Guinevere continued to watch as the two dots on the screen moved further and further apart.

She had been trying to increase the subconscious desires for revenge against Ukko that she embedded into the Trahir system, but she hadn’t made any progress. It almost seemed as if something was blocking out her attempts.

Or maybe overpowering them.

She tried to radio into Jace as well, multiple times, but she had yet to receive a response.

Now with Ukko suddenly capable of moving once again, it seemed like Guinevere’s dreams of revenge were suddenly rushing far beyond her reach.

She did everything right. Everything. Guinevere put in so much effort, she’d suffered so much, and yet her goal was now being ripped away from her before she could even get a taste of… of peace.

Of acceptance.

Of closure on this miserable journey.

She slammed her head down onto the keyboard, causing a spray of plastic, letter-labeled pieces to fly off in every direction. Her dark hair fell around her, blocking out the world. She tried to hold back the sobs. She ground her teeth until it hurt and let the drool pool out onto the broken keyboard beneath her as her lips stayed parted in a desperate attempt at a scream. She wouldn’t scream though.

She wouldn’t cry either.

This wasn’t a time for sadness or frustration. Guinevere had been through this all long enough. She’d paid her dues and then some.

She did what she was supposed to. Things are supposed to work now.

She dug her chewed down and serrated fingernails into her palms until she could feel the sticky blood pooling around her fists on the desk.

She raised her head slowly and stared at her upturned hands.

The blood seeped into each little crack and crevice. It dried into flaky specs even as fresh blood continued to ooze out. The dried flakes of blood swam around in the liquid red making for a strangely entrancing kaleidoscope, and, Guinevere realized, there was an answer in these hands.

Or on these hands, she supposed.

Blood.

The blood should have always been on her own hands.

She had to use Jace since she was being watched, but things have changed, haven’t they? The Stragglers are in complete chaos and Ukko is surely weak after being trapped in his MAC for so long. This was the perfect opportunity for Guinevere to handle things herself. And if she went to deal with this herself, then she could make sure the Trahir system ended up destroyed like she planned. Clearly, with Jace unresponsive, she would have to handle that by herself as well.

Jace must still trust her. Guinevere was sure the man even had some feelings of love for her. After all those nights of licking each other’s wounds, they were bound to grow closer, right? Yes, Guinevere would be able to use that to get in close and terminate the system.

Would she be willing to kill Jace though?

Guinevere took a deep breath before straightening her hair, surely leaving blood-red streaks as she did so. Yes, yes of course she could kill him. If ever there was a moment to accept who she was, it was now: she may like the man, but she loves her goals far more. Yes, just like Bonnie. It was perfectly fine to put things in front of people.

Guinevere was perfectly fine.

With that decided, Guinevere had to think about her next problem: if she was going to handle this herself, what could she possibly use to accomplish her goals? The Stragglers had sent out everything in their attempt at surviving this situation. As Guinevere stepped outside of the hangar-truck she had been in she even saw the engineers and researchers running about with guns and mounting up in the few vehicles that were left in the convoy. Each and every one surely rushing off to their own deaths.

Guinevere stood in place and looked around at the frantic people and the nearly disarmed convoy. There was no denying what she would be up against: two top-of-the-line MACs. Simply running out to the battlefield with a handgun wouldn’t do her any good.

Ukko would be more likely to shoot her on sight if he spotted her out in that warzone, and once Jace started fighting… it was like he became a different person. A person that Guinevere didn’t think would open his cockpit for a poor little Guinevere in no man’s land.

She couldn’t think of a way to kill Ukko or to destroy the Trahir system without being pitted up against those MACs. Even with Ukko weakened and Jace easy enough to manipulate, she would still ultimately need to destroy their MACs.

Guinevere closed her eyes for a moment to calm her thoughts. With all that considered, she realized she had two options. Option one was to go out to the battlefield and try to find a working MAC or anti-MAC weapon that she could man by herself.

Option two was to go visit a man she’d rather not have to visit.

Guinevere looked off toward the distant ocean, nothing more than a faint blue line on the horizon at this point. Between her and the ocean she was able to see an endless procession of flames and smoke and bright flashes. Each flash was followed up seconds later by a muted percussive blast that seemed to find a home directly in her bones.

A pickup truck filled to the brim with about twelve researchers waving handguns blew past her, causing her tie and hair to flutter in the wind as they both pointed toward the sorry souls. Another percussive blast in an endless chain seeped deep into Guinevere, and yet the truck filled with bodies continued on toward a battlefield that would surely be their end.

Guinevere would die out there if she went with option one.

