Ishguarduty [Lore Event]

"Kill me."

"Come again, Major General?" crackled an uncertain voice over the comms.

"Nothing."

Ah, a common muttered lament by miserable souls who usually don't mean it, but this Rune Knight Major General earnestly did. She also certainly had the means to do the deed herself and get out of this frustrating mission, but... Well, it was her title that stopped her these days, as well as needing a distraction. A whole squad had been entrusted to her to make sure this symposium went off without a hitch, and though she was not necessarily the only Rune Knight around with a squad here in Joya, she still felt the need to be at least somewhat reliable. The lives of countless people were at stake, both just here on these strange streets of Felidae City and the people of the countries by the war. Maybe even the world as they knew it hung in the balance.

Actually, that was a bit too much pressure. Back to the "Grr...this sucks!" If the men found out women could mask their real emotions with predictable and expected behaviors, they'd tell the church.

Being in the Special Operations Corps played into her impeccable skills of observation, infiltration, and information gathering. While she might not have the combat prowess to put down threats, her squadmates certainly had the means to quietly squash issues before they became too big. She'd never admit it, but a leadership role suited her sometimes. Strategically placing operatives was definitely a mind game requiring quick wit and knowledge from a safe distance. However, this particular event was not really in Dela's wheelhouse, as far as she knew. Her eyes and ears were open as she walked, eyeballing more anthropomorphic people in one place than she'd ever seen in her life, but she was in the middle of it. All was peaceful at the moment, even the protestors with their signs she didn't care to read. Her operatives were blending in like normal tourists or hiding in the shadows to wait. The whole idea was for all of them to stay out of sight. Covert. The more overt guarding was for the Combat Corps.

Dela had told Cillian where she was going. She'd even asked him to come along, though she didn't actually expect him to show. Things were a bit rough these days, what with Vera's sudden disappearance. Their mutual friend left a gaping hole in her life both personally and professionally, one that Dela had desperately tried to keep from forming to start with. This was why immortals shouldn't have friends or lovers! Not mortal ones. It hurt too much when they were gone, not that she'd show it. The blonde didn't outwardly express her deepest feelings often, choosing to be sarcastic and jaded and guarded instead. There had been an exception on the day of that winter festival fiasco, but other than that, she always kept up a snarky brave front. So far the only change in behavior was keeping in touch with Cillian a little extra, and not just in hopes of finally getting in his pants. She wanted his comfort, even if she wouldn't ask for it, sorta like how she'd jammed her frozen toes under his thigh that one time. Knowing he was there, even if he was far away and busy with his own life was better than nothing. It kept her tethered to the present, even if the here and now was full of stress from her sister and friend both disappearing without Dela having any idea where to start.

Muting the mic to her communicator, Dela slipped off of the noisy and crowded city street into an alley, leaning her back against the balmy bricks of a random business with an exhausted sigh. She just needed a second to get her head straight, but all she could really think about was how Joya wasn't where she wanted to be. Every fiber of her being longed for her room, her unhealthy amount of plushies, Toulouse and Paris, a nice greasy pizza, some games, and some clarity on what she needed to do. She wanted to look lazy and feel lazy, because that's when her brain did its magic and she'd catch a break.

The best she could do was look lazy in an alley, though. "Ugh..."

[wc: 721]

There was barely any noise next to her, nothing more than a soft loaf of bread that had fallen off the counter. Why she even turned to look was questionable, but no one could say her senses were dull.

"NGH!" she startled, jerking to stare wide-eyed for a moment before realizing it was the big oaf that had no right being that stealthy considering his size... "You know, given my profession, you shouldn't be able to do that to me," she hissed, lowkey wondering why no one in her squad noticed, but ultimately quickly moving on. It was Cillian, and it was better they didn't see the two of them chit-chatting anyway.

Snatching the aromatic container that she now viewed as an offering of apology for the heart attack, the blonde wasted no time digging into the breakfast burrito within. She loved his food almost as much as she loved his chiseled abs, and he'd seen her scarf down enough food by now that she felt no need to be demure about it. "I'w fowgive you jush shish onsh," she garbled through the mouthful food, cheeks puffed out. Very Major General-like. Truthfully, she was nowhere near disappointed that it wasn't pizza. The fluffy, moist eggs, the caramelized bacon, gooey cheese, onions, peppers, and some sort of sauce melted on her tongue. Weird how she hadn't felt hungry until she was moaning over her greasy breakfast.

