grasping of a hand at the cobblestones. A dismembered torso shifted slightly followed by it rolling completely off of the person it covered. Still watching as the girl got to her knees Suzu noted that the movements were slow and thoughtful like that of the very old or fragile as the girl would reach up and remove the porcelain rabbit mask from her face.
Suzu was staring now, out at her comrades, at what was left of them. She dropped her mask and stood slowly as she surveyed the road to find no one else had survived the blast. She shuffled around for a while looking for her katana before simply grabbing one that had survived the detonation and beginning a slow limp back to the second wall. She stopped suddenly and looked to the edge of the road at the shimmer of a ghost she was sure had just been there, a woman nearing her thirties with a face so familiar it hurt to not understand who it was. By the time she was looking directly at where the ghost had been it was gone.
The room was empty when she awoke this time. An odd stillness had fallen over the Zero Teams hideout, a place that when she'd first arrived had seemed somehow jovial given the circumstances of the country. Now it was quiet. The lanterns were out and she was laying on a couch that smelled of sickness and felt the part beneath her clammy skin. She rolled slightly to get a better view of the room and a firey pain overtook her side that lasted only a moment before disappearing entirely.
"A--" her voice began the start of a noise but quickly her throat decided the alien sounds were not to be made as protested in dry agony, "A---" she tried again and tears welled in her eyes as her throat burned so fiercely she would have thought she'd swallowed a coal had she not been so out of it. Slowly she moved herself to the edge of the bed, her arms coming out from beneath her and her injured shoulder voicing its opinion on the idea with every jolt it sent through her chest. She shuffled a bit more and yelped as she found herself falling to the floor with a sudden crash.
Not staying where she was for long Suzu hoisted herself up the couch with her good arm before taking a few shaky steps in the direction of the sink on the far side of the room. She reached the table after almost a minute and stopped to look at the collection of papers strewn about it. Clippings from papers or handwritten notes by one of the team, an amalgamation of things so random and unclear it seemed almost normal. Suzu reached for one and lost her balance, favoring to take a knee over toppling over she'd throw herself into the table with both arms stretched out, her fingers grasping at the far edge like a man falling from a cliff as she would heave her breaths in and out through her now aching ribs.
She stayed like that for quite some time, long enough to fall asleep for a brief moment before jolting awake and remembering what she'd gotten up for in the first place. Slowly rising once more she'd push off the table and make her way the final meter to the sink. Pressing her body into the body of the counter she'd lean over the sink and turn the tap on. The water came fast, so clear and with a smell that practically begged for her to drink. 'Has water always had a smell?' she thought before simply plunging her hands beneath the spicket and taking in greedy scoops of it. Quickly, almost frantically she drank for what felt like a lifetime. So much that when she was done she didn't even try to move back to the couch, instead just slouching down the cabinet and coming to sit on the floor with a smug look of fulfillment on her face as her stomach threatened to empty itself of the water she'd just gorged herself on.
She fell asleep again, this time for a while. When she awoke she was being roused by Atlas with a worried look. Her arm stung badly and she stunk of something foul, of rot and decay and festering wounds.
"Jesus Rabbit why the fuck did you get up, you tore your stitches!" Atlas exclaimed as he began to get to work on removing the dressing from her shoulder and cleaning the disgusting wound beneath, Suzu gave him a weak smile as he worked. Eros moved in from the other side and offered her a sponge, pressing it temptingly against her lips and letting the cool water it contained run down her face before she brought her good hand up to reach for it, to take in the water she now realized she still desperately wanted.
Eros's hand came up quickly to stop hers with ease as he shook his head at her, "Can't have you drinking too much right now, need to start slow. Just suck on the sponge for now." he said as he continued to hold it too far from her mouth for her to bite part of it away and steal what she wanted.
"Fuck you Eros." she managed weakly before complying with his command. He smiled and let her drink what little she could garner from the sponge as Atlas worked for what seemed like only a few minutes.
When he finished he tapped at her neck and smiled, "All patched, lets get you back to the couch now shall we?" Atlas had said as Eros and him lifted her from her spot on the floor. She managed to get her head far enough back to take a look at where she'd been sitting and managed a small repulsed gag as she took in the sight of what she'd left behind.
"Sh--" she began as they set her down on the couch, the sheets new and almost spotless save for the large yellow-red blotch that showed she'd already slept on it once before it was washed. She winced as they set her down sitting up and reached a hand out to grab Eros as he began to back off, "Shower." she managed out with a smile that begged for him to accept her plea.