She sighed as her tie fell back into place against her chest. She looked up into the sky and saw a similar blue line on the horizon, the same sort of blue she saw when looking out to the ocean. The endless gray of the clouds that had been dropping bone-chilling drops of water on them seemed to be coming to an end. Guinevere wondered if the rain would stop before or after the killing?

She broke into a run and made her way to the truck that housed Lionel and his research.

~~~

Guinevere found her way to Lionel’s truck and was surprised to see the man sitting outside rather than cowering within.

She was less surprised to see him in the fetal position on the ground mumbling nonsense.

“Lionel.” Guinevere approached the broken man with the assurance of someone with a singular goal.

He did not respond.

“Lionel.” Guinevere stood above him now.

He was crying.

She knelt down next to him and spoke as calmly as she possibly could given the circumstances, “Lionel, has the MAC you’ve been working on been launched yet?”

This had an unintended effect on Lionel.

He began thrashing around on the ground and screaming shrilly. He didn’t actually get any words out, just sounds and noises as he continued to roll around on the ground, throwing his fists and legs out in every direction, seemingly in an act of defense.

Guinevere landed a solid kick directly onto Lionel’s face.

It apparently wasn’t a very solid defense.

“Guinevere?” The man gasped out the singular word.

“Yes.”

“Guinevere. We have to stop.”

“Do I need to kick you again? The battle started a while ago now. Don’t you hear the absolute shit-storm of explosions out there? We can’t stop anything anymore.”

“No… no that doesn’t matter Guinevere. The things… we need to stop. We need to run.”

She was already getting tired of Lionel. Now instead of just being a worthless, cowardly insect, he was also too stupid to form a complete thought. “Lionel, listen to me. Is the MAC still in there or not?”

He seemed on the verge of screaming again so Guinevere planted her foot solidly in his gut. It was a good thing he didn’t get any lunch, or else there would have been much more vomit on Guinevere’s shoes.

After coughing up whatever was left in his stomach his eyes seemed to focus and he screamed at Guinevere, “Don’t touch it! We have to stop!”

Guinevere didn’t have time for this. She walked past the man on the ground and shook him off when he tried to grab at her ankles. She turned her head toward the man who could barely call himself one, “Coward.”

The old and feeble man curled up once more.

She entered the truck and saw what she was looking for. The MAC that Lionel had been working on was still here. No pilot had been assigned to it.

Guinevere enjoyed tinkering with MACs. She liked the weaponry and the armor and all the maintenance that had to be performed, but she could pilot the things as well. She may not have been as good as Callista or Jace, hence why she wasn’t given the role of a pilot in Atlantis, but she could do well enough for herself. She even enjoyed it quite a bit the few times she got to take one to battle.

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With her decent skills, her drive for her goals, and her ability to manipulate her main obstacle: Jace; Guinevere felt confident that she could finish this all.

Finish it all with her own hands.

She made her way to the main diagnostic room to begin prepping the machine for a sortie.

When she entered the room however, her work was seemingly almost done.

This was good, Guinevere thought to herself.

But the researchers and mechanics in charge of this machine were in varying states of dismemberment.

This was unsettling, Guinevere thought to herself.

The sight would have once made Guinevere nauseous, but she didn’t need to force herself to care about people anymore. She inspected the wounds briefly to see what had happened.

It was strange. The wounds were clearly not from any sort of stray shot or shell. The enemy artillery couldn’t even reach this far, and it definitely didn’t look like the work of friendly fire considering all of the machines and the room itself in general were completely clean and pristine. It was just the bodies. Each and every one of them had been cut into pieces. Some were unrecognizable yet uniformly shaped chunks spread across the room while others were merely separated in two. The cuts themselves seemed unnatural as well. Guinevere wasn’t exactly familiar with cutting humans into pieces, but the force required to do such a thing was likely immense. That sort of force would rip the skin and make it bunch up around the cuts. At the very least the organs should be mangled and battered. Even the sharpest blade couldn’t make a perfect cut through that much material. Not to mention the bones were cut straight through as well. It was as if the pieces had merely been separated, as if they were jigsaw-ed together all along and this was just someone taking apart the puzzle.

