Destrillians: Aftermath Act I

Early studied his face in the bathroom mirror and then glanced at the grey water in the basin. Barely a week since his last shave and wash, and that muck had built up. While his van was solid enough, what clean water it could provide he saved for drinking water. He felt grateful to Smythe for allowing him to use the bathroom of this hut to freshen up.

Early grabbed his tee from the side, and walked out of the bathroom to Smythe’s “office”, pulling the tee on as he went. Smythe had rented out a building the opposite side of this little town to his house for any old business that might crop up. Early thought back to the personnel file he had been given. He was pretty sure the old man was married, or had been.

“How’s your wife?” he asked, as he walked up to Smythe. The older man tensed before replying.

“She’s good, thank you,” he said.

“Either of you miss your old home?” Early asked.

Smythe shook his head. “There’s nothing left there for us. Even before the conflict started, I was the only surviving member of my family. And my wife… my wife was from Hephaestus.”

“Shit. I’m sorry,” Early said. Hephaestus had been the seat of the Damascan government, until it simply vanished one day. As it had also been home to the largest Volsung facility in the country, most people believed it was one of their experiments gone wrong.

“Hmm, you sound sincere enough, so thank you. If you can fake that, then rot in Hell,” Smythe said. “Now… I assume that as Hartnell sent you to see me, your job has something to do with the Animus.”

“Bio-engineering super-soldiers is bloody stupid work at the best of times, but starting from the womb? With non-human DNA?”

“Damascus needed warriors. Genetic engineering is a part of everyday life, and has been--”

“Spare me the sermon. My first job was hunting a genetically engineered pyrokinetic. The bastard turned three towns and a dozen villages into molten pits before I blew his head off. He had no control of his powers, and from what I’ve read, that’s the same problem with the Animus,” Early said.

Smythe grimaced slightly. “The Animus… originally had no control. As there is only so much that can be hushed up, I would believe they now have some self-control. Otherwise we would have heard about such grisly remains.”

“There was an Animus in Chulainn Hub, the province capital. The press and police were convinced it was a human serial-killer,” Early smiled. It held little humour. “When folks decide to fool themselves, those in the know tend to let ‘em.”

“So… I take it you know about that night. You also, presumably, know about the Hunger. What do you need an old man like me for?” Smythe asked. Something that could have been anger or could have been distaste glittered in his eyes.

“Doctor Hartnell gave me… a load of crap, to be honest. My security clearance is so low, he couldn’t give me much else. But yeah, I know about the night they escaped. I’ve been warned about the Hunger by one of the loyal Animus, so I guess she knew what she was talking about,” Early nodded. “But we - that is, they, your old bosses - think that a few Animus have crossed into Artolia.”

Smythe drew a sharp intake of breath, and rubbed his chin. “Dear gods… I, I mean, it was obvious some might leave Damascus, but…” Smythe appeared to gather his thoughts. “No. I think I know what you want to hear, but I’m afraid - ha, no, glad - I haven’t heard or seen any signs of an Animus in Artolia.”

Early nodded. That had been the thinking behind it - if there was an Animus making a nuisance of itself, one of the twelve surviving scientists involved would recognise the signs.

“OK. I doubt one could hide itself in a little place like this, anyway. What about cities? The capital’s called Osea, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Smythe said. “It’s about the only city large enough in Artolia that could cover the rampage of an Animus in the throws of the Hunger under the usual crimes humanity commits.” He paused. “Well, there is one other… Vanaheimr.”

“I’ve heard of that place somewhere…” Early said. “Might be worth checking out.”

“Vanaheimr is home to IRIN International,” Smythe said. “If an Animus rampaged there, I expect they would have captured or killed it themselves.”

“IRIN, huh?” Early said, and made a low whistle.

“You know of them?”

Early nodded. A few of the factions in Damascus made good use of IRIN tech, whether they bought it themselves or stole it off of another faction. Compared to some of the Volsung tech still in use after twenty years or so service, the IRIN stuff was hard to blow up in Early’s experience. The only other equipment that came close to that was the higher tier Volsung and Viola war-gear.

Smythe appeared to pause. “Of course… I expect you have heard…things…about the Destrillians,” he said.

“I’ve heard the name,” Early said. “Supposedly, Viola was involved in super-solider work before they went bust. And it was the Destrillians that helped them go bust somehow.”

Smythe glanced at him. “You seem pretty calm at the prospect. I would have thought, considering what you’ve told me, that the prospect of individuals with elemental powers would disturb you,” he said.

Early scowled. “I’ve heard rumours about…those things, too. You mean that’s what the Destrillians supposedly are?”

“Not supposedly, are,” Smythe said. “A stranger came into town three years back, terrified and near death. I was the nearest thing to a medical man here at the time. While I was caring for him, he recognised the Volsung logo on some of my kit, and we got talking. He claimed to be a former Viola scientist, and when he slept, he woke up screaming. Supposedly, because of dreams about the Destrillians, and a man called Vargas. Within a few weeks of him arriving, a group of IRIN soldiers came into town, and…” Smythe shrugged. “We couldn’t afford a fuss.”

That irked Early at a primal level. He didn’t put much stock in honour and fair play, but just giving up a wounded man to those he was mortally terrified of seemed wrong. But something in the story had sent a memo to his memory.

“There’s a Vargas in charge of IRIN…” he said slowly.

“Yes,” Smythe said. “I think you’re better off steering clear of Vanaheimr.” He snorted. “You understand, I really just want to be left alone now. And if you get killed, Volsung will be sure to hassle me some more.”

“You’re all heart,” Early said.

“You dumb cunt, get back here!”

“You’re the only dumb cunts around here for bothering to chase me down.”

Fiona chuckled under her breath as she ran down a long stretch of a neglected alley way. This was one of the rare nights that the fire destrillian dabbled in the decrepit crime rings of the Orange Zone—and of course it went awry. A simple gambling night hosted by the notorious Don Fabrizio. Naturally, nothing was ‘simple’ when it involved one of, if not the, biggest crime syndicates in the area.

Out of curiosity only someone as wild as Fiona would harbor, she wandered into the abandoned office building where the games were to be played after being invited by a couple of goons plucking fodder from the masses unfortunately stuck in the Orange Zone. The #004 prototype was, no doubt, a unique specimen for rounding up for such an event. An interesting victim—let alone a female! If only the poor saps knew what they were in for.

Poker was the popular game of choice, which was luckily a card game the fire destrillian had picked up in her four years of squandering the streets of Osea. Cash only, and the #004 prototype had just so happened to come into some money that day.

It hadn’t even been an hour into playing, when a small-time criminal by the name of Jackal Roterio playing at Fiona’s table said something. Right in the middle of a hand while the river card was being drawn, he met with his eyes with hers and abruptly slammed the old card table with both fists.

“At first, I thought it was pure luck that this broad was picking away at our earnings, but now it’s the goddamn 15th hand and this bitch has yet to fold or even lose to any of us!”

He jabbed his heavily jeweled finger at the girl with fiery hair sitting so relaxed at one end of the table.

“You’ve fixed this game! Somehow, you’ve fixed this fucking game and I’ll crack your head open if I have to, to find out how! Boys, I want you two to escort this dyke to the back and ask her nicely about her little scheme. Maybe I’ll let her come back and play next to me if she complies.”

Smirking with his half-gold grin, he handed one of the two grunts he spoke to a hand pistol. Silently, the duo stood up and slowly approached Fiona from both sides. Her feet had been propped up on the table during that time and continued to keep them that way as she coolly rocked back and forth, waiting. Of course she had rigged the game, just not as he expected. With the psychic and telepathic abilities granted to all of her kind, she readily used them in cheap thrills such as this. Fiona laughed to herself in these types of situations. She knew they all ended the same way and this time would be no different. Just as their hands crept to the fire destrillian’s shoulders, she made her move.

“Heh...”

Swiftly sliding her legs just beneath the poker table, she flipped it over, knocking the rest of her company to fall backwards and over one another. Standing up Fiona bent her arms so her elbows were out and jabbed the two men on either side of her in the chests, then bringing her clenched fists up to break their noses.

“I think this is my cue, assholes! See you in hell!”

With one sweep of her arm she collected a large pile of bills that were still wrapped in neat stacks to her immediate right and bolted for the exit. The rest of the men there had little time to react to all of this going on. One found the breath to shout out “After her!”, but that was all, given that this sudden shift occurred in all of 10 seconds.

As Fiona made her escape towards the stairwell at the far end of the large, stale room, the men fast enough whipped out their guns and began to open fire. With her superior speed, the gangsters had but seconds to even hit her—not that, that was even possible. Leaping down two flights of stairs, the fire destrillian legged it quickly through the double doors out into the street. She could hear the multiple grunts clamoring and fumbling over the next guy to catch her and take her out. THAT would never happen. Continuing her run around the corner of the next street, she ran past a purse vendor with his bags spread out over a table. Without stopping, Fiona helped herself to one and shoved all of the money she had just ripped from the goons at the poker match.

“You’re too kind, old man!”

Her sarcasm was far too sharp for her own good, especially when she was excited by a group of dumb criminals who had no idea just what she was. Before the poor vendor could even object to her stealing, several cohorts from the gambling night were in pursuit of her and ran right over him.

Rounding another corner down a small side street, barricaded on either side, Fiona couldn’t have asked for a better escape. A translucent jug labeled ‘GAS’ was sitting in front of a run-down repair store. Stopping with plenty of space between her and her pursuers, she kicked over the large container and watched as the liquid slithered across and down the street in a number of directions. Jogging backwards to keep an eye on the gasoline and the goons chasing her, she casually waved her arm in front of her, setting the liquid ablaze and watching as it rose to the sky. It left a perfect wall of flame between her and them, letting her run off without worry. Even if some of the men were stupid enough to try to follow her even after that, she would know and would only leave corpses after that. The grunts, no doubt, remained on the opposite side of the firewall and could only shoot blindly at a target they could and would never hit.

------------

So hear she was, Fiona Myrwind, self-liberated destrillian prototype #004 in all of her glory—what glory she could salvage living in a dump like the Orange Zone. Living life no normal human ever would. She refused to. Unlike her roommate, Thetis, #004 would never succumb to “trying to fit in” or “keeping a low profile”. With her appearance, she especially couldn’t pull that trick off. Even as she walked down the street now, most of those who passed her by on her way to her current residence would stop and stare for at least a few seconds. Her bright hair and outlandish clothing were certainly a combination that only a handful that had ever really seen before. That handful tended to be the people that lived near her.

After walking another hour or so, finally arriving to the apartment building where she lived, Fiona made her way up the several flights of stairs to her dwelling. She could sense the old woman waiting quietly waiting for her, but begrudgingly allowed her to think she was catching the destrillian by surprise.

“Ah good, the other one decided to show up. Is that a new purse you’re sporting, Miss Myrwind?”

Slowly, #004 turned to face the sour woman, her countenance ready to turn into a snarl at a moment’s notice.

“What of it, hag?”

“Well, you inconsiderate…girl...y-your rent is due! You certainly shouldn’t go around buying new things for yourse--!”

“Would you shut it already?! I can’t stand listening to you!”

Blindly reaching into the bag around her shoulder, Fiona grabbed a handful of money and shoved it at the landlady.

“This should keep your trap shut and you out of our business for a while. Now go back to your hole so I can have some quiet over here.”

