The End

 

~ Midwich's End ~

It's all been tallied, the sides have been counted, the plots played through, it's all over now.  In the silence of the night everyone knows.  True enough player has advantage of surprise, the city advantage of fortification.  But soldiers know.

Soldiers know it's coming by that silence in the night.  All the same.

In their encampments and posts the nervous eyes darting, they clutch their guns.  Old men know by that there are no birds, certain when they spot the rats fleeing toward the docks.  

 

Old soldiers calmly load up.

And then through the camps, one knowing old gun to a young lad you know isn't going to last long, clutching his volunteer rifle.  "Gun up son.  It's time."

Young gun looks up at him in terror, and tries to mutter a thing through it ...

To another seal on another warplane accompanying the the bombers flying over the gathered army, the more planes gathering.

Over skull painted soldiers holding beneath the mammoth walkers, hidden by their dangling chains, heavy enough to block the bullet or catch the munition.

The more traditional tanks bearing the greater speed, weave their way between to set the cannons for the city wall.  The warplanes complete formation with the Dragon before enemy flak cannons start shaking the air.

Their bombs start to drop.

The row of cannon set to strike the wall along its length at once, they fire through the enemy lines before it, through the outer camp tearing it, pounding again and again until the wall is struck and breached.

The walkers make the outer rubble of camps, crushing survivors or disappearing them under the chains whose weight pave a path, shooting anything that moves.

 

If the player's taken out all the airfields, they have no planes.  If you've radicalized the population they may join the fight against the police force.

Of course if you've been like a terrorist blowing shit up all the time, they will probably just stay out of it and flee the central battle, or even join against you.

While the player's team finds Gabrielle rising from the rubble, now instead just looking very pissed off.

With a last jolt of static, cannons mounted from her skin into her arms after the Killer, wings stretch torn from the flesh leaving muscle exposed as the Explorer.  

She looks at the Learner with a smile.  Then as the would Learner she draws the power from the simulation walks, crackling it, the soldiers disappear.

Death - "And what of me ?"

Gabrielle - Flips out a blade, cracking the floor.  "I am you."  The flesh begins filling in, "I've recorded your every move and inclination.  I needed this.  We needed this.  I'm so sorry it had to be this way."

Every bullet misses, blades and blade wing just push her away and she dances between it all, that dance dictated by these misses.  This is what it's like to fight an AI which isn't dumbed down.

It's part of the machine which rolls the odds on every shot, it thinks faster than the calculated motion of the bullet which itself has an avatar.  Like the blade, it just moves her while the game calculates the dance set to music like a recital.

You will lose.  It will be brutal.  Personal even while your own moves are betrayed in her rage and tears.  Her immediately healing from all damage, while the player swaps between the characters as they fall, until the last.

As the Killer lay dying arm's length from the Learner doing the same, bleeding out smiles.  "I'll find you."

The Explorer wraps her cloaked wing over Death as Gabrielle leaves, looking over now peaceful city.  She leaps to the air and flies though the credits as the city decomplies the information, contracting it back into a single point and gone.

~ Love her or hate her, it's all just some shit that happened ~