[PLAINS 2 - STRUGGLE]

The gunshot rings through Masaru’s ears like a trumpet sounding for battle. The two watch a patch of something black flourish into the air from around The Knight’s shoulder as it initiates its charge, curving to its right.

“Yeah!” Valerie erupts as she cycles the bolt and chambers her next round. She’s aiming a little to the left of it.

“Don’t hesitate!” Masaru directs. Go!

With another shot from the rifle, Valerie sends it perfectly into the top of The Knight’s helmet, scathing off the top of its ghostly white plume. If she had aimed just a little lower it would have been through the head.

“Ride to me, and be measured,” it commands like the cackle of an otherworldly authority.

Valerie prepares another round. “And this one’s going to be to our right!” she says, already motioning her rifle just a hair’s length in aim to the right of the helmet.

“That’s right. It’s about to- there!” Masaru erupts as The Knight follows its original pattern.

Valerie fires, and it cuts right through the helmet, spilling a spiral of black-white blood out into the air as it leans into its charge.

“Nice!” Masaru shouts as Valerie cries with joy.

The stallion continues down for them, The Knight still hunched into his stirrups.

The two watch it come around into the center: the perfect entry point to strike into the outcropping and sweep one of them with a singular, fatal tilt of the lance.

“Don’t reload,” Masaru says, reaching for her as he crouches in for movement.

“It’s… not down,” Valerie says, staring into the oncoming lance like the headlights of a truck as she depresses the trigger. “Why didn’t that kill i-whoah!”

Valerie flies over, but not by the lance of The Knight. She soars abruptly to the side just in time for the metal stick’s sweep, jerked by the salaryman’s effort by gripping her collar. Her finger, jerking from the shock, discharges the rifle and sends the round into a neighboring rock, only to ricochet uselessly into the dirt.

She trembles in confusion before swinging to Masaru. “You made me miss!”

“I saved your life,” Masaru snaps. “Now lean in. It still has to curl around.”

Valerie’s face fails to register the idea for a moment, until she connects the thought that would seem obvious to anyone who isn’t currently focused on firing accurately: it’s more important to be around to hit your next target, than to hit the current one.

Her gaze sharpens. “Okay!” She leans in from behind another rock as she aims towards The Knight, just now finishing his turn.

She fires her fourth round, striking along right side of The Knight’s breastplate, and immediately begins cycling her next round.

Riding forward like a demon across hell, The Knight raises its free hand, and couples its fingers together for some reason.

Masaru leans in, but not so much to delay her next jolt to the side. “Get ready to move on three… one… two… th-huah!?”

The Knight snaps its gauntleted fingers, the metallic clang reverberating through their minds as the rocks around them inexplicably vanish!

Masaru jerks with all his might to rescue Valerie, but the sweep’s arrival is right on target now that The Knight doesn’t need to maneuver around the rocks.

“Valerie!” Masaru shouts as he watches her blond head of hair, like a golden torch in the sunset’s dimming lights, flash along The Knight’s weapon.

With a flick requiring strength beyond a mere human, The Knight removes Valerie, striped red with her own blood, into the grass nearby.

Masaru, seeing a completely different kind of red, runs for the rifle she had dropped. He recovers the old bolt action, and pulls in a shallow, furious breath before swinging up to his feet to take aim.

It’s his first time using a firearm, but he’s given a little extra time. The Knight hasn’t jerked into the stirrups of its horse.

That… and he can feel something different now. He witnesses pictures in his mind, smells things that aren’t familiar to him, and a strange feeling of betrayal courses through his mind.

“The… hell?!” he gasps out as he does all he can to level his aim when he finally notices the waiting Knight.

Masaru’s gaze flickers in confusion for a moment. He’s never heard of a boss that waits after taking out a teammate.

“One shot!” he growls, struggling to align his eye with the sight of the patient enemy.

It’s so difficult to keep his arms still while holding a heavy hardwood base with a dense metal tube inside of it. “Who… made this shit?!” he hisses under his breath as he tries to keep the front sight post lined up with his target, but his eye keeps going out of focus.

The Knight takes the cue, and begins charging for him, its steed planting its hoof on the dying Valerie’s neck as it races across the shadowed field.

“One shot!” Masaru reiterates to himself as he squeezes his hand into the trigger, lined up as best as he can on The Knight’s head.

“One sho-”

The sound of the trigger depressing without the bang clicks in his ear just as The Knight’s lance comes in.

…In all of his emotion, he had forgotten to reload.

Masaru is once again acquainted with the horrible *CHUNK* of the lance as it smashes into his center, collapsing his sternum and spine as his legs dangle worthlessly in the wind. He spits out a volume of blood onto the base of the lance, his mortality joining Valerie’s as he quickly grays out…

But having stood up this time to challenge The Knight, he sees something strange.

The Knight struck him low, so now that he’s lifted up, he can see The Knight from a little higher up than last time.

It looks wrong. He’s not sure if what he’s seeing is real, but The Knight has a strange shimmer to it. The horse is real, there’s no doubt about that, but its rider has something to it that Masaru can’t quite understand.

He realizes that this is probably the first time anyone’s seen this, however, as he assumes everyone who faced The Knight previous were either laying prone, crouched down, or simply running away.

A gleam strikes into his eye as he loses consciousness to that now-familiar sensation of drowning.

“I’ll figure you out… bitch,” Masaru gurgles out with the last pulses of his blood spilling along with it.