Eros looked at Atlas who simply shrugged and nodded at the man, "Just don't get the shoulder wet yet." he said to Eros before backing away to take a seat at the table and seeming to sift through the papers that littered the tabletop.
"Right. Not a shower Rabbit. But you can scrub yourself down. Wash some of the filth off." Eros said quietly as he reached a hand under her shoulder and hefted her to her feet. She let out a small groan of pain before he led her off to the shower room and sat her down against the tile flooring with another groan. Watching from where she was left Suzu would try and begin removing her clothes with little in the way of progress without both arms. She managed to get her arm halfway out of the sleeve and her head through the hole but other than that she didn't get any farther. She began to breathe faster as the stench of her shirt began to overwhelm her. Wriggling against the wall she'd begin to thrash as she tried to get the shirt off, to get the filth away from her face.
She was close to panicking when Eros pulled the shirt off her face and cupped her cheeks in his hands, "Calm now Rabbit. Calm." he said quietly in a surprisingly soothing tone. The kind of tone Suzu would never have imagined the scarred Zero Team member even possessed. He worked quietly as he gently pulled the shirt off of her ruined shoulder and down her arm before setting his hands to work on the rest of her clothing.
Stripped and still stinking of her own rancid filth Eros offered Suzu a rag before he would begin to fill buckets with hot water from the tub and offer them to her as well.
"You've been out for six days you know." he said as he sat and stared blankly out the door of the shower room at something beyond. "Six whole days. I'll be honest I thought you were done for but Atlas held out hope. Said something good needed to come of everything we did for you. That he wouldn't let you die for everyone else's sake." he seemed distant as he spoke, the scar along his face casting a nasty shadow that left Suzu unable to tell if he was upset or just bored.
"He did it for them... Kept you alive that is. Not for your sake but for theirs."
Suzu slowly dipped the rag into the bucket and squeezed it, red and yellow blooming into the water before she pulled it out and got back to cleaning her side.
"Alright. I get it." she relinquished as she'd not stop her slow and incessant cleaning.
Eros turned to look at her, studied her face and the ghastly wound at her shoulder before nodding, "Right then. Good." he rose to his feet knelt at her side taking a second rag from a hanger and placing a hand just below her shoulder blade, "Scoot forward now I'll clean you back and whatever else you can't reach."
Suzu nodded slowly and with a little help managed to get far enough from the wall that Eros could help her. "Thanks." she said as she too continued her own cleaning. The buckets were a murky reddish-brown now, the afterthoughts of greens and yellows floating at the edges as they became too dirt to continue using.
"My mark?"she paused and turned her head so she could barely see Eros, "How is my mark?"
"Alive and faring far better than you. His wounds were easy. Cauterized before we even saw him. He better have been well worth it." Eros said as his rag pressed over a particularly tender rib causing Suzu to take a sharp breath in and double over in pain.
"Sorry Rabbit…" Eros said as he moved a bit back from her to see that she was alright.
"Okay…" Suzu labored a breath and shook her head, "It's okay you didn't mean to." she assured him before sitting up slowly and starting the tedious cleaning once more.
After quite some time of cleaning and small talk Eros would leave to fetch a clean towel and clothing for Suzu. Cleaned and changed she'd be led back to the couch and laid down.
She thanked Eros for his help with a smile and turned her attention to Atlas who still say at the table across the room.
"When will I be able to leave?" she asked him as Eros returned with a cup of water that was only half filled. She gave him a nod and sipped at it as Atlas seemed to think where he sat.
"At most? A month or two… At minimum? Maybe next week or the week after." he nodded sagely at her, "You have somewhere pressing to be? Last I knew you didn't exactly have a deadline. And if you did I'm sure as hell you've either missed it or are about to." Atlas added as he sat forward slightly. "You go when I say you can, no sooner, no later. Easy as that." he lifted his cup of tea and sipped at it before turning his attention away from Suzu and back to his paper. Suzu nodded that she understood and took one final sip from her own cup before laying back on the couch and letting sleep overtake her.
Wind had whipped at the water's surface, growing white caps that frothed up against the side of her small rowboat and sprayed her with a salty mist. She'd sat in that boat for an eternity, the wind gusting up against her and the never ending ocean spray soaking her through to the bone, but she wasn't cold. No matter how wet she'd become and how hard the wind blew she remained warm. Comfortable where she sat dripping and battered by the wind. It had been unsettling, but it was nothing like what was to come next.