With half the burrito swallowed, she took a small break to speak. "I didn't think you'd come," Dela said quietly, trying very hard to act like it didn't mean a lot to her. "You know, in hindsight, it was stupid to ask you to, considering all the backstory. Not that anyone would and should remember you, but..." I understand. The magical girl trailed her unfinished statement in a shrug, simply thinking how she'd feel going back to her old home, which wasn't nearly as bad, after Aberneel had his way with it. It was impossible since the town had been wiped off the map, but she could still imagine it. "I'm glad you did, though," she added quickly just before she cleared her throat and picked the burrito back up, ready to cram it back into her face at any moment.

Hastily hopping to the next subject, an impish grin tugged at her lips. "Now you get to go to work with me. Aaaalll daaay. If I have to suffer, so do you," sneered the small girl. Then she viciously tore back into the offering until it was gone.

[wc: 424 || total: 1788]

Dela should have been at least mock-insulted about the suffering her at home comment, but before she could sneer or clap back, he did something that derailed her.

He threw food at her. Food he made. Food probably intended to bounce off of her head and only the dirty Felidae alley dirt. But she'd already eaten a couple of moments before when he'd offered, once her burrito was gone, and they were delightful. Letting a single one fall was a far greater tragedy than either of them suffering in this Joyan city.

This was her moment. Her time to shine. Eyes gleaming with gremlin-like determination, her normally sluggish reflexes condensed all the potential they'd have in her entire lifetime, however long that would be, into this one moment. She lunged, mouth popping wide open. And just like any average person with the hand-eye coordination to catch an expertly tossed hibachi shrimp, the projectile tot was snatched out of the air and chewed victoriously.

Pleased with herself, she was only half-listening to him talk about the protests while she swallowed and stared into the crowd. Yeah, protesting peace was stupid, but people would always be people, no matter the country or the time period. Change was scary. Things were never black and white, but various shades of gray that people chose sides on. It was impossible to make everyone happy, and the unhappy were always noisy... and sometimes violent, but the silence in her ear gave her the impression that it was still civil sign-waving and mild looting for now. Nothing too big--

Dela noticed it about the same time Cillian did, if not a second before. Instead of answering his question, her fingers unmuted her comm device and she started issuing orders to her squad. "One protestor spotted with what looks like a bomb. Converge on Sphynx and Tabby. Team Alpha apprehend any and all protestors exhibiting combative behavior and gather them at checkpoint for questioning. Team Beta, clear the innocents off the streets for at least a fifty-meter radius," she spoke quickly, though she still hung back. While she might be a Major General, the blonde was not a combat operative. Anyone on her team would be more suited to a cleaner and quicker takedown, so she was happy to watch and delegate... except that wouldn't be an option. She expected at least one of her Spec Ops privates to appear any moment and take the horned man fondling his bomb into custody, but instead, her earpiece crackled back to life.

"Major General, there's a problem."

It was confirmed that there was more than one crazed offender in this crowd. All of her squad was preoccupied with the enemies they'd met along the way. Another horned bomber, a band of three earth mages quite literally shaking it up if the vibrations under her feet were any indication, and a more troublesome "beast man" who wouldn't go down, even with three of her men on him. At least the other team appeared to be making headway. The crowd was dissipating, which would give them room to work, but...

As the foe Dela and Cillian watched noticed his cohorts were being confronted and his cover in the thinning crowd was growing sparse, he started to move. "Crap," Dela groaned, reaching her hand out for her magical girl staff, complete with glimmering crystal swirling with tainted black she'd revealed at their post-christmas truth party. Predictably, as soon as she accessed its power, her clothes disappeared in an obnoxious display of ribbons and glaring rainbows, revealing her in her cute little sailor dress and pigtails in no time flat. Throwing the staff out toward the tailed man, a baby blue ribbon whipped out at blinding speed and wrapped his hand and the magical bomb up in a knot with a bow, preventing him from throwing it at the straggler evacuating civilians. The ribbons continued to curl up his arm, intending to immobilize his whole body.

