It has not been a good day for Sapper Jenkins. This is the day! The day that everyone dreamed of! The day they trained for! The day the Outside finds them! The day the klaxons blare, and everyone tumbles out of their beds, and the Knights roar to life, and jets tear screaming through the sky! The day of gleaming brass, and military fanfare, the day the augurs all proclaimed was years off! The day they were discovered, and fought, and showed they could win! And then some shithead lunatic threw a tank through her mech, and the world became an unceasing song of pain. Even through the combat drugs, one of her ribs is screaming that it's seconds from meeting her lungs. Kinda hard to feel good about a day's work in these conditions, especially when the minefield she worked so hard to organize just-- She just dove through it, you get that? And now she's just. Sitting there? Her mech is in pieces, it hurts to breath, the stupid fleabags have moved on to something more important, which is as humiliating as it is painful, and the blue streak that turned the tide is just sitting there and looking around and [i]crying?[/i] Are you [i]serious?[/i] No, wait. There she goes, up again and moving. Like someone in a dream, like a kid holding an interesting insect up to a light just to see the gleam on its shell. Jenkins narrows her eyes, wrestles with her controls, and empties her mine pistol with satisfying [i]chnka-chnka-chnka-chnk.[/i] *** Light blooms, thunder rumbles, and Dyssia soars above the battlefield. Wow, it's pretty from up here. It's pretty from down there, to be fair, but. She can see [i]everything[/i]. An endless series of snapshots, a barrage of--- Not of information, but of beauty. Of light cutting across the battlefield, of the play of fire across rivets, of the splatter over bodies. We forget so many things, is what she-- Is it? What does it mean to forget? What is the meaning of 'she?' What's a Dyssia? We. Forget? Is that what-- An explosion, but what does the word explosion mean? Light and color and fury and sound and the rush of air across you like a distant laugh. The world is a plaything--something to be molded and enjoyed and twisted without fear, without-- Oh! Oh, that series of lights! She knows those lights! Beams, playing across the clouds of fog and smoke! Like the ones that Brightberry used to-- Brightberry? Her brow furrows. The world is endlessly beautiful, not because of what it is, but because it [i]is[/i], in itself, without any attempt to-- What's a Brightberry? Why does that sentence hurt? What does it mean? No need for those thoughts, just exist in the-- No, what's. She needs-- Lights. Lights lasers crystals couch friends guilt fear love-- Brightberry. Brightberry her friend her guide where's her friend-- She stares out over the landscape. What does it mean? What do--what are letters? What are thoughts? Where's the voice, the voice behind her eyes, what does it [i]mean[/i]-- She heaves, and the splatter across the ground is beautiful. Brightberry. Brightberry Pix. Pix pile. Comfy. Couch. Cuddle pile on the couch. Couch gone. Ship gone. "Why?" she rasps, her throat sandpaper. Squeezes her eyes shut. Shut it out! Plug your ears! Scream! Drown it out! "Why?" Again, like it will mean something. Why why why why beauty why drown why kill Kill desire. Kill desire with beauty. Drown it out. Won't work gods desire can't kill desire with enlightenment She's face-down in the earth, hands over her head, wishing only she had four arms to cover her eyes as well. "Why? Why bother with this? What can this possibly give you?" Zeus. Zeus doesn't want this. Zeus doesn't agree with this. Maybe agreed with this, but sees still the continuation, the pattern, the opposite of this. "What's the point of beauty without attachment? Without love? Without meaning? What possible worth can beauty have if it's meaningless?"