Let's Play The Spirit Engine 2: professor

professor_prof

Let's Play The Spirit Engine 2

May 26, 2011 14:10

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Chapter 9: Return to Longreach

Part 2: Break Through

Let's hope so. That leaves three less for us to content with if we can catch up with Batiste again. But we're still outmatched.

I've never killed anyone before. I wish we hadn't had to do that. There must have been some other way. Something we could have said. Something we could have done!

We'll never know. It's odd. This is the first time I've killed another human. It doesn't feel as good as I expected. In fact, I don't think it sits well with me at all.

I-I... (cough)

I can, my friend, but I fear that my breaths grow ever too shallow. I sppear to have acquired a rather serious and inconvenient wound, and I'm out of the race. The burden is now yours alone to bear.
The prince's destination will be the mausoleum and the entrance it provides to the world beneath ours. You cannot prevent him gaining access to the ruins, but you can still follow his trail if you hurry.

We can't possibly get to the mausoleum in time! Half the armed forces in the southern hemisphere must stand between here and there.

If the only way out is through, we must take it. The battlefield is our destination.

I don't think I can do this, Denever. I'm not a soldier! I've already taken a live that was not my own. That alone is one too many. I cannot go out onto the battlefield and take another. It goes against everything I believe in.

Sometimes we are called upon to step up and become something we are not, PyanPau, even if we do not like the transformation or the responsibility it places upon us.
It would be worse to let a greater number of people die to keep your conscience clean. That's what may happen if Batiste finds what he's looking for in those ruins.
We have to choose the lesser of two evils. We already failed to do that when we let them take Isabelle. We don't have the luxury of making the same mistake a second time. There's too much at stake.

Maybe we don't need to do this, Denever. For once, the easiest option open to us may also be the best.
Perhaps Batiste is right. Perhaps he is our best hope for the freedom mankind has been denied.

I don't think we're in a position to judge, Ionae. And if we're not, then Batiste certainly isn't either. We've no idea what he'll do once he gets inside those ruins, or what he has planned for Isabelle.
Yes, most likely the future of the world should not be held in the many hands of the Rakari. But neither should it be left in the hands of any one man, let alone such an angry, damaged and dangerous boy.
For the sake of all those millions of ordinary people whose humble voice is lost here as it has always been, we have to stop him. We can worry about what happens to the world once it's safe.

Alright. I wasn't planning to sit here and wait, anyway. The brat is due a beating. Are you coming, PyanPau?

Yes. I'm not ready, but I am coming with you. I'm not letting you do this alone. Let's go.

History lies before us, comrades. Let us not keep it waiting.

What is this place? Where are we going?

This is our home, Isabelle. We've just never known it. Little wonder that it is so unfamiliar. This place has lain here undisturbed for millenia, and you are the last person on Medea whose blood it remembers.
Our ancestors were self-made supermen, girl. The Rakari have spent untold generations trying to breed our potential out of us, but they haven't succeeded just yet. It is our duty to try to reclaim our past for all humanity before we atrophy too far.

M-Maybe all humanity doesn't want this. You don't speak for anybody but yourself!

You have a front row seat to the liberation of the human race, girl. A bright new dawn. Could you at least try and sound a little grateful? You are so very lucky to be here.

I don't want to go anywhere with you! You're crazy, and I hate you! Please, let me go!

Do you see how well conditioned they have her? Unprepared to think or to consider any alternate possibilities beyond what she has been taught. When you control the children, you control the future.

It will be no easy task to undo thousands of years of brainwashing. I may be regarded by these cattle as a villain now, but in another thousand years, our people will look back on this history from their gleaming spires and call me a hero.

You'll never be a hero! You're just a grown up bully. The only way you can be big is to hurt other people and take things from them.
You'll never win. Ionae and PyanPau and Denever are going to come down here and stop you!

I don't doubt that they will try. Thank you so very much for reminding us, child. Julius, how many more doors do we need her for?

If Doctor Miles's notes are correct, none, my Prince. There are no locks upon the inner chambers. It is as if the place were barricaded from the inside to keep something out. Now that we no longer need her, we can discard her.

What?! You can't leave her in here! She's just a little girl, my Prince. She's innocent.

There is no such thing as innocence, Shala. There are the brave and the free, those who collaborate by action, and those who collaborate by inaction.

She's thirteen, my Prince! She's too young even to have done nothing!

I was only eleven when I saw my parents murdered. Our governors tried to take that memory from me and deny me my life.
I was not too young to be spared the sound of their assassins breaking into our shattered coach to finish the deed, or my mother's screams as she shielded my body from their blades with hers.

I would have joined them in the great beyond had you and shara not thrown yourselves to my defense. Sometimes I wish I had...

I'm so sorry, my Prince. I still see our failure when I close my eyes at night. We should have known that the road ahead was not safe. There should have been two of us in the stagecoach with you.

It's alright, Shala, dry your tears. I'm not angry with you.

Age means nothing to our foes. There will be time for such noble sentiments in the New World, but this is not that world. We must be ruthless in order to achieve it. We haev discussed this, have we not?

Yes, my Prince. Progress requires sacrifice.

And sometimes those sacrifices must be our morals. Leave the girl, she's a liability. We can't have her running loose within the World Eye. She can wait here, alone with her ancestors.

As for her friends, they're fast running out of time to interfere with our plans. They'll never catch up now...

We'll have to try and break through to the mausoleum. Let us pray there are some Lereftese soldiers out there still capable of fighting, or we'll be on our own.

AND SO IT BEGINS.

We have a limited time to break through all the enemy forces between us and the Mausoleum. We have some extra tricks available to us, but we'll keep those on hold for now...