One moment she had been watching the white caps crashing against the hull of her boat, the next, the ocean was completely calm. The wind was gone and she was all but dry. Slowly she'd taken in her surroundings and noted the eerie calm that had settled over the waters surface. Clouds had rolled in over head, a deep gray that blocked the sun completely and left the water a mirror of obsidian from which she'd found her reflection staring back at her. She'd watched the obsidian waters, watched herself, for quite a while before she'd felt she wasn't alone anymore.
The girl from before, the ghost, sat on the far side of the boat, its legs dangling over the side of the boat and kicking backing and forth like a kid on the edge of a dock. Its feet didn't touch the water, though whether it was by design or coincidence Suzu couldn't tell as she watched the ghost.
"Can I do something for you?" Suzu had asked the ghost from where she sat, a small look of confusion growing across her face as the ghost appeared not to notice her just as the ghosts from earlier in the day had paid no heed to her. She stood up, staying low as she moved through the small boat to reach for the ghost, the small ripples her movement created the only thing breaking the perfect mirror of the water around her as she got closer to the girl, "Excuse me?" she asked again as she reached a hand out to touch the girl. Grasping at the ghosts shirt she tugged once and found her words unable to come as she realized who the girl was, "Why…?" she began before grasping harder at the cloth and tugging again, "Why are you here?" the ghost still didn't seem to notice she was being talked to. Suzu sighed and decided to call out it's name to try and get its attention, an old wives tale she'd heard about spirits only responding to those that proved to know their names.
"I know who you are, you'r--" the ghost looked directly at her for the first time and Suzu felt regret well in her stomach.
The world had changed suddenly. The boat was no longer beneath her, but instead she was looking up at the bottom of it as she sank beneath the obsidian surface of the water. She struggled to rise, to swim to the surface, to the air she knew was there, but it was as if she was being pulled further into the abyss. The dark water around her was becoming colder with every passing second, the boat becoming further away and harder to make out against the small rays of light that shone through the water and down toward her. She thrashed and swung her body in agonizingly slow motions as the water stopped her from moving as fast as she'd have liked. She spun herself around enough to notice the phantom of a tendril that had snaked up from beneath her and slipped itself around her abdomen like the tentacle of some giant sea monster. Stories that sailors told flashed through her mind and she began to beat her fists at the ghost of a limb wrapped around her only for her fists to pass harmlessly through it as it pulled her deeper and deeper.
She jerked awake to a sense of helplessness as she couldn't bring herself to move more than a few inches in any direction. The tendril at her stomach had turned into two arms holding her thrashing body down as Atlas worked at her side. From beneath her view Eros leaned up from holding down her torso to be above her face where she could see him clearly, "Rabbit you need to stop moving or Atlas can't work. And you'll get the attention of the guards, you have no idea how loud you're being so shut the fuck up and stop moving." he said calmly to her as he continued to hold her down. At her shoulder Atlas was working, digging into the gruesome injury she had been given by the man with the curved swords from the Resistance. He was holding a set of tools, plier-like things that were buried more than half way into her shoulder and seemed to be delving deeper with every second that passed.
There was a sound like scraping metal and bone followed immediately by a flare of pain so intense Suzu was blinded for a few seconds. When her sight came back to her in a rush she was just in time to see Atlas dropping the tip of the curved dagger into a small bowl of water by his side. He sighed and turned to Suzu, the look he gave her was a sorry one as he got to work suturing her shoulder closed.
"That one's my fault completely. I missed it the first time around, hadn't expected it to be in there and hadn't looked. Careless of me." he admitted as he tied off a suture and cut it, "You might lose this arm. Worst case you die. That was in there too long God knows what sort of infection you might have brewing." he said solemnly, a tinge of regret evident in his voice and in the way he looked down at her with a lack of luster in his eyes, "I'll do what I can though Rabbit." he said as she slipped off into her fevered dreams once more.
The next thing Suzu knew she was standing at the center of a dirty cobblestone road. Buildings stretched on either side of her in both directions, and spoke of their origins by simply existing. She knew where she was, had been there a handful of times now, standing among the streets of Magnhild had always been a bit of a sobering experience when it came to scale, though this oddly empty version of Magnhild brought no sense of awe over the cultural icon, no sense of being among something bigger than she could ever be, instead it was wrong. The streets were too clean, too empty, the buildings uninhabited and desolate beyond their outer shells. She walked up to the closest building and placed her hands on the window as she peered through onto a small table set for dinner. Silverware and plates were laid out nicely and the chairs all pulled out to allow for someone to sit easily in them but there was no light coming from the lanterns. Everything was off inside except for the setup of the table.
