“I suck at children. Goddamnit, out of everything, I can’t deal with them. How the hell can someone even raise one? They must be a pain to manage. And I somehow am suddenly required to save one. Everything is a joke.”
- Excerpt from Lieutenant Hoffman’s Journal Entries.
+++
+++ Alizée Amboise +++
Unknown
“Attention! Whoever survived over there, lower your heads immediately!”
A young girl, crying as the gigantic wolfish creature opened its mouth, turned in the direction of the unknown metallic voice. The carriage convoy that was carrying her was ambushed by these magical beasts—completely tearing down their security contingent alongside her parents.
Yet somehow, someone came. The foreign voice’s language was familiar to her, even if she didn’t understand it. Instead of cowering into the ground however, her eyes locked on another seemingly demonic monster that appeared from the darkness—gray, six-legged, with seemingly two blue glowing eyes on its head, the monster charged forward, and it began spitting fire on the night wolves that attacked her and her family’s convoy.
The sight of it made her scream, as the metallic creature’s almost long nose, similar to the “cannons” that those “soldiers” fielded, boomed—turning one of the massive night wolves into red mist. One of the night wolves snarled and growled, launching magical soundwaves that broke trees and stone—but the metallic creature dodged it, before unleashing a hellish torrent of fire and downing the night wolf.
The last two night wolves glowed red, channeling their magic for the fight, as they charged at the metallic creature. But it jumped on one of them, before slicing its back with its legs that protruded a razor mid-air, just as its head turned into the last night wolf that seemed to be terrified of the new apex predator its pack just encountered.
But the terror in its eyes didn’t last, its blood pooling down after a full hail of the fiery death that its head angrily spat.
The girl shivered in fear, as the monster’s frontal legs sliced out of the downed night wolf, its body now slightly covered by the splashes of blood from its defeated foes, before it slowly crawled throughout the road, its head seemingly inspecting the surroundings for any remaining enemies.
She curled further in fear, her head slightly shaking, as if begging the creature not to slaughter her as well, tears streaming down her eyes—until something opened.
A man emerged from it—a Vanus, like her, with dirty brown hair, glowing blue eyes, glasses, and a uniform of a similar color pattern to the beast he seemed to ride. He was holding something similar to what her family’s guards held, those “matchlock muskets” as they called it, but it was smaller, jet black, and far sleekier.
He seemed almost a dark shadow in the night as his glowing blue eyes locked at her, yet his voice was warm.
“It’s okay, little one. It’ll be alright.”
+++
+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++
Unknown
Oh no. Yep…I probably scared her. Right…so how am I supposed to approach this?
Hans certainly didn’t expect whatever that was. Nor did he expect whatever the hell that [SYSTEM] that kept appearing on his vision and HUD was. What he did know was that he downed the [NIGHT WOLF] entities that were around this convoy’s vicinity, which seemed to have attacked them before he arrived.
[QUICK REPORT INCOMING]
[FOUR NIGHT WOLVES (LVL. 5) LIQUIDATED]
[PROGRESS TO LVL.2: 75%]
[AVAILABLE ARCANE POINTS: 18]
Hans ignored the anomalous “reports” that were appearing in his vision, focusing on the girl before him. He’d figure out what the hell that was later on. For now, his attention was solely aimed at the young girl before her. She wore a frilly black dress, and she strangely had silver hair, he noted. Dyed perhaps? And…was that a horn? Her ears were also…a bit strange, almost knife-like? More importantly, the young girl seemed deathly terrified of him.
And so, Hans slowly climbed down from the chassis of his mech, slinging his SMG (Submachine Gun) to his back and assuming a non-threatening pose. He began speaking to her to calm down, telling her that everything was alright, but the girl squirmed backward, away from him, into one of the half-destroyed carriages.
And then, she spoke, stuttering in fear.
“Please...sir, please don't kill me…”
Hans didn’t understand that. Her accent definitely was way off, but he knew those words sounded suspiciously Flandrish, the language of the Flandrian people. Was he then in the Empire’s countryside?
Cautiously, Hans tried to ask something stupid in the roughest accent he could muster in an ill attempt to speak Albionese.
“Albion? Do you…do you speak Albionese?”
The girl, as expected, didn’t understand him, as she just stared at him. Hans didn’t know what the hell could he do. There was…a bit of a language barrier here. And while he knew some Flandrian, it was mostly the unfortunate words that…well…had their other uses…
I mean, at least we have the courtesy to use their tongue to insult them before shooting them.
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Hans mentally slapped himself. He could have at least learned some other words and phrases like, “Please don’t shoot,” or “I surrender,” and even, “I’ll gladly kiss the Emperor’s boots.” Instead, all he knew was, “Die Imperial pigs,” or, “Eat shit,” and every other “useful” phrase he would find no use in this situation.
He held his hand up as he kneeled to her, the little girl still looking at him suspiciously. Now how would he calm her down? Crap if he knew. He wasn’t a babysitter, nor a daycare worker, and he was never particularly good with children, but…
She probably lost her family here. And that…that was bad. The entire carriage convoy was down. There were dead horses and armed people on the road. The girl must be really badly traumatized. Briefly, he wondered if there would be emergency services of local authorities speeding toward this area to check in and maybe help her.
