[Episode 178225] [Episode 178225]As Jeanette had fled for cover, she left Borne and Marennes free to act — and act they did.
Borne made up her mind fairly quickly. If Noir could turn against Althena, then they couldn’t be controlled by anybody, and to her mind, a Noir that couldn’t be controlled was not only useless, but it was incredibly dangerous as well. They had to be stopped now, before they ruined everything — she could deal with Althena’s shocking lapse in judgment later (assuming, of course, that either of them actually survived). She rose to her feet, drew a dagger from a sheath strapped to her leg (as Jeanette had confiscated her firearm) and charged towards Noir. She’d have liked to take out the Corsican (the Maidens might still be salvageable, after all), but quite frankly, the situation had just grown so dire that she couldn’t afford to be picky. Killing any one of them should have been good enough to stop them, and that meant that Borne’s “tactics” resembled those of a berserker more than anything else (i.e., there were no tactics).
Marennes, on the other hand, chose to flee — perhaps she intended to get help, or at least alert the other nuns at the manor to the turn of events that had occurred. Then again, she might have simply gone into a panic, choosing “flight” where her companion had chosen “fight.” In any case, if Noir allowed her to escape from the chamber, she could (and in all probability, would) cause them no end of trouble.
And Althena… did nothing. She remained where she stood, and made no move either to encourage or resist her impending execution. She simply took a few deep breaths, and prepared for her fate.
Noir’s reaction was like clockwork: the target needed to be eliminated, as did anyone who might try to interfere with her elimination. Suddenly, there could be no excuses, rationalizations, or emotional shortcomings — anything that might have caused even a moment’s hesitation simply wasn’t, and the True Noir found Themselves incapable of argument or reconsideration of their immanent actions. Noir had judged Althena, to forsake this judgment would be to renounce Noir, and that was impossible, for They were Noir, and could not be otherwise.
The Maidens knew their role. They were the primary executioners, and their focus was on their target. Both lifted their swords as they advanced towards Althena — despite their trancelike focus, they were still capable of some degree of independence, and both Kirika and Mireille knew that, given a choice, Althena would choose to die by the traditional weapon of Noir, rather than the gun or the throwing knife. They moved slowly: Althena was offering no resistance, and for all she had done for (and to) them, she had earned the right to die with dignity.
The Hand knew her role. She was the Maidens’ Guide, true, but in this context, she was also the Maiden’s Guardian. She would not, could not, allow anyone to interfere with their sacred duty. She would deal with the outside threats. Borne was the most immediate threat; clearly, she wanted to do harm to either one of the Maidens, or to the Hand herself (an act that would be just as harmful to the Maidens in the long run). Fortunately, she was acting irrationally, which made the resolution of this crisis quite simple. The Hand reached into her black robes, pulled out her Walther P99, and proceeded to shield her charges with its firepower.
The bullet struck Borne in the bridge of the nose, easily breached the cartilage and bone that separated it from her cerebral cortex. From there, it was a simple matter for the projectile to move through the brain, severing the neurons that controlled her higher reasoning, and slicing through the blood vessels that provided those neurons with the oxygen they needed to survive. By the time the bullet reached the occipital lobe, the nun’s cerebrum had been irreparably flayed, and it ceased to function. (Her body, however, would stay alive for the time being, as the bullet’s trajectory managed to miss the medulla oblongata entirely.) The back of the skull put up only a marginally smaller amount of resistance than the front; at this velocity, there was relatively little deformation in the bullet’s overall shape from its previous collisions with barriers, and thus it escaped from the skull with the same ease with which it had broken in, leaving a neatly shaped hole in the back of Borne’s head where the bullet had punched out small chips of bone. From there, the bullet’s journey became much less interesting, as it ricocheted twice off of the thick stone walls of the chamber before coming to rest in a decorative figure off to one side.
The Hand did not bother with a second shot for the same reason that she did not bother watching the body fall to the ground: she still had to deal with the fleeing Marennes. She shed her cumbersome black robe, revealing her street clothes, and immediately began to give chase. As she put the full weight of her body on her injured leg, her mind registered excruciating pain. This was ignored; the death of Marennes took precedence over discomfort.
Marennes had only just managed to open the door leading away from the chamber and begun ascending the staircase; the gunshot only increased her haste. She was still in view, however, so the Hand took aim and fired her weapon, but the Hand’s marksmanship was off, and Marennes kept moving. The pursuit lead the blonde assassin to the base of the stairs, where Marennes came into view once again, and this time the Hand’s aim was true — but she heard a metallic ping as the bullet hit the nun’s back. The analysis did not take long: her quarry was obviously wearing bulletproof armor. Clearly, Marennes would have to be dispatched with a headshot, much like Borne was. Unfortunately, that meant that the Hand would have to close the gap between them, and furthermore, she would have to do so quickly to keep from attracting any unwanted attention. Given her wounded leg, this was not easy; it took all of her willpower to keep from collapsing from the pain as she bounded up the spiral staircase (the possibility of allowing her quarry to escape and returning to the chamber did not cross her mind). Twice more shots were fired, and the second of these passed cleanly through Marennes’ right calf, slowing her down and causing her to trip on one of the risers, giving the Hand the opportunity she needed to reach the nun.
“No, wait—”
Mireille didn’t care what her quarry had to say. She simply aimed her pistol at Marennes’ head, and pulled the trigger.
“Did you hear that?” asked one of the two nuns guarding the entrance to the stairway.
“Hear what?”
“I’m pretty sure I heard gunfire coming from downstairs. Shouldn’t we check?”
“Why bother? It’s probably some part of the ceremony. I over heard Borne and Marennes talking earlier — they think part of it involves tying up loose ends, if you know what I mean.”
“Um…”
The second guard sighed. “Don’t you get it? This is a very good thing — that Corsican finally got what was coming to her.”
“Oh.”
Unlike the Hand, the Maidens had an emotional attachment to their target; but that did not stop them from meting out their justice upon Althena. Both stabbed the leader of the Manor simultaneously with their swords; Kirika’s punctured her left lung, while Chloe’s went straight through the abdomen. Althena collapsed immediately, falling towards the marble floor. Both Maidens withdrew their swords and prepared to attack her again, but as they did so, Althena managed to make eye contact with the swarthier of the two, and proceeded to mouth three words: Au revoir, Chloe. The next strikes both severed major arteries, and then everything went black.
There was no sense in trying to hide Marennes body; she was already bleeding so much that dragging her back down to the chamber would just leave a suspicious-looking trail for any curious persons to follow, and The Hand didn’t particularly want to feel compelled to kill anyone else at the moment. So she reentered the chamber and took note of the scene: as expected, Borne was now lying in a small puddle of her own blood. The Maidens were standing over Althena; they were remarkably clean, given the amount of spattering that had occurred when her arteries were severed. It was almost over now; there were just a few more formalities to take care of, and somehow, the Hand knew exactly what they were.
“Throw her in.”
The Maidens nodded and complied, hefting Althena’s corpse up by its limbs, and tossing the lifeless body into the cavernous maw. As the body reached the lava, the Hand recited the third version of the infamous Noir poem:
“Noir, das is der Name eines alten Schicksal.
Zwei Mädchen die den Tod beherrschen.
In die Tiefen des Höllenfeuers lockt die schwarze Seele die verlorenen Kinder.”
Thus ended the Grand Retour, the ancient rite of Noir, and thus was Althena’s long-held dream finally achieved.
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(Posted Wed, 29 Nov 2006 03:05)
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