When I was in junior high, my Dad started to train
me on an obstacle course set up at a park at the Opfer Cultural Center, a setup
which is, no doubt, destroyed by now.
Dad started me off slowly at first, but eventually pushed me to go over
this obstacle course in a full sprint. Training
on that course helped me to get to Grace's boutique. The difference between my training and the
sprint along the route to Grace's boutique was, instead of avoiding steel bars
and kids with sticky hands, I was avoiding the dead. Ushtar also avoided the dead in a swift
manner, but he was a couple of steps behind me.
I turned the corner to a straight shot to Grace's
boutique. When I sat the storefront I
saw a man, a verbrecher, drop a backpack in front of the mannequin wearing the
hot lacy combination. The mannequin is
no longer there. The backpack is no
longer there. The storefront is no
longer there. The store is no longer
there. I turned the corner in time to
see the backpack be placed in front of Grace's boutique. Ushtar turned the corner in time to see the
backpack explode.
Ushtar's reaction to the explosion was
understandable. Ushtar forgot the
environment he was in. He forgot about
the verbrechers, the guns, and the intent of the verbrechers carrying the guns. In that moment Ushtar sprinted in the
direction of the explosion to look for his love. Only through the power of love and the grace
of God does this result in something good.
In this case, Ushtar's thoughtless expression of his love resulted in
him not getting shot. I didn't get shot
either, but I was much more deliberate about making sure that didn't happen.
When I got to him, Ushtar was frantically digging
through the rubble that now fills Stilen's Silkenries. Watching this from a distance, I felt I was
watching a tragedy in process. This
tragedy reached its climax when Ushtar found Grace. Grace was dead. The explosion had killed Grace. Ushtar was holding his dead lover. When I saw this I saw a vision of myself
holding Rinoa. I saw this and I saw
afraid. This frightful vision was broken
by a ringing phone.
I dashed over to the register, picked up the phone,
and listened. "Hello? Grace?
Are you there?" The sound of
Rinoa's voice was a tremendous relief to me.
"Rinoa."
"Hato?"
"Yeah."
"Where's Grace?
Is she all right?"
"Where are you?"
"I'm at The Redford. I haven’t left the room. Are you all right?"
"Yes.
Are you safe?"
"I think so?"
"Good.
We're coming to get you."
"We?"
"Yeah.
Ushtar and I are coming to get you.
We need to leave, now."
"Okay. I
love you, Hato."
"I love you too. We're leaving, now."
Hearing Rinoa's sweet voice made me take my focus
off Ushtar. When I again focused on
Ushtar I didn't like what I saw. His
face was a mix of overwhelming sadness and white hot rage. I also saw Ushtar's gun positioned against
his right temple.
With tears streaming down his face, Ushtar said,
"Grace, I'm coming."
Across the store I ran, throwing myself at Ushtar
before he could take his shot. As I
tried to wrestle the gun away from Ushtar, I tried to reason with him. "Ushtar, you don't want to do
this."
"Bullshit I don't."
"Give me the gun!"
"No. I
don't want to live without Grace."
As a last resort, I kicked Ushtar in the balls,
allowing me the opportunity to tear the gun away from him. As he was on the floor in pain, tears still
flowing from his eyes, I began yelling at Ushtar. "Don't you see man? This is what the verbrechers want. They want to torture us. They want to slaughter us. They want us dead, and if we're causing
ourselves pain, if we're killing ourselves, all the better for them."
"They killed my wife. We were going to have a life together, with
children and a house with little daisies out front. I've lost it now. You don't know what that's like."
"You're right, I don't. You may never have that for yourself, but you
can prevent that from being taken away from someone else. Ushtar, we have to get to Velas. We have to tell the world what's going on
here. We have to do it." As tears began to trickle down my face, I
said, "Please. I can't do this
alone. We have to do it. For the sake of us, all of the opfers in
Dolore, we have to get to Velas to tell the world what is going on here."
Ushtar wiped the tears from his eyes, took a couple
of deep breaths, then looked at his fallen love. I know that such a scene may happen to me in
my life, but I hope that it's not for a very long time. The gunfire from outside served as a way to
break this scene. "Okay, let’s get
this done. How do you propose we do
this?"
I pulled back out my Hipster and started searching
for routes we could take. "I don't
see any back alleys we could take to The Redford, and the train station is
surrounded by busy streets. If we had a
car, this would be a lot easier."
"What about a big armored vehicle?"
"Yeah, but who has access to those?"
"I do.
The Vierdestad Opfer Military does.
There’s a whole fleet of them back at the base."
"Wouldn't that be the first thing anyone would
go and hide in during a firefight?"
"Sure, if they could get into them. However, the keys to the vehicles are in a
safe with a biometric lock on it. Only
Captains and the Commander can open that safe."
"Captains like you?"
"Exactly."
I looked at the map for The Redford. It took me a second, but then I got an
idea. "There's a loading area in
the back of The Redford. If you can get
there, I can get there with Rinoa."
"What makes you think they wouldn't blow The
Redford up the same way they blew up this building?"
"I just talked to Rinoa. She's at The Redford. She's safe.
I'm going on blind faith that she still is."
Ushtar nodded his head and said, "Okay. I'll go get the vehicle and meet you
there." Ushtar then started to go
back to the base. He was a couple of
steps away from leaving Grace's boutique before he stopped and turned back
toward me. "Could you give me my
gun?"
I was still holding the gun. I had never held a gun before. It felt odd to me to hold something that
could easily kill someone. Despite the
oddness I felt, I hesitated in giving the gun back to Ushtar because I knew
what he had just wanted to do with it.
The hesitation was only for a moment.
After that moment, I knew that I had faith in Ushtar, that he was going
to go to the base and bring an armored vehicle to The Redford. I had faith that Ushtar was not going to kill
himself. So I handed the gun to Ushtar.
"Thank you," Ushtar said to me as he ran
out of the destroyed boutique, going back along the route we took toward the
military base.
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