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Dissonant Hearts (Degusaurusrex x AndrewS)

Beyond the front door and inside the lobby, they found but a single person standing 'guard', though he was really just sort of hiding behind the front desk at this point. Isen presumed the rest of them had either retreated to the office upstairs, where he first confronted the Speaker, or to the hangar below. He kept his eyes peeled on the potential threat ahead but this man didn't appear to be a threat at all.

Adelaide teleported herself across the room in an instant, appearing behind the male and knocking him down to the floor. He seemed panicked, hands held aloft; and not a sign of a weapon on him at all.

Isen knew they had come in here looking for blood and to kill every single last person involved with the massacre that just happened, but was this low-level guard really worth their ire? He was scared, unarmed and now, in grave danger.

"Finally. I've gotten tired of all those damn robots. Isen, do me the honors?"

Isen had began to walk back towards Adelaide, his hand prepared to draw his blade at a moment's notice but when he reached Adelaide's side, towering over the poor soul beneath them, some of his need for vengeance seeped away. He wanted the General. He wanted to kill her grandmother, the Speaker, everybody making decisions who had a hand in what had happened...but this poor guy just seemed like he was trying to do his job and he was abandoned by them all. Another victim, left to die as a distraction so that those truly responsible could get away clean.

"Isen, what are you waiting for? Are you feeling...mercy? What happened to 'killing every last one of them?' Do it!"

Isen's hand fell away from his sword and back down to his side, his head shaking slightly. "He's just a pawn. He's not responsible for any of this, he's terrified, I can hear his heart beat racing." Isen wouldn't kill another innocent person. He had done enough of that, the DSTF had done enough of that. And it wouldn't be what Samara wanted, either. "We have to be better than them. He isn't to blame for they've done."

Isen had made up his mind and he hoped Adelaide would follow suit. He couldn't stop her, and he wouldn't try. He also wouldn't blame her if she decided to kill him then and there, she had every right to be mad and her revenge was just within the grasp of her finger tips but he would not be the one drawing his blade on an innocent, unarmed man.

"Are you kidding me? You saw what they did to the city, to your witch friend and that insufferable bird. Kill him now!"

Ignas made it sound like he was coming from a place of emotional sympathy, but Isen knew he was just trying to get what he wanted. A weaker version of him, from years ago, would have given in and he would have slaughtered entire villages without remorse but part of moving forward and letting go of his past the way Adelaide wanted him to was to let go of that part of himself. He was angry, he was sad, he wanted revenge as much as Adelaide did, but not this way.
 
"Of course his heart is racing," Adelaide scowled, "My foot is on his chest and I'm threatening to kill him. You seriously want to let him live?" She hadn't expected Isen to turn around and show pity on one of the DSTF workers so soon after Samara's death, even if the man did look rather pitiful shaking and whimpering under her boot. "...Fine." She made a noise of disgust and removed her foot, stepping back and scoffing at the man who had begun to cry softly now that he was freed.

"Never thought we'd be in reverse roles, but fine, let's go track down the ones we really need." Namely, the general and her grandmother, and anyone that was holing up with them in hopes of surviving the oncoming massacre. If they thought holing up in the building was going to save them, they were going to learn very, very fast that wasn't the case.

"The hangar?" She turned back to look at Isen for confirmation before making her way toward the elevator they needed to start downstairs, still fuming over leaving the DSTF man behind. Isen was right though, he was just a pawn, he hadn't sent out any of the drones, he might not have even known what they could do. It didn't make her feel any better about the situation though, if anything it made her realize that she was dangerously close to becoming a monster, and the knowledge that she was willing to do that should have been frightening.
 
The poor man she had threatened scrambled back and away from them, leaning against the wall. He looked at them both with total fear, the way Isen imagined all of the innocent victims of today's attack would have looked. He knew he had made the right decision and was glad that Adelaide had agreed, the two of them leaving in favor of searching for the hangar instead. "Hangar makes sense." He told her. It was either there or the office upstairs, as he had presumed before, and the hangar would have much better security for a group looking to hide themselves.

The elevator they stepped into felt familiar by now. They had used it many times but this was different entirely. At first, they used it to sneak around and gather intel, then they used it to destroy their drones. Now, however, their descent into the hangar hidden beneath the building was with a different intention and Isen could practically feel Ignas bouncing around inside of his head in giddy joy, the frustration of missing out on the first kill lost now that he realized they were about to stumble upon at least a couple dozen DSTF members in hiding.

The first door opened and two guards stood before them, both holding arcane infused rifles in their hands. When the elevator dinged, the both began shooting without question. Isen took that as a sign that these two were nothing like the poor guy upstairs and he dispatched with the threats quickly, before Adelaide could even lift her hand. His swift strikes sent both toppling to the floor, blood pooling at their side while Ignas cooed in joy. He saw one of them reaching for their rifle in a desperate final attempt to stop them and he kicked it away, letting the man bleed out rather than end his suffering. None of them deserved that.

It was a distinct change in his behavior when he had realized that now, there were no innocents. He was willing to spare those who were being tricked and manipulated but this wasn't the case. They had one more elevator to take down before they reached the hangar and it too felt familiar. Even though the ride itself only took a couple of seconds, Isen felt impatient, like even that was too long of a wait for the DSTF to finally get what was coming to them.

"Ready?" He asked Adelaide, turning his head, still brandishing Onigoshi, it's blade shimmering with energy as it reacted to the blood of the guards he had slain before. "Once these doors open, we're going to have everybody's attention." He suspected Adelaide would say that was a good thing and he readied himself for when they parted.

Isen went first. He was faster and more capable of taking a couple of hits. Within the hangar, there had to be at least a dozen armed guards, all of whom were reacting to the sound of the elevator, ready and waiting to fire. Their accuracy waned with his speed but he drew their attention as he ran to the side, leaving Adelaide free to exit the elevator untargeted. With the hangar being divided into multiple levels, he could see two distinguished people on the second stage immediately leave towards the back. There were pods, all empty, having released their drones into the world above, but it wasn't until Isen had gotten deeper into the hangar that he realized not all of the pods had been activated. He sliced through a guard, coming to a stop in front of four which were still in tact. They had kept a couple, just in case?

The pods began to revolve and open, the paired drones inside coming to life and hovering out of their nest. Takami wasn't with them, how were they going to do it without the magic from his Catalyst? He was too far away from Adelaide to tell her about it, so he would need to use Ignas as a go-between.

"Demon.."

