~ three

After the intermission, dust settled, green screen, occasional film crew passing with movie snacks, fading in with the sound ~

Doe rolls out the coffin on a dolly in front of the screen. He props it up, leans on it and lights a blunt with a Zippo.

Off camera - "Hey put that out !"

Doe - "Hey Fuck you !"

He unfastens the straps and walks off annoyed, checks his watch and flips the blunt behind him at the coffin.  The Witness explodes from it as the green screen clicks to the active battlefield. 

"!!! YOU WERE THERE !!!"

('Bring the Noise' live by Public Enemy with Anthrax)

 

The forward ops launches their distracting volley while the witness charges into the line.  Some see and fire twitching him a bit before he takes the first one, illness immediately setting.  

~ Elizabeth and the general fuck mad, while outside the office the soldier load for battle.

The storms raise in the distance as the sky grows darker over head from the space-time distortions, electromagnetism apparent in the air.

~ She rides him hard, holding his head to her chest while watching the soldiers depart through the window.  She turns attention back to him with a smile as the jets launch

The witness' effect is exponential, tearing through their ranks as the dead start climbing the walker chains dragging and into the control, chaos along the front halting the rest.

~ While they do well, helicopters depart loaded, the long rows heading for the road.

Ops continues their bombardment with ammo running low, destruction to the front line walkers, a wall of wreckage, terror screams over it.

~ in a good looking club ~

Elizabeth - "I think I may actually be enjoying myself."

General - Smiles understanding, "Why do you think that is ?"

...

Elizabeth - Smiles, "Because you're that smart, that good, still good looking and I just can't seem to see past your power."

General - "Because of what we can do ?"

Elizabeth - "Because of what we just did."

He smiles, they toast.

Elizabeth - Looks around, nothing but strangers, and back with a smile.  "What time is it ?"

________

Young Thesis with Empirical and the Architect ~

Empirical - "But these deployment planks ... why do they slope inward at the bottom? It looks to waste disembarkation space."

Architect - Smiles, "Ah yes ! That is so that the ship's massive weight may gouge the planet's surface," shaking his fist, "scarring it as you deploy."

Empirical - Smiles "Ahhh ... yes.   Of course.  I like that."

Thesis - "But why does it scar the surface ?"

They look at him as though he were insane.

Empirical - "To pave the edges of the road the missiles make."

A raised brow back to the returning look from the Architect.

...

Thesis - "Ah.  Yes.  Of course."

He meanders and leaves the room, returning to replace the model back on the table and leaving again while they stare in confusion.

Empirical - After Thesis leaves, "... it's his mother."

Architect - "Ah ... yes.   I understand.  It's ... my own daughter ... she's become ..."  He turns his head away, "she's become a superhero ..."

Empirical - Stares gravely, putting his hand on his shoulder, "I am so sorry."

The Architect nods, head down.
________

The planks fly open on the upside down craft spilling dead and wreckage across the site.  Empirical pulls himself from the pile in the distance while the witness charges, followed by ever more like him, taken from both sides.

Empirical watches in brief horror, then starts down the heap in resolution to deal with it personally until Nocturne's hand grabs his ankle from the wrecked carnage, dragging him scraping back into the heap, reaching last with his hand before dragged under.

________

Nyx now wearing Charon's cloak for the cold and carrying his pole as an afterthought heads downward into the deep caverns. She hears a beast among the distant clamor of the dead and smiles, the black unicorn exits the shadows, his burning eyes now embers.

Nyx - "Oh Surly ..."  She puts her forehead on his beneath the horn as he lowers it, "How did you end up here ?"

He snorts.
________

Inside the inverted cruiser, an area walled by wreckage and dead.

Empirical - Circling and scenting her as food, "What are you ?"

Nocturne - Circling in turn, "No idea."

They hear a roar, followed by clanging in the echoing chamber.