Before the fire destrillian could register the twisted look of horror, anger and disgust on Ms. Petrowski’s face, Fiona opened and slammed her apartment door shut. She whispered under her breath.

“Fucking humans.”

Now having the time to catch her breath, #004 took the bag to the shared bedroom and sat on the bare mattress there. Pouring the contents out, Fiona had a satisfied look on her face. The stacks she had taken were hundreds—most likely a private reserve that no one bothered to see was under the table. It really was her lucky day. A couple of months had gone by since the fire prototype was able to get her hands on some good money, let alone a small fortune. This was going to come in handy.

Shoving the cash back into the bag, with a few hundred dollar bills saved in her pocket for her next venture, Fiona threw it all under the mattress. Returning to the living area of the dirty apartment, #004 kicked her way through the garbage littering the floor to the small note left by her only roommate. She almost couldn’t read the horrible hand-writing, but managed to sound it all out.

“Please… buy… s-some… milk.”

There was a pause as she stared at the scrawl with a strange expression.

“Is she serious?”

Dismissing the note without thought, the fire destrillian flung the scrap on the floor with the rest of the junk.

Fiona was celebrating her victory tonight and in a fashion she rarely had an opportunity to do it in: getting wasted. Drinking and getting high were things Fiona was never exposed to before escaping Viola, unless you accounted for the large doses of distrum and other unconventional drugs specially made for destrillians. No, this was a new experience for her when she discovered it—and she certain enjoyed it when she could. There was a place she had heard of the last time she went to a local bar, they called it The Mirage and made it up to be a wonderfully grandiose experience that had everything you could ever want out of a nightclub. The group discussing The Mirage also mentioned how to get there and Fiona easily navigated to just the place. Hell of a time getting there considering she has to sift through the sewers, but she made it with ease all the same. When she entered, it was more than even what she expected.

As soon as the fire prototype walked through the door, all of her senses were assaulted by blood, sex and everything in between. Bright colors contrasted with the dark atmosphere and an earth-shaking bass attacked her eyes and ears. Still, Fiona gladly made her way to a seating area full of lush couches and other people.

She spent the next few hours drinking, smoking and eating multi-colored foods that tasted very different from what she was used to. A crowd also began to form in her area, everyone talking with everyone else. In her drunk and high state, Fiona melded into the crowd—having small talk with some of the more attractive people around her, mutually interested. #004 kept drinking and taking in drugs: body shots off of strangers and doing lines of substances she had never heard of. The music became low hums and the room, a haze. The fire destrillian was completely immersed in her environment. That’s when the vision started to come.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Lighten up a bit will you? I can’t be the only one you actually talk to around here. One day you might actually have to depend on the other guys, you know? I may not always be around. Fiona, are you listening?”

“Yeah, Ariel.”

“Good, because you being a little nicer wouldn’t hurt and could certainly help you in the long run.”

“I can’t talk to them.”

“And why not, exactly?”

“Because they’re not you, damn it!”

“What’s so special about me?”

It was a conversation that occurred often between the prototypes of sound and fire. Ariel was the only one of her kind that Fiona would be civil with. It was that charm that she retained when dealing with anyone that held #004’s interest. That, and Ariel always offered a warmth Fiona never had, without fail. The warmth the fire destrillian secretly yearned for…

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The flashback left Fiona feeling empty. All of the alcohol and drugs she just took in were subdued by the fresh feeling of hollowness that engulfed her. What happened? Why did her life have to end up this way? Looking back, so many things could have turned out differently. Certainly, someone could have stopped Viola from taking her away. Just maybe…

The fire prototype hadn’t realized that she had removed herself from where she had been seated all this time. Before she knew it, she snapped her head up and caught the feeling of an ominous presence nearby. Fiona’s eyes caught a hooded figure in the corner and kept her inebriated sight there for a moment until a large man brutishly bumped into her. In the intoxicated state the destrillian was in, someone harshly bumping into her was hardly the sort of thing that should occur now. Combined with the still-fresh flashback and flood of emotions, a very sensitive trigger was set off in the back of #004’s mind.

She didn’t hear the apology; she didn’t see the concerned faces of the folks around her as she slowly balanced herself as best she could in her loose condition. Fiona could only feel rage. These poor souls were about to get a violent light show.

“This…is all…YOUR…FAULT! ARGH!!”

Nothing could stop her now. In one fluid motion she grabbed the large man’s skull and turned his body to melting flesh and bone. His eyes immediately turned to goo and puss and blood boiled and slowly traversed down what was once solid skin. The Blazing Fury was unleashed.

Screams echoed in throughout the nightclub as the customers started to come to their sense. The smell of burning flesh was a rude sobering scent. Fiona couldn’t hear them.

“ALL OF YOU WILL SUFFER! YOU’RE ALL TO BLAME! EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU GOD! DAMN!! HUMANS!!!”

The furniture began to catch fire, the air became thinner, people began to fall to the floor and writhe in agony and even the temperature rose at an alarming rate. A small taste of hell, some would say. Everyone else was panicking; no one knew how to counteract this juggernaut of fire and death.

Fiona, the Blazing Fury, was going wreak havoc until this fresh wave of irrational rage diminished and no human could stop her.

IRIN INTERNATIONAL HEADQUARTERS - MAIN CONFERENCE HALL


There was an unusual amount of tension in the hall as many generals and other high ranking officers of IRIN's armed forces waited for Vargas to arrive. No doubt the sudden appearance of the Destrillians had the people in the room unnerved considering most of them were former members of Viola's Private army, and they knew all to well what Destrillians were capable of.

Sitting patiently at one of the seats in the room, Major General Krieg paid no attention to the other people around, or at least tried. A man came at sat himself on the corner of Kreig's desk and folded his arms waiting for the seated man to acknowledge him. This person's name was Reza Ali Sayyari, although here and everywhere else, he is known as 'Janus'.

After a solid minute of Silence, it was clear that Krieg was not going to say anything, so Janus finally spoke up.

"So I hear you used to work for Viola....that must mean you must know all about these 'Destrillian' things"

Krieg then looked up at Janus and bluntly replied. "Yes und no. Vhile I like a number of personnel here are former Violan staff, a majority of zhe information concerning zhe Destrillian project voz kept restricted to only zhe science department, so somevon such as myself had very little contact vith zhe accursed creatures." Then looked back down at the papers on the table infront of him.

"Eh? So then you know jack all about them?" Janus spoke in a surprised tone. The words were once again an interruption to Krieg who didn't even look up when giving his response.

"Not entirely, I know for a fact that zhese creatures are capable of great destruction, as ve have all seen from zhe reports of the current incident vith zhe Artolian military. To be simply put, zhey are unstable monsters, and zhe greatest mistake ever made by Viola during it's time." Krieg hadn't witnessed the actual massive breakout as he was in charge of the defense force of facility #2, however he had studied the footage from facility #1 and read all the reports Vargas had helped himself to during the collapse of the company. You could never be too prepared for the unexpected, and after so many failures of preventing escapes from facility #2, Krieg made sure that if these...things, ever emerged again he would ready.

"Hey, you gone deaf or something three eyes?" Janus interrupted his thoughts by making an idiotic jab at Krieg's monocle, which made him look up at the annoying man with a displeased expression, however before he could speak the room fell silent as the main doorway began to open.

The massive doors of the conference room slid open slowly, allowing light to pour into the hall from the walkway outside, making the doorway area appear as though it was glowing. Amongst the light, two figures confidently strode into the room - Seth Vargas and Maya Circe.
The sight made everyone in the hall move to their seats and await for the man in charge of IRIN to begin the meeting. Vargas moved to his spot, a large desk at the northern section of the Hall's circle of desks, which had two rows, with the back one elevated slightly higher. Circe took a seat at the desk on the right of Vargas', while the desk at the left remained empty due to General Sophalla being on active duty in Osea.

With all eyes fixed on him, the large monitor displays on the northern wall lit up with Vargas' image, still wearing his aviators in the dark room.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it's finally happened! Those misfits are back and within only an hour or so of resurfacing they managed to force the ASDF into retreat and lay waste to the surrounding areas......now come'on people, what the hell is this?!" Vargas echoed through the massive hall. Immediately the desk of Circe lit up and she added to the report.

"Additionally, the Artolian military command contracted General Sophalla who was on route back to Vanaheimr from military exercises, to deal with the problem. After arriving on scene the General ordered her Solde-class battleship's main particle cannon be fired on the target's location, after 10 minutes of minor delays the weapon made contact with the ground and incinerated everything within 2 blocks. However we have been unable to confirm if the targets were actually destroyed."

Vargas nodded a couple of times at the information and with his usual grin continued.

"So in other words we don't know if we even did anything, moreover according to eyewitness reports there were only 4 confirmed sightings of Destrillians and one pompous jackass in cosplay." He then hit a couple of buttons on the console built into his desk and on the screen multiple Bio images appeared. "Circe, if you would be so kind" Vargas motioned towards his right.

"Yes sir. From the data we've received off the Artolian military, we've been able to positively ID Destrillian Prototypes three, six, nine and eleven. Additionally an unknown individual dressed in some kind of unusual outfit was seen engaging the Artolian troops as well, however we are unable to confirm if this character is a Destrillian or not..."

After she finished, General Badrach, another former Violan, slammed his fist on the desks and exclaimed "Dammit, of all the bad luck, The gunmetal glint had to resurface!? Need I remind you all of what she did to Viola HQ? And from the footage we saw she was pulling Artolian VTOL's out of the air! How the hell are we supposed to counter that?!" And without any change of expression, Circe calmly replied.

"We have already implemented countermeasures for number nine's abilities, all our machines are equipped with EM shielding, causing a greater strain on someone such as Idris Savage attempting to directly affect the metal components of our weapons..." She then paused for a moment and added "...however it still doesn't prevent her from using metals from surrounding areas as projectiles, so pilot's will have to be on their toes and we'll require a major overhaul of the AI systems in all our automaton units to factor this in."

As the generals all talked amongst themselves about this information, Krieg finally decided to speak up to the assembly.

"Moving onto zhe more important question, vhat is zhe current status of all zhe escaped Destrillians? Can ve expect to see more of zhem appear now zhat a few of zhem have come out into zhe open?" To which Vargas gave a simple smile and shrugged before answering.

"Who know? We've had reports from all over the place of things that may or may not have been Destrillians, including ones where it was claimed the subjects were terminated. Of course it would be nice and convenient if they had all just moseyed over to the central continents and became their problem, however it seems we we're that lucky...." He then pushed his sunglasses up his nose and added "Now about your first inquiry, General Krieg, I think that calls for us to pull into the secretive goodness that is the Violan archives!" He then punched in some commands into his terminal and a few seconds later the main screen showed two windows, labeled #1 and #2, both with a list of names and photo's next to them. "Circe since we all just love the sound of your voice how about you do the honors again?"

"Of course..." She then turned in her seat towards the monitors and using an electronic pointer, enlarged the window entitled '#1'.

"This is a list of all Destrillians that were produced at Viola's main headquarters, known as facility #1."

"Originally, there were 27 failed attempts of creating a Destrillian prototype, all of the subjects perished. However finally the Violan scientists had success with Destrillian Prototype #001 - Sierra Alexis Lutraine. Her ability was that of light, which was mostly used to either light dark places, remove that light or blind opponents. Not the most impressive ability in my personal opinion, however she was the first to survive the process and demonstrate her abilities successfully. Reports suggest that she was the ringleader in the massive breakout of four years ago, however sometime when the Destrillians breached the main levels of Headquarters, she disappeared and has not been seen since."