"Already on it." Ignas told him, relaying a message to Adelaide. "Witch, Isen found more of those damned drones. He needs your help."
 
Adelaide was silent as they entered the elevator, feeling very strange for infiltrating the facility without any sneaking around this time. Any other time they'd been inside the building had been sneaking around, stealthily stealing things or destroying property of the DSTF. Now they were walking right in with the organization knowing they were there, disregarding the fact that there could be any number of threats they would walk into at any moment. None of that mattered as long as they got what they'd come for, as long as they took down the people responsible for the destruction of the town and Samara and Priscilla's deaths.

"Don't get too excited there, Ignas." She rolled her eyes as the door opened, ready to step out until Isen abruptly cut in front of her and cut down the two guards that had started shooting. She hadn't even been able to lift a hand, let alone weave any of her magic, and they were already on the ground bleeding out and groaning. One of them tried to speak through the blood pouring from his mouth, begging for death, but Adelaide only shook her head and stepped over him as they went to the other elevator.

"Now or never, I guess." She took a deep breath as they descended the remainder of the way to the hangar. "Yeah, I'm ready. Don't leave anyone alive." Now that they were this far down in the facility she doubted anyone left could be considered innocent, so who cared if they left a trail of bodies as they went? The elevator opened and Isen sped off in his quest for vengeance, leaving her to duck out without being attacked instantly.

"What?" She had barely taken down two of the guards when Ignas was speaking to her, and she cursed profusely before looking around in search of Isen. Where the hell was he? Ignas couldn't damage the drones, and her magic couldn't, how were they going to destroy them without Takami there? Even if Samara had been with them, they could have used her.. That was it! The magic stored in the suit!

"Isen! Where the hell are you?!"
 
It took the two gunner drones a moment to prepare their first round. They scanned the situation, notified the threat and prepared to engage before both fired in tandem. Isen moved to the side, avoiding the first blast while the second found it's mark against the blade of Onigoshi. The blade itself rattled from the force of blow and Ignas made a sound that Isen would have other wise found hilarious if not for the dire circumstance behind it.

"Isen! What did I tell you about using me against these things!?"

"It's not like we have a choice." He replied, in his head, making his way back towards the center of the hangar. There were other guards there, of course, they hadn't just forgotten about Isen but now, they were beginning to show interest in Adelaide as well as she exited the elevator and began to attack them as well.

Things were getting messy, fast, and Isen lost himself in the uncontrolled chaos. The drone fired a second time, smashing against the hangar floor, the splash back of the blast knocking several guards aside. He wanted to move towards her, to regroup, but to do so would lead his flying pursuers directly into her. Onigoshi crossed blades with one of the nearby DSTF members who tried to use their rifle as a melee weapon, slicing through both it and it's wielder, but Isen could practically feel the difference in how the sword was reacting after being zapped by the drone. Ignas really wasn't overexaggerating, these things definitely did something to him and his magic that he didn't like.

Isen threw another guard in the way of the next barrage of shots, trying to keep himself moving so that they couldn't catch him but also so their interest was solely on him and not Adelaide, whom he desperately needed to help him out at some point here.

"There's got to be something we can do." He called out to her, close enough now that she could hear him through the noise and the chaos.

"Witch, now would be the time for one of your magic tricks if you've got any."
 
Ignas was clearly out of sorts; Adelaide could hear him even from where she was as she worked through the hangar in search of her companion. The drones had begun shooting at Isen, blasts smashing off the floor and bouncing back until she heard the shouting of several guards. That was one way to take them out, although she definitely hadn't expected it to happen like that.

"I'm thinking, demon!" Finally Isen and Ignas were close enough she could hear the former in person, spotting him through the insanity surrounding them and pointing down toward her suit. "My magic won't work against the drones," She grunted and jolted back from one of the blasts, ducking behind a fallen slab of metal and peering around it with a glare. Fucking drones.

"Samara's magic is still in the suits, or at least some of it is. I can use that to try and take down the drones so we can get to the rest of those bastards." At least two people had immediately fled the hangar when they had entered, which meant they already had a head start and could possibly have already escaped by the time they got past the drones! "I can pull it from mine while you keep them busy. Can you do that?"
 
If she pulled the magic from her suit, it would most likely nullify the protective warding, leaving her vulnerable. Isen's immediate thought was that she should take from his instead. It wasn't like he was in any real damage as long as Ignas was around, he could handle it but she wasn't so lucky. In order for this to work, he'd need to get closer to her, and that risked running her straight into the line of fire of the drones, however, so he needed to figure something out quickly.

"Hey, Ignas, do you remember what we did in the alley?"

"...no, what?"

Isen lifted Onigoshi by it's handle and the demon quickly clued in.

"Isen, are you thinking what I think you're thinking?

"...Isen, stop."

"Do NOT."

But, Isen did.

Isen was trying to time the movement and he was pretty sure that he had it figured out. When the drones were about to fire, the red light in their lens flickered and the barrel revved. He heard it happening and threw Onigoshi directly towards the opening of the gun in such a way that when it drew near the drone and called the attention of it's protective orb, the orb swung around to block the blade and straight into the path of the blast. It absorbed it but the blow back separated both halves and left them out of commission for a moment. Ignas was going to ream him for that later but right now, he too seemed as stunned from the contact and the blast as the drones were.

Ducking around one of the guards now that he had no weapon to use, he shoved them aside as the other set of drones fired, watching the DSTF member become obliterated by the force. That had worked, but they needed to be fast.

Bounding back to her side, he placed his hands on her shoulders, stealing her attention momentarily before she could cast the spell. "Take it from mine. I don't need it, you do. Hurry!" He wasn't giving her much of a choice, pushing the envelope due to their limited time frame. If she thought about it reasonably, she'd understand his logic, but for now, she just needed to cast that damn spell before it was too late and their window had closed.
 
"What the hell is he doing?" Adelaide watched curiously as Isen lifted the blade and Ignas began to protest, only for him to throw the demon toward the drones and cause it to shriek in protest. That wasn't quite what she had in mind as a distraction, but it worked well enough to get the drones trained on him and then obliterate a guard that was put in the middle. Whatever worked, apparently.

"Wait, what?" She hadn't even thought about whatever magic still remained in his clothing, but that made far more sense than depleting what was in hers. Ignas could heal any wounds that Isen took from being hit, and he was faster and stronger than her to begin with, the exception being that she could now control when she teleported.

