The Last Bastion

((Wight, Lokey and Magik: Yes, this is exactly the same as my thread on NuP, minus the essay. I just feel that it will work better here, and I won't have to worry about auto deletion.))

Wars are generally very ugly things. Regardless of the justification, the nature of the enemy or the the expertise either side is able to employ in brainwashing its subjects into joining the fray, lots of people tend to die. For all those that are slain, easily as many suffer horrific, irreversible injury and buffeting psychological trauma - those who participate in conflict often feel its effects long after the physical confrontation has come to an end.
Worse still is when civilians and other such non-combatants become entangled in the struggle. It is in this case that the ones who come under fire are the ones who are least equipped to defend themselves and, when their backs are to the wall, find no other alternative than to fight.

In this story, the oppressed must somehow find the means to repel their aggressors...or be destroyed.

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Picture a deserted shopping mall, its front entrance - once a small feat of structural engineering - reduced to so much glass, steel and rubble. The shops were devoid of life, the only humanoid shapes being the mannequins so beloved of clothes shops, eternally trapped in a single pose. Were there anyone around to perceive it, the silence could be described as eerie - deathly, even.
The mall's silent entrance hall led onto a set of escalators. They were still, the power long since cut. Curiously, the tops of the escalators were barricaded with a variety of materials; mostly sheets of plywood, refridgerators, doors, pushed-over tables and various display stands. It clearly hadn't amounted to much when the time came for its moment of glory, as evidenced by the numerous bullet holes that riddled the surfaces of most of the objects. Judging by the number of bullet holes and the fact that most of them passed quite cleanly through the barricade, it could safely be assumed that anyone attempting to take cover behind it would have been killed.
There was, however, a lone figure sitting behind the barricade, his back against a large steel fridge. Beside the man to his right was a half empty box of soft drink cans, and to his left were several bags of beef jerky.

He was a young man, as far as one could tell from his physical appearance. 22 would have been a safe estimate.
His handsome, youthful face was crowned by a short mess of white hair, sharp, thick eyebrows complimenting green, almond-shaped eyes. His lower lip was pierced by a single steel ring on the left hand side, and he nervously ground his front teeth against it.
His attire consisted of a black faux-leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up, underneath which he wore a white sleeveless shirt. These were offset nicely by a pair of dark grey combat pants and black boots.

In his left hand he held an opened soft drink can - the colourful orange and white design proclaiming it to be 'Fireburst - The Energy Drink That Keeps the Flame Burning' - and in his right hand, quivering constantly, he held a revolver. His right arm was thrust out in front of him, his hand gripping the weapon tightly, though it still moved a great deal. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated, and his breathing was fast and heavy.

In front of him, blood slowly dripping from a wound to the head, was a dead man. He was dressed in a sleek-looking black flak-vest over white combat fatigues, black gloves and black boots. A strange-looking combat helmet covered the top half of the man's head - it was made of a black, streamlined shiny plastic, not unlike a bicycle helmet. Blood issued from a hole in the area corresponding to the man's left temple - he had been shot in the head at close range.

The young man stared at the corpse for what seemed to him like forever, before finally managing to tear his gaze away. His eyes travelled to the can in his left hand, which he slowly brought to his mouth. Upending it, he took great mouthfuls of the sweet liquid into his throat, draining the can in a matter of seconds. Sliding a little further forward, he tilted his head back to look at the glass ceiling of the mall, sunlight streaming through.
He closed his eyes, dropped the gun in his right hand and began to whimper softly.

A few months ago, he had just been Alain Serris, living his ignorant little life. Before the invasion he had just been another twenty-something, going out with his friends and having fun, going to work, paying the rent - another happy little cog in the machine, and now? Now he could call himself a guerilla, at best - at worst, a murderer.
He bit down on his bottom lip and attempted to collect his thoughts. It had all happened so fast. When the dropships came over the horizon, the army were spread all too thinly evacuating the civilians. With the enemy on their doorstep, they couldn't have been blamed for handling the evacuation effort as they did. Indeed, most of the populace had been successfully extracted, but there were the unlucky ones - those who couldn't get out before the strange aircraft landed, bringing with them scores of elite, disciplined soldiers. Once the dropships landed, there was no going back to the cities to pick up the stragglers. It would have been suicide.

Alain was brought out of his daydream by an audible thud from the direction of the entrance. It was followed by another, and then another and another still.
Heavy footsteps.