Guinevere decided to go with the most rational choice: the enemy had sent in special teams with special equipment to try to disable The Straggler’s MACs before the battle began. Since Jace sortied early, their plan only got them this far.

That left the question of where these special teams were, but it was a question that no longer mattered to Guinevere.

She began the final preparations to get the machine ready for launch.

She made her way into the hangar proper and started to climb the outside of the machine. It had a series of metal rungs on the outside for this purpose. Guinevere imagined that Lionel had planned to have the pilot synced to this thing at all times so they could board by manipulating the machine. If he was truly able to redirect the consequences of piloting into those canisters of his, then a pilot should be able to utilize the MAC remotely without harming themselves.

But Guinevere had a good idea of what was in those canisters, so she had no intention of giving the design any merit. It was nothing more than a savage and crude torture device when compared to her Trahir system.

But this was what Guinevere had to pilot.

She should be able to operate the machine without activating the large canister that was half-submerged in the core of the MAC. At least, she was under the impression it was possible.

She climbed into the oddly peaceful-looking golem of war and powered it on.

Something immediately felt wrong as a voice seemed to speak directly into her mind, “Finally, I thought I could do it myself but… I’m so sorry my comrades. I couldn’t save any of you, could I?”

Guinevere’s body was racked with an intense pain as her brain continued to think words that she herself wasn’t thinking.

“Oh, the prisoner from that city we flattened. I guess I should be happy it was you instead of that cockroach. Ukko sure was right about him.” The voice seemed to have an oddly childlike sound to it.

Guinevere could feel the horror in the pit of her stomach before the little girl said her next line.

“Well, looks like we’ll be working together for a bit, you can still refer to me as Vice Admiral. I’ll accept nothing less than complete obedience little missy. It turns out I can actually do quite a few things even with… well, with all my bits and pieces being gone.” The little girl sounded uncharacteristically sad as the voice inside Guinevere’s head softened just a bit, “I should probably be happy to exist at all though, shouldn’t I? After all, Ukko did this for me, right?”

Guinevere began to cry. It wasn’t just her own emotions forcing the streams of tears to flow, she could push that much down. It was the feelings of the little girl that were seeping into her as well. There was simply too much sadness to fight off.

It felt as if a small hand had been placed on her back, “Come on crybaby, we don’t have time for that. We need to find Ukko, so let’s get started, okay?”

Guinevere felt nauseous once more as the emotions of revenge and hatred battled it out with emotions of love and camaraderie. Her mind was crumbling. It was more than just an emotional onslaught, it felt as if her very organs were being played with like clay on a pottery wheel.

Spinning and shaping and spinning and shaping.

Guinevere was losing her grip.

She was-

She bit down on her tongue, literally chopping off a chunk that she spat out onto the mesh-metal flooring of the cockpit.

This changed nothing. Nothing. Her desire for revenge. Her desire to kill. Her desire to put an end to all of this. Her desires wouldn’t be overwritten so easily. She gripped the controls and felt as if she were tethered back down to reality.

“Gross, is that your tongue?” The voice giggled and sounded the same as any other child’s voice as it continued, “Adults should probably know this, but you’re supposed to chew your food.”

Only someone as messed up as that child could make a joke out of such a situation. Guinevere’s heart ached in a way that was out of place, even amongst all the other internal strife that had been wreaking havoc on her body since she had entered the cockpit. Why did it have to be her? “Vice Admiral, let’s go. Let’s finish this.”

“Yup. Sounds good to me.” the voice stopped for a moment and continued on in a slightly more serious tone, “Oh and, you should probably know we’re not alone in here.”

“What?”

“Well yeah, you didn’t think I killed my own comrades in there, did you?”

