NBA Dramatique: No Good-bye

"I did not know I would never see them again, but I could tell at the beginning that the night would end badly. I watched Yao looking out of the observation window at the palace below us. He could see the soldiers of the Royal Battalion move into position and our own troops as they rappelled onto the field of battle. His face read disgust and impatience. As he turned away from the glass bubble I knew before I looked what he was not wanting to see. The One Who Would Be King stood atop the parapet on the southwest end of his palace, hands stretched towards the sky. A cloud of dust encircled his form."

"Yao was already in combat fatigues, and I watched him pull the goggles down over his eyes and walk to the jump door, then grab one of the rappelling lines and descend. 'Good luck out there!' I shouted after him. I don't think he heard me."

"We were on the attack right away. Well, when I say 'we' I mean the troops. I wasn't fighting. I haven't fought in a long time. But I was ready, and I would have fought, if they had called upon me."

"Maybe we were over-confident. Maybe we were under-confident. It's hard for me to say now. We knew that no one had bested the Royal Battalion on their own land in this war, but we could have. As an observer, maybe it was too easy for me to see where mistakes were made. We let Big Ben get away with far too much at the outset. The notion that his interest only lies in protecting the King and the castle was proven wrong. The other knights would not relent, despite our superior weaponry, and they continued to fire and fight as if this was a battle to end the war."

"Our troops are not slouches. They're not scrubs. The Commander himself led the attack. Scola and Battier fought as hard as they could. I watched Brooks and Bones launch devastating shots as they were meant to do. I think what really beat us was not the King or his knights. It wasn't our lack of ability. It was the Overlord's secret police."

"Yao's demeanor before leaving the mothership was such that I fully expected him to come back on board with a blood-soaked uniform and human remains under his fingernails. He was going out to spread death. He never got the chance though, because the regulators kept stopping him from attacking. It is a bizarre notion to think of rules being enforced in the midst of war, but it happens. The idea is that all of the armies agreed to this supervision as a means of preventing any other army from developing overly inhumane forms of attack. We follow the Overlord's rules so that everyone else does too. But Yao creates weapons and likes to test them. Sometimes the rules let him. Sometimes they don't."

"Without Yao, we couldn't overcome. The Battalion is strong and fast, and their King fights with nothing in his line of vision but the Prize. Major Artest stepped up to fight the King toe to toe, and Major Artest is not only strong but crazy to the brink of fatality. The One Who Would Be King prevailed. He finished his evening by sneaking behind Yao and crushing Yao's last usable rifle with his bare hands. It was impressive and sickening to me simultaneously."

"As I said before, I expected to see Yao return to the mothership looking like a weary killer. In fact, I never saw him return to the ship at all. As combat decayed, I received a summons to the aft bay. I began walking alone, and at some point, an unseen assailant struck a blow to my head and rendered me unconscious. I write this note now, unsure of what occurred and how exactly I arrived in my current predicament. My clothes have been stolen and I am dressed only in fur. I believe that I have been captured by the Tribe of the Bear, but I have not yet been addressed, and do not know what these tribalists intend to do with me. Perhaps I will fight with them or perhaps they will make me a sacrifice. I write this in a hurry, to you, unknown reader, hoping that you will find it and in turn find me before anything unfortunate befalls me."

"Please send help."