You stand up and run, short bursts, intending to break off and escape the arc of the half-track's machine gun. Bullets whip around you, and you bend over, running as fast as you can as the machine gunner fires off stuttering bursts into the brush around you. You're a second too slow. You feel a bullet rip through your body, feel your gore spread onto the ground, red blood on orange pine needles, unconscious body crashing through the brush.
You feel utterly content. To give your life in battle against an impossible foe, against dishonorable cruelty - surely, you are counted among the honored dead! A valkyrie must come, to take you to the hall of Sigvird, to save you from the cruel maws of the Fischer-Gods! You feel the waters begin to lap at your soul, the cold grasp of tentacles around your legs, and cry out in panic now. You beg for your salvation, for forgiveness from your weakness and cowardice and treason, for the mercy of the Valkyries! Inexorably, the vines pull you into the water. You claw at the sand, cling to life. Not like this! Not like this!
The world goes black.
Finally, you wake up. The continuous groans and weeping, the scent of blood and pus, the bandages that wrap your body - you're alive, in a field hospital. Experimentally, you lift one arm, then the other - you've been bound to your bed. Slowly, you take in your surroundings, and it dawns on you. Neither spade nor skull nor eagle adorns the walls - you've made it! This isn't a Goth camp!
You sink back into restless sleep.
You awaken again. A nurse takes notice, and there's movement. You're given a breakfast of dried meat, bread, and a few vegetables, which you eagerly devour, before being transferred to a stretcher and moved again. They place you in a wooden chair, hard-backed, facing a desk.
On the opposite side of the desk is a woman, young but broad-shouldered and hard of face, dressed in loose clothes, and festooned with little trinkets and cheap jewelry. She looks up at the nurses carrying you.
"The prisoner?"
"Yes ma'am. We brought him straight in, like you asked."
"Good. Leave us."
She turns to you, and you gulp.
"I am Helene, and I'm in charge of this outfit. What I want to know is why Minna brought a goth, and a man at that, into my encampment. What's your name, and what happened to you?"
Name:
[] Garen. Just Garen.
[] Garen. I'm a pilot.
[] Fahnrich Garen, A wing, 33rd Jager Squadron
[] Something else?
What happened to you?:
[] It's not important.
[] The truth - ran out of fuel attempting to defect, saw your people in trouble, tried to help.
[] Something else?