~~~

Guinevere was amazed at how easy it was to control the machine.

In fact, it almost felt like she wasn’t doing any work at all. The Vice Admiral seemed to be piloting through Guinevere, and it was clear that she was more than happy to do so. Guinevere even had the slightest smile peek through as she listened to the little girl make sound effects as she zipped around the battlefield. The machine itself was performing above expectations as well and the Vice Admiral was certainly happy with it, though she did miss her battleship style cannon emplacements. She simply had to make do with the two full length cannons secured to the hips of the MAC. When not in use they would pivot and hang down like a set of sword scabbards. Of course, the Vice Admiral had been making use of them as they flew around the battlefield.

But it wasn’t entirely as if the machine were on autopilot, Guinevere still played a significant role. The Vice Admiral was impressed with how well Guinevere was managing.

The little girl was also very clear about how much better of a pilot she would have been on her own, without Guinevere ‘taking up space’.

There was actually another reason why Guinevere was likely piloting better than usual though. She wanted to thoroughly distract herself from the Vice Admiral’s revelation.

She wasn’t sure whether or not to trust the girl, but the fear was hard to turn away from.

Supposedly, the MACs themselves had something in them… something alive. Though, as the Vice Admiral said, ‘alive’ might not be the right word.

Given that all the cores for MACs were supplied by a singular company and had never been replicated by a third party, Guinevere’s imagination was allowed to run wild. This wasn’t what she wanted her mind to be busying itself with, hence why she focused so intently on her piloting.

A new variable like this could interfere with Guinevere’s goal. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to deal with any of this. She simply wanted to finish her work here and be done with everything. With all of it.

“Hey, what’d you do that for? We could’ve flattened that whole battery Guinny!”

“Guinny?”

“Yeah, I figure if we’re gonna be more than just prisoner and super awesome leader of The Stragglers, I should probably give you a nickname. Like it?”

“Isn’t Ukko the leader though?”

“Well, between you and me, I’m way better than him. It’s probably for the best if you just think of me as the super awesome leader and him as… I dunno, my underling?”

Guinevere laughed, somehow in the midst of all this madness, she laughed.

But she tried to keep a comfortable distance with any of these… good emotions. She had been trying to see who had more control in the machine with opportunities like that; not shooting that target or altering their course slightly. Killing Ukko would be the ultimate test of who had more power here, but Guinevere simply had to believe in her own hatred. Her own lust for revenge.

They continued to fly across the battlefield, seemingly untouchable as they weaved through incoming attacks and laid waste to anything that was even a vague threat to their ultimate destination. The Vice Admiral had been trying to track Ukko’s machine, but he hadn’t shown up on any of the radar scans so far.

The rain continued to trickle down, even with the clear blue skies now above them and the ocean seemingly so close.

It was almost eerily simple to fly through the warzone and arrive at the beach. The beach that was the goal of The Straggler’s whole mission.

“So, should we retrace our steps? I’m sure he’s just caught up in a fight back there.”

“Oh no, that doesn’t sound like Ukko at all. He’s the Admiral you know.”

“I thought you were the super great leader here?”

“Super awesome leader, and yes, I am. But he’s the Admiral. Very different Guinny, very different.”

Guinevere sighed as she stared at the ocean. It wasn’t exactly the ideal scenario, but she did manage to see the ocean with the girl. Maybe that would make her final step off that cliff just a bit easier. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to imagine that cliff.

No matter how hard she tried, she still couldn’t see herself alone and for some reason she felt angrier and angrier at the shadow that stood beside her. It didn’t seem to be anyone in particular, but Guinevere had started to hate it fiercely. She wasn’t sure why…

She shrugged off the idea. It was a problem for later.

“So what? We just wait here and hope he shows up? That doesn’t sound like a very good plan Miss Vice Admiral.”

“Gross. Don’t add ‘Miss’. I’m the Vice Admiral, not some doll.” In her mind’s eye, Guinevere could see the child spitting at the idea, “He’ll be here soon. This was what The Stragglers set out to do, so Ukko is bound to do it.”

Guinevere tensed up as she realized something was actually approaching. She gripped the control sticks all the tighter and prepared to go to war with not only Ukko and Jace, but the Vice Admiral’s goals as well.

But apparently she got herself psyched up for nothing.

“Oh hey, it’s little Bonn.” the Vice Admiral sounded as if she were just seeing a good friend passing by on the street.

“What? Why would she…”

Bonnie’s voice now entered Guinevere’s machine.

It was starting to feel crowded in this cockpit, Guinevere thought to herself.

“Identify yourself.”

“It’s Guinevere.”

The fairly normal looking MAC raised a long rifle and planted it directly against the core of Guinevere’s machine. The MAC was a standard military variant. A CIWS on one shoulder and a rocket battery on the other. A long rifle in the right hand and a basic metal chunk formed into a hatchet was gripped in the left hand.

Bonnie continued calmly, “Why are you here? And, just so we’re all on the same page, I’d like a bit more honesty than when I was last asking you questions.”

Before Guinevere had a chance to answer, a streak of light shot overhead.

It fell like a comet that burned toward the Earth and stopped itself on the beach alongside the two MACs.

It was strange, but the machine almost seemed to stare longingly at the submerged city that was just off the coast. Guinevere wondered if that was the Vice Admiral’s way of viewing the machine. After all, Guinevere would never use the term ‘longingly’ to describe a machine.

After that came the next realization.

The armor, though it was covered with a strange organic mess of intertwined muscles and meats, had a dull golden glow underneath.

The rifle in its hands, though it was inflamed with purple tinted pustules, was also far too recognizable.

“Ukko.”

Two voices shared the same word in the cramped cockpit.

One voice held a hint of hope mixed with horror.

The other voice held only hatred.

The tiny waves continued to fall idly onto the beach, unaware and unconcerned by the battle that was about to take place.