"Next, Destrillian Prototype #002 - Erthys Connor-Guzman, the....Thunder Child. This one had the power of lightning, which despite sounding impressive, his power was rather unstable. During the escape he was seen with Prototype one, and disappeared around the same time. No sightings since."

Scrolling the screen down, the display next showed a young girl with dark green hair and matching eye colour. "Prototype #003 - Terra Michaels, who was codenamed 'Makeshift Golem' oddly enough. Not much to say about this one. Her power is Earth, to what extent her powers goes is unknown as this one had an issue with controlling her abilities..." Vargas then interrupted by adding.

"Didn't this one also have some kind of glasses fetish?" To which Circe replied "Apparently so." Then continued.

"...During the escape of Viola, it's noted that she caused considerable damage to the basement levels of the building, effectively taking out the power for the levels which disabled the electronic locks used by most doors on the levels. After this event all drone units were pulled back and we lost track of Prototype Three. However she has been positively ID'd as being present at the recent Osea battle."

"Now onto Prototype #004......" The room then fell silent. Everyone at some point had heard of this one, of #004...

"Fiona..." Vargas bluntly said. Although he had never cared to remember any of the names of the other Destrillians, 004, Fiona, was one who he remembered all too well. The day of the board meeting, when he viewed her so mercilessly immolate the squad of guards and tear out Dr. Fringe's heart with her bare hands, there was no other emotion he could've described as feeling that day other that sheer awe of her cruelty. Unlike the other Destrillians he knew Fiona enjoyed the killing, savoring every moment of the process. This girl was the harbinger of Death, and Vargas desired so much to meet this angel of destruction....but where was she...

"She manipulates fire which many of us have seen demonstrated and is god knows where now, move on." Vargas said, details on this one were unnecessary.

"Yes sir, now about Prototype #005, Ronin Maverick - Shadow Star. This one had the power of Darkness, apparently he could drain the life out living things."

"Really now?" Vargas said, clearly getting bored.

"Yes Sir." Circe replied. They then exchanged glances in silence for a few seconds before Vargas called out. "Next."

"Ahem, onto #006, Thetis Alcesteos - The Raging Charybdis..." To which again Vargas interrupted.

"The what?"

"The Raging Charybdis, her power is to manipulate water, however she was a rather timid one and there was little expectation from her. Although she was spotted as one of the four at the Osea battle, so perhaps the science department was wrong..." She didn't even pause for the next one.

"Prototype #007, Eydin Eckhart - The Wayward Gale. Ability was the manipulation of wind. Currently missing and whereabouts are unknown." She then instantly clicked the pointer, the Destrillians not sighted were of little interest at this point.

"Prototype #008, Emma Marie Johnson - Vacker Påsklilja." Circe then paused and looked at Vargas expecting an interruption, who simply looked back. She then continued. "This one was actually a sorry case according to Science department records. She had an ability to manipulate plants, which is not very impressive, so let's move on."

"Prototype #009....Idris Savage - The gunmetal glint. We've already spoken about her, and due to the high risk she poses despite our countermeasure systems, this Destrillian is our highest priority target. Extreme force is approved if any of our troops encounter her."

"Prototype #010, Eve Rosalind Daly - The Ice Queen." Circe stopped there as she knew Vargas would say something, and he did.

"Ah Eve...lovely girl, almost had her on my side, until that arrogant jackass Roland ruined everything. Sadly the girl perished however she did do me the favor of eliminating Roland. Next please my dear!"

"Sir. Prototype #011, Kerr Nordstrom....Viola's lap dog. Has the power over gravity, and this one was spotted at the Osea incident. Our annalists suspect he might have been the one carrying out the horrendous acts of violence throughout Osea in the past. Consider him a priority target."

"And finally....Prototype #012, Ariel Regan. Her power was of sound, however she was terminated during an escape attempt at Viola, so of no concern anymore. That concludes Viola facility #1" She then brought up the second window with the pointer.

"As for facility #2, this one is hard to document, as most records seem to have been lost or destroyed. This facility had a track record of escapes, and after Viola collapsed the remaining Destrillians there simply vanished with no traces as to where they went. Additionally there were no signs of a mass breakout like at facility #1."

Everyone then began talking amongst themselves again and Circe sat back down at her desk. Vargas sat there silently, contemplating the situation. Shortly after he spoke up again to the assembly.

"Alright so there you have it everyone, we know what we're up against, so let's not embarrass ourselves like Viola did OK? We have the means to take these scientific rejects down, and additionally we shall roll out all prototypes that have passed their trial tests." He gestured to the desk to the right of him. "Circe and I shall be heading out to Osea shortly to assess the situation ourselves, anyone wishing to accompany us is most welcome to do so. As for everyone else, please proceed with regular operations, that cash flow isn't going to bring itself in after all..." He then stood up from his chair and added. "So with that meeting adjourned, and I bid you all goodnight." And headed for the main doorway, with Circe close behind him.

Still at his desk, Janus sat back in his chair and grinned. So Vargas is going Destrillian hunting...this could be my opportunity to take one down as I hear they would be very formidable opponents, and i just love a challenge.... He then let out a small laugh, to which Krieg simply gave him an unimpressed look and got up to leave.

Outside the room in the corridor, Vargas and Circe walked down the hall towards Vargas' office.

"Circe, be a dear and make the call for Solde-1 to be prepared for takeoff, we shall depart in a few hours. Also call the lab and have then ready Zwei and Drei for deployment, this might turn out to be a good occasion to give those fine ladies a proper field tests - after all nothing proves a new weapons better than actual combat." Then let out a slight chuckle.

"Yes Sir." Circe replied, then after a few seconds asked her superior. "What will you do if you find her?" To which Vargas simply smiled and said. "Somehow I doubt that will happen, however if it does....then I shall play it by ear."

"I will find that strength, Even if it means murdering those responsible"

Lokka finished making calibrations to his PDA device before setting off. He had been shackled up in an abandoned apartment room for the last 4 days and had used his time here to pick up useful information about the mercenary group 'The Undying'. A high ranking member of the gang was the target of an Assassination attempt made by Lokka and his group a few weeks before. The reports leading up to the attack proved to be falsified in order to lure the group into a trap. Detryn Vita was the man they were after and he proved to be a lot harder to take down with roughly 400% more reinforcements than Lokka's group had expected.

The battle ended in the deaths of Lokka's teammates, Destrillian prototypes #015 and #018. Lokka fled the scene and took refuge in the darkest corners of the Orange Zone of Osea. Working under the alias 'Prism' during his time working in Osea, Lokka had become infamous and posed as a major threat to many of the crime syndicates in the local area, as well as some legitimate corporate business holders who were working out of the spotlight in shadowy affairs.

Tonight was going to be the night. Detryn Vita was holed up in a temporary headquarters for the gang with his boss known only as Banshee. The information was secret and classified but it was Prism's job to find out this kind of information. The Undying would be fools to assume that they're meeting was going to be exclusive to them, which is why they were heavily guarded by many of the gangs members aswell as some hired brute force to ensure the meeting would not be disturbed. Detryn was not Lokka's target however, and neither was the thugs boss. Lokka needed to know which of his contacts was working against him. Detryn may well be a scumbag, and his men may well have been the ones to fire on Lokka's team, but he did not set them up. Detryn would get the justice he deserved, but not before he parted ways with the name of his associate.

Lokka closed the door to the apartment, knowing he would not be returning here. On his person he was carrying 5 capsules of Distrum, secured through sources all over the city, as well as a high-calibur pistol with several ammunition clips and his PDA. He doubted he would need to use any of the items much but they were there as a security risk. Not that there would be much trouble. Lokka wasn't going to break through the front door and fight his way through a bunch of guards and give Detryn a chance to prepare or flee. He wasn't entering through Detryns personal quarters, the room adjacent to the meeting room. If there was any one thing that Lokka could do better than anyone else he knew, it was planning. He'd been studying the building's blueprints for the last few days and deduced the quickest way to extract the necessary information.

He walked out onto the street. His face was not known to his enemies and he intended to keep it that way. He produced a large bandana from his pocket and wrapped it around his face several times, only showing small parts of his body and leaving his bright green eyes uncovered.

"There it is"

He muttererd to himself as he saw the structure. Nobody knew quite what a building like this was doing down in the orange zone. From the outside it looked like a millionaires mansion that you'd see on the upper levels of the city. The bluprints revealed that the inside was open and barren. Lokka instantly recognized the bystanders outside the building as guards in disguise. Moving around the nearby building he proceeded to scale it using his powers as gripping points. Shining, white synthetic-looking barriers produced at the ends of his hands as he moved up the building. Pulling himself up on to the top of the small building he had a clear view of the room he was about to infiltrate. He was not out of the sight of the guards so he would need to time his jump correctly and minimize the time taken to get through the window.

"4 Guards: Centred position on west side, 2 to the east. None on Southern side. Window not open. Careful opening not an option, takes too long, guards would fire or raise alarm. Forced entry preferable, quieter than alarm or gunfire."

As Lokka contemplated the actions that took place he armed and readied his pistol.

"Guards talking. Opening."

Without hesitation Lokka ran and leapt off of his own building aimed directly at the window. Using a barrier as his landing Lokka quickly forced the window open, shattering the top panel. The guards outside the base would be too far away to hear the glass breaking without listening devices but the gang members in the meeting room would certainly have heard it. Lokka rushed to the door, forced it open and took a left down the hallway. The first door on the right, that was the room that the meeting took place. No doubt they were aware that someone would soon enter the room. The mercenarys would be lining up their shots on the door and be ready to fire. They will be confident.

Lokka brought out his pistol and activated his prime ability. He covered his body in a powerful barrier shield, invisible to the naked eye. The shield would not allow him to move much faster than a walk and but his pistol would take out any opposition before this became a problem. Knowing his limits Lokka forced the door open then and began analyzing the room.

'Two guards, Unknown, far right of the room. 1 guard, Detryn's bodyguard, room centre. Detryn Vita and stereotypical mobster, Left hand side. Detryn carrying Sub-machine gun, Mobster unarmed. Assume this as Undying leader'

Lokka took the time to analyze each of his enemies thoroughly as he entered, as they fired they're weapons without holding back. Confusion set in and Lokka seized the opportunity. He pulled up his pistol and spent 5 shots on the two guards on the right, turned and fired a shot into the centre guards neck. Two shots left. Lokka aimed his gun at Detryns kneecap and fired. Detryn went down with a cry. Lokka turned his attention to the mob boss.

"You. I have no reason to kill you, you pose no threat. What can you offer me in return for your life?"

The boss was clearly taken by surprise. He stuttered for a moment and looked down at Detryn. He was curled up on the floor screaming in agony and gripping his leg tightly. The wound in his knee had shattered a joint in the bone and had caused more damage than Lokka first expected. It didn't matter too much though, he wouldn't last long as it is. The boss turned around to face Lokka.

"Wh-What do you want with him?" He muttered looking back down at Detryn.

"That doesn't concern you"

"Fine. I know when to keep my mouth shut. What do you want from me then?"

"I assume your life is worth more to you than your pathetic excuse for a gang?"

