Fire Final

Day 2 - Afternoon: A Desperate Gamble ~ Deus ex Mokouna
 Previous Scene [Background: No change] [Music: No change]

No I’m not going down so easily. Not just yet. Not before I find another way out. I edge away from the window, and not a moment too soon.

[SFX: Crash]

As the ceiling begins to give way, the path to the window is buried under the burning remains of the second floor. A bit more hesitance and that would be me under there. I guess the window was a bad idea.

[SFX: More crashes]

I’m fresh out of good ideas.

I’m stuck. I’m cornered. The flames are a step away from checkmate and I don’t even have a legal move. It’s exasperating. It’s infuriating. It’s the feeling of a rat trapped in a sadistic maze made solely of dead ends. Whose plan was this anyway? What went wrong? I want to cry foul, but there’s nobody who’ll listen. It’s unfair, but there’s nobody at fault. Somehow it just didn’t work out.

With nowhere to turn and no one to blame, I let myself go and slump to the ground. Then I just laugh. And laugh, and laugh.

I can’t help it. In the face of total helplessness I have nothing left but the humor of my situation. The irony of my struggle was at once both sobering and comical. I’m not even sure what I wanted to happen, yet it’s all about to end in this anticlimactic fashion. All you can do is laugh, like an emperor of antiquity, reveling in hysterics as your kingdom goes up in smoke. Rome turns to ashes around me and I can do naught but fiddle.

I’m just drained. I have no more energy to fight, to despair, to live. Yes, I’m done. I’m tired. Just let me sleep. The blaze still burns bright around me, but my eyes are already losing the light. As the world grows dark, I could see my end approaching. I could see Death coming to take me away.

And she is beautiful

[CG: Moukou’s Entrance ~ Phoenix of Gabriel] [Music: Transcendent Grace]

She comes to me from on high, crowned with silver and cloaked in flames, her light putting the inferno around her to shame. In her presence even the furnace of hell are but dim wisps vainly trying to match her splendor. She is the angel that heaven has sent to redeem me from the plains of torment.

[???]: “Hey, you still alive?"

Her voice rings out into the Abyss, but her calls do not register in my mind. I’m beyond the point where I understand words. All I understand is that she has grabbed Akyu.

[???]: “I’ve got the girl. Now come on, we have to go.”

No please, you can’t take her. I am the only one who should have to die here. She…she still needs to live.

[???]: “We’re leaving. Hold on.”

As my consciousness fades, I feel my feet lifted off the ground, and my body is whisked away.

My only regret is that I was useless even to the very end.

[Transition - Background: None] [Music: None]

I don’t remember much of what happened after that. After all, I am supposed to be dead. I have faint recollections of racing through the air [Transition – Background: Mokou bearing her burden over the bamboo forest], of a strange house of strange folk [Transition – Background: Mokou and Kaguya shouting match], of being put to bed amidst worried faces [Transition – Background: Eirin and Reisen concerned].

But even as I fell into slumber, there is one memory that encroaches on my dreams.

[Transition – Background: Keine crying over a patient]

Damn, you weren’t supposed to have to cry anymore. What’s the point of doing all that if you’re going to go at it anyway? How inconsiderate of you…

[Transition: Fade to black]

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