Oh, Kurz.

[joiedecombat]

1650 meters. He doesn't have any measuring devices nor observer, but he can tell by the scope on his rifle.

His body is a mess. He can't control his right leg, and his left leg under the knee is twisted the wrong direction; he can't be entirely sure his lower half is still there. Metal pieces break his back already, breaking his ribcage, organs mixed with one another, his head keeps bleeding and he can't hear anything from his right ear. Nothing can be done; he'll die soon enough, he knows... But can he do one last thing with his remaining life? Yeah, that is---

---his rifle.

He uses his arms to climb out of the ruined cockpit, and every move hurts, but such feelings are also fading. He crawls to the blown-off weapon rack and barely takes out the unharmed old rifle in there. He then unwraps the gun and start aiming...

1650 meters. If it were 400 meters nearer he'd still have some chance.

In the scope he saw Casper emerge from his cockpit, and it must be Sousuke's brillant work, but the distance is too far for him to do anything.

At that moment he thinks of Sousuke (better find a way out by himself), Tessa (just drop that boring man and find a good one), Mao (who'll feel lonely more easily than normal women, and he wanted to take care of her more but he doesn't know if he should make her cry, so it was better not to hug her at that time), and finally Casper.

He perhaps is a bad student for not being able to call Wraith to beat him, nor becoming a real sniper------but at that time in Leberon, when he saw the one who killed his family, he didn't fire because he saw an unrelated girl behind: 8-year-old Rana, and if he fired the shot he'd obviously hurt her. Casper told him to fire as it was the last chance, but he couldn't, so Casper fired that shot. Yeah, by his shot his prey is dead, and it's the end of his revenge; but he traded that by Rana's life, as his bullet blew off the man's head and also some of her organs, and she's still living in a hospital now (and a normal one won't be able to save her).

Casper obviously knew all this before firing the shot, so Kurz chose to leave his unit as, if that’s what it means to be a "real sniper", he wouldn't want to become a monster like him. So, in the end, is he going to hand over his comrades to such a monster without doing anything, just because of the negligible reason of that 1650-meter distance?

He better give it a try, but he just has one chance as he can't maintain his consciousness for long, like the dimming fire of a nearly-burnt out candle, even if he just stares into the scope he feels the darkness coming.

Anyway, he uses the best crouching pose to place his rifle------1650 meters, an impossible distance for his .308 bullets, and it's 130 meters longer than Casper's record. After he places his rifle well he starts reading the winds: in front of him is NW 15knots, at that place is NWN 10knots, and there're disturbances around. The tumbling effects, Coriolis Force of the Earth (especially in 60degree high-latitude place like here) which may make the bullet miss for about 30cm, and there're lots more problems that will have to be dealt with only by his human brain, and Kurz thinks deeply about these.......And finally the bullet's path imagined by his instincts, ignoring all sorts of calculation or maths. The cross reaches the air close to the target for about a few meters, but it's still not enough. Because of his breath the cross is shaking up and down, but the accuracy needed soon after is just like painting the eye of a dragon painted on a needle, which is impossible in normal cases......

But a voice in his brain says otherwise. "It can be done......"

He just thinks about this calmly, and reads out things that're never seen before: movements of his degrading muscles, the temperature of his losing blood, winds' movements, imagination about the bullet's path, and then every particles around are being controlled and understood by him. He's not thinking about the safety of the team, nor stuff about Mao, Rana, his dead family, his first love in secondary school, and soon he even forgets who the target is------all he needs is to deliver the bullet to there. The moment that injects his life to the target will soon come, as he can aim further......Something has come to him, an invisible thing opposite to the materium, and twisting the space and time around him. All of a sudden------

FIRE.

As expected, the bullet flies out of the gun and this magic bullet catches with the wind perfectly, and seems that it's attracted to the target. He knows that it'll hit from 1650 meters apart.......

(You deserve it.)

After thinking about this word, Kurz grabs his rifle and succumbs into the void-like darkness.

----

There's also a bit from the next scene, in which the survivors return from the battle and Sousuke contemplates what happened:

He also thinks about Kurz and the enemy who died in front of him being shot in chest, and when he predicts the firing distance by digital map, it's 1650 meters. Having some knowledge about sniping, Sousuke knows that it's an impossible act for a human, which means Kurz used his whole life to fire this lifesaving, best-of-his-life shot.

And then Sousuke has to go tell Mao what happened, and she has an interval of massive "these things happen and anyway it's not like there was anything serious between us" denial before breaking down in tears.


Sorry for the awkwardness of the text; I cleaned it up as best I could but it appears to have been roughly translated from Chinese and there are parts I couldn't make complete sense of.

Comments

[ancalemon.livejournal.com]

...KURZ. DDD:

Kurz is really, seriously dead?

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

Currently it's a "nobody was able to retrieve his body but everyone's pretty sure he's dead" situation. He could still make a miraculous return, especially since there's all kinds of things unresolved between him and Mao - hey, if Gauron can do it three times - but I have to say it doesn't look very good for him.

I hope he comes back. D: