11112090 EOD B-Juliett

*Happy Veteran's (Armistice) Day 2019!*

### **1190 [KF] and [AM]**

[AM]: Thank you for meeting with me, I can't thank you enough with what you did for me those weeks ago.

[KF]: So this is the great Maximus mansion of Crimson, Colorado.

[AM]: Yes, please come in.

[KF]: It's only a shame with space like this that it never gets used for any festivities. It's truly magnificent.

[AM]: Please, you don't have to say that to be nice. If I weren't keeping myself busy with cleaning it surely it would fall into disrepair. Solace isn't the only reason I stay indoors.

[KF]: I imagine with someone as famous as you were, someone recognizing your face nowadays might spark controversy.

[AM]: Quite perceptive, that is the exact main reason I don't gallivant about.

[KF]: I accepted your invitation on that notion, I had something I wanted to ask seriously about.

[AM]: By all means then, let's find us a seat.

*[AM] leads [KF] through the massive mansion. The last time anyone was here it was [LE] and [RK] together during a time of emotional crisis [AM] had been experiencing. [NH] almost always refuses to come back, and not anymore because of spite. Nowadays it is because of scars he and [AM] have long since buried*
*The massive wooden residence sits on the other side of a canyon valley from the mountain pass road with a narrow yet strong ballistic plate bridge to connect it; a large sturdy (electric-shock capable) metal fence separates the road from the property. An unusually placed waterfall with its own mountain, seemingly stretching to the heavens, spans the width of the canyon valley. Inside the opulent wooden it gives off the Earthen comfort of a true home; showing a spacey living room and entrance room before them, with a large kitchen down towards the back of it. Rooms span overhead towards the back that appear to be the bedrooms and bathrooms. Towards the left of the entrance are massive windows that show the Rocky Mountains range in the midday sun, and towards the right leads to the stairs that go up into the bedrooms et. al. and a short hallway that leads to a backyard*
*In its prime this house hosted many jubilant parties of scientific endeavors, military accomplishments, and recreational fun. Hundreds of people in the 2020's must have been in this beautiful home as [AM]'s family took use of it. As [AM] and [KF] pass by on a short tour of the downstairs area, [KF] looks towards the backyard and peers out the window to it, thinking about what [AM]'s time must have been like with his family in different areas of the house*
[KF]: How did someone like yourself come to acquire this place?

[AM]: I built it myself.

[KF]: You're serious?

[AM]: It took me years, it was at first a pet project from when I was a teenager. Family property handed down, said with my aspiration in the military it could come of use. I'll get to that in a moment. When I joined the military finally at 18 I had to stop working on it for a long while. After I returned home I went into full gear trying to get something real impressive built, hiring contracting firms to assist on the construction itself and architects to assist on making the place functionally stable. If it weren't for the unforeseen fact that I would become world famous afterwards I would probably have spent my entire life paying off the real costs for this place. Now it serves as my tomb, the fame being the reason I can't go out often.

[KF]: Most good things come at a price not most of us can predict.

[AM]: Despite the irony it was good while the times were too, I suppose it still is. Why exactly it was handed down to me and not my younger sister was that eventually my adopted family knew I went directly back to Nazi scientists, exactly how luckily escaped their understanding. That, and this property covered a rather remote set of Cold War laboratories and tunnels now below the house that were owned by my adopted family's line. My father, as it were, refused to have anything to do with them. In my prime when I was building this place had it refurbished to 2020's standards rather than 1960's and that's where I developed this curse Nate and I share.

*[AM] and [KF] sit down across from each other on a L-shaped couch overlooking the mountain ridge*
[KF]: This has bothered me since arriving here, but what phenomenon is happening with the waterfall between the canyon out front?

[AM]: That there was one of the reasons my adopted family wanted nothing to do with this place. Perhaps they saw me as marginally more expendable than full blooded family or maybe they thought I'd solve the issue in the area once and for all. See, the town down below of Crimson is haunted by something strange and the locals are convinced this waterfall is the source given its unusual nature. Locals always loathed at my decadence and "ignorance" as they called it, but the whole time I was aware of it.

One day here me and my soon to be wife were spending the weekend enjoying the newly finished home and a we hear our doorbell ring. A little girl, about 7 years old at the time looking back, was standing at our door wearing barely anything and with these pearly white wings behind her back. I guess she was too young to understand fully what happened at the time, little did I know that not only would our decision to take her in bring a string of curses but also that we had found one of the living examples of a "fallen angel".

