Jack's Diary - The Titan Falls - Day 75

*Noon*

            The chains seem to be holding the thing in place, but I could swear I heard creaking and bending each time it pulled at them. Mike and Moses were in shock and didn’t seem to hear me when I told them to follow me so I pulled them away into a storage room near the base entrance.

            “What the hell is that thing?!” yelled Moses.

            “A monster,” responded Mike. Moses grabbed a rifle off the table and was about to march out of the room when Mike and I got in his way.

            “We can’t just rush into this without thinking it through,” said Mike.

            “That thing can get loose at any second. I’ll put it out of its misery.”

            “Shooting it won’t do anything,” I said. “I came across this thing, or another one like it when I went into the city to get you, Mike. It took 7 shotgun blasts to the face at point blank range and it fell off a building and it still didn’t die. I’m not even sure if I hurt it so that gun won’t do you any good.”

            “Then what are we suppose to do? Crap our pants and cry for mercy?!” yelled Moses.

            “It’s big enough to break through our walls,” stated Mike. “We’ve got three options: we leave here, find a way to kill it, or…”

            “Or hand over Julie,” I said.

            “We’re not doing that!” yelled Mike.

            “I’m just stating our options.”

            It was then I saw Moses look back toward the door. There was Julie in the doorway. She ran out before we could say anything. Mike was about to do the same when Moses grabbed his arm.

            “Hold it!” stated Moses, “Look, I’m sorry, but this decision has to be discussed with everyone. We stand by our people, but if what Jack’s saying is true, then our whole base could be in danger and we can’t risk everything just for one girl.”

            “This isn’t right. There’s got to be another way,” said Mike.

            “I doubt they’d go through all this just to get Julie back. They’ll probably just let it loose once we hand her over anyways,” I said.

            We all stood in silence for a few moments in thought. As much as I’d like to stay here, the decision falls to everyone else. Are they willing to continue to fight or would they rather run?

            “Let’s talk with the others,” said Mike. He and Moses walked out. I told them I’d monitor the monster. Nearly everyone was already near the entrance staring at it (I think I’ll call it Titan) so it didn’t take long to gather the rest together. I didn’t attend the meeting; I climbed up to the watchtower and kept an eye on Titan. Some man called out from time to time, “You’d better hurry!” and “Give her up or else!”. Whatever they decide, I’ll go along with it. I’m sure they’ll have good reason for whatever they do.

*Evening*

            They decided they want to stay. Seems they came to the conclusion if they were willing to hand over Julie, they’d be obligated to hand over themselves if such a situation every came up again and no one wants to do that. Mike and Moses put the attack plan in my hands, which makes sense since I knew the most about it I guess, but didn’t really change the outcome.

            I directed a few men to sneak out over the wall and find the men responsible for bringing it here since they might have a way of neutralizing it had it escaped when they were bringing it here. The rest of us got all of the guns, explosives, and blunt weapons we could find and stationed ourselves against the entrance of the base. I didn’t see any men hiding nearby so there wasn’t any apparent danger from enemy fire. The attack went like this: a portion of the men marched out and attacked Titan’s legs with melee weapons (I even gave my Double Sledge to Victor to use). If it can’t walk, then it can’t very well break through the wall. They really wailed on its legs with hammers, shovels, bats, axes, pipes and others of the sorts, but after a few minutes, the men were already tired. The legs were heavily damaged yet Titan continued to stand and struggle against its bindings.

            We were about to start the second phase (multiple shotguns to the face) when a strange noise came from behind us. It was a subtle, siren like sound, like something you’d expect from a dog whistle. That’s when Titan went berserk. Its muscles bulged as it ripped off the supports connecting the chains to the cart like they were yarn and charged forward, slashing through or knocking away many of the men in its path and breaking through the entrance doors (Victor along with a few of the other blunt weapon wielders survived). The men instinctively fired on it randomly with no results as it ran toward the back of the base. That’s when the siren stopped for three seconds and started back up, this time coming from all around the base. It was like the noise was driving Titan mad. It broke through our supply sheds and damaged the buildings as it headed wherever the sirens were coming from.

            “Jack, I think we should skip to phase three!” yelled Mike.

            Phase three was to surround Titan with explosive and ignite them, hopefully blowing it to pieces. I wanted to save this for last while it was still bound because if it failed, the explosives would’ve blown away the chains and cart holding him, but that doesn’t matter now. Titan charged through the back wall, and stabbed something with its sword (most likely the thing making the noise). The sound lessened. Titan then proceeded to head for the other sources of the sound, again damaging our base and breaking through the medical building, more than likely killing the injured inside. The chains were still connected to its arms by shackles so I told half the men to grab hold of them while the others carried the explosives. We ran to get in Titan’s path and just when he took a swing at us, we ducked and grabbed the chains, keeping it from reaching the next siren. Even with 15 people on each chain with Mike, Moses, Julie, Jess, and myself, it still managed to move around. It certainly wasn’t stupid as it turned around and attacked us, cutting three men in half and crushing another person’s windpipe with its bare hand before we could react. It was then I took out my rope and lassoed its neck to give us more leverage. To make matters worse, soulless were coming in through the openings in the wall so many of our men were busy killing them. It was a lot like my dream in a way.

