Ch4p42
Chapter: Conversations in Ash
Location: Salamanca
Watch out, captain, one of these days you may get shot in the back.
Also, try to guess how many hours I spent looking at this picture just so I could draw one (1) panel:
↓ Transcript
7 Panels.
Panel 1,2:
Nikita walks out of the small road they were on. Steffano follows him, but he's looking away and scratching is neck nervously.
Steffano: I thought-
Nikita: I would've done the same. I wouldn't hesitate to off and incompetent commanding officer either.
Panel 3:
Nikita makes a fist, in restrained anger, but chuckes.
Panel 4:
Nikita enters a big plaza. Some people are passing by. Some windows sport large red flags with the symbols of the empire. Nikita laughs almost maniacally to the sky as Steffano follows him.
Nikita: AHAHAH! WOW! I just can't wait for my upcoming demotion! AHAHAH AHHAHA OR maybe I'll get SHOT in the back by one of my men!!
Steffano: You couldn't know...
Nikita: THAT DOESN'T MATTER!
Panel 5,6,7:
Nikita takes a moment to breathe and seems to calm down as he looks off into the distance. Steffano is still aprehensive.
Nikita (off panel): Who's gonna trust my leadership now?
Panel 1,2:
Nikita walks out of the small road they were on. Steffano follows him, but he's looking away and scratching is neck nervously.
Steffano: I thought-
Nikita: I would've done the same. I wouldn't hesitate to off and incompetent commanding officer either.
Panel 3:
Nikita makes a fist, in restrained anger, but chuckes.
Panel 4:
Nikita enters a big plaza. Some people are passing by. Some windows sport large red flags with the symbols of the empire. Nikita laughs almost maniacally to the sky as Steffano follows him.
Nikita: AHAHAH! WOW! I just can't wait for my upcoming demotion! AHAHAH AHHAHA OR maybe I'll get SHOT in the back by one of my men!!
Steffano: You couldn't know...
Nikita: THAT DOESN'T MATTER!
Panel 5,6,7:
Nikita takes a moment to breathe and seems to calm down as he looks off into the distance. Steffano is still aprehensive.
Nikita (off panel): Who's gonna trust my leadership now?
Gosh that last line… I didn’t think about the fact that he’s lost his brother, and his rank AND the confidence of his subordinates :c
Well… on the bright side, now that you suck at your job, you might get to do space stuff. 🤷
Is that … the Escorial?
There’s a similar square in Southern Bohemia (Tabor or Budejovice, I cannot recall which) … I first saw it at sunrise in late 1989 (just before the counter-revolution swept all before it) as the fog lifted and I saw a little kid I thought was a South American beggar in a torn polyester sweater … he was staring at us like we’d come out of a dream (only my father had gone back once we were first promised the arrest warrants for us were no longer in force over a decade after the relevant treaties dictated that they be dropped, and since he hadn’t been arrested by “the people”, we all came back two years later in a fortuitously timed trip, we were CLEARLY not locals, though my folks had been born nearby). I’d never knowingly seen a gypsy before. It was like a scene from a surrealist film, or a horror movie. The trip turned out really well even though we were nearly crushed to death by an anti-socialist crowd (very polite, not socialist) a few days later.
We Czechs built a lot like the rest of the Hapsburgs for quite some time, especially when we deviated from Gothic or modernist styles.
It’s actually the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca! It’s apparently the biggest plaza in Spain at the time.