[KF]: One of them? There's more, or other kinds?

[AM]: Some time later I found out the other kind of fallen angel is more feral, more like the emaciated frame of a humanoid rather than human.

[KF]: I'll believe it when I see it.

[AM]: You wouldn't want to, but I'm getting off-topic. We took her in, called her one of us. I learned more about her over time and despite what felt like curses running through we felt like we did the right thing. Raised her like our own daughter and figured out a way to let her blend in with society.

[KF]: What was her name?

[AM]: Angel, by her request. She and my son Austin got along well, and while he was too young to remember it Angel and I would be forever depressed by the loss of my wife.

[KF]: Nate has told me this story.

[AM]: Yeah, he lost his wife in that mess too. For him they'd only been married for a month. For me it had been two. It almost felt like the force of God struck us down.

[KF]: You don't have to continue, if you mustn't.

[AM]: Well I'll wrap it up at least. I lived on here trying to raise my adopted daughter and by blood son, not letting them feel a moment like they weren't family. It didn't matter that he was my biological son, they both were my kids. I feel like I could have prevented it, but earlier when I mentioned this town was haunted and Angel had something to do with it, back then I didn't so much as understand a wink of it and yet today I only marginally know any better. It's something with the fog. It rolls in once in a while and those caught in it are spirited away to some hellish ruin of the town infested by ghouls. Up here it doesn't affect us, but visiting the town at the wrong time of year is certain death. I don't want to think about it much, but fog at the wrong time of day caught all three of us. We got taken there but in the end upon our escape, by how I saw it I can only imagine it was the case, it almost was if Angel was taken back to where she came from. Whoever took her back took my son with her. She was 17 and he was 10, bright futures and aspiring ambitions.

[KF]: I'm sorry.

[AM]: No, don't be. I've had many decades to mourn the loss of everyone I love.

[KF]: I'm sure all of use have known loss, it's almost as if it's what connects us.

[AM]: After his wife passed too Nate took everything out on me, left and searched for his own answers I guess. I wouldn't hear from him in 60 years.

[KF]: I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one who he's told he did in all that time.

[AM]: Me neither, sometimes I wonder how he's kept a grudge on me for nearly a century and sometimes I wonder if I'm lucky he's not that hostile anymore. Perhaps I have you to thank again for that.

[KF]: I must ask what I came here for: how did you deal with fame?

[AM]: Why, is it catching up to you to?

[KF]: I accepted it, I don't like that I did, but that comic show everyone's loved for the last century that you also starred in-

[AM]: Oh that Ninja Nightmare.

[KF]: That one, they asked for my appearance too. I realize how big that is.

[AM]: It's like being an actor for one of the superhero movies in the early 2020's, Ninja Nightmare didn't start making movies until the 2030's, just cartoons for a while. Ninja Nightmare has existed since around 2011 too.

[KF]: I heard from Nate how big those other movies were. I used to like that comic series when I was young, I liked the funny antihero one that had a movie I heard as far back as 2015.

[AM]: Yeah I know what you mean. But what, you have a problem with Ninja Nightmare, or?

[KF]: Being famous. You had to cope with it somehow.

[AM]: Yeah, I did. Nate didn't like it back then.

[KF]: I'm worried he'll leave me too.

[AM]: Honestly Nate is the most closed of all readable books, kinda like door that's stuck shut rather than locked. He listens to you more than anyone else in the world, and I mean it. To anyone else he is stern and stubborn, maybe a couple people like the Mason brothers he's more open to and then just friendly enough with Ren and Aki. You get the message.

[KF]: He's not my only concern. Maybe call me fortunate, but when people see me on the streets they wave, nod, or some kind of polite greeting. I heard people used to run up and ask for autographs from you and scream and cheer at your presence.

[AM]: Damn, that is kind of fortunate.

[KF]: I'm world famous too, now. I've got nicknames in different countries even.

[AM]: Hopefully none bad or resentful.

[KF]: Back home I am simply called "Miss Frost" but some people say "Miss Frost, my hero", probably because my doings in the ZED crisis.

[AM]: I'm surprised that given the damage and lives lost that society wasn't destroyed over there. Millions survived somehow.

[KF]: The military must have known something as there were quarantine zones guarded by mechs and drones that I would pass by during that time. Communes of thousands of survivors scattered all around, I only ever went to one with Dominic and Marius once. Since we ran off for our own survival at ground zero there was no way to identify any of us as the GSG-9 we were and those communes apposed lethal force if we wanted to enter with all of our gear, so we stayed away.