"I'm hurrying!" She raised a hand and set it on top of one of his as she closed her eyes, focusing on the tendrils of magic still woven into the fabric of his clothing. It was weird feeling Samara's magic now that she was no longer living, and Adelaide took a shuddering breath as she clamped down the emotions that came with feeling the familiar magic. They didn't have time for that right now.

"Think I got it." So this was what concentrated witch magic felt like. She wasn't sure if that was what made it easier to manipulate, or the fact that they were desperately short on time, but she was able to weave the magic together quickly and send it toward the drones with far better aim than she remembered having, causing them to fizzle and burst instantly upon impact.

"Huh. That was... Huh."
 
As she drew the magic out of the garment, Isen could only think of this as one last gift left behind to them by Samara, once more saving their lives without even really knowing. It was going to be so difficult for them to move forward without her once all of this was over but, in a way, the best way for them to honor her now was to put an end to this mess and, in the process, get the revenge she always wanted.

Adelaide seemed to control the magic with an ease that had not been there when they fought the drones in the alley. It made them burst apart immediately, ending the threat before they could even begin to reload a second shot. Seeing their trump cards shatter made the remaining guards attempt to flee but Isen gave her a nod as if to say that he would take care of it. He found Onigoshi and, in a flurry, the rest of the men on this floor found their end. The carnage laid around them was but a small amount of payback for what had happened and it was far from enough.

"I saw the others head upwards. Unless they have some sort of way out, they're probably all on the third floor." The general had a teleportation device, maybe some of the others did too? There was no guarantee there would be anybody waiting for them at the top of the hangar but they needed to check regardless. Isen made for the stairs, immediately, knowing she'd follow, so that they could climb upwards.

The second floor had several weapons lockers that Ignas seemed drawn towards as he recovered from the shock of being hit by the drones.

"There's a lot of magic here, Isen. Weapons for their guards?"

"Get rid of them." He told Adelaide as they walked past it, knowing it wouldn't take long for her to fry them or drain them of the magic they had been enchanted with. He wanted to leave nothing left behind that any straggler or survivor could use to cause anybody else any more pain.

On the third level, a heavy duty, metal gate shut them out from whatever was on the other side. Isen tried to pry it but it wasn't moving so, as always, he defaulted back to Adelaide. She had been able to open doors here before which they now realized was because of her relation to her grandmother, it stood to reason she could do so again.

If they were still here, said grandmother would oppose them on the other side, along with her husband and who knows what else. He was ready to end this and he could tell that she was as well. A life time of pain and running, hurt and loss, all led to this vengeful moment and he would make sure that she had the resolution she wished for.
 
Adelaide made no move to follow any of the men that tried to flee when the drones were demolished. Isen's expression, as well as the bloodlust she knew Ignas had, assured her that she didn't need to move a muscle to deal with them. She had promised the demon free reign, after all, and he wasted no time creating the carnage with his host before Isen returned to her.

"Third floor it is." Adelaide was already jogging to catch up to him as he made for the stairs, brushing against his side and coming to a halt as they reached the lockers upstairs. The amount of magic coming from inside was astounding, and it took her breath away at first as she tried to parse through the different magical signatures and decide what was good enough to take.

All of it!

Something inside of her screamed to take all of the magic she could, every last bit that she could absorb regardless of if it was too much for her or not. The ring hummed sweetly against her finger as she placed her hand on one of the lockers, drawing the arcane energy from it with a soft inhale and a hum of her own. It always felt so good to draw in such strong energies, her hand running down the row of lockers as she hissed in a breath at the end of them.

"Holy shit." Her entire body was still humming pleasantly when they reached the third floor, and even the sight of Isen unable to budge the door didn't deter her or ruin the high she was riding from all of the magic. She stepped past him and placed a hand on the door, listening to the humming from inside and feeling for what was keeping it from opening.

"The bitch is in there." She scoffed, tugging at the magic holding the door closed and winding it around itself tightly before snapping it and stepping back with a smile. "Good, I hope her husband is in there too." She opened the door and stepped through without hesitation, which in hindsight probably wasn't her best choice, but when no immediate attack was made against her she went for the first person she could see.

"You." That obnoxious bastard of a speaker for the organization. Her hand wrapped in the collar of his shirt as she nearly knocked him over, her fingers crackling and the material of his clothing beginning to smolder and burn under the heat of the growing flame. "Of course you're hiding in here like a coward. Disgusting."
 
Adelaide forced the door open, buckling it from the pressure her magic had exerted when breaking the lock. Had she been that angry? Isen hadn't realized just how much magic she had drawn from all of the weaponry downstairs, she was practically supercharged at this point. As he was realizing this, she had already walked forward into what appeared to be a large, circular shaped safe room. There were a couple of guards, all to stunned to talk, but the main source of interest in the room were the six individuals hiding inside of it. They were the 'special guests' of the DSTF during the presentation which unleashed the drone and among them, General Orion and Lorelei Van Dyne.

Adelaide's tunnel vision saw her find the nearest person to her as she entered, the Speaker whom Isen had encountered before and was the vocal face of the DSTF in the public. He seemed shaken from what had happened, even more so from their safe house door being destroyed and his life immediately being put at rest. Isen stepped forward as well, now, joining her with Onigoshi at the ready, separating the captive Speaker from the rest of the others at the back of the room.

"Wait, wait, wait!" He cried out to her, lifting his hands upwards. They wrapped around her wrist as it pulled at her collar but, feeling the heat from her skin, immediately dropped back down again to his side. He was unarmed but unlike the guard downstairs, he was far more complicit in the terrible things that the DSTF had done. "G-guards! G-General! Do something, please!" He begged but nobody moved.

The guards were terrified while General Orion watched on, gripping his teleportation device from his pocket. Glancing over the DSTF's best, he activated the device. All but Lorelei were taken with it when Orion disappeared, leaving her behind on her own.

"Coward!" Isen called out as the man disappeared, taking his allies with him. His eyes found Lorelei next, the only person remaining aside from the Speaker and the guards, the first of which was being handled by Adelaide and the latter seemed shellshocked and didn't dare to move an inch. Onigoshi's blade scraped against the floor, ominously, as Isen channeled the Reaper he had once been known to be, approaching the cornered witch. She seemed shocked as well, perhaps even a little sad, realizing that her husband had abandoned her and left her as sacrifice to the vengeance of her grand daughter and her ally.

"I'm not the one you want! I'm just a Speaker!" The Speaker continued to beg for his life, his pleas going on deaf ears. "Don't kill me! I have money, do you want money? I have knowledge, I can help you! Please, just let me go!"

