Subject: Grail: Last Look Back: Saftey Dance (Brinn)

Sickbay

It was hot. Not just any hot, either. This was a stifeling, sticky hot.

The kind that got into your lungs and killed you slowly. Or so you

thought. Not that it mattered much. You wanted to die anyway.

"I wanna get out of here." Pvt. Nanacy gasped out into the sticky

atmospere.

"Don't we all." Athalya Anne gasped back. These nice, warm Marine

uniforms weren't helping anything, either.

"I can't stand this." Nanacy choked out.

*Who can? So stop whining about it.* Athalya Anne thought. A fox hole in

the middle of a jungle hell was the last place she wanted to be.

"It's just so small. Too crouded." Nanacy whined some more.

"Put a sock in it, Nanacy!" Corpral Hazen threw a small rock at her.

That was it. That was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.

Nanacy let out a scream and took off running like the devil was after her.

"LENA!" Athalya Anne screamed and tried to take off after her.

"Danm it, Private, don't!" Hazen tackled Athalya Anne before she got all

the way up. "She's gonna die. Don't send yourself to the same fate!"

Athalya Anne strugged against the corpral. "Danm it, I can get her! I

can!"

"No. You can't. She's dead now."

Another one of Nanacy's screams punctured the night. They all knew what

happened. They got her. Athalya Anne went limp. Hazen let go. "No..."

Athalya Anne whispered. "No..."

Nanacy screamed again.

~~~~~~~~~~

It wasen't quite as hot any more. There had been a cool, morning fog,

which had cooled things off a bit. Not by much, though.

Now they were marching. Marching to the sea. From there, they would

regroop and set up fortifications. *We'll be safe there. We'll be safe.

Safe at the sea.* Athalya Anne kept churning the same idea around in her

head. *We'll be safe. At the sea. Safe.* The word had taken on a whole

new meaning. Athalya Anne longed for her drawing board at Utopia Planitia

for the first time in years. There was saftey there. It was so much

easier to romanticise war and killing and death and dying from behind the

drawing board. None of it was real there. You could go back to the

drawing board after you had tired of that fantacy. There was saftey behind

paper. *Saftey. At the sea.*

A gasp interupted revrie. Athalya Anne looked up. A mass of pink flesh

hung from a tree. The person had been skinned. And probaly alive, if the

sounds from last night were any indicatior. Beneath the pink flesh was a

uniform. And the missing skin.

It was Pvt. Nanacy.

Athalya Anne screamed.

~~~~~~~~~

Athalya Anne woke up screaming. Sheer terror eminated from her

conciousness. She looked around. Sickbay. On the Grail. A familar

sight. *I'm safe.* But that didn't disguise the fact that she was

sweating like a pig and had just woken up screaming.A doctor appeared from

around a corner and looked at her concernedly.

"Well," Athalya Anne demanded, trying to cover her sheer terror, "What

DOES a girl have to do to get a sponge bath around here?"

<<OOC: Any doctors out there?>>