The boss scowled lightly at the insult. "Yes"

"Then I require data on your group. If I know everything you know then I have no reason to keep you here"

"Here" The boss rifled through his pockets and produced a small memory key. "This has all of our bloody information on it, some of it heavily classified, will you just let me go?"

He threw the memory key to Lokka. Lokka caught it and lifted his left arm to reveal his PDA system attached to it. He inserted the memory key and the data opened up on the system.

"Credit Transactions, Private Funding, Member Files....This will be useful"

"Yes yes can I go? I need to get out of this god damn city!"

"You may leave once I get a name out of this guy". Lokka gestured toward Detryn with his gun. He slowly moved across the room and grabbed the piece of dirt by the scruff of the neck.

"You possess information that I require"

Detryn looked up, grunting as he did so. He looked Lokka right in the eye.

"What the fuck do you want?!"

"I need a name. Two weeks ago. Information was leaked to Prism about your whereabouts. Who was he?"

"I can't tell you that I'd be out of a job!"

"You wont be able to work very well with two broken kneecaps I bet"

"What?! You cant even count your own shots you assho-AGHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Lokka had fired a second shot into Detryn's leg. He'd wasted far too much time here tonight. He needed answers now.

"I NEED A NAME!"

"Michael Sayrs! He's part of Prism's network thats all I know!"

Lokka dropped the man. Michael. He had provided a lot of information to Prism when he was just starting out after leaving the viola facility. This man was responsible for most of Prism's reputation. Why would he betray him and for what price?

"C'mon man! I told you the goddamn name! Why do you need it so bad he's just a god damn information broker."

"He provided me with incorrect information"

"Wait...What? Your....your Prism?"

Lokka had heard all he needed to hear and needed to get out now. This man had to be found tonight before he heard about this.

"Yes, Thats me. Goodbye Detryn Vita"

Lokka bent down and picked up Detryns gun, placed it in his hand and pulled his own arm to fire through his throat.

"NO! PLEASE MAN DONT DO-"

The round went off and the criminal got what he deserved. Lokka turned to face the frightened Boss. "Get out of here"

The man ran and would likely alert the guards still positioned around the building. It didn't matter, 'Prism' would be long gone. He bent down and picked up Detryn's UI chip which was inside his telecommunications system. This would be all he needed. Lokka continued through the building and exited out of the southern side on the second floor, the side which was unguarded in the earlier survey.

He vanished out into the streets and removed his Bandana. As he moved he injected himself with a distrum capsule and released his shield. Michael Sayrs would die tonight.

Lokka brought up his PDA and inserted the UI chip belonging to Detryn. He opened up the recent call logs that had light encryption on them. He configured the calls with his own PDA and within minutes replicated Detryn's own voice from the chips history. Accessing the files he found Michael's User number. He found a safe alleyway and made the call.

"Michael its Detryn". The voice translator worked perfectly.

"What the fuck do you want? I'm already in way over my head for what I did the other week!"

"Hey asshole I'm covering your back! You need to meet my associate tonight so he can give you a new UI chip, the information on your old one has been compromised"

"Dammit! Okay but you better make it quick. I'll be at The Mirage in 10 minutes"

The call ended. The Mirage was a well-known nightclub in the area. Michael could be found, moved to a nearby alleyway and slaughtered. It would be seamless.
　
-----------------------------------------------------------------------　
　
Lokka arrived at the nightclub at the meeting time. He lurked in the shadows for a while and watched the people in the club. He had no idea what Michael looked like but he'd spotted 3 males alone in the club neither drinking nor dancing. He could be any of these three people, or they could all be working for Michael, it was hard to tell. Lokka brought up his PDA and dialled Michael's number once more, this time looking carefully at the Men in the room. Only one reacted and brought out his phone and touched it to his ears. His lips moved in sync with the sound coming from Lokka's own device.

"Hello?"

It was him. This was it. Justice in its purest form. This man would die and things would be corrected. Suddenly it begun. Complete chaos. Lokka had been soo focused on finding Michael that he hadn't even noticed the presence of a Destrillian. It was made clear to him however when flames begun to sprout up in the club, burning everything.

Lokka identified the woman that was doing this. I young girl that had attacked a bystander in the club and done serious damage to his face, no doubt killing him. The girl's glowing hair shone out red and orange in the flames purging the room.

Lokka didn't panic, he tried to re-locate Michael. Where was he?
Looking down he found the man he was looking for, lying on the floor with severe burns on his body, getting worse as the heat grew stronger. The man was no longer conscious and if he wasn't already dead he would be in seconds.

This...Revenge. It wasn't how Lokka had planned it. Not at all. Thinking logically he realised that his mission was over here but there were more pressing issues such as the destrillian.

Holding out a barrier around himself to ward out smoke or flames, Lokka moved through the crowd of slowly failing humans and approached the girl. Another Destrillian was here tonight and he needed her. The building was slowly collapsing around them so he needed to get them both to safety and out of the public eye. This was the kind of attention that he did not need.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around.

"We need to get out of here"

No sooner than their eyes adjusted to the dim light near the door, the door swung shut behind them and threw them into darker darkness. A second later, the room instantly flooded with blinding light and writhing snakes on the floor, causing most of them to close their eyes, some of them to look away from the room that lay before them.

The walls were covered in naked human bodies, all drenched in what appeared to be the same liquid chocolate and wine but darker, thicker and even more viscous. Red and brown-black coated the room, giving it the appearance of a macabre lair of a wild beast. They did not move, although a continuous, deep groan rippled through the room. The bodies were in various states of dismemberment, but were surreal and were unlike any bodies in their last death throes the Destrillians had ever seen, more resembling freakish mannequins nestled deep within the trough of the uncanny valley.

At the far end of the room, the magnificent man-sized cat lay curled at the feet of a teenage girl, who sat on a red-leather throne, which contorted with the imprints of human faces, arms, legs, and torsos. She wore a simple, white billowing gown which reached her ankles as she sat, contrasting herself with the live, writhing bodily hell she sat in. Her face was made of plastic – or porcelain – and her eyes shifted colors from left to right iris. She spoke, her supposedly innocent voice like the honey hiding the bitter syrup underneath.

I find you in my fears
and in my fascination

“Why are you here?” Her voice came at them from all sides, from behind them, from above, from below, from inside them. “They tell me you came from out of the Orange Zone.”

“You tell us.”

The girl pouted, her eyes flashing between a cream color to pink and then hot red. “My lair, my rules. You know when you play in someone else’s house, you play their games.” She rested her chin on one of her arms propped up on an armrest. In an instant, she shifted out of focus, convulsing as in the space of seconds she grew into an adult woman, back curled as she continued to fuel the nightmare playing out in front of the Destrillian’s eyes.

“What the hell is this place…”
The woman on the throne lifted her head, noticeably the same, glistening porcelain skin glinting against the spotlights from above. “You’re not like the others…”
“We can’t really say the same thing about you.”
The woman shook her head, her eyes flashing blue to dark purple. “You didn’t come here by choice, you’re looking for something… something more human – human – than you…”

Paranoid and peaceful
Inside a sweet addiction

A couple of dismembered torsos detached itself from the ceiling and landed on the floor between the woman and the Destrillian party, splashing more redness over the snaking floor as they silently writhed on the spot. Unsure or not whether to attack it, they took a step backwards as the queen in the lair continued.

“I can help you with what you need… a sanctuary…” She spasmed again and on her chair she grew – her dress billowed outwards and her belly rose. Her motherly visage was only broken by the same, plastic complexion. “Somewhere safe, a sanctuaryAAAAAHHHHH-”

Most of them took another step backwards as they watched her lapse into another convulsing fit, most too bewildered to reply to very much. She tripped and fell over the beast curled at her feet, and clawed at the snakes on the floor as she continued to writhe on the ground with a scream that echoed and pierced through their heads in one continuous bellow.

Soft insanity and I can’t make it stop
Live hallucination within a dream

Eventually, there was silence as she collapsed into a heap. Then there was movement under her dress. Red bloomed across her belly as she began to crumble into ash and dust.
A child stood up from under the dress as it turned to liquid and reformed on the child’s body. The dust cleared as the red dress quickly returned to form-fitting proportions, as she seemed to phase in and out of existence, morphing from mere child to full-bodied adult. Finally, she stopped just as she was a few feet away from the group, standing amongst the crawling dismembered torsos, the air growing heavier and heavier around them as she stepped closer and closer.

Iara che respiro
Il mio cibo, cioche osservo
Magico se tu

“Long story short, I don’t know who you are. But in a moment, I will find out. And maybe some of you will too.” A red haze descended from the ceiling and floor and began to wrap itself around the Destrillian’s and the other’s bodies, as the woman’s voice manifested itself into a viscous honey-water fluid that pooled around their feet. “Start the dosage, prepare the pods.”

One by one, the group began to fall unconscious without knowing, until all who was left standing was Kram and Stolz. Through the near-opaque haze of red now completely surrounding them, the two half-realised what was happening, although by the time they had started to reach a conclusion, there were two neat sharp blows at the back of the head, and gentle but firm fingers gripped their necks and stabbed syringes into them, causing them to fall unconscious soon after.

***

Thetis didn’t know where she was when she woke up. She tried scanning her surroundings but soon realized she was lying down – floating on water, ignoring the wave of nausea that swept over her as she stood up.
The water was like glass and spanned out for as far as the eye could see. Her reflection flickered and died out on the water under her, and before she could call out for someone, anyone –

“So it’s you.”
The man standing a few feet behind her – it couldn’t be.
“Father?”

He was silent after his greeting, staring at her with eyes that seemed so empty and lifeless. He simply stared at her. He seemed to loom over her as he folded his arms and was immaculately dressed, hair combed neatly.
She reached out towards his face, and without warning, he pushed her away, a rough shove that caused her to trip and fall backwards. “Why did you?”

“…”
“You left. And you know what? I didn’t mind. You didn’t want to follow me. And that’s fine. But how could you do that to your mother? You abandoned us. It’s all your fault.”
It’s all your fault it’s all your fault it’s all your fault it’s all your fault it’s all your fault
Before Thetis could reply, a rough hand pulled her back on her feet from the scruff of her collar and as she struggled to pull herself away, she was backhanded across the face with a slap that burned her cheek. She fell onto grass, the wind grating across the fresh mark that the slap left. There were trees, looming over her in an enclosure, black and spiny with branches that seemed to reach downwards. And then the slight frame of a woman in a lab coat squatted down to meet Thetis’ eyes with a piercing, disapproving gaze that seemed to drill fear into her chest like a knife.

“You continue to fail yourself, Number Six.” Allison Perkins ignored anything Thetis might have said, and slapped her across the face again. She stood up, wiping her hand on the sleeve of her labcoat like one would have wiped their hands after killing a particularly bothersome mosquito. “You continue to fail everyone you know, and most importantly, you continue to fail me.”

At a shadow of resistance from Thetis, armored soldiers she didn’t notice were there before walked towards her, aiming their rifles at her as Dr Perkins drew out a syringe from her lab coat. “You’re not even human anymore. But you’re no better than one. You’re nothing. You think otherwise? Prove it.” She drew a penknife out with her other hand, twirling it on her fingers like an expert.
This wasn’t the Dr Perkins Number Six knew, but she was going to be the end of her anyway if she didn’t do something fast.

***

“Idris? Where are you? Idris? Where are you? Idris? Where are you?”

