Interim 2: The Sheep Descends With The Eagles

Interim 2: The Sheep Descends With The Eagles

Content Warnings: Child Abuse, Murder

Art by Mori: https://x.com/moriartsu/status/1506874180146712576

  The rumbling of the earth was all The Sheep heard in his ears. Crammed into the back of a convoy transport, vibrations shook him violently from side to side. Sat between two full-grown Auxilia, he looked even more a child than usual. Short brown hair fell barely into his eyes, the offset sides framing his face. Grey eyes, focused intently on the floor. His full attention was given to a bug that had stowed away with the soldiers. It appeared to be an ant from Before The Fall, yet with some notable differences. It's colour was white and it's body thicker and more chitinous to protect against the harsh environment. 

  It was rare for any form of life to survive outside of The Republic. The harsh environment made sure that anything without a proper exoskeleton or natural armour was doomed to fade away. Small, pale and weak, the creature approached The Sheep's boot. He consciously ceased the shaking of his leg which had taken him since the journey began. Just how far it had traveled to be here, he wondered. 

  Had it come with him from The Republic? Had it hitched a ride from the last mission? This insignificant creature had traveled far further than The Sheep ever had. He, who had not left his bed in adolescence. He who had spent his entire life within the walls of The Republic. If such a small and defenseless creature could make it out here, then who was to say there wasn't a chance for any to rise in its wake.

  -Thud-

Art by M!N: https://x.com/96MiN69/status/1619689602532667400

  A shock absorbent boot crashed down into the snow-white insect, snapping the sheep out of his haze.

  "Bastards are everywhere out here," came a grizzled voice from his side. For good measure, the man twisted his heel, boot smearing the remains of the bug into the surface of the caravan.

  The sheep turned his face to look at the older man. It was expressionless. Stoic and steady; a soldier's face. Noticing the eyes of The Sheep, the Auxilia's expression soured.

  "And monsters inside the walls too..." he grumbled before turning away.

  The voice sounded even more callous coming out of the pitch black helmet that surrounded the man's entire head. All of the Auxilia wore the same, a carbon-fiber material so dark that it almost absorbed the light around it. Black holes atop human bodies from which there was no escape. 

  The helmet The Republic provided The Sheep had bounced around his head, more likely to give him a concussion than deflect a bullet. "What's a monster like you need protection from anyway? Keep your metal mitts up and you'll do fine." They'd torn it out of his hands and left it in his pen.

  The sheep focused his gaze on the grey smear before him. His wide eyes showed no expression, but his lips trembled slightly as he turned from it to the small window on his left. More a gap than a window, like the arrow slits of a castle.

  The view was not inviting. The sky above was a dull orange despite it being the middle of the day. The earth below was a wasteland of brown, desert sand having reclaimed the uncolonized earth. The air in-between was a hazy mist of pollutants left behind from the generations before. 

  Once more, The Sheep's leg began shaking at the thought about the road laid before him. The convoy shook harder as they descended some rocky surface into the earth below. The shadows of the heaped soil shrouded the interior and The Sheep's leg froze. Two small hands balled up the material on his thighs, gripping tight for any comfort. Gone was the tiny glimpse into the outside, dark and destitute as it had felt until this.

  As the convoy came to a stop, The Sheep felt his head fall forward and snap back up. The men around him hadn't moved, fixed in everything that they did. A gasping wheeze erupted from all sides as the doors of the convoy opened autonomously. The artificially pure air was sucked out in an instant, the pungent scent of sulphur engulfing the small compartment. One by one, the Eagles descended from the carriage, each steadying themselves as they confirmed the equipment on their bodies. A pistol, a machine gun, a knife and multiple explosives hung from the holsters that clung to their forms. Entirely clothed in skin-tight black, their silhouettes were a frightening sight to behold. 

  The Sheep stumbled out of the convoy, legs trembling from the captivity. His form looked less frightening and more comical, the equipment he carried hanging off of him like unsheared wool. Wasting no time, the Eagles began plunging deeper into the earth, their eyes fixed on a hatch; shining silver, juxtaposed against the barren terrain.

  Pouncing on it, the first eagle tore an opening into the den, swooping forward in a effortless motion. As a unit, the other Eagles followed suit, dropping into the hole, their prey already panicking, alerting one-another of the predators in their midst.

  Gunshots erupted from within the bunker and The Sheep paused a moment to look down at the chaos within. Dark, dismal, dirty. Flashes from The Eagles' guns cast twisted shadows of their own forms onto the tiny patch within. He had to drop down. Descend with his flock to beneath the earth where ghosts still haunted. Eyes closed, he lifted his face to the heavens, the light of which no longer reached him. One single deep breath flooded his lungs with a new kind of air. A familiar, sickeningly sweet scent of metal and flesh. He was ready. 

  Until he looked down.

  Two narrowed eyes. That's all The sheep saw at first as the form clawed its way up the exit ladder.

  "Oi, grab that kid!" One of The Eagles screeched from below. 

  A gun is drawn. The small pistol from The Sheep's hip. Practiced and precise, the movement was wired into his very being over the last 2 years. The form pauses as it breaches the surface, staring up at the sheep and his gun. Those narrowed eyes, a curved pair of lips, a small flat nose. Wild red hair is tangled all over the head of the child who now glares up at the sheep, flight or fight reflex in full force. More wild animal than child, a flash of white appears on the child's face. A foxlike smile, recognizing The Sheep as a fellow human. 

