lucetilogs | Being unconquerable lies with yourself; being conquerable lies with your enemy.

Being unconquerable lies with yourself; being conquerable lies with your enemy.

Who: Draftees
What: Battlefield shenanigans + anything in between.
When: 12th -14th December.
Where: Underground Research Facility.
Summary: Violence! Fighting! ...and your temporary bouts of non-fighting too, if you like. You may want to label which day it is + the location in your thread title!
Rating: G to R?! Everything applies!

[For all your battle-and-in-between needs! Please refer to the modpost and the OOC plotting post for details and so forth! Don't forget to state the day (Day 1/2/3?) + location in your thread too! ♥]

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[Oh. Caesar recognized that voice. And it was far less cheerful than usual. He still had a responsibility, so he wasn't going to ignore anyone who wanted to speak with him, but...

Please tell him you're here on business, Rise.

He gets up to answer the door for her. He tries not to be too lazy about it, but it still might take a minute. He nods when he sees her.]

Sure. Come in.

[She shifts from foot to foot as she waits for the door to open, her glance darting around the corridor. Several others were returning from the battlefield, some of them with injuries, but none major enough. She hadn't been able to prevent everyone from getting hurt, but she had tried to ensure that no one had gotten seriously hurt- or so she hoped, at least. It was difficult to tell when you were focusing on one part of the facility.

It's a little awkward for her to be in someone else's room, though. A touch personal, in a way- even Souji and Naoto, whom she'd considered to be one of her best friends, had never extended such invitations to her.

...her gaze falls to his mostly uneaten dinner. Um.]

...I'm not disturbing anything, am I?

[He follows her gaze before answering and then shakes his head.]

My dinner? I guess I forgot about that! [Not really. He's just not hungry. He steps out of the way, a gesture for her to come in.] Uh... Something the matter?

[She'll step into the room then. It was at least more personal than having a conversation about her doubts within public earshot.]

Well, it's- just a couple of things.

[He shuts the door behind her while he considers what this could possibly be about. She seemed hesitant... So it was probably uncertainty. It wasn't like he hadn't dealt with this before, but encouraging and reassuring others still wasn't his job.

...but even so, he'd deal with it. It was necessary, and someone had to do it.

The next thing Caesar does is quietly request for the food to be taken away. He wasn't going to eat it. Then, he sits down comfortably on his bed again before he speaks up.]

Unsure of something?

[And while he does all that, she'll settle herself against the wall, where she would be in plain sight but still maintaining a comfortable distance. Something solid- that was nice.]

Our side didn't suffer any serious casualties today. [A pause as she shifts.] We killed more than three hundred soldiers alone.

We've dealt with more in the past. [Caesar doesn't seem particularly interested in these words. She's telling him something he already knows.] This is nothing in comparison. Let's just hope the lack of casualties stays that way.

Edited 2010-12-18 23:35 (UTC)

So you're fine with the idea of having to kill more?

[He lets out a bit of a sigh. He doesn't really care for her choice of words.]

I'm not fine with it. Believe me, if I could have it any other way, I would. But we don't really have a choice right now. These guys aren't exactly up for friendly negotiations.

[She'd heard all that before- it was, after all, a rehash of whatever everyone had been trying to beat into her. But she'd promised that she'd try to understand.]

Everyone keeps saying that they're not willing to negotiate with us. What really happened...?

The soldiers refuse to speak. Probably sworn to silence or something like that. The only one who ever said a word was their general, and we haven't seen or heard from him in a long time. I believe the idea is that those jerks wish to free us from the Malnosso's prison with a permanent death.

But we can't even die here. The Malnosso would just bring us back...right?

As long as they have the ability. But if the Third Party kills them, there will be no one to bring us back. The people who have already died here in this city are probably dead for good.

So the people we were rescuing...

Those Malnosso? We're doing them a huge favor.

[She shifts uncomfortably at that. She'd never been very kosher with the idea of killing.]

...everyone we found today didn't even have any means to protect themselves.

They're all civilians. Can't blame them for thinking they'd be safe, I guess—their city is completely surrounded by water, for goodness' sake. [Then again, with the way the Third Party has been attacking, he finds it odd that they weren't even kind of prepared to deal with an attack... but maybe he's missing something.] The Malnosso we know might be a bunch of jerks, but I'd rather put up with them than deal with a death courtesy of the Third Party.

I see...

All of this is linked to that one attack that they did way back last year, right? People keep talking about it.

Perhaps. That was the first time that we encountered them, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were bothering the Malnosso even before that. It was also the first time the village itself was attacked, though, so it's understandable that people keep talking about it.

Yeah...yeah, I guess it is.

[She falls silent. In the end, it all led back to an ultimatum- an us or them thing, didn't it? It was not something that she wanted to accept, even if she'd been told repeatedly that it was something that she couldn't avoid. Temporarily incapacitating others so that people could escape? That was okay with her. Killing them wasn't.

She could pretend that a lot of things were okay, but this? This just wasn't one of them.]

How many of them do you think are out there?

Of the enemy? Way more than there are of us. At least six hundred of them. However, even for three days, that doesn't seem like very much compared to what we're usually up against. I have a feeling we're going to see more of them before we're sent home.

And they're all equally out to win, if they'll all fight like how they did today too. There were some close shaves.

....

There isn't no info on how they've been getting in here...?

Edited 2010-12-30 14:23 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, but I'd guess that they're using a sort of shifting technology. When they attacked the village, they had to be let in or else they'd destroy the barrier, but I highly doubt that's the case here. If it were, these people would have been much better prepared than they actually were.

But if we could figure out if there's a particular area where they've been appearing at, we could stop them from spreading throughout the city so fast, couldn't we? It'd be easier to arrest their movement.

Certainly, certainly. [He sounds dismissive. Come on, you think they haven't thought about this already?] But after today, our only priorities are to make sure that the shifting machinery is disabled and that we eliminate the enemy forces. It doesn't matter how fast they move through the city, we have plenty of time to take care of them.

(no subject)

analyzing - 2011-01-06 17:15 (UTC) - Expand

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