"I won't tell you not to follow me," she called to her friend as her bedazzled heels rapidly clacked down the alley toward the man, but she wouldn't ask for help either. Did she have a plan? Other than summoning Chester as soon as she got out of the narrow alley, not really. All she could do was delay his attack until the bystanders were out of range and try to wrap up the protestor's other free hand before he could...

FWOOM!

Yeah, that. Just as Dela emerged in her pretty baby blue costume, one of the "bombs" crashed at her feet and threw her with force back into the alley, filling her lungs with acrid smoke and what she assumed was poison. At least when she was thrown back, she had the mental faculties to keep her grip on her wand, so the ribbons violently jerked the man forward and to the ground. She didn't stay down more than a moment or two, but her feet staggered once up. Coughing into her frilly glove, she made the futile effort of ridding her lungs of the substance, but the mild dizziness was already settling in. Lovely, but hey, it wasn't the bubonic plague! She'd make do.

[wc: 869 || total: 3262/8000]

The Chairman of the Magic Council better really appreciate this. Dragging her and who knows how many other Rune Knights out here to deal with stupid Joyans and stupid outsiders and stupid wars between other stupid countries over stupid things was stupid. She could've been an idol, a superstar that lived and died already and was simply an old classic legend for enthusiasts to emulate and gush over, but no, she'd stayed home and signed a cursed contract and got conned into immortality, which she was currently using to be a frickin' police officer in Magical Girl clothes wrapping a-holes up in ribbons and hanging them like little silken cocoons from street lamps and awnings! Was she okay? NO! She wasn't okay! Her elbows and back were scraped all to bloody heck because impacting hard pavement over and over and over again with this stupid skimpy, non-armored magical girl bullcrap was cosmetic only and completely useless! Her lungs were burning and full of magical soot and her nose was gushing blood and everything tasted like eyedrops! And she was pissed!

Non-combatant. How many times did she have to stress that she was a non-combatant! Her brain was where her strength lay, as were her lies and ability to go undercover. She deceived! She manipulated! She wasn't like the other Spec Ops operatives that could kill someone sixty-nine ways before they were even aware that someone was watching them with their pants down. It was Dela's job to know where and when their pants were down and which shadow to lurk out of... and sometimes share. She was basically a sports announcer, but with the responsibilities of a coach. She was the one who watched and sent those death-dealing shadowmen.

This was the wrong job! She should quit. Now. Just throw up her hands and hide in an alley until it was over, then disappear to focus on herself and her sister.

Also, frankly, it was embarrassing to be the leader of a squad and get knocked around as much as she did. If not for blinding enemies with glitter and Chester farting rainbows and kicking like a fabulous gay bucking bronco, she'd likely already be dead and her troops would be thrown into disorganized chaos.

All the while she threw her temper tantrum in her head, Dela pressed on with shaky determination, trying not to remember that she was actually rather cowardly in these situations. Everything in her small body screamed to run, even though she knew she couldn't stay dead. This just wasn't her scene, and the mounting consequences of dying wouldn't end well for her, but... even if she denied it, Dela had grown after all this time. Not in strength, which would've been handy right now, but in perseverance even when the situation didn't benefit her in any way. To not run as soon as the violence started.

With the help from her team, the weak terrorists and any sympathizers populated the ribbon mummies. There weren't many she could say she took down herself, but it progressed all the same. Her haggard voice continued to speak orders into the microphone as she went along, at least mildly pleased that the area was pretty well cleared of innocents now.

With a small breather, she cautiously moved ahead while tiredly perched atop Chester's bareback. Happening across about three bodies that, the cursed girl deliberately didn't think too hard about. Since she wasn't a fighter, she had really never killed anyone that she was aware of, but she also wasn't super against it herself. Her position would likely require her to be more mindful of it, though, and she'd lost sight of Cillian some time ago. The blonde bit her lip. Hopefully, he was okay... Like, she knew he couldn't die, but that new insecurity over the bonds she'd reluctantly made caused a gnawing in her chest that was not easily subverted. Or maybe that was just the poison in her body that had already turned her skin a bruised purple in various places and a steady stream of gore out of her nose.