She moved back to the middle of the road and looked up it toward the second wall of Magnhild, the second line of defense that separated the inner-citadel from the outer districts of the city. A howling started low from behind her as she studied the tops of the wall for any movement, any sign that she wasn't alone in the city. The howling grew louder until she was forced to face the incoming noise. Her hair was thrown out behind her and her clothes flapped in the wind that had set on her. The howling hadn't brought only the wind, but a new version of Magnhild for her to view now lived and breathed before her eyes, a version of the city she knew well.
The sky was mottled by the heavy streaks of black from the burning lower city. Arcs of fire screamed through the air and crashed into the buildings ahead of her with massive crashes, throwing debris up in plumes of smoke though these siege engines were not what scared Suzu the most about the barrage that Shoji's forces had unleashed upon the city. What scared her most were the new siege engines, things called "bombards" or "cannons" depending who you'd gotten a chance to ask about the weapons during the siege. They sounded their assaults with small noises barely audible over the sounds of the barrage around her, but ended them with a myriad of noises that set the mind alight in fear of what they heralded. Whooping shell falls foretold of the incoming projectiles, a strange high-pitched noise that simply came from somewhere "above" and ended in deafening detonations. So huge they pulverized parts of buildings, so loud they shook the very air in your lungs. Blinding flashes of flame and shrapnel meant to maim and kill the enemies, and for those that didn't die they were meant to terrorize. To shake the very will of a man to do battle against such an uncaring and relentless assault.
Suzu found herself instinctively ducking at the high-pitched scream of a shell falling somewhere high above her. She threw herself into the side of a building and watched with a strange fascination as the shell fell in slow motion in front of her. A large spherical shot, larger than the head of a man and spinning with nauseating speed as it hurtled into the cobblestones and detonated. A bloom of fire, preceded by the shattered metallic casing of the ball fanning out in all directions to kill with impunity. As quick as she had watched it happen it was over. The fireball had dissipated and the shrapnel had either found its way harmlessly into buildings or into the soldiers unlucky enough to be in their paths. There were soldiers now, ghosts, but soldiers still.
She almost shied away from the sight in front of her as men simply crumpled over from the weapon. Twisted and mangled into forms no human should be able to take, or maimed so badly they fell from ruined limbs and struck the ground screaming or completely silent and unable to process what had happened fast enough. There was a yell, or at least she could tell there had been one from the way the ghosts opened their mouths and brought their weapons to bare.
The group of soldiers, those that remained capable of combat, smashed into an opposing line of ghosts, these ones the enemy, the Shoji forces. Weapons flashed and men fell, and within it all she noticed the ghost from before, the girl she knew. Older than she'd seen her before, her mid-twenties was a good guess, and fighting an almost unwinnable battle for her very survival. For the very survival of a nation
Suzu stood and watched the brutal clash with a sense of dread, a sense of helplessness as the battle progressed to its ultimate conclusion, a conclusion she knew was coming long before it did. There was a whooping sound, one among many, low and short from somewhere off in the distance and none of the soldiers seemed to have heard it. Suzu raised her arms and pointed in the direction of the first wall, out towards the weapons on the other side of it as she screamed her silent warning at the ghosts but they didn't hear her, like every time before.
The whistle of the shell came suddenly, and without any second thought as to where it was going to make its landing it fell directly in the center of the clash. Soldiers from both sides found themselves dead so quickly they hadn't even the chance to realize the fact. Limbs were torn from bodies with the force of the impact, the crump of the detonation and the ensuing pressure wave so close to them pulped armor and men like a small child might crush grapes and the shrapnel, the shrapnel killed indiscriminately as it made its way from the center of the blast in straight lines of unavoidable death. Men far enough from the blast fell in showers of blood and limbs as the debris moved through them with such speed as to kill the next two men behind them as well. Suzu placed her hand over her mouth as she held her scream and watched the carnage come to its sudden conclusion.
