Before anyone could call out, before the first hammerblow could be struck, the executioner’s upper body turned into a fine mist and a projectile smashed into a building behind him. The thunderous report of a high-caliber firearm soon followed, itself accompanied by the clarion call of brass and the distorted proclamation of a man’s voice.

“YOU WANT REAL WAR CRIMINALS?! HERE I AM!”

With thrice the speed and nimbleness than a vehicle of its size had any right to move, the blood-red tanksuit took off sprinting and drifting across the square, in its right hand a massive cleaver and its left a giant gun. In moments, it sent both policemen and soldiers in the encirclement into a panic, one that grew greater still when they had tanks fire on the armor only for their leaden cannonballs to ineffectually bounce off, not even scratching the paint. Even when one tank fired its main cannon it was a lead ball, and its ponderous turn rate had caused it to fail in leading its shot properly. Going by the amount of smoke, they must’ve been using mundane black powder. Why? Had they simply run out of proper ammunition?

A few seconds later, the next tank shot ripped through the air and carved a gash into Zero’s frontal plate… And with a horrendous metal screech, blood-like fluid gushing from the crack, the deformation bent itself back into shape, metal fusing together, leaving an unseemly scar. Strake felt the machine’s thirst for blood that it might finish the mending, more than willing to slake it with the vital essence of occupationist lapdogs.

Ineffably precise, faster than most could track it, and broadcasting this thunderous anthem that so many in the crowd were familiar with, even nostalgic for, the soon-to-be Crimson Comet didn’t just break the encirclement.

It slaughtered them to the man, painting a circle of blood around the spectators, and even as it did this, the pilot continued bellowing, pointing out provocateurs and egging the crowd on with encouragement to beat them unconscious and murder them in cold blood.

After circling the crowd no more than twice over the course of no more than half a minute, the tankman drove his machine straight at the phalanx, mercilessly unloading grapeshot shells into it and shredding policemen and soldiers alike, without regard for nationality.

“TRAITORS AND TYRANTS, EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU,” he derided, punching through the hole in their line that he had carved and driving straight through the executioner’s platform, throwing down his cleaver that he might pick the bearded man off the breaking wheel and set him down on the ground.

All throughout this, shot after shot rang out from the rifle on the tank’s back.

One after another, golem after golem was shot down long before their ponderous movement could threaten anyone, and it was clear that he targeted those closer to civilians before defending himself.

Higher-ranking officers were present - a commissar most importantly, who had carried several scrolls that doubtlessly contained the prisoners’ many imagined crimes. He had taken off running back towards the Lighthouse already, and he was nearly there, running into its doors.

Strake evaporated him with a shot from the Type-Z as he pushed a speedloader tube into his shotgun, slotting it back into the ammo box as he drove Zero out in front of the crowd. As he did this, he picked his cleaver back up. The policemen and soldiers alike were fleeing at this point, thoroughly panicking and routed… And the tankman pointed at them with his cleaver, siccing the turning mass of bodies upon them.

“I DID NOT COME TO BE A HERO. I HAVE TO COME TO DO THE THINGS MOST OF YOU GOOD PEOPLE ARE UNWILLING TO DO, TO SAY WHAT YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO SAY.”

An encroaching presence pushed further, a beast pressing against Strake’s mind, goading him to, in turn, goad the crowd into a slaughter. It was still no more than a faint presence, but already he knew to mentally suppress it, to act towards tempering its as-of-yet mindless bloodlust.

“LOOK HOW THEY SCATTER WHEN FACED WITH RETALIATION. THESE ARE NOT MEN. THEY ARE THE VERY THINGS THEY ACCUSE US OF BEING - BEASTS IN THE SKINS OF MEN.”

“IT IS ONLY RIGHT THAT THEY ARE RUN DOWN AS THE BEASTS THEY ARE, WHETHER THAT IS MISGUIDED DOGS TO BE PUNISHED OR RABID LOCUSTS TO BE EXTERMINATED.”

“NOW TAKE UP THE ARMS OF THOSE I HAVE SLAIN, HUNT THE OCCUPIERS LIKE THE DOGS THEY ARE. RIGPORT BELONGS TO HER PEOPLE, NOT FOREIGN PLUNDERERS.”

“REMEMBER THAT YOU OUTNUMBER THEM.”

“REMEMBER THAT THEY TOO, HAVE HOMES AND FAMILIES.”

Strake knew well that things were more nuanced than that. That many of the policemen were likely not personally inclined to what they were doing, and were merely following orders.

He also knew that nuance did not fit into grandiose speeches, and that the wise among the police officers would surrender to or join the mob hunting the soldiers.

Using the commotion of Strake driving Zero headlong towards a major street far faster than the tank had any right to move, Alcerys traveled the city alongside Burgess, following a small fraction of his path to ensure his safe passage before she herself set down a flanking path towards Lighthouse Square.

On her path to that place, she encountered only a few soldiers, and of those, only a three-man squad was actually patrolling. Though they stunk of guilt it was old and tinged by regret, and so it was that she decided to pass them by. If she were to punish soldiers who felt guilt for wrongs committed in the line of duty, she would be buried beneath a mountain of corpses sooner than reach those responsible for remorselessly giving those orders in the first place.

As she began to near her destination, however, she saw something very much deserving of both judgment and punishment. A wretched thing wearing a commissar’s uniform, beating three people with a steel baton whilst barking accusations of and demanding confession for everything under the sun, from collaborating with terrorists, to stealing from the occupation forces, to practicing heretical magicks, even though no such classification existed in Ikesian or Grekurian law. His grasp of Ikesian was limited at best, and he broke into a lowlife dialect of Pateirian every other sentence.