the aftermath

"clear! make way, coming through!"

Jake, covered in blood, both his own and otherwise, came crashing through the double doors of the medical part of the facility. Covered in dirt, guts, blood, he looked terrible from the neck down. Ironically, he was grinning from ear to ear like a cheshire cat.

"unbelievable!"
"Allright Jake, try not to talk too much or else I'll have to sedate you,"
"Doc, you should have been there, it was..." Jake couldn't even begin to describe what it was.
"Well now, if I would have been there, who would have been here to take care of your mangled leftovers?"

Jake was asleep, probably from loss of blood.

"That's right, Jake, you sleep. When you wake up, you'll be about as good as your going to be,"

"he's going to make it, doc?"

The Doc didn't reply, but his eyes spoke for him.

Upon waking, Jake found himself staring up at ten or so happy faces.

"there he is, good man" it was the Sergent.

"good boy jake, glad to have you with us," said the Captain.

"Doc was right, he woke up right on schedule."

Tell us about the battle, Jake.



The amazing sense of fantastic that Jake had been feeling prior to passing out due to blood loss had been replaced by an overwhelming sense of good fortune and a perma-grin.

"Now, now, don't press him too much, he's been through a lot, give him a minute now."

"Actually," Jake smiled at them, " I feel great."

"That's fine, Jake, really that's fine," Doc was smiling too, "just try not to overdo it right now, okay?"

"Sure, doc. No problem."



All of it was like a crazy awesome dream where you are a super-hero with all these powers and get to bone all these hot blonde porn-stars, but when you wake up, all you have left is the good feeling that's remained, while the details are sketchy at best.


The Doc was the first to speak, "Now, if you can, could you tell everyone what happened at the DOT?"

"Man, what a fight!" Jake sounded like a sports fan that had just watched his favorite team trounce their rivals. He didn't sound at all like the only survivor to the biggest all out battle-royal between good and evil that the New World had ever seen.


"It all started with Techno music, we were so scarred in that little room that we would have probably froze when the call cam in, but then..."

Jakes eyes became distant, his face relaxed, everyone in the room waited intently on his silence. A tear started rolling down his dirt smeared face.

"They're all dead, aren't they." It was not a question.

"You're still here, Jake," the captain couldn't cry, so he was the one to speak.

"We knew there was going to be security, but there wasn't just a force of VM guarding the component, there was a small army, five hundred at least. A whole armored guard of tanks, trucks, motorcycles, fuck. I think they were thinking to just make it so fucking obvious NOT to fuck with them that is why we won."

Everyone knew the outcome, 100 of the facilities warrior class, those with a strong kind of combat skill or other combat qualification, against 500 armored guards both VM and mercenaries. And even against those odds, the machine had been destroyed, the VM force destroyed, scattered to oblivion. It was as if equal parts of matter and anti-matter had come into coexistence, only to obliterate both simultaneously. What nobody could understand was: why?

"The music, it was the music," said Jake, "it made you strong, fast, and brave to the point of idiocy." Over the next few hours, Jake spoke of those that had passed, of their heroic efforts against impossible odds, how one good-heart had taken down a socre of armored trucks by confusing of the tanks with illusions, how the music, blasting through the air out of a combat helicopter speaker system had just as much of a negative effect on the VM force as a positive one on the facility's; How the music caused some of the VM to turn and run, only to be gunned down by their own support troops, and others to freeze in their tracks with their guns pointed with the dangerous end towards the fight.

"It was as if they were so shocked by the fact that we were actually attacking them, and the sheer force of will, the sheer ferocity of teh attack, that they felt that they were fighting on the losing side." Said Jake, as if one statement could ever explain the unexplainable event that had occurred.



That night Jake slept the sleep of the just. The VM scheme to tip the scales had resulted in a cataclysmic event, severely damaging both sides resources and leaving both licking their wounds. But one thing was true, all the momentum was with the facility and their attempt to stifle the Vice Magistrate's efforts to bring the New World down into chaos. Never before had the goal of defeating the VM and instituting a world where equality and justice were the bread and water of the people been so real. Jake never woke up, but he was to be credited as the hero of the Battle of the New World, not for his actions, but because he survived it, giving those left behind the story, the legend that was to become the Legacy of the Just. His job finished, Jake died.