            Those carrying the explosives finally made it over and threw them around Titan. The problem was that by the time the entirety of the explosive were laid down, Titan had gone back to moving to the next siren and already moved slightly out of the circle of them. We all pulled as hard as we could, but Titan was just too strong. Mike and I even fired at its legs with our hands with little to no effect. That’s when suddenly, the sirens stopped (apparently they had been going off one by one for a while, but we were all too busy to notice. The men on the outside found them and destroyed them, thinking they were bringing the soulless to us, which is a good assumption). With the sirens off, Titan stopped struggling as much and we managed to pull it over and drag it back. It was less aggressive, but now not being driven made by the sirens, it was fighting smarter and slashed at the legs of the men and the rope around its neck. It had just stood up when we let go of the chains, backed away, and all of us fired at the explosives, setting them off. What a gust of wind that whipped up.

            You’d think that the battle was over, that would be dead, but we were wrong. As magnificent as that explosion was, the noise brought soulless from all around the area though that came a few minutes later. What’s worse, out of the fire came Titan, now with only one arm (the one with the sword), limping, his skin scorched and on still fire. Everyone was shocked, even me though I wasn’t as surprised as everyone else. I noticed that Victor had my Double Sledge on his back. I took it and said to Mike, “Let’s just finish this…”. Mike grabbed two axes off someone.

            All of us walked in front of Titan, with everyone still wielding a gun opening fire on it. Titan recoiled background from all the hits, but after everything went silent, still stood. Everyone holding something to swing stepped forward and proceeded to beat the snot out of it. It only managed to get in one good slash before we knocked it off its feet. Mike hacked away at its sword arm as others pulverized its legs. I, along with other hammer-wielding survivors, pounded in its face. Everyone took shifts in cutting down the soulless wandering around so we wouldn’t get swarmed, as we were “finishing”. I think everyone wanted it dead after all the damage it did. In the end, its sword arm was cut off, its legs were a bloody mess, and all that was left of its face was a large crater. It didn’t move anymore. If Titan was still alive, it wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone anymore. Titan had finally fallen. You'd thinking finally killing it that we'd be happy, but in reality, we lost.

            Moses decided that we had to leave. Its not that we couldn’t fix the wall, but with the threat of being attacked again by the Valors and us having lost a good deal of our men and supplies fighting Titan, we would be easy targets so we packed up what we could and left before more soulless arrived.

            I get the feeling that I am responsible for this. Had we just blown up Titan when it was still bounded, it would’ve saved us a lot of trouble, but how could I have known? The thing seemed invincible when I last fought it. Still, I don’t picture things going any better had we did it differently. What’s next? I don’t know. Everyone’s already gathered their stuff and left while I’m still at base, getting the last of my supplies and writing this. I’ll be joining them shortly.

            With all the bad stuff that just happened, I think I’ll tell Mike about Ann another day…