Isen thought it strange how Lorelei wasn't doing anything to defend herself from his approach . She wasn't casting a spell and she was more than capable of teleporting herself away with her power, she just seemed to accept what was coming to her.

"Isen, this doesn't feel right...something's off here."

Reappearing from out of nowhere came General Orion, weapon drawn, driving it into Isen's back. Isen staggered forward, the blade exiting his wound and causing his blood to pour outwards as he caught himself with Onigoshi, using it as a crutch to keep him upright. The blade came to life, it's magic swirling through the wound, closing it. Isen kept his back to Orion for a moment, gripping the handle of the blade tighter. He didn't want to turn away from Lorelei but he had no choice. Moving to face Orion now, directly, Isen watched the general toss his teleportation device aside, the cannister inside of it empty, likely from having been used multiple times lately plus being strained to move so many people at once. This would be a proper fight, there was no turning back.

The general lifted his weapon and clashed it with Isen, locking them together. Isen watched as Lorelei confidently strode past him, a smirk across her face, straight towards Adelaide. He tried to warn her but Orion's shoulder connected to his during his brief distraction, knocking him back again. "Don't worry about the baby mage, Lorelei will take really good care of her. You need to be more concerned about me." He taunted. "I've waited a long time for this moment, Isen Hiyori. So much wasted potential, both of you. You have the power to create change, instead you're clinging to what this world used to be instead of realizing what it could become."

"We are trying to change it." Isen spoke back, standing up straight once more, assuming a ready stance. "By bringing you down, and your entire organization too."

The general smirked, laughing behind his protective helmet and mask. "I've beaten you once before, do you really believe that I won't do it again?"

"This guy's the worst. Isen, let's finally shut him up for good."

"You read my mind." Isen told Ignas, smirking himself, because that was exactly what the demon had done. "I have something worth fighting for now. Something that I didn't have before. I won't let you take her away from me." Her.

Isen leapt forward and the General moved to catch him, crossing their blades again in a burgeoning struggle between both sides. "By the time I'm done with you, you won't have the will left inside your body to protect her or to protect anybody." Orion taunted, staring Isen down through his visor, noticing the anger on his face. He was going to enjoy this, they both were.
 
"You really think he cares enough about you to help you?" Adelaide scoffed and shook her head, looking toward the general just in time to see him disappear with everyone except Lorelei. Interesting. "See how he abandons you so readily? He even abandons his wife. The two of them are perfect for each other, so ready to abandon and betray their family." Why was Lorelei just accepting the abandonment? She was making no move to defend herself, no move to attack either of them despite Adelaide knowing just how powerful the old woman was.

"I don't want your money, and I don't need your knowledge, because you're all going to die." She caught wind of what Ignas was saying and paused, watching Isen and Lorelei curiously. Something was off, she just wasn't sure what it was yet. What trick did Lorelei have up her sleeve that they needed to watch out for?

"Isen!" When the general reappeared out of nowhere Adelaide cursed, dropping the speaker abruptly but hesitating to run after her injured companion. Ignas would heal him, she needed to worry about the other parties in the room. "I don't have the time to deal with you." She glanced down at the wheezing speaker with a cold stare, opening her fisted hand and letting a little ball of fire roll off of it to land on where his shirt was already smoldering and turning black.

"Scream for me, for everyone you people killed." She took a step back and turned to look at Isen again, ignoring the screams and the heat from the fire that was rapidly spreading to consume the unfortunate man. While she made certain the fire touched only him and didn't spread to the rest of the room, she made no effort to touch him again or put the fire out even as his skin began to melt. He could suffer, and she couldn't possibly care less about what happened to him after that.

"Demon, you had better fucking keep him alive or I swear I'll make the rest of your existence miserable." The smirk her grandmother now wore disgusted Adelaide, and her lips turned down into a scowl as she held another fireball aloft in her hand. The screaming of the speaker had died down to quiet whimpers as his features melted and turned to blackened, charred skin, the flames beginning to die off as the last of the life left his body.

"You really should have just joined us, Adelaide." Lorelei sighed, barely looking at the fire and shaking her head in disappointment. "You can't win, and now you're going to lose that little boyfriend of yours. Is it really worth it, fighting with a beast? The two of you could never have a life together, you can never be normal. You'd be much better suited to someone in the organization that will work with you to better the world like you talked about when you pretended to be unaware of who I was." She smiled sweetly at Adelaide and stepped to the side as the flames came soaring through the air at her, reaching out a hand and catching them before extinguishing it by closing her hand.

"Such a pity." She tutted and, in the time it took Adelaide to blink, appeared on the other side of the room where she pressed a button in a control panel located on the wall. After a moment of whirring a section of the wall opened and released one of the orbs from the drones, leaving Adelaide confused when the cannon didn't follow. Why was she bringing just the--

"Shit! Isen, she's got an orb!"
 
Isen had been too preoccupied with what had been happening with Orion to have seen what Adelaide had done. He could hear the screams of the Speaker as he burned, but it was background noise despite his powerful hearing due to how focused he was on the clash he was dealing with. The General was every bit as skilled as he was psychotic, clearly having earned his position rather than having it given to him. Isen already knew that it wouldn't be an easy fight, they had clashed before, but he had thought that the adrenaline and anger he felt would give him the upper hand but he had met an equal match nonetheless.

The two combatants traded shots at one another, each one being successfully parried away by the other. It was a back and forth affair where both men seemed to be feeling out their opponent, looking for an opening that never came.

"Don't you get it? You can't beat me. Not as you are." The General taunted. "Where's the Reaper? Where's the demon? This is pathetic."

He was trying to get underneath Isen's skin but he wasn't clueless enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book. It was concerning, however, that he was trying to provoke him. Had he some sort of plan in mind in case Isen had given in? Or was he simply that confident in his abilities? Giving up full control to Ignas was always an option but it wasn't one he was going to take, especially not with Adelaide so close by.

Isen tried to keep an eye on her while he dueled, making certain that her grandmother hadn't done anything to kill her while he was preoccupied but it was difficult to even see her through the flurry of strikes, let alone try to actually help her from where he was. The second he turned his back to run from Orion, the General would strike him down and in the short time it took Ignas to recover him, he would have already gotten to Adelaide. No, he promised he wouldn't let him get to her. He meant it when he did.

"...Isen, this isn't good." Ignas told him, within his head, having sensed what Lorelei was doing on the other end of the room before she had even fully released the orb-shaped drone.