His eyes darted about, searching, until the came to rest beside the corpse in front of him. Beside the dead man was a very long and very heavy-looking rifle and two bandoleers of ammunition. He surmised that, due to his significant musculature, the dead man could have operated the weapon with impunity. Alain, however, was a normal person who, before today, had never fired a weapon at a person. The heavy footsteps grew louder, indicating that their source was getting closer. His mind made up, Alain edged forward and reached out to take the rifle. It was extraordinarily heavy, but he managed to grab it and prop it up against the back of the fridge. He edged forward again, picked up one of the bandoleers and slung it across his torso, then peered cautiously through one of the larger bullet holes. It was a very tall figure - almost seven feet by Alain's estimate - dressed very similarly to the dead man. Its helmet, however, was extended to include a black respirator for the lower half of its face and it wore a short, black, buckled jacket over its flak vest and fatigues. Its gloves and boots were also noticeably thicker and heavier than those of the dead man, and, incredibly, it held a rifle identical to Alain's in each hand. Booming footsteps marked its steady approach.

Alain's eyes widened as before, and he was momentarily frozen in fear. He drew back from the barricade and fervently glanced about, looking for somewhere to hide. Most of the shops' shutters were down, and breaking a window would surely alert the soldier to his presence. Fortuitously a clothes shop a hundred yards ahead of him on the left hand side had evidently been the scene of a gunfight or somesuch, as its large front windows were smashed into pieces that littered the floor in front of the shop, intermingled with spent cartridges.
Alain gripped one of the bags of jerky between his teeth, then braced the rifle across his back with both arms, slowly rose to a crouch and headed as quietly as he could manage toward the shop.

Just as he cleared the doorway and darted inside, he heard the soldier reach the top of the escalator. The sound of splintering wood suggested to Alain that the soldier had simply walked straight through the barricade.

The soldier looked down and saw the dead man, and immediately glanced about, scanning his surroundings for any sign of an assailant. It let go of the rifle in its right hand, which adhered itself firmly to the side of his waist - magnetism, Alain supposed - then knelt down beside the corpse. It raised its right hand to its head and tapped its helmet once, then tapped again.

It spoke in a muffled voice, though it was impossible for Alain to make anything out, given the distance. It soon became apparent that the soldier had called for backup, or something to that effect.
Soon, more footsteps could be heard. Three soldiers dressed like the dead man hopped over the barrier and saluted the taller soldier, who gestured ahead of them. The other three soldiers, presumably its subordinates, saluted again, spread out and began advancing forth. Alain swore under his breath and retreated further into the shop, crawling underneath a coat rack.

He'd backed himself into a corner, and all he could do was sit still and hope that the soldiers wouldn't find him. The rifle was pointed ahead of him, and if it came to it, his finger lay on the trigger...

((I find it vaguely ironic that you are now completely ignoring the contents of said essay, and abandoning the NuP boards to illiteracy. Your choice, I suppose...
I'll now copy+paste my 'intro post,' but after this we begin to RP in earnest. ^_^))

Alain, watching the strange soldiers raptly, was oblivious to the world around him. Thus, it was only natural that he did not sense the presence of another person in the clothing store... at least until a hard metal object, cold to the touch, descended quickly past his face and was pulled up jarringly under his chin. He opened his mouth to shout, but a hand slid over it, stifling the nascent cry before it was even born.

"Are you one of them?" The question was intense but very quiet, audible only because it was spoken directly in his ear. "Nod once for yes, twice for no."
Alain, remaining still for a moment, took stock of his situation. His captor's hand was over his mouth, preventing him from making any noise that could give away their position. The elbow that hand was attached to was curled around one end of a long gun of some kind, and the other hand was holding the other end of the weapon. The strangling hold had loosened, enough to allow him to nod, but not enough that he could look around or slip free. He hesitated for a moment longer, then nodded twice, quickly. An emphatic no.
The pressure on his neck eased, and the cold metal of the weapon withdrew from its position just under his chin. He turned slowly, and in the gloom of the clothing store he got his first look at his captor.

A girl, at first glance no more than thirteen, stared back at him, sizing him up with a regard that seemed somehow not quite normal. Her apparel was decidedly practical, and not at all feminine: a simple deep blue T-shirt with the text 'Not Interested' in white, falling a short ways over a pair of close-fitting black pants. Her sleek grey sneakers were new-looking, but bore no logo.
Looking back at the girl's face, one immediately had to rethink one's estimation of her age. She couldn't be younger than fifteen, but a small fifteen, slender enough so as to fool the onlooker into thinking her younger. Her facial features were only hinted at, obscured by the gloom of the hanging clothes all around, but her eyes burned from within the darkness.
Those eyes were uncanny. They were a bright amber color... Perhaps an uncommon hue, but that wasn't what caught the eye. A dancing, angry orange light seemed to emanate from the depths of the girl's irises, lending a haunting quality to her gaze. They seemed to see right through the eyes of whoever was brave enough to meet their fiery regard, to see into the very core of the person's being.

She stood up, her cool demeanour giving no indication as to what opinion she'd formed of Alain.
"They're here, now. We'll kill them," she said softly, looking down at him, with so little inflection that it took a moment for the meaning of her words to strike Alain.
"We'll kill them all." There was no emotion in her face.