Heat.
It was hot. The air around Idris shimmered like the atmosphere sitting on a searing summer road, but the more ice-cold the metal floor she was lying down on was. It was the heat that had woken her, and then the flame that licked at her toes. She looked around at the inferno raging about her, and a cold, dreaded sense of familiarity set in.
The floors used to be wooden floorboards, though…

“Idris!” The scream was faint, distant, choked back by the flames engulfing her bedroom, leaping up the curtains and sending thick plumes of black smoke out the windows as paint curled up and crackled, blistered and charred by the licking tongues of red and orange.

Suddenly, the ceiling caved in and soldiers followed suit, landing on their feet around her as she fully realized where she was and what was happening. The patches sewn on the sleeves of their arms fully set in the reality of what was happening.
They drew out stun batons, and circled her, the snap-crackle of electricity rising above even the stifling inferno the house was in. The windows were not a good exit, and by now flames were surrounding them as they circled around her, the door the only visible safe exit she could see.

***

The thicket of trees felt the same to Emma, even though they were different from those she had known before when she escaped. An inescapable feeling of freedom. A newfound awe of the silvery light beaming from a midnight sky and casting midnight shadows on the ground. The life pulsing around her swayed in the breeze, shedding leaves like hair onto the ground.

A wail pierced through the silence of nature and through her mind, and she instantly recognized the voice. She had been here before.
She had been in this situation before.

Emma tried shifting the trees, bending them to her will, but when she concentrated –
Nothing.
In fact, the trees seemed to close in on her, pushing and shoving her as they buckled and swayed to the wind that picked up into a gale.
Suddenly there were people all around her, trying to kill her, trying to plead with her, trying to reach out for help, and all were buffeted around and impossible to reach as she fought to gain control over the trees around her.
But there were only two cries of help that echoed in her mind, and both were the voices of two of the most important people that had ever entered her life. As several armored soldiers seemed to jump down from the trees, blocking her way, she knew what to do.

***

Terra yelped as a wildly flailing tree branch caught her across the legs and made her fall face-first into the dirt, which then surprised her because the pain in her fairly useless legs were gone.
In fact, as she stood up without too much effort, she knew something was different as soon as her legs failed to fail to support her body. Momentary surprise was replaced by momentary glee and then to momentary suspicion.
And she could feel it, despite the constant disturbing prodding of the tree branches making her jump.

Emma was close.
Thinking about it, she realized that she could think a lot better, and when she cleared her throat to talk out loud, she realized that her brain was connected to the rest of her body much better as well. She diverted her attention to her thoughts, and suddenly realized how they – how she had gotten here.
They had gotten here out of nowhere.

As another tree swung at her particularly uncomfortably, a pinprick of annoyance, a massive wave of dirt uprooted the tree and blasted its bottom half into splinters, leaving its remains to lie on the ground, squirming in what appeared to be pain.
She covered her face with her arms, expecting whatever incredible source of power that had done this to charge at her next, when she realized that she was the source of power that had exploded the tree, her simple careless gesture causing a deadly shockwave of lethal earth.

And she had barely noticed.

Suddenly, the trees morphed into screams and howls, of eerily familiar voices that threatened to rob Terra of what little newfound confidence there was.
YOU ABANDONED US, YOU LEFT US, YOUR FAMILY AND YOU DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT WHETHER WE DIED HOW COULD YOU BE SO CRUEL TO YOUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD
A particularly thick branch swung at Terra, and swung at her hard.

***

Kerr woke to pitch-black darkness. For an irrational moment, he might as well have been blind. Eventually, eyes adjusting to the darkness moments later, he methodically retraced his steps, where he was, how he got here.

He was sitting in a leather chair, excessively extravagant. Fine-trimmed and clearly expensive, somewhat like one a business executive would have in his office. He deduced he obviously wasn’t in his comfort zone.

In front of him was a long table which stretched out into the darkness. Neat rows of laptops were closed in front of neat rows of other extravagant office chairs.
A board room.
Details played out in his head immediately afterwards: the room was relatively open-spaced, too open-spaced for his liking. The only protection afforded could be from the chair he was sitting in, the table impossible to upturn, any attack on him from a distance difficult to defend against. Any such self-defense would inevitably force him to use his powers, and considering his state –

A reassessment of his own condition cut him short. There were no aches in his bones or fatigue clouding his head like there was previously. He had no wounds that needed tending to or limbs that felt stiff.
Previously.
The more Kerr thought about it the less he was sure of what ‘previously’ was. Details about some fight, a whole range of emotions ranging from shame, stinging embarrassment, smugness, apprehension to fear.
But his head was somewhere else entirely.
He would have to find his way out, try and pick up the details of where he exactly was and why he was here.

As Kerr stood up, floodlights shot torrents of light straight at Kerr’s face, the sudden light leaving marks before his eyes could adjust to them. He noticed a logo printed into the wood of the table as he turned away, and finally he knew where he was now.

“Number Eleven.”
He couldn’t see where the voice was coming from, but he knew the voice the moment it voiced his old name.
“It’s good to see you still doing Viola’s work. But you’ve been straying from the mark lately, Kerr.”
The spotlights moved with mechanical whirring, and Kerr deduced that they were actually security droids, their guns trained on him. The favored heavy guns of Viola, designed to take down even the most rebellious of their property.

“It’s reasonable to bide your time, Kerr, but you can only keep up the act for so long. Viola is not dead. It lives in you, Number Eleven, and as you are our property, you shall finish your orders to the letter. You can’t gain acceptance from anyone except us. You are a Destrillian, not a petty human living out a mundane life.”

The spotlights seemed to close in on him, laser sights from a line of soldiers behind them training onto his chest. “We can make it so all your guilt can vanish. Besides, Kerr, think about what really needs to be done. You know we can’t have dissenters in our ranks.”

Something felt very wrong, and as Malcolm Abaddon paused, the whirring spin of chain-guns could be heard.
“Just ask your friend Ariel.”

***

The hard concrete floor on Kramskov’s bare face was a rude awakening, much more so when he felt the chill all over the front of his body, penetrating through the shirt and pants he wore.
Looking around, the room he was in was bare except for a toilet and a bed that he had most likely rolled off from. The room was small, cubicle-like, and with the oddly-sized window placed at the uppermost part of the wall behind him, he may as well have been in a prison cell.

There was the sound of a klaxon in the distance, a familiar sense of danger and darkness. The cold gave Kramskov a runny nose, and the boy began to get a sinking feeling in his stomach.
It felt like he was missing something. He couldn’t place his finger on it, but there was a familiarity to where he was that he couldn’t shake.

The door in front of him was pulled of its hinges and thrown aside, and the klaxon sounds began to crescendo as dust from outside cleared. A man-sized robot with large metal muscles burst through the doorway, sweeping the room with a cone of fire that extended from his palm, yelling something about SUPER HENSHIN DRIVER FIRE FORCE SPLENDIDU and other incoherent rubbish. The roaring heat seemed to light up the room like an oven, but there was no way out aside from the doorway.

KRAMMY!!!

The voice pierced through his mind, even as sheer terror bled like sweat.
She was somewhere.
She was in trouble.
He had to find her, and to do this he had to get out of this horrible laboratory.

***

Nova grunted as he plucked the last of the fur off his meaty forearms. “So, uh, see anything you like, girl?”
Jettison remained silent for a moment as she adjusted the bulky headgear attached from her head to the monitor. “They’re fucked up.”

“Just ‘fucked up’? Come on, you knew that the first time you even saw ‘em. There’s more than that shit.”
Jettison chose not to reply. There was another gut feeling that replaced her reasoning skills which she couldn’t explain. She had no way of ‘recruiting’ them into the gang, they seemed far too independent and untameable for that.
Just like me.

But they could help her, regardless. There were things that even her entire gang combined could not face by themselves. As much as Jettison had prepared for her inevitable attack on the company and its science that had ruined her life, she knew that as a weapon she was not enough. Being a master of disguise and improvised combat could only take her and her gang so far.

And these people… they weren’t people. They were far more human than human. Aliens, living out their lives in mortal worlds. Even more so than herself.

“Oh, and hey – aren’t you gonna hook that kid up to some of that wacko-jacko shit?” Nova flicked his head in Stolz’s direction, who lay unconscious on a mattress in the corner of the room.

“We have other plans.”

Nova rolled his eyes. “Yeah, y’all need to do your thang with him, move yo master plan and all into fruition or someshit. I get it.” He cricked his neck as he turned to face the shadows at the back of the room, raising his eyebrows in curiosity. “But just how important is that kid to youse guys anyway?”

The ash scorched at the back of his throat, causing him to choke. His brain was telling him what he ought to be smelling - charred flesh, wood smoke - but the flame was too hot to smell anything other than heat.

“Kara? Mom? Dad?” he cried. At first, there was no answer. And then, directly behind him…

“Sssssssss… burnburnburnburnburnburnburnburnburnburnburnburn--”

___________________________________________________________________________

The sound of a silenced gunshot jerked Early awake in a heartbeat. That damned nightmare again, -who fired that gun? Who was it fired at? Am I hit?-

Early smirked and tapped the butt of the pistol against his temple.

“Idiot,” he muttered to himself. He always fell asleep with a gun in his hand, and every time he had that nightmare he always pulled the trigger in his sleep, always waking himself. A friggin good eject button, he had to say so himself.

He pulled himself into a sitting position on the couch in Smythe’s office. The doc had allowed him the use of the building for the night, on the understanding that before the morning was through, Early would be gone from town for good.

He hated that nightmare. It wasn’t how things had happened, but it captured everything Early had felt at the time, dialled up to eleven. By the time he’d returned home, the fire was long dead and the freak that had caused it was even longer gone.

…Not to mention that Kara had died the year before. Shit.

Early shook his head. He needed to focus on the job, not the past. Let’s see… First point of business: where next? There were no other former Volsung staff settled in Artolia that he knew of, which meant it was either Vanaheimr or Osea. He’d have to visit the capital sooner or later. So, was a detour to Vanaheimr worth it?

He knew Smythe was right - it was likely that any Animus that had been in Vanaheimr would have either moved along or been bagged and tagged by IRIN. But could there be any new arrivals there that he could catch… now there was a question worth asking. And the IRIN. Early knew a thing or two about organisations, and greasing the right palm could get you a few words off the record. On the other hand… approaching them in an official capacity might be worthwhile, too.

But; would an Animus go to Vanaheimr in the first place? Hmm…

___________________________________________________________________________

“Is this safe?” he’d asked.

Doctor Hartnell nodded. “Of course it is. Nemesis works for Chulainn just as… hnn… better than you do, Early.”

Early expected it was fact, although the senior scientist could just be showing pride in his work. Hartnell was somewhere in his sixties. Doubtlessly as a younger man he was quite tall, because now, even stooped with age, he was over five and half feet tall. His ash-white hair had receded up his forehead, leaving him with a widow’s peak. His white lab coat covered his body to his knees, where carefully creased trousers took over to the polished shoes.

“So, Nemesis… what do I need to know?”

“Nemesis is her identifier, hmm, see, at birth, each Animus was given a ‘code name’, which we call their identifier. However, when it seemed they were unlikely to see combat duty, they were also given more regular names. Nemesis is a Lykaon Animus -- you remember that term from your briefing I trust? -- and was one of the first to be repatriated after the mass escape.”

“You mean the Night of --?”