Nocturne - Smiling, "He's an army."
________

As Nyx walks deeper next to the unicorn, droves come walking the opposite way.  Old friends pause and wave, disappearing, visions passing, yet an occasional solid walker bumping through in the crowd.

Eurydice pushes hard to escape in the throng.

Nyx - "Oops."

Surly grunts a laugh.
________

Empirical looks to a louder sound approaching then back to Nocturne, finding her gone.  Looking back to the sound, he sees the witness staring, with distant movement crawling behind.

Witness - "Already dead."
________

Nyx and Surly approach a man covered in rough furs, a dark rough bag at his side. He blows into a bundle of reeds, tightly bound, wisps of smoke exiting the bundle.

Nyx - "Prometheus ... why are you still here ?  You're free."

Prometheus - Handing her the bundle, "No.  This.".

Nyx takes it cautiously, looking up as he removes and hands her the bag.

Prometheus - Looking from her to the bag and back, he shakes it once. "You take it.  I will be free."

Nyx - "... no.  It's not for me."  She reaches the bundle back to him.

Prometheus - "You take it !"  He breathes hard into the bundle, dousing her her face in smoke, she falls back.
____

Nyx watches again as the last Gargareans meet the Greek soldiers, she watches as the Amazons escape with her cloaked, running in the woods, Greeks falling to Gargarean arrows.

The Greeks burn the woods with catapulted fire, rolling through in destruction. The Amazons escape, the Gargareans cover them and do not.
________

The witness stares cautiously at Empirical, sniffing him.  A clanging sound turns Empirical's head where the witness observed, then back.

Architect - Hissing a shriek, "Already Dead !"

A hoard pours at Empirical's back, pulling him down and trying to tear to no effect.  Confusion turns to rage as Empirical starts breaking and throwing them, pieces crawling back as the junk walls pry with his own dead crew.
________

Nyx wakes lying down to Surly's now burning eyes, Prometheus gone, the bag at her side.  She checks it, the bundle still burns.  She looks up and closes her eyes with gritted teeth, licks them in annoyance and gets up moving.

Passing through more of the dead fleeing the other way, another man standing, painting an intricate work on the far wall, a woman laying propped by the elbow watching.

Nyx - Smiling then looking around in the darkness, "Epimetheus ! You're free !"   

He paints on without notice.

Pandora - Smiles wicked back at her, "Not by me."  She gets up to approach, "But I've got what you came for, 'Gorgon'."

Nyx - A step back into readiness, "I came for the Gargareans."

Pandora - Stepping close, with cruelty.  "That's right.  You came for fucking Hope !"  She palm strike's Nyx's sternum hard, throwing her back as all fades away to an empty room, leaving only the painting.  

Rising Nyx examines the completed work, a depiction of Milton's rings but the style Buddhist in wide descending bordering rectangles down to the core, the tortures depicted and for what crimes shown.
________

They fall from the ceiling and crawl from walls, grab at his feet atop the piles. Nocturne charges through and hits his head with a solid pipe knocking him to his knees, the dead pulling and piling.

He throws them off in a rage, breaking the last spine over his knee as he's hit across the face with the pipe.  He twists down again as they pull ... he roars his rage as they pull him under again.
________

Nyx and the unicorn walk across a broad cavern to a giant of a man sitting on stone, seething eyes staring back in examination before a shirt smile and lust in the eyes.

Nyx - Looking up at him with a smile, "Menoetius.  You're the next ingredient."
________

Another hit hard across Empirical's face as he pulls himself half from the pile. He twists from the impact to see Architect throw his hands around his throat, struggling to push him down into a now writhing mass of broken dead.

Another hit across the head.  And another.  And another while the Architect chokes, grinding his teeth.
________________

Pragmatism stands in the open command center on the hill watching the shortly slowed onslaught.  He lowers the binoculars.  Back up, checking the trench digging, then the oncoming storms drawn to them from all sides.

