SMG4:// Exodus

Part 7: Encandillar

Ch 1: Waidmann's Heil (???)

この世で一番辛いのは

雷に打たれた木を見ること

幹の年輪が一瞬で

燃え尽きるのを見ること

嵐はすぐにやってくる

いつもそうなる

太陽が空高く昇るとき

長い冬が終わって花が咲き終わるとき

嵐、火事、飢饉が降りてきて森全体をバラバラにする

輝く刃で木を切り裂き

鎖を地面に投げつけて爆発する

空を突き進み、光と鋼鉄の雨を降らせる

その火の飢餓が世界を...黒く染める

~

The greatest pain in the world is

Watching a tree struck by lightning

Seeing all the rings in it's trunk

Burn away in an instant

That storm shall come soon enough

It always does

When the sun is highest in the sky

When the flowers have all bloomed after a long winter

A storm, a fire, a famine,

Shall descend and rend the whole forest asunder.

It cuts through the wood with a shining blade

Casts its chains to the ground and explodes outward.

Charging through the sky, raining light and steel.

The hunger of its fires shall color the world... black

~

Ch 2: The Eagle Has Landed

"Remember, no mistakes..."

There's fire in my lungs. I'm blazing like a missile across the crowded streets and blocks of Inkopolis. I don't have time to think, even worry. Every thought, every twitch of my neurons is directed through my Meta Arm, augmented by it's hardware, and focused wholesale into my slightest movements; every flick and dilation of my eyes, every automatic breath I take, every rapid flex of the tendons in my legs, is carefully and precisely calculated without tolerance. I am a cyborg, I am flesh made machine.

Without so much as a twitch of anticipation, I leap in between an Octoling and the Negative Meme about to devour it. Level Twos always move exactly 15 mph faster than their base speed when the meme was alive. I'm faster, the Meta Arm pushing my legs to their absolute limit and then some. I grab the Octoling and expend just enough of my internal LIMEADe to block three drops of NME the size of sewing needles in my blindspot.

With exactly 28/37ths of a second to spare, I hit the ground with the Octoling in my arms as Shaggy soars over me and rips into the Level Two a hair's breadth above me. He's been flying no more and no less than 5 inches behind me this whole time, maintaining the exact same speed. I grab all the civilians out of the crowd, he cleans the street. Without giving a centimeter per second of my speed, I carry the Octoling into the crowd in front of me and skid to a stop, firing off my Epithelium against the giant wall of NME right behind me and Shaggy. It's cornered.