It flew freely without a gun turret to be tethered to. It wasn't hear to fight them, it was hear to suppress them. This was bad. Very bad. Not only would this mean Adelaide's magic wouldn't work but it also meant that Ignas wouldn't be able to revive him while it was active, making even the slightest of injury now practically fatal if it slowed him down or gave Orion an unwanted opening.

Isen finally managed to hook the blade of Onigoshi underneath the hilt of the General's weapon, something he had been trying to time properly. The blade did nothing against his foe's hands but it allowed him to wrench it free, disarming him. Before he could do anything to follow up on that, however, the General had reintroduced something Isen had forgotten about; that damn, green gas. Chucking a grenade from his belt, it landed at Isen's feet and Isen instinctively kicked it away, straight into the direction of Adelaide's grandmother. He had no idea if it would affect her but it was better there than it was in the middle of their fight. The distraction had given Orion time to grab his weapon again, however, and this time, he sat lose a second grenade.

This one wasn't green but it was definitely smoke, making it difficult for Isen to see. It was during this that he heard footsteps rushing him, being forced by the General. The guards who were standing by before were being pushed into the cloud, a black, unseen figure swinging and firing wildly. They missed every shot, out of fear and lack of visual, letting Isen dispatch them before they could even see what was coming. "To your left." Ignas instructed as Isen side stepped an errant swing and sliced beneath the rib cage of the next guard. One by one, they stormed him through the cloud but none of them met their mark.

Orion was using them as cannon fodder, funneling them in to their death. The last soldier ran straight for Isen and practically bounced off of him. There was no blade in his hand, nor a gun but something small and circular. Another grenade, this one containing the same green gas he had tried so hard to avoid. It burst in front of him, immediately mixing the green gas into the grey smoke. Isen closed his mouth, he couldn't let it get into his system. Even with Ignas, he needed to breath, he couldn't hold it forever. Knowing that he needed to find his way out, he tried to focus his hearing for any sound that the General was coming but all he heard, instead, was the clicking of a cylinder and the dispersal of an arcane round, passing through his right shoulder. The reaction caused him to drop Onigoshi and, in response, forced the air he was holding in out of his lungs, allowing the gas to seep inside.

It burnt even worse than the first time. It instantly paralyzed his body, dropping him down onto his knees through the verdant-tinged smoke cloud where the General had finally reached him. He had his blade in one hand, one of the soldier's rifle in the other and he gave the kneeling Isen a kick in the chest, forcing him to stumble out of the cloud and onto the floor, in the open, where Adelaide could see him.
 
No, it wasn't good at all. With the orb out that meant her magic would simply be absorbed if it was within range, which meant that she couldn't hurt Lorelei that way. It also meant that Isen couldn't be healed by Ignas while it was in effect, which meant that she needed to find a way to dispose of it immediately, or they were going to be in deep, deep trouble. He could still fight the general with Onigoshi, blade to blade, but the actual magic in it would do little to nothing against whatever magic lay in Van Dyne's blade. This was really, really, really bad.

"You're cowards, both of you!" Maybe if she threw magic toward a different part of the room, the orb would track it and absorb it, leaving her able to launch an effective attack against Lorelei for a moment while it was preoccupied. It was the only thing she could think of on such short notice, and after a moment of contemplation she turned and whipped a ball of fire toward the opposite side of the room.

The orb did begin to follow the flame, interrupted as green gas began to spread through the room in their direction. Isen had knocked it closer to them in his haste to get it away, causing Lorelei to curse and immediately extinguish it with a hushed spell and a glare toward her husband. He was supposed to be dealing with the beast, not endangering her again! The bastard. She stepped back as the smoke followed swiftly after, erecting a barrier to keep it from her with ease, while Adelaide backed away and raised her hand to cover her nose.

"Put the orb away and fight for real, enough of your games and tricks!" Adelaide was beginning to get desperate as she tried to peer through the smoke, coughing and backing towards Lorelei in an attempt to get herself close enough to the barrier she would be safe from the smoke. The old woman only sneered at her and tutted again, shifting herself just out of reach and making sure the barrier didn't extend to her granddaughter.

"I told you, you should have joined us. It's still not too late, Adelaide."

"You already know I would rather die." It was starting to look like a real possibility with how the scene was playing out, her hand over her nose as she tried to keep away from the smoke only to watch as more of the green gas poured through the gray and infiltrated both the room and Isen's body. "Fuck!" She threw up some of her magic into a barrier and prayed, thankful that the orb wasn't taking it immediately as an attack and allowing her to keep the gas away from herself as it took Isen down quickly.

"Leave him alone!" Fuck the barrier, she needed to put her energy into trying to strike the general. Maybe if she pooled enough of it together the orb wouldn't be able to absorb it all. Even if some of her magic were to land a hit on him and stop him from hurting Isen more, that would be good enough for her. Isen was already bleeding, she couldn't tell how badly he was injured yet, but the fact that he was bleeding and couldn't heal it made everything far more dire.

"Come on, Ignas, do your bloody job! You're a demon, for fuck's sake, you can't seriously let yourself be beat out by an orb?!"
 
The blade of Onigoshi began to light up with purple energy, magic which fluttered towards Isen's body, across the distance that had been put between the blade and him, but it never reached him. The orb whizzed and whirled, darting across the room, away from Adelaide and Lorelei in order to disperse the magic Ignas was releasing, causing it to alter it's intended course from the wound to it's metallic body where it dissipated.

"Don't you think I'm trying?" He yelled back, angrily. "I'm getting really tired of these damn drones!"

Ignas attempted a second time, only for the same end result. The General removed his helmet, watching with a sick smirk on his face, having taken it off just so Isen could see him for the first time, laughing at him as he gasped for breath. His features were sharp, his eyes cold and careless. He looked like a man who had fought a thousand battles and had never lost a single one.

"I can't do anything until you get rid of that thing!"

But what could she even do?

Isen rolled over onto his stomach, trying to make his way back towards his weapon. The General allowed him to do so but cut him off before he could actually reach it, driving the point of his embued blade through Isen's leg, pinning him in place. The only pain Isen was feeling was inside his lungs, from the gas, so he tried to simply pull the muscle through the blade to free itself but he couldn't find the leverage or the strength to do so while he was still affected.

"Like we told you, you can't win this. Haven't you realized it by now?"