But considering we’re in bumfuck nowhere…
It seemed that task would fall to him. He sighed, trying to figure out a way to perhaps soothe the terrified girl. Awkwardly, he tried to fish out something from his pocket, pulling out a chocolate bar from it.
He tried presenting it to her with an awkward smile—the best he could muster, as the girl stared at him blankly. Internally, Hans was dying at his pitiful attempts.
Why does everyone have to look at me as if I’m about to poison them just for offering food?
“Chocolate…” he attempted, pointing at it with his gloved hands. “Chocolate…yes, chocolate…”
+++
+++ Alizée Amboise +++
“Chocolate...yes, chocolate...it's good, yes. I swear, no kidding.”
The girl, Alizée, seemed less terrified of the man before her as he attempted to present to her…something. Alizée wasn’t stupid, this man, this…whoever this man was, he must be trying to give it to her, for some reason.
He kept repeating the words, “Schokolade”, “gut”, and “ja” to her, which Alizée understood as food of some sort, and that the man must be attempting to feed her with it because it was “gut”, or something.
Does he mean…good?
The man at this point seemed…nervous. Almost as if he was panicking at her lack of response. The little girl found that quite curious, as her initial fear slightly waned. Perhaps this man was just a bystander who really tried to rescue them, instead of a hostile being. She had initially assumed him to be a bandit of sorts, but instead of looting her and her family’s convoy, he was here, trying to calm her down.
“Goddess…this isn’t working.”
The man seemed to be close to giving up on her. Meekly, Alizée accepted the offering, as the man’s smile returned to his face. She didn’t really know what it was, who he was, and if it was safe. But Alizée tried to return a meek, thankful smile that immediately turned into an embarrassed blush when her hungry stomach growled.
The man gave a hearty laugh at her display.
“You seem hungry, yes?”
The man assisted her to open it, revealing something similar to what she always loved to drink at home. Chocolate, it was chocolate, she realized as she took her first bite. It was soft and sweet. And it definitely helped her hunger. Alizée’s guard finally faltered, as she began snacking on it, trying to forget the nightmarish scenes earlier of her mother and father being devoured by those wolves.
+++
+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++
Unknown
Helping someone who could be an Imperial civilian and possibly revealing your position? Hans, you’re about to get court-martialed. However, who cared about the Confederate Army’s higher chain of command at this point? He laughed inside. Considering the fact that these people used horses and the fact that there were those strange creatures that attacked them—Hans was now taking things at face value.
There was a high chance that he was nowhere on Terra.
Hans stood up, looking at the surroundings as the girl ate her chocolate. It seemed that she really was the last, and no one else survived. He was far too late. Not that he had much of a chance as he only managed to attack upon finding them on the road—when all of them were already devoured except her.
And I thought I could ask the locals out for some intel. Well, that was now off the table. He looked back at the silver-haired girl, who seemed to be in her own world as she ate her chocolate. She was closing her eyes at each bite until some tears streamed down her cheek. She seemed to be muttering something about her “mama” or “papa” from what Hans could deduce.
Hans heard a growl from the side. One of the wolves seemed to be mewling out in pain, bleeding on the side from the wounds that Hans’ MG24 inflicted on it. While the beast must have indeed murdered these people, Hans knew that much like everything else in nature, it was merely trying to survive.
He fished out his pistol and approached it. He prepared his Ruger Z08 pistol while giving the beast’s head a gentle pat with his gloved hand. It growled at him, but it was too weak to attack any further. His pistol was gently aimed straight at its head, as Hans spoke to it softly.
“It’ll be alright…it’s all over now…”
He pulled the trigger to end its misery.
Hope she didn’t see or hear that. His Ruger was suppressed, so what came out of his dirty job was nothing but a silent pew. Damn, these creatures are pretty big for wolves too. Certainly, they seemed gigantic. He could also see these patterns that he remembered to be glowing yellow on its body. Now, there was none of it.
How fantastic. His mind thought. A new undiscovered species. I bet the nutheads back home would have a field day if they saw this.
Hans returned to his task. He began scouring each carriage for anything of importance. He found some maps, notebooks, and other paper items that he imagined would be useful if he understood the words that these people used. He kept a close eye on the young girl who seemed to be keeping to herself after she finished her snack, making sure that nothing would threaten her.
Hans however avoided even touching any of the bodies to loot them. Instead, he began pulling them to the side of the road in order to line them up into a neat row on the grass. While he didn’t have time to bury them all, he’d at least place them to the side so no speeding dipshit would just drive over them. By the time he was done, he gave them a solemn bow of respect, before doing a brief prayer for them.
He didn’t believe in the goddess, but if souls and heaven existed, he wished them a good journey toward it.
He turned back to the girl and kneeled to her.
“Hey, kid. Let’s go?”
The girl looked up at him before she muttered something.
“Alizée,” she said, pointing to herself. “Alizée.”
He understood what she was trying to say. Alizée huh? So that was her name…
“Hans,” he said, pointing to himself. “Hans…” he then pointed to her. “Alizée.”
The girl nodded meekly before she pointed her finger at him as well. “Hans.”
“Yep, that’s my name kid…or, well, Alizée.” He held his hand to her. “Let’s get you somewhere safer.”
The young girl took his hand, as Hans made his final plans for her. Surely, there would be someplace somewhere that could take her in.
He just needed to give her a ride there.