The Most Important Thing in the World

[Skraal]

Clara stood frozen in shock, her body trembling with adrenaline as her eyes remained firmly locked onto the crumpled human form below her. A thin wisp of smoke wafted up from the gun's barrel into the evening air, the breeze blowing through the scene all of a sudden becoming unbearably cold. She slowly lowered the weapon as the boy breathed his last, expiring without another word.

She...she had done it. He was dead. Deceased. Gone. Whatever you wanted to call it, the point was that he was no longer alive, and the reason for it was the uncomfortably heavy piece of metal currently held in a white-knuckled death grip by the girl who was currently standing over his corpse.

Clara's heart pounded in her chest as the reality of the situation began to set it. Sure, he had gotten what was coming to him, but still... fuck, this wasn't how it was supposed to happen. The revenge that she had been anticipating for days was finally hers, yet instead of satisfaction, all she felt was a strange sense of emptiness. She had only barely started to confront the guy, and yet the whole ordeal was already over. The girl turned to her partner in crime (or the closest thing to one that she had right now), her voice breaking slightly as the volume of her voice began to rapidly increase.

"Why the fuck did you bring up the gun, man? We had him right where we wanted him and you had to go and spook him before we were even done talking! Now we still don't know where our bags are, and we have no way of finding out..."

On some level, she knew that the complaint was unreasonable, but still... Clara wanted to scream. The situation just all kinds of fucked up, and the more she thought about it, the worse she felt. Her head was spinning as she desperately tried to get a handle on her emotions, looking down and away from the corpse while doing her best to avoid hyperventilating from the rapidly building volcano of stress inside of her.

"God damn it!"

And with that, she turned and began to quickly walk away. She...she needed to get out of here. She'd get a handle on things, surely, but there was no way that she was going to be able to think clearly about this without putting as much distance between her and the corpse as possible.

((Clara Micallef continued in Full Circle))

[Dogs231]

He stared forward at the corpse he'd just watched die, the corpse he'd helped kill. He stared, eyes glazed, half-present as if he'd just awoken.

His body felt as heavy as lead, but he pushed himself forward anyway. He strode towards the dead, cold boy.

He knelt by the corpse, stared closer and further. He didn't see any light in the dead eyes.

He didn't know him, not at all.

He was a name on the announcements, nothing more.

He remembered it anyway, had it memorized, like all the others.

He took in a breath and sighed, then rubbed his eyes. He mumbled under his breath, just outside of earshot.

"Soz, Caleb."

He removed the stapler, placed it by the body, and pulled his gun from the boy's hand. He held it, but it didn't feel right in his hands, not like he'd imagined. He slipped it into his pocket.

He turned back to his companion and followed her, then muttered a response.

"I don't know."

(He went to Full Circle.)