She stared a while, surveying the damage the single weapon had brought upon the enemy and its own allies. She wondered if the operators of the weapon even knew they'd killed a dozen of their own, wondered if the commanders of the Shoji force had factored the indiscriminate nature of these weapons into their losses. Had decided to use such foul weapons to ensure victory? She wondered if they had had them, would they have used them against the Shoji force with the same effect if it would ensure their own victory?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden movement of one of the corpses strewn across the road. A small movement, as if whoever it was wasn't entirely sure they were still alive followed by a grasping of a hand at the cobblestones. A dismembered torso shifted slightly followed by it rolling completely off of the person it covered. Still watching as the girl got to her knees Suzu noted that the movements were slow and thoughtful like that of the very old or fragile as the girl would reach up and remove the porcelain rabbit mask from her face.
Suzu was staring now, out at her comrades, at what was left of them. She dropped her mask and stood slowly as she surveyed the road to find no one else had survived the blast. She shuffled around for a while looking for her katana before simply grabbing one that had survived the detonation and beginning a slow limp back to the second wall. She stopped suddenly and looked to the edge of the road at the shimmer of a ghost she was sure had just been there, a woman nearing her thirties with a face so familiar it hurt to not understand who it was. By the time she was looking directly at where the ghost had been it was gone.
The room was empty when she awoke this time. An odd stillness had fallen over the Zero Teams hideout, a place that when she'd first arrived had seemed somehow jovial given the circumstances of the country. Now it was quiet. The lanterns were out and she was laying on a couch that smelled of sickness and felt the part beneath her clammy skin. She rolled slightly to get a better view of the room and a firey pain overtook her side that lasted only a moment before disappearing entirely.
"A--" her voice began the start of a noise but quickly her throat decided the alien sounds were not to be made as protested in dry agony, "A---" she tried again and tears welled in her eyes as her throat burned so fiercely she would have thought she'd swallowed a coal had she not been so out of it. Slowly she moved herself to the edge of the bed, her arms coming out from beneath her and her injured shoulder voicing its opinion on the idea with every jolt it sent through her chest. She shuffled a bit more and yelped as she found herself falling to the floor with a sudden crash.
Not staying where she was for long Suzu hoisted herself up the couch with her good arm before taking a few shaky steps in the direction of the sink on the far side of the room. She reached the table after almost a minute and stopped to look at the collection of papers strewn about it. Clippings from papers or handwritten notes by one of the team, an amalgamation of things so random and unclear it seemed almost normal. Suzu reached for one and lost her balance, favoring to take a knee over toppling over she'd throw herself into the table with both arms stretched out, her fingers grasping at the far edge like a man falling from a cliff as she would heave her breaths in and out through her now aching ribs.
She stayed like that for quite some time, long enough to fall asleep for a brief moment before jolting awake and remembering what she'd gotten up for in the first place. Slowly rising once more she'd push off the table and make her way the final meter to the sink. Pressing her body into the body of the counter she'd lean over the sink and turn the tap on. The water came fast, so clear and with a smell that practically begged for her to drink. 'Has water always had a smell?' she thought before simply plunging her hands beneath the spicket and taking in greedy scoops of it. Quickly, almost frantically she drank for what felt like a lifetime. So much that when she was done she didn't even try to move back to the couch, instead just slouching down the cabinet and coming to sit on the floor with a smug look of fulfillment on her face as her stomach threatened to empty itself of the water she'd just gorged herself on.
She fell asleep again, this time for a while. When she awoke she was being roused by Atlas with a worried look. Her arm stung badly and she stunk of something foul, of rot and decay and festering wounds.
"Jesus Rabbit why the fuck did you get up, you tore your stitches!" Atlas exclaimed as he began to get to work on removing the dressing from her shoulder and cleaning the disgusting wound beneath, Suzu gave him a weak smile as he worked. Eros moved in from the other side and offered her a sponge, pressing it temptingly against her lips and letting the cool water it contained run down her face before she brought her good hand up to reach for it, to take in the water she now realized she still desperately wanted.
Eros's hand came up quickly to stop hers with ease as he shook his head at her, "Can't have you drinking too much right now, need to start slow. Just suck on the sponge for now." he said as he continued to hold it too far from her mouth for her to bite part of it away and steal what she wanted.
"Fuck you Eros." she managed weakly before complying with his command. He smiled and let her drink what little she could garner from the sponge as Atlas worked for what seemed like only a few minutes.
When he finished he tapped at her neck and smiled, "All patched, lets get you back to the couch now shall we?" Atlas had said as Eros and him lifted her from her spot on the floor. She managed to get her head far enough back to take a look at where she'd been sitting and managed a small repulsed gag as she took in the sight of what she'd left behind.
