// combat dolls, war, death, bad good end
You knew you were dead as soon as the sigil went up. ZM class. You didn’t have any angels, much less anything to deal with a ZM class incident inclusion. Your little garrison was dust. Nothing would survive. The sky was cracking open. Your witch called a general staff meeting.
The mood in the main bay was somber. You all knew what a ZM class sigil meant. The clock was ticking down now, it was only a matter of time. Someone broke open the good booze, cigarette smoke hung thick in the air. One doll was crying, its witch gently patting it on the back.
Your witch was smoking when she made the announcement.
“We’ll fight of course.” There was no question. Of course you would. You would fight and you would lose. “It’s been an honor to serve with all of you.” She holds back a quaver, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.”
The sky is cracking open. The sky is cracking open and something is slipping Inside. A vast obsidian shape is sliding through the hole in reality, radiating malice and hostile field interactions. Your witch authorizes deployment, ripping out each of your safeties before takeoff; this will be a one way mission. You launch into hell.
You feel the sun on your skin, the wind in your wings, that glorious moment of jubilation as your systems fully authorize and activate–for one last time. For one last time. You’re going to make it worth it. You can’t stop a ZM class incident inclusion.
You’re going to stop it anyway.
Thirty two combat dolls fall through clear air towards the growing rip in reality. A boiling tear from which the Inclusion continues to ponderously and inexorably rise. Valiantly, futility, full of love and sorrow, you ride into hell.
Field interactions boil off the Inclusion, casually flaying away layer after layer of the military grade warding which protects your base. It isn’t even really attacking yet, you’re not worth the energy yet. Yet. It could kill all of you without trying. You’re going to make it try anyway, that’s the least you can do. Your sisters fall with you, locked together in a silent embrace, wind whistling past. Thirty two combat dolls descend into nightmare, bound by love, savoring that final touch in those moments before you’ll part hands for the last time.
“Begin operation.” The words are calm over the astral link, and are swiftly accompanied by the timed collapse of the remaining wards. The base standing stones overload as they’re forced into catastrophic redirects. A thread tugs at you, and your formation scatters.
You ride the thread, diving and rolling away as you draw your sword. You feel the wind in your hair.
“Now, my dolls. Waltz!”
The base power redirect finishes, the artillery witch dies instantly, and there is light.
The attack is desperate, foolish, impossible. A particle beam combined with a death curse combined with all the power of a collapsing and overloading fractal reactor splits the sky apart and punches straight through the Inclusion and back out into the Beyond.
You’re already on an attack vector as the beam flickers into nothingness. The Inclusion is launching Neverweres, a vast insect cloud offgassing from its wounded hive. You feel your reactor overheating, the divinity is intoxicating and absolutely fatal. You won’t need long.
The remaining witches have already abandoned the base when the untime lance unmakes it, blasting up to meet you on unstable curses and unsurvivable divinity taps. Falling combat dolls meet rising neverweres. Your blade sings as you dance through the enemy army. This is love.
There are orders of magnitude more of them than you have any hope of killing before your power reserves fail, before your reactor overloads, before you run out of bullets and your sword crumbles to nothing. You dance through your borrowed moments in a blur of blades and death, falling like a dagger towards the rip in the Inclusion. Good dolls.
The medic witch rockets past you like you’re stationary. She’s diving ana, burning the entire base’s blood supply on a ritual that she’s the final component to. The dolls in her squad close like a protective knot around her. She hits the shear plane and is ripped apart, her death curse activates.
The knot of astral threads made by her dolls tightens around the inclusion like a noose as the blood curse detonates and manifests the shear plane for a fraction of a second. Somehow, your impossible plan is working. The Inclusion is burning and crumbling, but it’s not dead yet.
The logistics witch throws herself against the wall of the Inclusion, along with a curse carrying the mass of all the supply chains running through her in a leviathan’s fist of kinetic energy. None of it is enough, you’re dropping one by one, dolls swarmed by neverweres and ripped limb from limb. It doesn’t matter.
Threads tug you forwards as your witch flings you towards the enemy. Your sword is glowing hot now, your movements are faster than they should be. There’s not much time left, it’s all coming down to the wire.
You feel the threadlines rip out of you, your witch is drawing them all back to herself for one final strike. You don’t need them anymore to feel her love, it’s radiating into the air.
“Hey, everyone?” She said in that last moment, “You were good dolls, you did good.”
You smile and blink back tears as your sword slams into the ruined side of the Inclusion.
Divinity drips from you, leaking from every joint and weld. Containment is failing. Light pools at your feet, your core is melting down. You hold back tears and drive the sword in further.
Your witch drifts down beside you and kisses your hair, wiping away a glowing tear.
“I did good?” You ask her.
She smiles and nods, cradling your head as your overloading core instantly gives her a lethal dose of divinity. Somewhere outside time, a thread snaps. Her final curse arrives. The Door opens. The world rips apart. There is a fractal, and then…nothing.