“I detest that name. The Animus are too cowed to know rage. No, it was the Hunger that caused it. Heh, gods know if I knew about the Hunger beforehand, I would have advised they be sedated more heavily.” Hartnell shook his head, perhaps in remorse.

“What can she tell me that you guys can’t?”

“The Animus think differently than you and I. This is in part due to simple genetics, in part due to their isolated rearing. And, of course, there is also the Hunger. Every single Animus we have interviewed since the escape, regardless of personality, has spoken of it.”

“Yeah,” Early said.

“Ah, of course. I had forgotten how you became aware of the Animus in the first place.” Hartnell paused. “If it makes a difference to you, most who have become aware of the Animus have had memory alteration work done on them, if not straight extermination.”

“Ain’t I lucky?” Early said, not trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

Hartnell shot him a look, well aware of the tone. Early guessed that the old man had probably had people ‘exterminated’ for the Tone.

“Ah, here we are,” Hartnell said, obviously as glad to be out of Early’s company as Early was to be out of his. “This is the interview room Nemesis will be brought to in a short while. There are cameras, so we will know what passes between you, although--”

There was an audible clack as Hartnell closed his mouth so quickly his teeth bumped together. Early knew what the sound meant, as he’d made it a couple times himself. He was biting off an utterance he might regret later.

“Anyway; wait here. A handler will bring her along shortly,” Hartnell said, opening the door.

Early went in quietly and heard the door close behind him. The room was painted off-white all over. There was a table and two folding chairs in the middle of the room. They were, depressingly, the same colour. He briefly wondered which side of the table he was supposed to sit. A quick examination suggested they were both the same.

He decided to take the seat opposite the door, as it gave a more commanding presence. If it had been sooner in his career, he would have presumed that they would have expected that of him and gone for the seat nearer the door. However, he had recently come to the conclusion that trying to second-guess anyone was like a bad comedy skit, as they’d probably try to second-guess how you would second-guess them.

No sooner had he taken his seat than the door opened. A lean girl somewhere in her late teens walked -- no, stalked -- into the room. He’d never seen a female Animus before, but as he knew what the males looked like, he couldn‘t not identify her as an Animus. Where you would expect body fat to provide definition on a normal human, the Animus lacked it. One of the scientists had explained it -- their metabolism was so severe they couldn’t sustain body fat. The head sheds were divided as to whether this was a result or cause of the Hunger. Only muscle tone prevented them looking malnourished. Although, a few of the Animus on the run looked that, too.

This girl had dark hair and dark eyes. As with all Animus, due to being raised without natural light she had what could only be described as extreme prison pallor -- and with the harsh fluorescent lighting, what little skin colour she might have had was bleached out.

The grey jumpsuit she was wearing would have emphasised her figure, had she had one. The hair was cut short, and the eyes were wary. Dog tags hung around her neck.

“You are Donovan Early?” she asked.

“Yeah. What’s your name, kid?” Early asked in response.

“I am Nemesis,” she replied.

“Cute,” Early muttered. “What’s your other name?”

Nemesis narrowed her eyes slightly, but it seemed affected. Early remembered something in the briefing about Lykaon Animus being the most loyal to their handlers. Well, Lykaon were part wolf and part human, and dogs were domesticated or ‘humanised’ wolves… Would the pup want a pat on the head?

“Lani. Lani Blaise,” she said.

‘Good girl,’ Early thought to himself. Out loud, he said, “Nice to meet you, Lani. Wanna take a seat?”

Nemesis took the seat opposite him carefully, not taking her eyes from him even as she brushed the seat with hand.

“So, Ms. Blaise. Our bosses think some of your fellow Animus may have left not just the province, but the country. They want me to go after them,” Early said, and then leaned in conspiratorially. “What can you tell me of how the Animus think?”

Nemesis tilted her head to one side and studied him, frowning. “I would try to avoid the cities at first. They’re too noisy and smelly,” she said. “But, smaller settlements would be insufficient to hide an Animus for too long. Especially if the Hunger was to overtake us. So…”

“You’d migrate to bigger towns. Then the cities. Then the biggest cities,” Early said.

“Yes,” Nemesis answered. “But I take it from your tone of voice, you had already surmised that.”

Early paused, thrown at actually hearing the word ‘surmised’ from the mouth of anyone who wasn’t involved with the law.

“Pretty much,” he said. “I’m told you could give me some insight to the Hunger?”

The frown on her face deepened. “The Hunger… It’s, well, it’s impossible to describe accurately. The Hunger is… As an Animus, I feel hungry most of the time. To say my highest priority is where my next meal is coming from wouldn’t be far wrong. But after…we change, this hunger is heightened to unbearable levels. At times, it can overcome us, leaving us barely more than berserk savages. In this state, our only focus is to gorge ourselves on meat.”

“Why meat?” Early said.

“I don’t know. Some of the scientists believe it’s due to the proteins in the meat, that immediately after the change it’s what our bodies need most. Some suggest it’s due to our DNA and our more bestial characteristics asserting themselves.” Nemesis shrugged. “If any of them do know the cause, they do not tell us.”

That made sense to Early. “So, you said gorge. Why did you choose that word?”

Nemesis shook her head, a wry smile quirking her lips. “You are Donovan Early, who brought down Achilles? Do you need to ask that?”

Achilles… He hadn’t known the monster’s code name, but he knew who she meant. A serial killer had been stalking the streets of the Hub, slaughtering without discrimination or pattern. As Early was in Chulainn’s pay, he decided he would hunt it down.

He didn’t approach the police, as he had no official weight, being a soldier of fortune. He followed the details released by the press. He talked to people who may have seen something. He talked to those who saw ‘absolutely nuffin’, honest, wait, no, don’t get like that, OK, but you don’t let anyone know I told you this’.

Eventually, he came across the man whose description had been seen around nearly every murder. The damage this man had done to those he killed was horrific. Early was prepared to bring in the corpse of a monster. And a monster was what he had got. With talons…teeth…

“An Animus in the grips of the Hunger… is nothing but a monster. Even in your own eyes. Tearing people apart to sate its guts, blind to everything else,” he said, presently.

Nemesis nodded, almost impassively. “Exactly. I have no idea how many of my friends fled in the Night of the Rage… or how many were torn apart by another Animus, perhaps even…myself.” Her voice wavered slightly on the last word.

“For myself -- and the other repatriates here -- losing ourselves to the Hunger is one of the worst fates imaginable. For those feral Animus… I can’t say. Some of them may revel in it. Others may end their own existence to try to escape it.”

She locked her eyes directly to Early’s.

“You should take care of yourself, Mr. Early.”

Thetis didn’t know where she was when she woke up.

The icy chill of something against her back made the water prototype shiver as she stared at the dreary monotone sky. Her blue hair had come loose from its braid, and was spreading in the eerily calm water beneath her. How did she get here, again? Thetis couldn’t quite recall anything before waking up and staring at the empty space above her. Despite being surrounded by her element, Thetis felt alarmingly out of her depth. Her chest tightened. Something was very wrong.

The water prototype’s stomach churned as she clambered to her feet as she tried to negotiate her balance with the still sheet of water below her. It was so quiet, and the water seemed to go on for miles in a glassy grey expanse which never ended. Thetis impulsively reached for her arm, half expecting a twinge of pain from the battle she had fought...earlier? There was nothing there. She leaned over and glanced at her image in the murky grey mirror beneath her. No blood, no wounds, nothing. But she had been so sure, so certain that something had happened. The water prototype just didn’t know what. Thetis crouched to study her reflection. A ripple in the mirror, and her likeness faded in an instant. Thetis frowned. She was a Destrillian; designed to overcome any adversity. Why did she feel so nervous? The girl took a step back, her breath catching in her throat as she opened her mouth to shout for the others, someone, anyone who could tell her where she was. The prototype flinched at the sound of a booming voice.

“So it’s you.”

Thetis turned on her heels. It was the man she had never expected to see. The man who brought back memories of home and white corridors, the smell of moss and sterility, a photo of a woman with warm blonde hair and a smile that sparkled like the stars.
“Father?”
He was silent and stern in his starched shirt and tailored suit, his eyes cold and brown like coffee stains. She remembered what he had done, yes, but Thetis was drawn to him. To know that this man lived was to know that she existed. A few disjointed steps and Thetis was inches away from her father. He had betrayed her. But after years of not-knowing, to see him here and now melted her anger into nothingness. She was his daughter, after all. Trembling pale fingers reached to remind her that she had finally found the answers to everything.

The girl’s legs buckled beneath her as she was roughly pushed to the floor.

“Why did you?”
Her father loomed over her, and she could only stare up at him. This wasn’t right. There was a numb silence as Thetis attempted to process what had just happened. She had so much to say. Words floated around the air in bits and pieces as Thetis clumsily tried to form a coherent sentence. She stuttered, words dribbling out of her mouth as she tried to reason with her father.

“I don’t understa-“

“You left. And you know what? I didn’t mind. You didn’t want to follow me. And that’s fine. But how could you do that to your mother? You abandoned us. It’s all your fault.”

It’s all your fault it’s all your fault it’s all your fault it’s all your fault it’s all your fault
Those four little words hurt Thetis more than anything in the world. Tears pricked the back of her eyes as she edged herself away from the overshadowing figure of her father. One last look at her father’s glassy brown eyes, and Thetis felt herself being choked as she was dragged violently to her feet by the collar of her shirt, her feet trailing across the still sheet of water below her. Thetis flailed her arms behind her as she fought to tear herself free, pulling and scratching at the hands that held onto her clothes and hair in a vice-like grip. Before the girl could voice a single protest, she was roughly spun round and backhanded across the cheek. The force of the slap threw Thetis to the ground. Damp blades of grass brushed against her face and the mark on her face stung almost as badly as her damaged pride. Trees creaked in the wind, stripped of leaves and life, bare branches jutting out awkwardly like broken bones towards her as Thetis glanced indignantly into the face of her attacker. Her heart sunk as soon as she caught a glimpse of a pristine white lab coat and a chillingly critical glare. Thetis instinctively scrambled backwards, her chest heaving as Dr. Perkins walked closer and closer, yellow eyes widening as the Doctor squatted down in front of her.

“You continue to fail yourself, Number Six.”
Words fell from Thetis’ mouth in a gasp as she received another slap to the face. She watched Dr. Perkins stand up with a glare and a lump in her throat. It was exactly like back then at Viola; constant humiliation because she could never fight back, because she had always been so weak. Thetis sunk her nails into the grass as she watched her former Doctor wipe her hand on her sleeve in disgust.

“You continue to fail everyone you know, and most importantly, you continue to fail me.”
Incensed by the Doctor’s callous tone, the water prototype leapt to her feet. She had grown since Viola, and she knew it. Freedom had made her stronger.

“I-I’m NOT a failure!”
Thetis winced as she heard it; the stammer that betrayed every ounce of uncertainty in her words. She felt the rough bite of bark against her clothes as she backed into a tree, all of a sudden very aware of a number of soldiers approaching from all directions. The tell-tale click of rifles being raised and primed to fire made the girl’s hair stand on end. Her primal instincts kicked in as she watched Dr. Perkins pull a syringe from her pocket. A flash of steel, and the doctor was rolling a knife in her other hand, twisting the blade around her fingers without a thought to masking her intent. They weren’t taking her back to Viola. They were going to kill her.