Art by Bunki: https://x.com/yukicole02/status/1510328878912335873

  "Don't move!" The sheep cries out. His voice cracked a little but somehow he managed to avoid stuttering. "We won't hurt a civi-"

  The form is ripped off of the ladder, feet first. With so much force applied the child had no time to react, face slamming into the solid metal below. A crunch, followed by spluttering spilt out of the bunker and finally the sheep found his footing, plunging confidently into the mass grave.

  "STOP!" fists raised up at chin level, pistol abandoned aboveground, The Sheep growls at his own flock in defiance. The gunshots have already fallen silent along with the pleading and struggles of those who called this hole home. Releasing the child's ankle, the mountain of a man looks back at his Eagles with a laugh.

  "The fuck do you think you're doing monster?" he asks. "Daddy not teach ya 'ow to read? This was the mission." A murder of laughter erupted from the convocation surrounding The Sheep. With a gentle, simple movement, the mountain slid his boot under The Fox's arm, kicking forward to flip him onto his back. Everything was dark red, from the hair down to the clothing. Blood still pouring out of his mouth and nose, flying out and over his body with each cough and gasp, The Fox resembled a newborn ripped away from his mother's protection. Even smaller than The Sheep, he could have only been 8 at the oldest, yet now his breaths were laboured and rattling like a man on his deathbed.

  "Eliminate any hostiles that resist. The Republic always welcomes civilians who need aid!" The Sheep bleated.

  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

  The Eagles caw back at him, surrounded by a dozen fresh bodies and the hordes of treasures from the old world they had buried themselves with. "Running is resistance. The Republic sent a legatus ahead of us, monster. My guess, he's in that pot out there." A gentle whistling could be heard from the next room and the sizzle of liquid spilling and boiling on a hot surface. "If you used your fucking IIs, you'd see this bug is parading around in 'is shoes." Sure enough, The Fox had one red and white shoe on his left foot, marked with the legati wolf. The other had disappeared somewhere across the room, far too loose on his tiny feet to hold on when he was ripped off of the ladder. "How's about you use 'em Frankenstein parts of yours and crush this bug like I taught ya?"

  There was another round of laughter in the room as the mountain grinned back at his flock in triumph. For months the largest man in the squad had done his best to break the smallest boy forced upon him. Now that he was dispatched in a real mission the animosity had only grown worse. The cackle echoing throughout the room was just another weight that The Sheep would have to bear. The straw that broke The Sheep's resolve. 

  -CRUNCH- 

  It sounded like a car being compacted sped up to half a second. It felt as easy as swatting a fly.

  A landslide of rock-hard flesh and body armour toppled to the ground, vomiting violently on the blood soaked metal. The mountain of a man coughed and spluttered in a mixture of his own bile and the blood of The Fox as he rolled to his side and struggled to breathe. Without any hesitation The Sheep kicked hard into the man on the ground's chest, launching him over the child and into the corner of the room like a rag doll. 

Art by Kurohiko: https://x.com/meikurohiko/status/1787902070730981851

  Fulgur Ovid, all 5 feet of his teenage form, assumed a defensive pose toward The Black Eagles of The Auxilia. One crimson fist had been exposed from the force with which he had connected against the first man's body armour and crumpled it into his solar plexus.

  "You're so desperate to kill a child? Explain to the Pratores how your monster died on his first mission defending one who tried to flee."

  The Eagles eyed one another, likely communicating silently on a neural network that Fulgur couldn't access. One in the corner readied his rifle, then paused, looking at another and nodding. They couldn't gun him down with weapons from The Republic. Having to explain why their new toy, already broken down and molded by The Auxilia's harsh training, would commit treason on day 1 would be too difficult. He'd passed his psyche evaluations just like every one of them. The Republic had put his mind back together just enough to go on living outside its walls. Grins appeared on the faces of the men as they began grabbing makeshift weapons out of anything they could find. 

  A bunk's metal frame, a desk leg, one even ripped the huge air purifier out of a nearby wall, approaching menacingly with glee all over his features.

  'The Slaughter in the Slums.' That was what the media had branded Fulgur Ovid's crime as. His punishment, skipping the rest of conscription and serving The Republic in The Auxilia, special forces within and outside her borders. The Black Eagles didn't take too kindly to his appearance and had tried to goad him into fighting numerous times as he struggled through training. Finally they had their opportunity to butt horns with the monster in their midst and the scent of blood in the air had driven them into a frenzy. 

  The paperwork of course swears that the doomers, surviving in their fallout bunker had attacked them all. Almost a hundred in all, their 8th troop of only 6 men and one boy took heavy damage but fought them off together as a unit. 

  Four men. That's how many of the best trained soldiers The Republic had to offer, Fulgur Ovid knocked unconscious in the bunker. The first, which he had meant as a message, suffered injuries serious enough to end his career. He retired as a hero, having served The Republic to his fullest extent. The others woke up bruised and battered but able to return to active service within weeks.

  Fulgur Ovid himself was in critical care for 6 days, then the hospital for 3 more months. Once he returned to the Auxilia, he did so as a respected member of the squad, having earned his place among them. By the time he was fit for redeployment the helmet fit him snugly making him just another faceless Eagle. He never led his own troop but he served diligently as a breacher for over a decade, fully paying back the time for his crimes before taking an easy job as a legatus.

  The fox-faced child was taken back to The Republic and assigned to a family to be raised into an upstanding citizen. He disappeared before Fulgur left the hospital and was only reported missing by the parents 9 years later when he would have been required to enlist for conscription. They received a hefty insurance settlement 5 years later when it was assumed he had passed away, on top of all the aid they had received for providing for a child over the years.

Art by The Drawn Legend: https://x.com/drawn_legend/status/1583502308184236043