"Kalashnikov's", Zvezdny Gorodok

[arvg]

Song

Katz watched Mao turn his back, and he stared bitterly into his glass of wine. Things had changed in the Coalition over the past year. Prosperity was something that some in the Coalition were not used to. They preferred the Stigma of bitterness and hatred fueling a fire of revolution... not willing to accept that best course for revolution was to show the potential of the Coalition... that it was a better system, a prosperous system... a benevolant place.

There were always those trying to restore what they thought the Coalition should be, through ignorance or blindness to what it could be. They saw any deal, or any friendship as a potential threat to the ideals that had built McIntosh's Coalition out of the ashes of Aeon's legacy. But they were the heirs to the Coalition, it wasn't the past... the days of starving in a rock, throwing lives away against enemies too numerous to count were long over.

The groups in that room, the IND, the TAZ, the Order, the Hessians... they were all there because they needed the Coalition, and in that same way, the Coalition needed them in return.

Comrade Mao's words of scorn were nothing more than echoes of a long dead time.

Katz smiled warmly as he returned to his guests.

The Coalition moved forwards, and those that chose to be left behind, were.

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