- Jack's Diary

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Jack's Diary - Day 39

     I wonder if soldiers ever miss the battlefield? I guessing they don't, but it seems they go through a lot of emotional stress coming back since things to them are different. Nothing may have changed at all, yet everything feels so new. This isn't a good thing. When you're at war, you're always looking over your shoulder, you react to the first sign of danger, you dream restlessly of the home so far away that moves on despite your absence. When your home again, you can't abandon those feelings and thoughts that ate away at your mind. All the time, you wished you were home yet you are never truly free of the war since it now takes place inside you. Would you want to go through life like this, trying to regain the peace of mind lost to you or would you just want to stay at war until you die, leaving the haunting memories to rot with your body. I never left this country to go to war, but this is a war, a nightmare to new comers and a normal everyone day scene for the suffering. I can't imagine settling down again, especially now.
     I decided to leave that night. I realized that if I left to find Mike in the morning, Lexi could stupidly leave the base looking for him too. Better that I find him before she wakes up, I thought. I didn't work out to well though. I searched the surrounding towns, peaking into windows, sneaking passed soulless and looking at their faces to see if they looked familiar, and looking for fresh dead bodies (expecting the worse) with no luck. The morning came which made it easier to see and made it easier for me to be seen. I really hoped Lexi wouldn't leave the base, but I didn't have much time to be concerned with that thought. I heard a sound of a handgun being fired and I instinctively jumped to the nearest cover being a small dry cleaner business. I heard more rounds being fired as I ran in. I hid behind the front desk and checked my guns to see if they were loaded. Instead of charging out the entrance I came from, I decided to go out the back door and climb on top of the building to get a better view. I saw about three people ducking behind an old car two buildings away. Although my shooting skills were great, I didn't want to take the gamble of missing them on the first shot and have them retaliate so I went back in the alley behind the building and made a complete circle around buildings and other tall structures to conceal my presence to catch the men by surprise. However, when I got to their location, they were gone. All I found in their place was soulless who I figured showed up as a result of their gunfire and drove them away. I knew that my search wouldn't be safe until I disposed of them so from then on, I searched for any living humans including anyone (or anything) that looked like Mike.
     About another hour into my search, I saw something move in the distance. By the way it moved, I knew it couldn't have been a soulless. Behind it came four more and in an instant, they all turned in my direction. I quickly drew my gun just before they did and managed to pick off one of the ones in the middle. However, one of their bullets pierced my shin. They quickly ran for cover behind the nearby buildings while returning fire, but I took out another one before he could find cover in time. I hobbled over to a store that had a sunk in entrance way. I knew that soulless would be arriving any minute and I was in no condition to run away. To make matters worse, more men came marching forward in the distance. It didn't seem like these guy were amateurs since they managed to hit me from a far distance and had enough brains to leave an area after shooting. I knew that they would begin retreating as soon as the soulless arrived, with me being killed by the soulless and acting as a distraction to ensure they weren't followed. With that thought in mind, I knew I had to press them, make them feel pressured and afraid of me. I stepped out of my hiding spot, shot the first person I saw, and hurriedly moved to the next nearest spot for cover. It hurt to walk or just trying to run for that matter, but it wasn't impossible. I only brought my handgun and a sawed-off shotgun with me so I didn't have a large assortment of weapons to choose from. However, the bag of supplies I took did have some smoke bombs. I'd save those for later. Two men approached my cover. I shot one in the chest and the other in the arm and thigh quickly. I left the last one alive to draw the soulless attention to him instead of me. They may have been better shots than I am used to, but they still weren't as good or fast as me. I then broke through the building I was using for cover and came out the back entrance. I could see soulless heading my direction. I peeked out at the men still left, only a small number in clear sight. I shot two before the other caught on and unleashed a fire storm of bullets in my direction with a few of the stray bullets taking out some nearby soulless. I looked back to find they were retreating. I followed, hoping to catch them off guard. In the distance, I could hear a man screaming in pain. The distraction worked.
     This game of bullet tag continued through nearly three city blocks. I killed three more of the men and managed to get a semi-automatic. Ironically, I was shot in my left shoulder just before picking it up so I couldn't hold it properly to shoot. The soulless followed behind us, feasting on the fallen men. It seemed there were only four or five left or at least there were until I heard an extremely loud and painful scream followed by multiple gunfire. I looked around the corner and saw a very large soulless stabbing one of the men with a large blade for an arm. It had an almost uniformly flat face; there were no identifiable eyes, ears, or nose. It looked like an Olympian. This was the first time I'd ever seen one this big.
     I only saw three bodies so at least one of them must have gotten away. Only two remained alive, one being extremely damaged, and the other was being held up by his neck by the large soulless. I could have saved him, but I chose not to. I watched as the soulless stabbed its blade through his abdomen and then, with his other hand, ripped him in half. He then went toward the last man alive intending to finish him off. I could've watched another killing, but the man was vulnerable right now, meaning I could get some answers from him as to why I was being shot at so I stepped in and shot the soulless in the head with the sawed-off. It didn't seem to phase it at all. I shot it in the head again and it knocked me to the side, intending to grab me, but the shot seemed to unbalance it. It now focused on me as I quickly stood up and reloaded the sawed-off. As intimidating as it was to see this thing survive two powerful shots to the face, I could think of this situation as a wall; with enough hits, it was bound to break. I continued to shoot for the face and it continued to grab or slash at me. After five shots, I was beginning to doubt my theory until it began charging at me, possibly due to enragement or maybe because it was nearing death (or it was getting bored). Either way, something changed which showed I was having an effect on it. Sadly, I ran out of shells for the shotgun and the handgun bullets didn't even seem to phase it. What's worse, more soulless showed up and I not only had to dodge them and the larger one, they already had begun eating the man I wanted to question, making this effort useless. I only had one idea left. I moved as fast as I could to the tallest building I could find and it pursued me. I went to the roof and once it came close enough to the ledge, ran eat it and rammed it over the side, almost taking me with it. Upon hearing the impact, I looked down and watched it for 10 minutes. It didn't move.
     I closed the door to the roof and sat down. I was safe. I thought about the fact that the large soulless didn't eat anything or anyone. It was only interested in killing. The behavior was so uncharacteristic and  almost disturbing to think about; a creature that only wishes to kill. Anyway, it was gone. A better question is why were those men attacking me? Perhaps Mike came across them and they got him. Right now, I didn't know what to think. So many things are running through my head; Mike, Lexi, that soulless, will I die? Through all of this, strangely enough, I felt at home.

- Jack's Diary

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