Arms Wide Open

Part 9 Blitzkrieg

OOOOoooooooooXIIIooooo

"Would you repeat what you just said?"

Lightning doesn't answer the younger woman at first. Azure orbs are closed like slits, scanning their surroundings. A dark cloud of anxiety covers her eyes, as she finds several packs of wild, robotic animals attacking their neighbors, most of them helpless civilians without proper means of defending themselves. They're doomed. Once she finally addresses Serah, the soldier locks eyes with her.

"Haven't you noticed? These beasts are no coincidence. They are an advanced force. Be certain that we are under attack by an enemy army, and if we don't move fast, we'll soon be outweighed by ex-PSICOM's units." Lightning finishes with a definite tone, as she sheathes the Omega Weapon inside its worn-out scabbard, and fastens its belt over her hips and leg. Looking for a safer way out, the eldest pinkette takes Serah's wrist with her right hand, while she presses her left, injured arm against her own chest, trying to minimize the shoulder's movements.

Serah hasn't come out of her stupor. As the young woman looks at the struggling neighbors suffering the beast's rage, tears of frustration and anger build in her blue eyes.

"We have to... we have to help them..." Serah whispers more to herself than to anyone else but doesn't make a move, completely flabbergasted.

Lightning looks up, and rage builds on her blood at the bloody scene that takes place in front of them. But she's established her priorities a long time ago. Without any doubt, she gently pulls her sister's hand, prompting her to follow.

"Serah..."

The youngest pinkette doesn't respond to her sibling's calling, but without any protest, she lets herself be pulled towards the direction Noel is pointing, right at the back of their house. But as the images of the massacre on the beach disappear from her field of vision, Serah finally snaps out of her stupor and pulls her hand free from her sister's tight grasp.

"All the more we have to stay, Light! We need to help those people!"

"And we will." Lightning doesn't try to pull her again. Instead, turns to look at her friend in a mix of worry and anger. "Noel, where are Fang and Snow?"

"Snow was finishing the last details up on the mountains. But I'm sure he heard the signals we sent him. He'll be here soon. I don't know where Fang went, though," he could sense the anxiety building up in Lightning's heart, for fear of something happening to her partner and closest friend, and he surely can relate to that, "but I'll go find her if you want me to."

Lightning hesitates. She is worried, feeling a pressure over her chest. There's no denying her intuition is trying to reach out to her, but she has learned the hard way she can't always save everyone.

'Fang is a grown woman and an excellent warrior. I have to trust her.'

Though not convinced at all by her own speech, Lightning forces herself to shake her head in denial.

"No. Thank you, Noel, but there are more important tasks at hand. I need you to take Serah to a safer place."

Before Noel can answer though, a pantheron, the militarized version of the gorgonopsid, falls upon them from behind, attracted by the iron smell of Lightning's bloody shoulder, a feral growl escaping through its throat. Taken by surprise, the trio isn't fast enough to avoid the attack, as the pantheron's powerful paws are clamped on the soldier's back, the impact forcing Lightning and Serah to the ground, and they hit the sand hard, with the weight of the animal upon the eldest pinkette. The collision over her open wound is too much to bear, and Lightning screams, her fingertips digging into her palms, but, out of sheer will, she still manages to turn her lower body at the last second, the impact of the fall over her belly diminished even further by the soft sand.