[AM]: Ah I hate situations like those.

[KF]: In Japan they call me "Mikado Frost". After reviewing my phone library I realized it was a reference to a Eurobeat song, and I must be making an impression being a street racer with an AE86 in 2090.

[AM]: Roll with it. If fame ever makes you uncomfortable then play it off cleverly or make a funny comeback, it's much too difficult to tell millions of people "no" to something. Make the best of it, don't let it take you over ever.

[KF]: I suppose in a way that works. It's really difficult making decisions when there are billions of people watching you do it, directly or not makes no difference.

[AM]: Look, Kari, the fact that you made your way out here to ask for advice rather than help proves you're already strong-willed enough to face it.

[KF]: I suppose you're right.

[AM]: And I have been waiting for a time like this because something has been on my mind for the last few years.

[KF]: What would that be?

[AM]: Every time Grace, the Canadian JTF-2 one, stops by to check on me she tells me how she's somewhat intimidated being in your presence. Someone as highly skilled and impressive as you working with someone as new as her, she says, seems almost unreal.

[KF]: I'm always told I'm intimidating, that bothers me a bit.

[AM]: But she speaks highly of you not out of fear or necessity but out of pure honesty. Apparently you showed her and Lt. Mason why you and that Sweet Dreams aren't to be messed with.

[KF]: Yeah, I remember. I spent the next few days trying to learn what SDR really could do since I believed at the time that I messed with the natural flow of time on all of Earth.

[AM]: And I just wanted to tell you that I clap from the sidelines with everyone else because that's how I honestly feel and not because I'm trying to make up anything to you.

[KF]: Why would I feel that way?

[AM]: Because when we first met, when I took some few soldiers that knew of my age into France and Germany, you and Nate acted hostile. I was convinced he had brainwashed someone to work on his side despite my intervention was simply to get him out of Europe. I suppose in the end y'all didn't need the help.

[KF]: Oh. That was decades ago for me.

[AM]: I, really?

[KF]: I've messed too much with time and space, dimensionally and throughout time. Really I am about 67.

[AM]: So you really are in the same boat as us then, huh.

[KF]: From what I recall, he still wasn't fond of you then. Although the lethal force was misunderstanding. My naive self thinking he was my escape after I lost my two best friends.

[AM]: Kinda like young love.

*[KF] sighs*
[KF]: Yes. In a time of distress regardless.

[AM]: All this time I was just hoping you didn't resent me too.

[KF]: My thoughts are my own, and my perception is mine to forge.

[AM]: That's, well, that's really mature of you. Much different than you were years ago.

[KF]: We as people can be influenced, but only the monstrous brainwash. All this time, it takes knowing how he's changed too, Nate wasn't concerned about making me see things like him. He's concerned about me. In his own way Nate is caring, but to anyone who doesn't understand it may seem like lecturing. I see it in his face, he wants me to understand why he points stuff out and not really what he's saying. Maybe it's because he doesn't know how to communicate how he's feeling any better, or maybe that's just how he is from all that time off the grid. I'm not in any position to brainwash him to be any different, that would deceive the very meaning of a relationship.

[AM]: It's not always about always being happy, I get it. The way you put it, Nate's a much different person than he was back in the day. That would explain a lot.

[KF]: I don't mean to sound rude, but what did you expect? Time does a great number to one's personality.

[AM]: You're absolutely right. Kari, I bet you don't realize it fully but your mere presence can change someone's life for the better, let alone talking with you.

[KF]: My influence grows, just another person in this web of sorrow that's been affected. I'm just glad that this time I didn't have to use SDR to do it.

[AM]: Thank you for speaking with me today, I appreciate you coming all the way out here. I don't get many visitors anymore.

[KF]: It was an honor to meet again with such a legendary soldier of old. I'm sure it was heart-wrenching to see your fellow brothers live out their lives without you, and more so to see who you outlived in combat.

[AM]: Sometimes it's not about the soldiers lost, but about what the soldiers lose. I know you understand how that feels.

[KF]: We've all lost someone dear.

[AM]: Kari.

*[AM] stands up and [KF] follows suit, both standing across from each other parallel to the windows*
[AM]: I am proud to call you a fellow soldier. Don't stop what you do, no one can replace you.

*[AM] salutes to [KF], and after a moment of shock she salutes back. Both then drop their arms to the side after a few seconds*
 [AM]: I hope you have a peaceful rest of your Veteran's day, today.

[KF]: I can only wish the same for you.

*end*