EXECUTION III

[faentasy]

Execution

Like clockwork, the melody calls you together for the execution, although the circumstances are perhaps a bit better, if you can even call it that. Those who choose to attend will see an odd sight: two winged beings present in a magical bubble: one is Lucifer of course, six wings folded like they were much of yesterday and the other is a cream colored mourning dove, Nageki.

The mirrors and scenery is much like it was the week before, but—the air feels slightly heavier today? Maybe today is just a day for oddities.

Comments

[eternaljune]

Those are--those are bombs! He-he can't just--

[It's too late for Rika to react or run, or do anything besides cover her ears and squeeze her eyes shut.]

cw: indirect gore I guess

[heroicact]

[There's no time to respond, or think, or grab Rika and run -- their proximity to the bubble itself and the sheer level of noise in the room and the knowledge that just a few steps away... that in another dimension on the other side of a near-invisible barrier the inevitable is playing out.

Jack turns and falls to his knees, uses himself as a shield for the girl as the explosions go off -- they shake the room, they shake the air and every last atom of him and yet that's all they do. They don't break the barrier any more than all of their powerless words and fists and anything else.

So it was perhaps always going to turn out this way.

He can hear everything, because his arms are occupied: the rustle and snap of feathers and then the sickening, inescapable sounds of something or someone becoming nothing and no one just behind them. He squeezes his eyes shut.]

[eternaljune]

[Rika can't completely see everything with Jack shielding her, but she can hear and imagine it, and the aftermath paints a fine picture. Splatters and an empty space where wings once stood. It's as if Nageki and Lucifer had never existed in the first place.]

What...what did I say? Lucifer already sealed his doom yesterday. There's no way to save someone slated for execution. That's the rule we established...Nageki. Nageki, why would you even bother?

This was pointless.

[heroicact]

Rika...

[Jack had opened his eyes once the worst of the explosion died down, almost like he couldn't help it -- like standing at the scene of a wreck, in the middle of a murder, like the grasping claws of this entire week dragging them all forward but in the worst way. He turns around, just enough.

He sees what once was Nageki, and he sees what happens to Lucifer, and though he still had no words for a long moment after that because everything was a roaring blank (a ringing noise in his ears, because it was almost impossible to hear after that sort of an explosion, magical barrier or not) -- Rika's ranting brings him a little closer to earth again.

He continues to stare at the spot where Lucifer disappeared, for the moment unmoving.]

It was not pointless. Do not call Nageki's life pointless, nor even Lucifer's -- those of us who remain, we don't have the power to do so. [they really, truly don't have the power for anything right now; though he's also not particularly choosing his words, either] Please...

[eternaljune]

Well, his death was! Can you give me one good reason that it had to happen this way?! Nageki just--he just threw his life away in some half-baked statement...and look! His refusal to kill didn't do anything but add another person to the pile of corpses we've got!

We don't have the power to call people stupid for their stupid sacrifices, we don't have the power to decide our fates--what do you think we have the power to do?!

[heroicact]

[...]

I cannot. I haven't yet found the reason; we haven't yet found enough to understand the reason for all of this, but I--

[There's something very tired in his voice, stark echoes like he might have said these words too many times even though it is the first time they are having this particular conversation. Here, the two of them, in front of the slow erasure of two people and whatever hopes they carried with them.

But nevertheless -- he drags the words up still, haltingly, gravely.]

Nageki decided who he wanted to be. If this was as far as he could go with us... then what we can do is-- [we should have a common goal] --Rika. Do you think everything here was planned?

[eternaljune]

He decided who he wanted to be--what kind of weak goddamn reasoning is that?!

[She pauses for a moment at that last question, though.]

Do I think everything was planned...to an extent, yes. We can't leave this place on our own, and everyone who has been been voted to be executed is certain to die. Hamelin won't let those rules be contested.