Her focus was set in stone, though. There was a ringleader here somewhere, and by the reports, they hadn't been found yet. She wasn't the one to go find and fight them, but also there wasn't another choice. The only hope was that Cillian had already gotten to them, but she couldn't rely on that. The ringleader and bomb were still considered active. Mind wildly working through countless scenarios and predictions for the ideal placement of a bomb, she headed deeper into the heart of the city, figuring the device would have to be somewhere close. The ringleader wouldn't get too far from it, especially with so many underlings being arrested or killed. There was no way to know how large the bomb was or how much damage it could cause until she saw it, and even then, she was no demolitions expert. Was it intended to kill the people in the peace talks or just cause chaos and death in the streets? Was it meant to lead the important people out where they could be killed in other ways? There wasn't enough info, and there was nothing more that an information broker like her hated. She should have been sent here days, weeks ago to put her ear to the ground, then she'd know.

Just as she clippity clopped into the square, she saw a particularly familiar body zoom across it and through some buildings, leaving dust and rubble in his wake. "Hang in there, Cillian!" she cried with her hands cupped around her mouth, emanating pale pink and blue pulses that would heal him a bit and bolster his strength if he was still in range. Not only did she just want to help him, but also, if that killed him, his rez time was a bit longer than she'd like and avoiding it was key... especially now that she'd drawn attention to herself. As was a particular drawback from the very limited support spells she knew, they required screaming and thus murdered stealth where it stood. Then again, riding a rainbow unicorn into the square wasn't exactly the epitome of subtlety.

The musclebound lion man responsible for yeeting her friend turned and looked at her. "Mmmm....crap," she huffed. "I don't suppose you could just f*** off, right?"

It was worth a shot.

Waving her staff around, she abruptly filled the whole square with enough glitter to blind just about anything, not to mention the general annoyance. Hopping off Chester, she sent her traitorous steed in to gore and kick and stomp and fart rainbow lasers on the overgrown furry while she attempted to slip into the rubble and make her way toward where ever Cillian had landed. Again, she wanted to help... but also, again, she wasn't a fighter and she needed him for this clusterf--

Without warning, the piece of building she crept behind exploded as something big and chonky busted through it. Her blue eyes caught only the briefest of side-glances before a soft, slightly sticky, and disturbingly cold appendage violently yoinked her from the ground and up into the air hard enough to knock her communicator off. "...it had to be tentacles..." Dela lamented through gritted teeth, feeling her brain slosh around in her skull as it waggled her around like a toddler with a Darbie Doll. Dela, a bit of a nerd for shows and games out of Bosco, had seen enough content to know where this was going. If she lost her virginity to a furry rebellion leader's Kraken tentacle...

"UGH!" she cried out suddenly, the undercooked calamari giving her a squeeze hard enough to threaten her spine. Lasers haphazardly shot from the crystal in her scepter, trying to injure the tentacle and make it open, but it didn't do much. It only retracted, bringing her close and closer to a grinning catgirl with stripes, a cape, and an imperious grin.

[wc: 1334 || total: 5802]

Most of her senses were screaming in pain, obscuring any of her other observational skills until the moment she was falling through the air. For a moment she simply thought 'oh no, falling deaths always suck' as if ninety percent of the deaths she'd experienced were pleasant by comparison, but there was just something about splattering on the hard ground with a delay between the mindblending agony and the suffocating darkness she found particularly unpleasant. It wasn't in her top five, but maybe in her top ten worst ways to die.

However, it seemed death would not yet take her, despite the periodic hemorrhaging from her nose and darkening circles under her eyes. Poisoning was in her top ten, too, though bleeding to death wasn't too bad... anyway, that wasn't the point. The calamari was chopped and ready for frying, and a certain "secret" crush of hers had valiantly rescued her. Very kind of him, no? And an excuse to be oh so close...

"My hero- HOT?"