Isen coughed, trying to force it out of his body, hearing Ignas' voice in his head urging him to keep fighting, to keep going, but there wasn't anything he could even do. The General placed his foot down against Isen's lower back, applying the pressure of his body, dealing who knows what damage to parts of Isen that he couldn't feel. Isen's eyes lifted, from where he was laying he could see Adelaide looking on in horror, powerless to do anything to help him.

Was this how it ended? They were supposed to win. They had a world to change, an ending to write, a witch to honor. Surely this wasn't the future that Samara had seen?

"How about we make a little deal with your grand daughter, dear?" The General asked Lorelei, his devious smirk never faltering as he turned his attention towards Adelaide next. "Let's start by having you show our little friend here some of your magic tricks. We can't have you all charged up now, can we? And then...give up this charade, take your rightful place beside us and join the DSTF. If you do what we say, we'll let the beast live. The demon can heal his wounds and we can all walk away. If not, well...I don't think that body of his has much time left, but I can certainly speed up the process a little if you'd like?"

"No..." Isen coughed out, though it took everything in him just to make that word come out of his mouth from the pain. She couldn't turn herself over to them. He wanted to believe she wouldn't...but he feared that she might make that call just to save him. It wasn't worth it, he knew what they force her to do, how much damage they could cause with her power...no, he'd rather die than have her turn herself over to them.

He told Ignas in his head to tell Adelaide not to accept the offer, to just let him die. To turn and run and never look back. The irony was in how Isen had just started to learn that he wanted to live only to be put in a scenario where he could finally find the peace he had always wanted.

"He's telling you...not to take the deal. Witch, you need to do something, now. I can't heal him, he's going to die and then we'll both lose him."
 
"Then fucking try harder!" This wasn't how things ended, it couldn't be. They'd gone through so much, lost so much and hadn't even fully dealt with losing Samara. Her eyes were on the general now as he removed his helmet, full of fire and hatred as she balled her hands into fists and clenched her jaw. How could she help Isen when she couldn't even use her magic? The sight of the general's blade piercing her companion, her friend when she had no way to stop it made her lunge forward, only to be pulled to a halt by the force of Lorelei's magic holding her back.

"Let go of me, you sadistic old bitch!" Even Ignas was powerless against him, and without Takami there they had no one that could destroy the drone. "Get off of him!" She screamed at him as the sound of bone cracking reached her ears, her own magic struggling hard but uselessly against Lorelei's. The orb stole it straight from her veins, pulling it in and devouring it eagerly.

"Stop it!" She lashed out at her grandmother, catching the old woman by surprise as she broke through the magic and stumbled back. "Leave him alone. You don't gain anything by hurting him, and if you kill him what makes you think I would ever even consider dealing with you? I'd tear your heart out and feed it to you just for spite." Her hands trembled as Lorelei sighed, lifting her hand and tracing a lazy circle in the air with a finger before pointing at the drone.

"You can save him, you know. Here, we'll shut it off for just a moment and you can consider whether or not it's worth it to let him heal. After all, you do seem to care for the beast quite a bit." She snapped her fingers and the drone whirred again, powering off slowly and allowing Ignas the chance to heal Isen's injuries if he chose. She left it off for only about half a minute before snapping her fingers and resuming it again, at which point Adelaide had frantically begun flinging her own magic in an attempt to knock it out of the air. Somehow, no doubt thanks to Lorelei, she had missed and only managed to exert more of her energy.
 
The orb powered down, it's buzzing exiting the air and letting the room fall to silence as both the General and his wife watched what would happen next. Ignas took the opportunity to begin the healing process, he had to. If he delayed, Isen was as good as done for. Ignas knew there was probably some sort of ulterior motive here but what choice did he have? He wasn't losing his vessel, not to these assholes. Purple energy fluttered through the air and began to heal the wounds on Isen's body. The general removed his blade from his leg and let the magic fill in the gap that had been made, mending the hole that had been left behind.

Isen still felt the effects of the gas, barely able to breathe, but at least he wasn't on the edge of death anymore. He tried to lift himself up but the General slammed him back into the ground with a kick to his back. Before Isen could recover, he jammed his weapon down into Isen again, directly through the center of his back. Isen's entire body went rigid, feeling a pain he couldn't experience but was more than enough to render every inch of him incapable of moving, his spinal cord severely damaged by the attack.

It was very clear that no matter what Adelaide did, Orion Van Dyne wasn't going to let Isen go.

Ignas attempts to heal Isen were thwarted now as the drone came back to life, sucking up the magic before it ever reached it's intended target.

"Did you think I was going to let him leave? No, you haven't given us what we want yet. Come on, Adelaide, give it up. Save your little pet before it's too late."
 
Damn it. Stupid orb can go to hell.

All she needed to do was hit the thing and take it down, and she'd failed to even do that. The one, single thing that she needed in order to save Isen, and they had made certain she wasn't able to and was left contemplating their offer. She wouldn't join them and let them twist her power into something cruel, but she couldn't let Isen actually die there, laying on the floor. The general had barely given Ignas time to heal him before he was striking him again, leaving him frozen on the ground from what she could only assume was a broken spine.

"He's not my pet, you bastard!" She tugged at her own magic, pulling it to her fingertips and letting it build up before she flung a ball of fire nearly the size of a basketball toward the opposite end of the room. The orb zoomed after it and inhaled it without hesitation as she turned her attention toward the general and drew another, rearing back and preparing to throw it-- Just in time for the orb to swing around, come back, and gobble up the flames like a starving child.

You have got to be kidding me.

"Get your sword out of his back. Now."
 
General Orion didn't so much as flinch when the fire ball came in his direction. He knew it would never reach him and that he was in no danger, but that smug, self-satisfied smile on his face after the orb stole the flame away would have driven even the most composed person, which Adelaide definitely was not right now, crazy with anger. He pressed his palm against the handle of his weapon, wedging it down deeper into Isen, letting it rip and tear as it jiggled back and forth, an act he did so casually, as though doing something so cruel and deranged was something he barely put any thought or effort in.

"I'd be happy to." He told her, shaking his head. "Once you decide to co-operate." She clearly still had some fight in her, and a whole lot of magic, but he intended to break her by the time this was over. "Turn it off again, let him heal. I want her to watch me kill him. Again. And again. And again." He was clearly taking joy in this.

"Witch, if I don't heal him, we're going to lose him. But if I do..." Even Ignas was at a loss. There was nothing he could do either other than to just play along, part of this twisted game that Orion Van Dyne was conducting.

