"You can feel it, can't you?"

The woman circles the chair, her hair hung low and her breath low, dangerous.

"It's there, on the verge... you can smell it, taste it, can't you? So close, you can sense it in the wind... but you're so close behind. Behind."

She grins, beautifully, venomously. She totes a knife, dripping and sizzling with poison. She sinks it into his side, smirks at the look on his face, but still puzzled at the lack of sound from the man. The blade slides out, its serrated edge tugging slowly on his tendons and flesh.

A metallic, cold hand grasped her neck and slammed her against the wall. The man's eyes were cold and calculating, and as his hand twisted and made her neck pop wetly as her voicebox was crushed under his iron grip, as her neck made a sickeningly hollow snap as her neck was broken, as she clung to life, the knife dropping from her fingers... the man leaned in and whispered into her ear...

"Das spitz ist aus."

...

Brendan Nygaard hefted the last box into his Manta, and turned back to the mine that they had used for their base of operations for the weeks since the beginning of the war.

Their security had been compromised, their allies had backed out.

The whole of Rubi-Ka shook in it's boots like abused children, waiting for the angry mother Midia to finish beating the rebellious child Archetype, and then proceed on them for even thinking about helping them. One child had the courage, or maybe stupidity, to stand by their younger brother and accept the punishment in hopes to stop the abuse. Someone no one would have expected would help the fledgling child Archetype.

As all should know... abuse is fueled by fear. And fear is fueled by uncertainty.

Nygaard hefted up a steel sign, and with three quick strikes with the palm of his hand drove the post of the sign a foot into the ground, twenty feet from the massive mine doors.

As he walked away, he typed a few numbers into an object and hefted it over his shoulder into the doors of the mine. Within five seconds the mine erupted in a gout of flame, spewing tendrils of fire everywhere... destroying any evidence.

He hefted himself into his Manta and tore away, throwing dust into the heat-whipped fire.

The sign read:

"Sie betrügen das Schachspiel.
Das spitz ist aus.
Es ist schade alle gegen alle."

(OOC note: I do -NOT- speak this language. I tried to translate as best as I could... those of you who DO don't impale me please. )