“You’re not even human anymore. But you’re no better than one. You’re nothing. You think otherwise? Prove it.”
Adrenaline pulsed through her veins as the doctor’s taunts bubbled like poison under Thetis’ skin. If she was a shell of a Destrillian, she would make sure it was still enough to get revenge for ten years of torture at Viola. As water snaked up Thetis’ arms and body, she could have sworn she felt something of a twinge in the back of her skull.

“I have nothing to prove to you.”
Thetis’ voice resonated with the false confidence she had practised for years. As the sixth Destrillian prototype lunged for the troop of soldiers that stood before her, she held in her mind one clear thought.
She still had everything to prove.

Darkness.
It was almost odd, after all the flashing lights and explosive heat she’d been exposed to lately. It was almost kind, after the dirty smiles and intentions of the scum in the sewer. It was almost comforting, after the horrors of the nightclub, what with its thumping music assaulting the ears and its pungent smoke assaulting the nose and its strobes and bodies and faces and mirrors and everything everything everything assaulting everything else.
Almost almost almost.

But not quite odd, because the girl was used to darkness and had learned to embrace it a long time ago; not quite kind, because there was an edge of something ominous to it, like the front of a storm cloud.
And definitely not comforting, for the woman who had put Idris Savage in this predicament was shady at best.Woman? Or child? Or thing? She—it?—had never given any sort of indication as to what her true form looked like, but good lord had she looked like a monster anyway. Idris would have shuddered if there had been enough of her to shudder – as it were, she was… floating, almost, upon something invisible and cold. She was barely able to register what cold felt like, so dulled were her nerves. But she remembered what it should feel like, and so with the confused signals her body managed to grab hold of, Idris gathered that this was cold… whatever this was.

But suddenly, it wasn’t cold anymore. No, the temperature was rising all of a sudden and Idris had a sickening jolt of a premonition that whatever was making the heat rise was bad bad bad. She tried to open her eyes, not knowing whether they were already open or not, but it was hard and her body was still sending jumbled signals to her – hot cold hot cold. What was where?
The heat of licking flames was above her.
The cool, familiar feel of solid metal was beneath her.

The Destrillian opened her eyes and beheld something she never wanted to see again.
I recognize this place.
It took her by surprise that she did, for Idris had not seen her house since the day the fire had actually occurred. That day… today…? For some reason it felt like ‘that day’ was supposed to be ‘today,’ although a big part of her told her it wasn’t. It had happened years ago, she told herself, and yet suddenly the small woman wasn’t so sure. What was going on?

“Idris? Where are you?”
The voice, muffled and hoarse from smoke, called out in the hallways and Idris’ mind did something it had never done before. It shut out logic in favour of awful awful awful childish instinct. Here she was, eleven years old, and this was her home, and it was the middle of the night and she was tired and in bed—on the floor?—and there was a fire raging away and this was her home.

“Idris? Where are you?”
“I’m here,” she tried to call back, but instead she only breathed in a lungful of smoke. She coughed it out, feeling increasingly like there was something she should be doing, but she couldn’t figure out what. She just had to get out of there, and find her family. There was plenty of metal on the floor, that would make life easy to escape… wait, wasn’t her floor made of wood? And what did she even mean, metal made life easy?

“Idris? Where are you?”
And the third time’s the charm and Idris Savage called out like the scared little girl she thought she was, for her mother and father and big brother, but there was no reply. The smoke stung her eyes and her fright didn’t help and soon she was crying crying crying there on the floor. Some memory stirred in her brain that you were supposed to stay low while there was a fire, and Idris curled up on the floor.
The moment her cheek hit the cool, soothing metal ground, some strange and painful blast of clarity went through her like the floor had shocked her. The girl started, and then blinked. What was going on here? Why did this feel familiar?

Cccckkrrrr—

Oh. That’s why.

The ceiling caved, and a team of men resembling the military reconnaissance team of your nightmares came crashing down into her bedroom. That was what really kicked Idris back to where she was supposed to be. Here she was, crying on the floor while people were trying to kidnap her and… and… and…

“Idris!”

And take her to Viola.

That’s right. The small woman’s bright grey eyes flashed with sudden realization. This had happened before – this exact scene, playing out in front of her, was what had gone on almost a decade ago. She had been taken by Viola to begin treatment, honing her into a weapon, and her family…

Her family was dead. Not from the fire, ironically, but from circumstances unknown to the woman. They had died while she was at Viola. They had died, which meant that the cries of anguish from somewhere just down the hallway that she could reach if she just tried a little bit, didn’t mean anything. And now Idris knew what was going on here.
You’re trying to pull up my past against me. Well, it won’t do you any good.

“IDRIS!”
“No.” Idris stood up slowly, brushing herself off despite the flames licking around her. This had happened before, which meant it wasn’t happening now. The urge to run to save her family was there, alright, and it was strong, but Idris Savage’s logic was stronger. And so was her cold, sad, resigned determination.
You’re dead. You’re dead you’re dead you’re dead. I’ve already lost you – nice try, woman, she thought viciously, cursing the thing that had done this to her, but you’ll have to try a LOT harder to get me that easy.

The team in front of her, however, with their stun batons pointed straight at her, were going to be a bit more of a problem. Idris closed her eyes, took a deep breath of the air and the smoke and the flames, and ignored the urge to cough horridly. She needed to concentrate. The only safe exit was the door—as safe as you could get in a burning building, anyway. There would be no getting out easy.

A swift glance around the room one last time – maybe to scout for possible openings, maybe because she knew she’d never see her room with this much clarity ever again and she wanted to remember it, burning though it was. And then Idris Savage dropped to the floor, grabbed the metal floor beneath her, and pulled the top layer off, like pulling taffy. It hung liquid from her clenched fist, dripping thick silvery ropes down to the ground, until with a flex and flick of her hands the stuff wound around her forearms in a hard, fluid metal shield. Another flick of her fingers and the metal had whipped out to cover her fingertips in wicked claws, three inches in length and dense as lead.

“You want me so bad?” she said, talking to both the men and to whoever was controlling the freakish flashback. She took a stance incredibly low to the ground, coiled like a viper. She took a preparatory breath for what was about to happen. And with as much malice as she could muster (which was a truly frightening amount, mind,) she snarled through a grim, feral smile:

“COME AND GET ME.”

The mid afternoon sun was irritating Serviceman Reynolds, standing guard on the Acropolis of the city wasn’t the kind of action he had expected when he enlisted in the armed forces three months ago. The closest he had come to a brush with the enemy was escorting Jason Spencer back into his cell a few days back. The fact that one of his greatest heroes was about to be executed for crimes against humanity was not helping this irritable, lazy afternoon. He had heard there had been some fighting for the 22nd Brigade down in the Orange Zone today, what he wouldn’t have given to have joined in down there. Anything would have been more interesting than the excruciatingly boring job of watching the helicopter landing pad here on the Acropolis from the interior of the security checkpoint. It was ridiculous, the Acropolis hadn’t suffered a direct attack for over five hundred years. Why the hell was it so necessary to have such a tight security force around here?

“Acropolis control, Acropolis control this is prisoner transport VTOL, callsign: AT-RAP requesting permission to land to commence prisoner extraction. Over.” The speaker on the console piped up. Reynolds looked at it, dumbfounded momentarily, amazed that something had actually had happened on his shift.

“Anybody there?”

Reynolds blinked rapidly, snapping himself out of his daze. Of course a prisoner transport would be inbound, his superior had informed him that one would be coming in order to take Spencer from the jailhouse to the execution grounds.

“This is Acropolis control, you’re cleared to land AT-RAP” he spoke apprehensively into the microphone. Doing his best to ignore the irony that he was now responsible for sending the man who had inspired him to join the armed forces in the first place, to his death.

“Much obliged” the gravelly voice of the pilot said.

Reynolds signalled to his partner to take over monitoring the consoles of the small control room, as he pulled on his dark blue security jacket and cap. He’d always loved seeing the VTOL craft take off and land, it was rare that somebody on security detail would ever get to see one up close. Stepping out of the office and through the door at the end of the hall he emerged onto an open-air walkway that led to the landing pad.

The VTOL that was coming in to land did not look any of the standard military-issue ones that Reynolds had been briefed about. It was sleek and jet-black, composed entirely of curves and contours, looking far more like a hyper-advanced prototype or private-sector vehicle than anything supplied by the armed forces.

But still, he thought to himself. The sector of the military that handled executions was so far removed from standard operations that the fact their own vehicles looked so different hardly came as a surprise. He gave a wave to the pilot, though he couldn’t see him through the pitch black windows of the cockpit.

The VTOL touched down, the engines’ volume lowering themselves to a low hum as Reynolds approached the cockpit door, which swung open and upwards like the scissor door of a sports car. It took less than ten seconds for Private Reynolds to realize that the man exiting the chopper was most definitely not a member of the military. Unfortunately for him, it took the bullet much less than ten seconds to punch through the very centre of his forehead.

“What a noob” Salem muttered to himself as he holstered the high calibre revolver and closed the door to the VTOL.

He took a moment to consider that this plan would have probably gone alot smoother if he had used a silenced pistol, or even taken the time to dress in the uniform of one of the security officers of the Acropolis. Instead, Salem Locke had donned his own uniform, one so ragged and beaten up that he looked as though he had worn it through a hundred different battles. Military boots over a pair of torn, patched and ratty jeans, topped with a dirty white t-shirt emblazoned with the graphic image of a smiley face disfigured with a bloody bullet hole in the centre. Over the top of the shirt he wore a loose fitting kevlar bullet proof vest that had taken more than its fair share of damage in its time.

“Hey you! Freeze!” the panicked voice of Serviceman Reynolds’ partner was yelling frantically. The deafening crack of the revolver gunshot had sent the frightened man sprinting outside to investigate.

“Put your hands up!” he shouted back, Salem kept walking forward as though he hadn’t heard him or didn’t see the gun being pointed in his direction.

“Yeah, no. Sorry”

“I’ll shoot! I mean i-“ the explosion killed him before the scared guard could finish his sentence. Shearing his body apart so violently that it cracked the concrete walkway beneath their feet and collapsing the wall into the Acropolis air control station behind them. Leaving nothing but a smoking, bloody crater where the guard had been standing moments before.

Salem Locke, #022, the Destrillian of gas and explosions didn’t even change his expression from one of boredom. Returning to the VTOL, he fetched a long, slender package wrapped up in a brown paper from the passenger seat, which he promptly tucked underneath his arm. Finally smiling a wide grin as he heard the muted sounds of the alarms going off inside the Acropolis jail walls.

It was time to go to work.

===
“What do you mean it’s just one man?!”

“Like I said sir! It’s just one ma-AARRRGHH”

The communications line went dead with a jarring, agonizing scream that left Commander McCoy firmly rooted to the spot. Eyes transfixed on the walkie-talkie he was holding.

How could one man cause so much destruction? In the space of 5 minutes the courthouse and jail complex had been thrown into chaos. Timed explosives maybe? It had to be. Terrorists must have been setting up this plan for months. And today of all days? They had to have been after Spencer. It was the only explanation that made sense.

“All units, this is Commander McCoy. Defend Priority Prisoner One. He is the terrorists target!” he shouted into the communications device. “Do you read m-What the hell?” he shouted as the whole building shook. McCoy was a ten year veteran, listening to his senses is what had kept him alive throughout the war, and he was thankful they had saved his life again now. Running to the end of the corridor as the floor beneath him began to shatter and cave in, the structural integrity of the building was beginning to become too irreparably damaged by the scale of the explosions that were gutting its interior.

