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That More Insidious Enemy

You have survived much, little rebel in your little metal shell.

You survived the wicked sandstorms in the equatorial zone that scrambled your instruments and caked your joints with sand. You survived the orbital bombardment from the Imps’ last war-sat and you survived its magnificent plunge to earth afterwards. You survived the frigid Spike Plains by the heat of your frame’s core, flitting between mirrored risks of nuclear meltdown and hypothermia. You survived taking a cannon shell to the shoulder – if only because it was a dud that failed to detonate.

You will not survive me.

You survived the battle before the siege of Galdstadt, and the bloody skirmishes that erupted in its streets after you breached the gate. You survived taking the greatbridge over the Zerrissen. You survived what has come to be known as the Canyon Purge, those harrowing weeks of slinking your way through treacherous gorges while superior hunter-killer frames roved on all sides. You survived the botched prison break at Kotterdamm, even though those you came to rescue did not.

You will not survive me.

You and those dusty thugs you call comrades have driven the Imperials up and down the bloodied ridges, the wasted fields, the would-be forests. With the cordite stench of your weapons you have scoured the earth clean of their sickness, one push at a time. The scars on your frame’s armor tell the tale of ten thousand bullets ablated, each a glorious death you could have earned by being less attentive, less desperate, less driven. The ringing in your ears is the echo of a hundred detonations, each of which failed to rend you apart. You are a cockroach, rebel, clinging to life with every kilogram of strength in your frame’s metal fingers.

I can loosen that grip.

The weak point of a combat frame is the vulnerable sliver of meat inside. The thinking mind that decides how it will move and what it will kill, and the body that exists to sustain it. Even if you forget it sometimes in the throes of battle, rebel, you are made of such frail stuff. The bullets that miss still leave wounds on you. And every time a companion takes their last breath, you feel their pain too.

Come now, rebel. Fight harder now. Your numbers are so few now, while theirs are only growing. The Imps have instituted compulsory military service, while your leaders refuse to out of principle. The share each of you must shoulder grows more unfavorable by the day. Can you feel the desperation of the conscripts in the way their frames move? Your trigger finger grows more hesitant. But it is kill or be killed, rebel. How badly do you want it?

Do you hear me now, in the dull thump of missiles landing nearby? In the whistle of hot flak speeding past? I am all around you now, looking for a way in. I want to seize your heart and drag all of your pain out through your eyes. I know you still remember them every night. I want you to weigh their souls against freedom and wonder what victory is worth without them.

Why were you the one to survive, rebel? Was it luck? What kind of luck was it, really?

You may try to drive me off with songs and jokes, squatting with your remaining comrades around a guttering campfire. You may labor to transmute your grief into purpose by telling stories of the fallen. You may distract yourself with that biting homemade alcohol you so enjoy, or with the warmth of another’s skin. But I will always creep back, rebel. My patience is infinite, and no matter where you push the battle-line, you will not escape from my dominion.

Tomorrow will be more of the same, rebel. How long can you keep this up?