As the jets arrive for an immediate preliminary sweep over the battlefield, they observe the crashed battle cruiser creates a wall, extended by the wreckage of the walkers, a tangle of their jam past it.

Pragmatism watches the line walls with Timepiece, the few stragglers over picked off.  He calls on the comm.  "Eastern line, I got no eyes.  You hold ?"

Comm back - Zombies gunned down in a short row, "Picking them off as we go ... we just got reinforced.  But they seem almost ... content where they are."

The helicopters arrive at the front near Pragmatism, the General exiting and walking directly to.

General - "I understand this is your shit show ?"

Pragmatism - Turns and looks over the insignias, then back across the field with the binoculars.  "Yours now."

The Airship crew are grouped together, seven of each, one each painting skulls on the faces of all the like others.  Storms gather around, tornadoes approach from the distance as soldiers group nearby.

General - "What are they doing ?"

Timepiece - "They already died.   Right here.  At least they should have and they know that."

Some pray together, some mourn and drink, some salute as the skulls separate from the rest and walk toward the field.
____

At the forward ops.

Pragmatism - "So now, to protect the time-line, they have to die."

...

General - "And if they fail ?"

____

Orpheus and Eurydice hold hands in the sunset before the distant city, their new world.  Now cleared the airships patrol, horizon lit with the city's glow.
____

Nocturne - Her voice in the writhing darkness, moans from the hoard burying Empirical, "It's a sickness I've got."

Her heel presses his forehead back down into the pile.

Nocturne - "Down the hole, little Alice, down the hole ... I've got to know."

He struggles free in renewed rage, sitting upright as Architect thrusts his hand into Empirical's mouth, grabbing the back of the head with the other to force it down, leaning him back into the pile almost gently.

Architect - "... sleep now."

Nocturne - Echoing unseen, "I have to know who's stronger."

Nocturne - Standing a distance behind the Architect, a hoard pulling at her into the walls without resistance, "I've got to know."

She's pulled in as he's forced back down choking by the Architect.
____

Followed by the unicorn, Nyx reaches a hilltop, a dark version of the battlefield. She sees a man looking over holding a bow.

Nyx - Calls to him in the wind, "Gargarean !"

He turns back to look at her, "Who says that word ?!"

Nyx - "We need you."

Gargarean - "All you'd ever need say."  He turns to the cliff, "Gargareans !  We Ride."

Thousands cheer from over the cliffs, and mounting horses, turning for path.  Menoetius roars to the cave's high with them, absorbing into the stone and walls becoming the Earth's quake again.  

The caves shake hard as the wall begins to crack before the riders.
________________

Beef (from the airport) drops a mechanism in front of Timepiece at the command center.  She's looking down the hill with her scope, ranging the individual battles, taking a snipe to give random home advantages.

Beef - "Engine core.  Dug it out.  Are you sure this reality can take it ?  It's a bigger boom.  Might tear."

Timepiece - "If it can't, they sure as hell aren't surviving the next book.  So a bigger boom it shall be.  The storms will centralize it."

Beef - "Hnnn ..."

Timepiece - "And if we fail now, then we fix that ship and steal steal the same singularity core from the same place we stole if from this time tomorrow.  When security's distracted.  And then it's our turn to make that run.  Mine too."

General - "How many times have you people done this ?"

Timepiece - Crew approaching, "No one even knows any more.  No one remembers anything else.  This is my first time.  The youngest retrieve.  This battle ... it's what they do.  What we do.  As many times as it takes and each time we learn a better way to do it.   Victory is inevitable."  She looks at pragmatism, "Under these conditions."

Doe walks up and puts his envelope on the table and lights a cigarette, Pragmatism's eyes following the lighter.  Doe takes a drag and hands the cigarette to Pragmatism.  Wind around them rises, scattering the papers in a whirlwind.

Pragmatism - Inhales deeply and throws it down, stamping it with his foot's hydraulics, "Guess that makes it my time."