Given her past mostly non-consensual explorations of his body, it didn't take more than a couple of seconds for Dela to register that these were not the muscly, flexing man-arms and torso that she had been more than ready to snuggle into once given the chance. Still muscly, but... smaller...more condensed? And... Ok, Dela might not have much to speak of herself, but she knew a pair of boobs when she was smooshed into them. With a conflicted frown, her head whipped around to examine this unexpected change, finding Cillian to be more of a Cici. The whole costume change wasn't really out of the norm, it happened sometimes to those around her and despite the chaos it usually caused, she was used to it, but... a whole gender change was new. Dela had anticipated being disappointed in light of this but...

Dangit, he -- she? -- was still too frickin' hot.

Bisexuality for the win!

As she was placed down, the blonde just sorta stood there and watched her go, butt cheeks jiggling out of that skirt and heels making those legs go on for days. A dumb smile accented the bright blush in her cheeks, making her seem even more magical girl sparkly than usual. Bisexuality was a gift. This was a gift. Even as Cillian tripped in the heels, Dela hardly even noticed as her brain processed what she was seeing and filed it away in some folder in the dark recesses of her mind palace. He was fine either way. If she had to choose, she'd still go for the male version, but--

BOMB. Right. There was a bomb.

In the time she left Cillian with Empress Twat Waffle and Virgo and Chester with Mister Furrynuts, Dela jogged around the square searching for any signs of the bomb. This was the place that made the most sense. The building all the important people were meeting in was close, and any further in would take way more manpower and skill than there was evidence of. It was tough, ravaged as her body was with this poison, but her excellent deductive skills came in handy and she located it behind a false door in an abandoned coffee house.

Just as Cillain called her "General Sparkles", the magical girl was a good deal through "disarming" it, which consisted of viciously whacking it with her scepter. There were no wires to speak of, and the timer was dangerously low, so... gratuitous violence was the only hail mary. Pieces of bomb flew everywhere, and once the control panel of the thing was bashed in, she started flooding the innards with rainbow lasers and more glitter than should ever exist in one place. It wasn't eloquent, but it was a potential solution, and that's all she cared about. For good measure, once she was sure the detonating method was destroyed and it hadn't exploded in her face, shimmering ribbons appeared to wrap it up like a little cursed Christmas ornament, only supersized.

"Nickname aside," she started, panting heavily as she plopped down onto her butt right in the middle of the sidewalk. "Good job with Miss Tantacle Porn. Now we just gotta get this thing out of town, preferably before I drop dead from this poison," Dela wheezed, reaching up to smear some of the blood away. She might feel like garbage, but the smirk on her lips betrayed the glorious feeling of victory. Crisis averted. No bombing of Joya today!


[wc: 750 || total: 7652/8000]

Well, so much for that.

At first, the now poison-free Dela thought she'd failed to disarm her bomb, but obviously, the blasts were at some distance once she got over the initial second of blind panic. A frown creased her face. So there was more than one? Before she could curse and gripe about her lack of intel, or note that those weren't really her sector and at least she'd done her job, there was a last, catastrophic explosion. And that explosion was not a little terrorist bomb. Cerulean eyes widened at the sight of the mushroom cloud rising from the hill where the peace talks had been taking place. Never had she seen anything like it or felt the ground shake so violently, and the shockwave wasn't even to the pair yet.

Sometimes something so terrible happened that just blanked the human mind, and this was one of those times. In those tense nanoseconds following the nuke, Dela's normally busy mind screeched to a horrified yet serene stop and she froze.

Her mind was still stunned as Cillian started moving, which she barely noticed. Even as she was pulled into his arms and down into Virgo's hole, her mind's eye still saw the rush of debris upward and outward, blasting toward them and taking everything with it. It wasn't until the deafening roar started at the opening of their foxhole that she started thinking again. And with the thoughts came fear, visceral and unrelenting. It'd been a very long time since she'd felt such a thing. As the sheer force of the atomization tore past overhead, deafening in its brutality, Dela wasn't sure when she'd started screaming but it only blended into the symphony of destruction. Her heart was beating so fast and hard that it'd be a miracle if it couldn't be felt through the trembling body pressing into Cillian's chest, for once not out of opportunistic pleasure, but just for some small comfort. Even though she knew both of them would come back to life if they died, it truly didn't feel that way. It started to dawn on her that this scale of power was something else entirely. Something abominable. Something she could have never known was coming and would have been powerless to stop even if she had.

