Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 9 • Serenity [NB]

AUTHOR GAMES: THE ABSENT EMPRESS - FINALS

Fall to dust and shed your tears, but you won't see me for a million years.

The very instant Project Phoenix - collectively, for the last time - made their way out of the Empire's base and became entwined in the cold night air, Nora - bitter Nora Belasco, lying, unashamed Nora Belasco - flew in a direction separate from the helicopter. Flew up. Flew above the trees. Shot away, flitting faster than any man-made vehicle across a heavy sky. It was moist with impending rain. This, however, didn't impede her flight. She merely fled faster, fast enough to leave the island of Japan behind and fall upon the city of Vladivostok in the span of two hours.

Leave. Leave. Leave.

It was long, and it was arduous, but it gave her time to think. Thought. Was it something she truly wanted? No, not at all. Was it something she needed? Certainly. Black sky against a black, undulating sea proved to be just as hypnotic as driving along the same road for too long, and eventually, as she reassured herself, her mind would've drifted even without the aid of personal compliance.

She'd just made a choice. She'd chosen to leave the Empress behind. Left her in chains, in captivity, under the guise of death, but she was still very much alive, and what had probably been her last hope had been squandered. Squandered by Nora. Her heart dropped, left her reeling in the air, but she composed herself, had to compose herself. Sakura Sato was a criminal. An interrogator, a robber, a beater, a torturer; Sakura Sato was a murderer, and Nora couldn't think how, in any universe, it would be morally correct to allow such a being to walk beside her or down the pristine white halls of headquarters or into a fight, knowing she'd have no qualms over killing her opponent. There was a reason Nora'd always shot for the knee and not the brain. The knee. Not the brain.

"Fuck her, then," she muttered, chest heaving against the wind. "She made her own decisions. Not my problem. Not my burden."

And so, with this conviction flying high alongside her, she proceeded on.

Ebb and flow, the bitter sea. Wing beat.

A Russian airport sent her to a California airport and the California airport sent her to the earth, where her feet landed soft and unburdened, but bitter all the same, on ground she knew and trusted.

But then, seeing swarms of people holding their luggage and dragging their kids along violently by the wrists, seeing them running along with places to be, Nora came to wonder, What now? There she stood, right in the middle of a bustling crowd, unmoving. A woman with a set of pearls on her glanced too long at Nora's old tight uniform, the torn get-up of resilient cloth, the torn get-up of resilient skin scabbed over. Gave it a distasteful look. Nora crossed her arms. "Have a plane to catch, miss?"

The woman scurried away.

Others gave her similar looks, but Nora figured she'd used up all of her remaining energy on the pearl-lady. Exhaustion overpowered anger; she shuffled over, head down, to a nearby bench. And sat. And sat. And sat. Nowhere to be. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.

It wasn't like she'd never lived that way before. Memory brought her to working odd jobs just to keep herself busy and alive, and then staring up at the ceiling of some rented-out room with a shitton of unidentifiable stains in them, and then packing up and getting on a bus to some new destination. But the past few weeks'd kept her too busy to pack up and leave, too dedicated to flee. She didn't particularly want to go someplace new. And she'd be damned if she had to take another bus.

She sat straighter.

I don't have to take the unhygienic bus. I can take a goddamn car if I want. Her body squirmed upon the bench briefly. I've worked my ass off. I've been shot at and thrown out a window. I deserve a car. I deserve one good thing to come outta all of this. She had no reward to hope for anymore. She wasn't under any protection program and she wasn't stacked with payment and she still had her name. Her only plan, the only thing she ever considered could've happened, was no longer happening, so now she had to move on.