He would wait while the orb powered down and the magic began to flow from Onigoshi back into his body. He would delay until Isen's wound closed and then, he'd inflict another just as the drone powered back online. Each time the healing went off, Isen would get a little farther away from the General and a little closer to Adelaide. He kept drifting in and out of consciousness, losing minutes at a time, minutes spent wishing desperately that she would leave and that she wouldn't fall into Van Dyne's game. He didn't want to die, but it was a better alternative than having her become their pawn, a puppet dancing on a string, brainwashed by the DSTF the way Lorelei had been.
 
"Stop it!" She turned to stare at Lorelei in disbelief, watching the other mage simply shrug, although she did seem to be a bit perplexed by what her husband was doing. She'd had no problem allowing the demon to be injured and healed, only to be hurt again, but her husband was talking about killing him repeatedly? That was time consuming, messy, and held no guarantee that Adelaide would side with him once he actually murdered him in cold blood. What was the crazy bastard thinking?

"We don't have all day, dear, just get this over with." The old woman's tone was dry as she sighed and rolled her eyes, ignoring the way that Adelaide was on the verge of tears as she bounced back and forth on what to do. She couldn't give in and work with the DSTF, but maybe she could pretend to give up long enough for Isen to be free and healed? She could deplete her magic enough for them to believe her, allow Isen to escape, and then hope from there she could escape on her own.

"Just get the damn sword out of him!" The orb powered down as Adelaide stood there, not even bothering to toss her magic at it, but instead weaving erratic, absentmindedly made designs with her magic and letting it flutter toward the floor, unused for anything more than mere decor until it faded away to nothing. "Get it out and stop!"
 
Again, Ignas' magic swirled around the wound as the blade exited Isen, healing it up. She had begged him to stop using the sword and so, he did, dropping it down to the floor, letting it clatter against the tiles. He was, however, still holding the rifle he had used to shoot Isen with the first time and as the drone powered back up, he unloaded a round, point blank straight through his back and into his heart.

"Was that better? I didn't use the sword at all." He commented, smugly, looking towards his wife for acknowledgement on the joke he had made but finding no laughter coming from either of the women in the room.

It wasn't torture anymore. It was cold blooded murder.

Isen's death was instant the moment the arcane blast pierced through his skin and his vision went black. In the time between his eventual resurrection and the moment he properly died, he saw his sister. For a brief moment, there was respite, relief, he felt his little sister hug his leg again, so happy to see him. Over her shoulder, however, he saw Adelaide. She was distressed, she was yelling for it to stop. Distressed and pained from what she had seen, it's like her call continued to reach him even after his heart had stopped.

He gasped as he returned to life. For a moment, he didn't know where he was but then, another blast rocked his body. This one was non fatal but it was in the same area on his lower back that the General seemed to target with precision, knowing the damage it dealt would render Isen unable to move or react regardless of whether he could feel the pain or not.

"Witch, even I have my limits. I can't keep doing this..." Ignas was beginning to sound tired in a way Isen had never heard him sound. He had never heard the demon exhausted, like he had nothing left to give but he was fast approaching that point from the repeated usage of his magic in such a short time.

"When I said I could do this again and again, I really did mean it. But this is a good start." He commented, watching her throwing her magic away, defeatedly. "You remind me so much of your mother." He continued, treading very dangerous ground, with both Adelaide and Lorelei. "So fragile. So easily broken. Let's get this over with, Adelaide. We both know you're only delaying the inevitable. Take your rightful place among the DSTF, your family. We could be whole again."

It wasn't something Orion Van Dyne has brought up before but it was true; he was technically her grandfather after having married Lorelei. They were family. And just as Lorelei had treated her own daughter so poorly, Orion was doing the same to her, forcing her to witness tragedy on repeat to weaken her resolve and get what he wanted. He was a manipulator, after all, he always got what he wanted. And if he didn't, then he just disposed of them and moved on to the next. He had done it with Samara's mother, he would do it with Lorelei and Adelaide, even if she became an ally of the DSTF, was no more safe than either of them were. His nefarious cycle had no end and the longer it spun, the more joy he seemed to derive from the misery he was causing.

"Let's go home, shall we?"
 
Adelaide sighed in relief when he removed and then dropped the sword, but her expression quickly turned to horror when he shot straight into Isen and killed him with a single shot. Even Lorelei froze and stared at her husband with wide eyes, looking between him, the body on the floor, and Adelaide with a mixture of horror and confusion. That hadn't been part of the plan, not to her knowledge, and it had quickly turned from a game to something far more cold and calculated, even cruel. She didn't even bother to start the drone back up after Ignas healed Isen the first time, watching with concern as the general almost immediately shot Isen and left him paralyzed on the ground again.

"You're going too fast." Lorelei frowned and spoke up as Adelaide sobbed, having thrown fire and webs alike as she tried to expel her magic quickly, wiping awkwardly at her face and trying to peer at Isen through her tears. They had talked about a home together after all of this, and now she was being forced to watch him die before her very eyes, only to be brought back and maimed just moments later.

"I already have a home." She wiped at her eyes and took a deep breath, her hands falling to her sides as she looked at Lorelei as if she was pleading with her. "Just.. Stop. Stop hurting him already!"

"You've already run the girl nearly to death's door," She glanced at Adelaide, who was indeed looking rather pale and shaky between the emotional outburst and the exertion of using so much magic at once, "She's not going to be able to teleport them out of here. Let the beast heal and let her think on it. If she hasn't chosen the right path when we return... Well, you can kill it again."

Home.

He'd worked with Samara to restore her childhood home, to give them somewhere to return to after all of this was done. Samara had sacrificed herself, had gone to rest with her familiar and hopefully to be with her mother, she couldn't lose Isen too. She'd lost her entire family to the greed and cruelty of the DSTF, had even lost her grandmother to the insanity of the general standing before her now. All she wanted to do was end this and have a normal life, have a home again. She had promised to be Isen's home, after all, she couldn't fail now.
 
"We do not give mercy to our enemies." He coldly responded to his wife, having very little interest in simply letting Isen go. He moved the barrel of the gun towards the back of Isen's skull, holding it there as he looked between both Adelaide and Lorelei, expectedly. "Her home is with us. Her duty is with us. Her purpose is with us. The sooner she realizes that, the quicker this will all be over."

By the way he was talking, he wasn't intending 'over' to mean Isen would survive this. He meant he was putting him out of his misery, the misery he had inflicted.

Ignas' magic attempted to fix the first wound the General had made but it wasn't moving the way it used to. It was slow, sluggish, it had lost some of it's color. It still did it's job, but it appeared to be struggling to do so, just barely managing to mend the severed flesh. He hadn't been lying, he maybe had one or two of these left in him but after that...