The moments that followed were tense. The rumbling faded into the distance. Debris was settling. Both of them hacked and coughed as it filtered into the impromptu mine shaft. Other than pebbles falling and shifting, the silence is what made the biggest impression. Dela remained pressed against Cillian, her eyes tightly shut trying to decide if she'd gone deaf from the explosion or if there really was nothing else beyond the ringing in her ears.

Dela didn't want to leave the safety and ignorance of the hole. Cillian asked if she was okay, resolving her deafness concern, but she didn't really answer other than a wobble of her head that was both a shake and a nod. Whether she wanted to leave or not, she was being helped up and the hole was being cleared for them to leave. her eagerness to stay suddenly turned to morbid curiosity, and she too poked her head out. And then she hurriedly scrambled out to stand and take it in.

Now that she could see the devastation, her mind took a breathless moment to catch up with the heavy reality of it and silent tears started to trickle down her cheeks. Felidae was gone. Leveled. A flat ring around a planetous crater. It hit her with enough force to make her shudder at how many lives were lost in those few instances. Men, women, children, all going about their day and spectating a historical moment expected to end in peace, not genocide. Dela wasn't a very spiritual person, but it was an eerie atmosphere, as if all of those souls were still hovering in confusion where their bodies had been reduced to particles. So, so many. A shaky hand rose to her mouth to stifle the sobs as the tears continued to come.

She'd never been heroic. It wasn't in her. She's joined the Rune Knights just to serve herself. But in this moment, she truly felt like she understood it for the first time. She'd have done anything to stop this from happening to all those poor people. Most of her life had been spent selfishly worrying about herself and Elle and virtually no one else, to the point where loss of life could usually be met with snarky wit and held at an arm's length. People died every day, very easily and didn't come back over and over again like her. She'd been a calloused monster about it. No more. This broke her.

"Cillian..." she said softly, slowly looking away from the expanse of nothing to the man at her side, "Is this real? Did thousands of people just die right in front of us?"

[wc: 829 || new total: 1097]

Cillian verbally confirmed what she feared. Currently countless people had just died all around them. In a breath, they were gone, body and soul, or so she thought. She stood there doing the same as Cillian, just staring around in some sort of shock.

Before she could properly fathom the gravity and scale of it, her attention was drawn to her friend as she witnessed a rare break in character. He whimpered. Slowly she turned to look at him, not sure she'd heard right over the tinnitus, but it seemed the pained sound really had come from him. There was a flash of fresh panic as she thought he was falling victim to some residual attack, forgetting for just a second that he couldn't die. "Cillian?! What's wrong?" she squeaked with her heart in her throat. With Vera's disappearance, her mind just went to the worst-case scenario, which was losing the man she loved in this wasteland, too. The large man covered his ears and ended up sitting on the flat, scorched earth, and even though it was alarming, it managed to ground Dela a little. It gave her something to focus on, something still alive and immediate.

After a second of watching, it clicked. Oh god, he could hear the souls, couldn't he? It didn't take a good detective to put together what was happening, knowing that he could talk to zombies and stuff. Dela knelt in front of him, worried and trying to support him with gentle touches and soft words to let him know she was there, but knowing there was nothing she could do. How useless she'd been this whole day! There was no way for her to see or interact with them to chase them away.

As it turned out, she didn't need to, anyway. While she sat kneeling in front of the suffering necromancer, a shadow caught her attention in her peripheral. As her cerulean hues flickered to check, knowing full well no one else should be around, her blood stopped pumping. The blonde went completely still and silent, not even breathing. For a long moment, she was convinced that she'd truly died as well, watching in pallid horror as the pitch cloak and scythe approached them both and interacted with Cillian like an old friend. In a sense, Dela had stared death in the face many times (and did a little cursed barrel roll to avoid it), but never actually stared Death herself in the face. Their eyes met and the magical girl flinched, spine chilled no matter how thankful she was that the entity had helped the man before her. That despairing smile before she left... what did it mean? Whatever it was, it struck something far more violent than fear into her very soul.