"Sh--" she began as they set her down on the couch, the sheets new and almost spotless save for the large yellow-red blotch that showed she'd already slept on it once before it was washed. She winced as they set her down sitting up and reached a hand out to grab Eros as he began to back off, "Shower." she managed out with a smile that begged for him to accept her plea.
Eros looked at Atlas who simply shrugged and nodded at the man, "Just don't get the shoulder wet yet." he said to Eros before backing away to take a seat at the table and seeming to sift through the papers that littered the tabletop.
"Right. Not a shower Rabbit. But you can scrub yourself down. Wash some of the filth off." Eros said quietly as he reached a hand under her shoulder and hefted her to her feet. She let out a small groan of pain before he led her off to the shower room and sat her down against the tile flooring with another groan. Watching from where she was left Suzu would try and begin removing her clothes with little in the way of progress without both arms. She managed to get her arm halfway out of the sleeve and her head through the hole but other than that she didn't get any farther. She began to breathe faster as the stench of her shirt began to overwhelm her. Wriggling against the wall she'd begin to thrash as she tried to get the shirt off, to get the filth away from her face.
She was close to panicking when Eros pulled the shirt off her face and cupped her cheeks in his hands, "Calm now Rabbit. Calm." he said quietly in a surprisingly soothing tone. The kind of tone Suzu would never have imagined the scarred Zero Team member even possessed. He worked quietly as he gently pulled the shirt off of her ruined shoulder and down her arm before setting his hands to work on the rest of her clothing.
Stripped and still stinking of her own rancid filth Eros offered Suzu a rag before he would begin to fill buckets with hot water from the tub and offer them to her as well.
"You've been out for six days you know." he said as he sat and stared blankly out the door of the shower room at something beyond. "Six whole days. I'll be honest I thought you were done for but Atlas held out hope. Said something good needed to come of everything we did for you. That he wouldn't let you die for everyone else's sake." he seemed distant as he spoke, the scar along his face casting a nasty shadow that left Suzu unable to tell if he was upset or just bored.
"He did it for them... Kept you alive that is. Not for your sake but for theirs."
Suzu slowly dipped the rag into the bucket and squeezed it, red and yellow blooming into the water before she pulled it out and got back to cleaning her side.
"Alright. I get it." she relinquished as she'd not stop her slow and incessant cleaning.
Eros turned to look at her, studied her face and the ghastly wound at her shoulder before nodding, "Right then. Good." he rose to his feet knelt at her side taking a second rag from a hanger and placing a hand just below her shoulder blade, "Scoot forward now I'll clean you back and whatever else you can't reach."
Suzu nodded slowly and with a little help managed to get far enough from the wall that Eros could help her. "Thanks." she said as she too continued her own cleaning. The buckets were a murky reddish-brown now, the afterthoughts of greens and yellows floating at the edges as they became too dirt to continue using.
"My mark?"she paused and turned her head so she could barely see Eros, "How is my mark?"
"Alive and faring far better than you. His wounds were easy. Cauterized before we even saw him. He better have been well worth it." Eros said as his rag pressed over a particularly tender rib causing Suzu to take a sharp breath in and double over in pain.
"Sorry Rabbit…" Eros said as he moved a bit back from her to see that she was alright.
"Okay…" Suzu labored a breath and shook her head, "It's okay you didn't mean to." she assured him before sitting up slowly and starting the tedious cleaning once more.
After quite some time of cleaning and small talk Eros would leave to fetch a clean towel and clothing for Suzu. Cleaned and changed she'd be led back to the couch and laid down.
She thanked Eros for his help with a smile and turned her attention to Atlas who still say at the table across the room.
"When will I be able to leave?" she asked him as Eros returned with a cup of water that was only half filled. She gave him a nod and sipped at it as Atlas seemed to think where he sat.
"At most? A month or two… At minimum? Maybe next week or the week after." he nodded sagely at her, "You have somewhere pressing to be? Last I knew you didn't exactly have a deadline. And if you did I'm sure as hell you've either missed it or are about to." Atlas added as he sat forward slightly. "You go when I say you can, no sooner, no later. Easy as that." he lifted his cup of tea and sipped at it before turning his attention away from Suzu and back to his paper. Suzu nodded that she understood and took one final sip from her own cup before laying back on the couch and letting sleep overtake her.