#v. icarus

The benefit of being really, really, really high up on this mountain was being damn near impossible to surprise. Vast distances were available to him through his scope, and he'd watched her make her way up here carefully, in case she was followed. To his knowledge, she hadn't been.

He's turning an attachable thermal scope over in his hands as he asks it, idling. He's been trying to look more towards the stars lately. It wasn't something he was ever into, stargazing. Down to earth was always his style. But these days he doesn't much like looking at the world around him.

A stick of C4. Transportable and potent. She takes a sec, tosses it to herself end over end. Good - her depth perception isn't completely shot. Then, she unbuckles one shoulder of her plate carrier and tucks it in close to her side.

Piers is already looking at her. Good. Her stride stays mostly confident as she approaches, but her breathing's still ragged despite the fact that it's just a light jog. "Okay... sir. Obviously we're on a short clock now, so. I'm gonna stay in the game as long as I can. I do anything - start making a weird noise, can't stay on my feet, start scratching too much, anything weird at all."

Her other bloodstained hand's gripping the detonator. She holds it out. "You're the one guy I trust for this. Don't disappoint me."

from @crucialelement

'Sir'. A sign of respect, and an uncommon formality with Emily. She must really think she's about to die.

Piers is unimpressed. Not unmoved, just unimpressed. C4--actual C4? She just had that, at the ready? This is the kind of material their explosives expert typically handled, and here she was ready to explode at a moment's notice. Piers can only suppose she's lucky no stray projectiles have struck it.

He has a feeling he knows why she chose explosives, even if they presented a risk. Part of it had to be caution, just hoping it didn't end up causing problems if she did turn out to be a threat to the team or their goals. Even if you could put down a zombie, it wasn't always a clean kill with one bullet to the skull, and that went double for more complex bio-organic weapons.

He reaches a hand out, though it stops short, hovering for a second rather than grasp the detonator she's offered him.

Of course, there was also the fact that it was the least ugly death, and the simplest expiration. It removed the after. What a person looked like after infection, what injuries they'd sustained after it, it presented the possibility of terminal infection--inevitable death of the self--being immediately paired with the finality of a detonation. Complete removal of everything ugly and complicated and difficult to deal with from the equation. It's probably how he would've preferred to go out...how he actually had, once upon a time, before that had turned out not to be the end.

Still, he can't say he's ready to flip the kill switch on Emily's life, especially not so unexpectedly. He's quiet and impassive as he surveys her state, her injuries. She had a serious chunk taken out of her, and a lot of good reason to believe she was infected. She had done the math.

But Piers is pretty good at math himself. And he'll take the detonator--reaching out and slowly wrapping his gloved fingers around it, before stowing it in a pouch he thinks is unlikely to get damaged. And he's not using it today. If the worst should happen, and if things should come to it, he's going to take every other option first.

"You think about death too much." he says bluntly.

Not cold, just direct.

"Think about life instead. There's a lot you're still best suited for. If you're trusting me with this, then that means I'm deciding when the clock runs out. Get to the infirmary. We're gonna quarantine you."

She's too prepared to die, he thinks. He gets the practical reasons of behaving that way, of course. But he wants a little more fight in her, if she's going to be the Hound Wolf Squad's main surveillance and scouting operator.

fun little item get meme

Your very own anti-materiel rifle, a modified Barrett M82 custom that used 12.7mm rounds. A bulky and heavy weapon designed to punch through and destroy military hardware. Uniquely suited for warfare, no pretense about hunting deer to be heard of.

The weapon had become identified with you over the course of your career with the B.S.A.A., a mark of sheer audacity given that your use of it would typically be termed mis-use, but in your extremely capable hands, was instead a mark of how thoroughly you had mastered sniper combat. Handling recoil like that while standing up or on one knee, and still hitting targets at well beyond normal rifle ranges, was why you were the right hand of Alpha Team.

The weapon was originally lost in the confrontation with HAOS that resulted in your mutation, and afterwards, had become effectively useless, handicapped as you were. You had not expected to ever see it again, but it seems some of your pals at the Guild ended up salvaging it from the depths.

You had repaired it and tried to get back into the familiar poised positions to fire it effectively...but it just hadn't worked. Your shots kept landing off-center. The way your arm was structured now was different than it was before, and as a result, muscle memory kept screwing you over. It had been an infuriating, humiliating process, realizing you could no longer do what had made you famous amongst your peers and being proven as inferior to your prior self.

So you had had a new one made. This one had been tailored to your new body specifically, down to the tiniest defects. And though it had taken some getting used to, you now had at your disposal the same sniping excellence you were always known for.

SEND “⚡️” AND A QUESTION AND MY MUSE WILL BE FORCED TO ANSWER HONESTLY

The stoic mask drops off Piers' face and is replaced with a very ugly look.

Disposed of.

Like trash. Even if that's technically protocol, it doesn't sound right when it comes out like that. You don't 'dispose' of B.O.W.s, you put them down. Quick. Humane. Practical.

It's not a fair question. This person is asking if he thinks he should live or die--despite the danger he presents to other people. If he says yes, he's saying he has no reason to be here and should just lay down and die. If he says no, it makes him out to sound like he thinks he's above everyone else. That others deserve death while he doesn't--and that thought is vile.

It's something that he does. He stays out well past when other soldiers would be recalled, searching for targets and security threats. It verges on paranoia. But then, he did this even when it wasn't about guns and vantage points--he'd sit out in the cold and lets himself chill over because he'd rather feel ice in his veins than keep feeling fire.

It's why he's sitting next to the fire, keffiyah wrapped around his head and ears to assist with warming. Doesn't explain the thousand-yard-stare he's giving the fire, but that part doesn't need explanations.