Exhaling her held breath into something nearly heave-like, Dela lurched forward and stared at the dirt at Cillian's feet, an arm curled around her midsection as if that would hold it together. The other hand reached for her comm out of reflex so she could tell her squad to steer clear of the Grim Reaper while she helped the souls move one, but then she realized. They were part of the casualties, weren't they? "Anyone, c-come in... please..." Dela whispered into the mic, but the dead-air crackle told her all she needed to know. She knew it was futile as soon as she did it. There was no way they'd escaped. The places she'd ordered them to be were all within range of that explosion and they would have had no reason to leave. They were among the souls being reaped. Major General might not have fit her, and she might have complained about the work, but those guys were great people. She trusted them. Even if she held them at a protective arm's length because they were mortal, laughing with them on the way to and from missions hadn't been all that bad... and now they were all gone. All of them.

Trembling as if her blood really was ice, a hand reached out and grasped pitifully at the hem of his pant leg. Tears streamed from her eyes, but she used the very last thread of her composure to try and maintain her tough shell and not completely break in front of him. It'd do no one any good if she started hysterically sobbing and/or throwing up and/or screaming, no matter how high those things were lodged in her throat. "Should...should we leave... or... s-survivors?" the magical girl asked the dirt, or possibly Cillian, in a half-formed question. There was nothing more that she wanted than to escape this hell to the security of her room, but did she still need to do her job? Was there a job to do?


[wc: 796 || total: 2540]

The poor girl didn't even realize she'd been moved until she was already nestled under his cheek. Being held honestly helped. It grounded her and kept everything from shattering. For now, anyway. After many many years of being self-sufficient and self-soothing, Dela had forgotten what it felt like to be comforted this way. There was a moment or two that she needily snuggled in, her fingers burying into his shirt as her eyes closed to the misery, but his next words brought her back to the task at hand.

At first, his decision stuck ice in her heart. Dela was never particularly dedicated to any other work or cause other than those that served her directly, but at her core, she'd always been a coward. Unless the risk was unshakably worth the reward, she was the first to tuck her tail and run. Deep down, she'd hoped he'd reinforce her impulse to escape this tragedy and they could go together. As he tilted her head up to lock eyes with her, the fear was still there in her bright blue eyes, stretched wide with scrunched brows.

He was ultimately right, though. Though it'd be easy to uproot those more heroic and altruistic seeds witnessing an unfathomable amount of death had just planted, they really couldn't turn their back on this could they? They were undead, not monsters that could go continue a normal life unaffected. The icy terror ebbed off as he convincingly presented the possibility of finding survivors and that they'd need help. They'd be even worse off than she felt right now, right? As someone who had watched her own sister pass on early and her town rot to nothing from a distance, she could find the sympathy and empathy required to set herself aside for a change. This was the least she could do in this twisted aftermath. Just her job, but it was something. Who knew if there was anyone else around who had somehow survived that blast to save those hanging on by a thread. Maybe it'd make up for being unable to stop it.

Besides, and perhaps the most important thing to her at the moment, he said he'd stay. The pair then pressed foreheads, taking an unintentionally intimate moment to steady themselves and dry tears. "Okay..." she breathed, then rose with his help once it was time to get to it.

Cillian summoned two ghosts. Dela couldn't help but think somehow the spirits looked more at home in this apocalyptic setting than she and Cillian did. Then again, all present company seemed to have very complicated relationships with death, didn't they? Perhaps she'd have even been a bit more weirded out or reactive, but truth be told, she was spent. The disassociative numbness had come to offer some relief to the overwhelming gamut of emotions. There was very little that would get an ounce more feeling out of her today.

With a tired to the two ghosts and Cillian, the quadruple proceeded to spend the rest of the day combing every nook and cranny for signs of life amongst the ruins, not knowing the true, unprecedented scope of the tragedy that had taken place that day and the shockwaves that would follow. Millions were dead. A tribe was decimated. Half a million were missing.

A war was cresting the horizon.

[wc: 557 || total: 4016]