"I will ask you one last time. Join us. Give up on your foolish desires, child. There was never a future for you with this...beast." His finger tensed around the trigger, preparing to pull it again. He truly felt, in his twisted head, that he was about to break her and Isen, barely moving between conscious states, worried the same. "What will you choose? Your stubborn ideals or your family?"

"A-Adelaide..." He coughed out, his eyes so sad, so tired, as they tried to find hers from where he lay. "Don't..." He tried, so desperate, to speak, to keep her from making a mistake on his behalf. She couldn't join them. She just couldn't. Isen heard the clicking of the gun's barrel and resisted his instinct to shut his eyes, reflexively. He wanted to look at her, one last time. "I..."

He wasn't sure what he was trying to say or if it made any sense. What he felt and what he feared were at odds in his exhausted mind, his body struggling to keep up with the shock of moving back and forth beyond the boundary of death. He cared about her too much to watch her throw her life away to save him, he didn't deserve her or that sort of sacrifice with what he had done and yet, he wished he had another couple of minutes, even, just to tell her the truth about what she meant to him and how she had made him feel...but he knew, much like Samara, his time was at it's end. He wasn't happy about it but, in a weird way, he knew he'd be at peace, finally, he just wished that he could have found that peace with her.
 
"It's not mercy, you fool! You're going to end up killing the both of them and this will have been for nothing! You really think she'd listen to you if you pull that trigger? You're a fool, Orion."

The orb still hadn't powered up, Adelaide noticed this through her tears as she heard Isen speaking her name. Ignas' magic was growing weaker, something she hadn't even thought was possible for the demon as he struggled to heal the different wounds inflicted on his host. If she didn't make a decision soon, Isen was going to die regardless of whether or not Lorelei powered the orb back up. The fact that she hadn't, coupled with the way she was looking at her husband, made Adelaide doubt she was going to turn it back on at all. Something about the guarded look on her face and the tone of her voice, the way she snapped at the general and insulted him even as his face contorted to one of rage. For a moment, she almost thought he would even move to strike his wife, and after seeing the orb was indeed still off, Adelaide made her move.

"We're gonna go home, Isen. You and that bastard demon hang on." She wasn't sure why she included Ignas in the promise when just keeping her thoughts organized was a struggle. Her emotional state was compromised at best, her anger taking over as she dug deep for whatever magic she hadn't thrown away in her panic to save Isen from the general's clutches.

"Hey, asshole!" She laughed through her tears and pointed toward the orb, seeking to distract him long enough to watch her send the device to the floor in a shower of metal and sparks before she made her next move. "Come on, Samara, I need you to help us one last time." She'd taken all of the witch's magic from Isen's suit but not her own, and she took the last of her own magic to teleport across the room and slammed right into the general, Samara's magic blazing through her as her fist connected with his face.

"You can fucking die in the armor you're so fond of." Hitting him had hurt her hand enough to make her cringe slightly but hadn't stopped her, the fury on her face more than enough to override the pain as the force of Samara's magic pressed down on the general until his suit of armor began to cave in and mold firmly to his body. She felt a feeble attempt to stop her as Lorelei's magic danced her way, barely ghosting across her skin before the old woman stopped and watched in stunned silence.
 
Hearing his wife speak back to him caused the General to feel sudden anger directed towards her. She was telling him what he could and couldn't do? What gave her the right? Her sudden outburst had drawn his attention away from Isen, for the meanwhile, sparing Isen and Ignas the strain of another resurrection, at least for now.

"You call me a fool? That means nothing coming from you. For a woman of your power, you've been awfully content with being a lap dog for all these years. Your insistence on their protection is the only reason it even got this bad to begin with. And to top it all off, those drones you said you had perfected? Where are they now, Lorelei? We have one, maybe two left that hasn't been destroyed even though you claimed they were indestructible...or was that part of your 'mercy' too?" Insinuating that she had flawed their design on purpose, this was only making the General more frustrated and upset.

Orion intended to take it out on Isen but Adelaide's interruption gave him no opportunity to pull that trigger again.

Samara's magic, through Adelaide, pressed in on his armor, molding it to his skin, crushing him within the arcane-embued metal that was supposed to protect him. There was a sickening crunch, but not one undeserved, as his bones crumbled under the pressure and he screamed in sudden, unexpected agony. In a further showing of how disconnected he was from reality, he looked towards Lorelei as though she would help him, just moments after he had berated her. She made a half-hearted attempt to stop her granddaughter before letting her hand fall idly to her side. She seemed shocked but it wasn't shock that prevented her from moving.

This was karma, comeuppance for all the wrong he had caused. General Orion Van Dyne had spearheaded and commandeered Project Acuity, twisting it to his own demented design, leading to the death of hundreds of innocent people all of Cresthaven but even beyond that, he had taken countless lives before. He had ruined multiple families and broken several women all in the name of getting himself what he wanted. There were no redeeming qualities for him, not even in the eyes of his supposedly devoted wife, who watched as the life was squeezed from his wicked body.

"Lor-elei..." He choked out her name, coughing blood as he did. Was he about to beg her to help him? No, of course he wasn't. He was too proud. If he was going out, he would go out the way he lived; inexcusably evil. "...choke on your mercy. Fucking witches...should've wiped the lot of you away with the D-Dissonants...."

Orion used the last bit of strength he had to try and maneuver his fractured arm towards his waist. He was grasping at the final grenade that hung from it, attempting to go out with a bang. His mangled fingers clawed at the pin but he never got to pull it.

Beneath him, the fallen and equally damaged Isen had reached his weapon and he had used it to pull him up into a seated position, just enough so that he could make sure the General never got the finale that he wanted. Onigoshi pressed through an opening created by the crumbling of his armor, piercing Orion's stomach, preventing him from having the will to tug on the detonator.

"That's for Samara..."

Unlike Isen, when tortured, Orion felt every broken bone, ever twist of his body that shouldn't have been there, and now, the insertion of a razor sharp blade in a place where razor sharp blades shouldn't go. He coughed up more blood as Isen pulled it away. The amount of effort it had taken made Isen fall back to the floor again but the General was not powerless to do anything to fight back or to get out of the situation he was in.

"...crush the bastard, witch." Ignas told her, weakly, echoing what Isen had thought as well. One death wouldn't be enough to pay off the debt of lives General Orion Van Dyne had taken but this would have to suffice.
 
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