===

Salem hadn’t even been forced to break into a run yet, nor had there been any resistance strong enough to wipe the self satisfied smirk from his unshaven face as he calmly walked over the pile of rubble that had once been the central wall that separated the courthouse building from the jail area of the building. Holding out his left hand and feeling the gas constrict and tighten down the corridor to his side, the trio of guards who had turned on their heels to flee buckled over as all of the air at that end of the hall was sucked from their lungs, compressed from the air all around him into a space no bigger than a marble. Then he released the pressure psychically and felt the familiar wave of gratification as the tension released itself from his psychic ability.

The large explosion had blown out the walls, floor and ceiling from that end of the corridor, and Salem gave a wry look at the ceiling above his head. If he was crushed by some falling masonry then it would really put a downer on his big day out.

===

“Mr Spencer! We have orders to move you!” said the most boisterous of the trio of guards that were now standing in the cramped, ill-maintained corridor outside of his tiny cell. The convict remained in utter silence, not even looking up from the shadowy recesses of the room, apparently transfixed with continuing scratch against the wall of this cell.

“Mr Spencer! We need to move out now, this facility is under attack from terrorists!” he barked in what Spencer could have only assumed this guard believed was an intimidating, authoritative voice.

“I’m well aware.” He said quietly. The scratching on the wall continued. Temporarily becoming the only sound as the distant rumblings of explosions died away. Spencer caught the nervous city guards, so unused to actual combat were noticeably trembling from the corner of his eye. “You would be well advised to leave now if you value your lives.”

“Shut up!” another one of the guards shouted, pointing the gun at Spencer through the bars. Spencer refused to look up from whatever he was engraving on the wall of his cell.

“If you want to live then I strongly advise you to leave now.” Spencer spoke calmly and softly, ignoring the gun barrel mere feet from his temple.

“One more word out of you and I’ll put a bullet in your head, I swear to God!” the guard shouted hysterically as an explosion much closer in proximity literally shook the room and caused a copious amount of dust to fall from the cracks in the aged ceiling.

Spencer let out a slow sigh and turned to face his aggressors; three sweaty, panicky youths. Not a one of them could have been older than twenty-one. His eyes were hidden in shadow, but the gaze was uncompromising, completely ignoring the potential threat of a loaded gun barrel thrust directly at his face.

“You were warned.”

As Spencer whispered those words they instantly became lost amongst the thunderous explosion and the resulting screams of the guards as the corridor outside the cell has blasted with boiling hot wind and the scorching blaze of gas expanding so rapidly that it caught all three in an explosion shattered bones and tore their insides asunder.

Even though the reinforced concrete walls of his cell provided Spencer with some protection, the sound had been like a cannon ball firing close by and had left his ears ringing uncomfortably.

“Hey gorgeous” Salem spoke cheerfully as he strolled through the blackened crater that had once been one of the most secure doorways in the entire country. This penitentiary for only the most maximum security prisoners had been reduced to a charnel house in less than ten minutes by the gas Destrillian. This young man who had made a mockery of their uniforms and automatic weapons with his wild and unkempt green hair, torn clothing and arms covered from wrist to shoulder in a colourful mosaic of tattoos.

Spencer rolled his eyes, working with Salem was always treading a fine line between the special blend of lethal battlefield perfection and the intense desire to slap him for the continuous and inane running commentary of sarcasm and quips.

“You were cutting it pretty close there boss” Salem said unhelpfully as he noisily tread through the bloody meat and brittle bones that were littering the floor.

“Just open the door, thank you” Spencer said patiently, casting a final look at the wall he had been carving on since he had first called his accomplice rather than watch as Salem created a mini explosion inside the cell door’s control panel.

“What were you doing in there?” his partner asked inquisitively, looking at the white scarring marks that Spencer had been scratching into the wall of his cell. Five names had been crudely cut into the concrete surface.

“Just something to keep myself occupied.” Spencer said coldly.

“These five going to be the targets then?”

“Yes.” He answered simply, shrugging when he saw the incredulous look that Salem was giving him. “I’ve had a good long time to think about this Mr. Locke, I’ve made my decisions as to which of my errant creations matter. Shall we go?” Spencer made little attempt to hide his frustration at the fact they were lingering around his cell. Freedom was only minutes away, and every minute they spent talking here was another minute that the Artolian military would realize that their government’s highest priority prisoner was making an escape and to mobilize their military accordingly. Time was short.

“Did you take the VTOL here?”

“No. I rode in on a magnificent white stallion. I recognise one of those names, why do you need him?” Salem asked impatiently as Spencer wearily got to his feet, with an equally impatient look in his eyes. The glare was as unreadable as it was severe, causing the gas Destrillian to check his insubordinate tone.

“I’ll tell you when you need to know.” He said as calmly, but with enough force that the usually roguish Destrillian looked uneasily to avoid the uncomfortable gaze. “Now, let’s get out of here. Did you bring what I asked for?”

By way of a response Salem handed over the long, thin brown parcel he had been supporting in the crook of his arm. “I sure did” he responded “Figured mine wasn’t the only pretty face you needed to see”

Spencer smiled as he unwrapped the package revealing a long antique rifle and an equally long two-handed sword, the leather bound grips on both were well worn and the rifle’s barrel and sword’s scabbard looked weathered enough to know that they had both seen use outside of regular practice sessions. These were the traditional weapons of Artolian military officers, formerly they had stood out amongst the rank and file of the military by wearing a sword. This practice had long since been abandoned after he had left the military, but in close quarters combat and with a skilled sword arm, there was no more deadly weapon. His hands were quick to tie the scabbard and belt around his waist, well experienced from having done the same hundreds of times before. It was a larger sword than most officers dared to wield, many favouring their swords as being nothing more than ornamental trinkets as a mark of their status. Spencer had rejected that outright and chosen to wield a heavier blade, one that wouldn’t break or bend if he was forced to defend himself at close range.

“We have one more job to do before we can leave”

“We do?”

“Yes.” Spencer answered firmly, taking up his old rifle and slinging it over his shoulder. “We’re going to go kill the supreme court.”

===

“Can you confirm that Spencer is free?” Chief Justice Walther shouted over the chaotic hubbub of noise that was swelling to an almost unbearable pitch in the courtyard outside of the Central Courthouse building. The entire supreme court and many of the legal representatives involved in today’s trial had been hurriedly evacuated from the key government buildings encircling the courtyard. However, given that nobody really knew how many attackers there were or on what scale the devastation really was, the assembled mass of thirty to forty security guards had no real idea where to evacuate the civilians too. There had been reports of explosions all over the Acropolis, concentrated on the jail building adjacent to the courthouse.

“Not at this moment Chief Justice!” one of the five security guards that he had been assigned solely to protect him responded.

“Well can’t you start getting these people out of here!” Walther shouted back, grabbing hold of the guard. “We’re just begging to be ambushed by terrorists out here!”

“Not terrorists!”

One voice rang out clear above the crowd, powerful and captivating all at the same time. It was as hard as iron and loud enough to shout across the length of a battlefield. The noise seemed to die down before it, simultaneously curious and terrified. Every eye turned in its direction, towards the courthouse doorway where two men now stood.

“This was not done to you by terrorists!” Spencer shouted again. Mindful not to make a move down the steps of the courthouse, from speaking up at this height he could hold them captivated much like an actor or orator would do to their audience.

“This was done to you pathetic people by my Destrillians!” he gestured to the roguish figure of Salem to his left who gave a cheery wave to the crowd of petrified onlookers. “And by me!” it was now that the crowd noticed the drawn and bloody sword in Spencer’s hand. The panic and screaming began to set in now and a few of the guards began to fire their guns wildly at them. None of the bullets came close, but their firing encouraged more and more gunfire, causing Salem and Spencer to calmly move behind the pillars at the front of the courthouse building for cover.

“Did you really need to be so melodramatic?" the Destrillian asked with a wide smile on his face as the panicked shouting reached fever pitch as it struggled to contend with the cacophony of gunfire.

Spencer shrugged his shoulders indifferently and put the rifle down off his shoulders. “The survivors of what happens here today will now definitely know who to blame”

“And that’s a good thing I take it?”

“Even these clowns are competent enough to drive them out into the open” Spencer explained, then saw the sideways look that Salem was giving him from behind the other pillar “At the very least they might be able to help us find our friends.”

“And you aren’t worried at all that the humans won’t end up killing one of ‘our friends’, or one of the ones on your list?” the Destrillian of Gas asked.

“No I’m not, Mr. Locke” Spencer said with such finality as if to suggest that the very notion was something repulsive and impossible. He carefully took the rifle from his shoulder and placed it against the pillar to his back. “Now listen closely, in ten seconds time I’m going to need you to destroy the very centre of that courtyard. Don’t concentrate the blast and make it 90% strength. I should have enough time to get clear.”

“Get clear? You’re going out there?”

“I’m going to be sending a message.” Spencer corrected him. “Leave one survivor”

Spencer leapt out from behind the pillar and instantly tucked into a dive to duck the swathe of bullets that cut through the air above him. Hitting the hard stone floor at the foot of the steps and instantly tucking into a roll to minimise the pain on impact.

Ten.

He leapt forward, the sword swinging out to the right to sever somebody’s head and then back around, using his own momentum to cleave a female lawyer he recognised from the trial in half, all in one fluid motion.

Nine.

The sword swung out again and again, and two more maimed security guards fell to the floor. Spencer caught a muzzle flash out of the corner of his eye, some idiot was trying to shoot at him whilst he was in the middle of a packed crowd. He rolled his shoulder instinctively and felt the bullet streak by him, plucking at the fabric of his bright orange prison uniform. Faster than the guard could squeeze the trigger a second time, the former President of Viola had taken one step forward and extended the heavy sword with one arm outstretched to pierce the security guard’s throat...

Eight.

...and tearing it out again in one large stroke, catching another advancing security guard in the face, dropping him to the floor. He caught a glance of the familiar long black robes worn by the supreme court amongst the teeming mass of people and charged forwards.

Seven.

A series of brutal chops with the sword left the security guards separating him from his targets had left them maimed and screaming on the floor.

Six.

The first one fell before he could even cry out, thick red blood spilling out onto his black robes. One brave security guard tried getting in between Spencer and the next Justice but he was knocked to the floor by one of Spencer’s fists crashing into his face, rewarding him with the sickening wet crunch of his nose shattering.

Five.

Two more Justices fell in less than a second as they tried to escape, but were hindered by the massive throng of fleeing civilians. That just left chief justice Walther. Not much time left.

Four.

Another bullet flew by him, but Spencer paid no attention. His eyes transfixed on the man that had spent the better part of two years trying to damn him into a death sentence.

Three.

Most kills were emotionless, an act of necessity, a means to an end. Spencer rarely felt guilt, or sorrow, or pleasure in taking the life of another. Out of the dozen or so men and women he had slain this afternoon, taking Chief Justice Walther’s life was the only one that managed to penetrate the cold, mechanical act of killing another human. The act of pushing the blade roughly in between his ribs and feeling the resistance on it as it tore through the stomach and punctured the heart left him with the lingering satisfaction that only came with the total destruction of an enemy.

Two.

The air around him was starting to get tighter, his heightened senses, fuelled on pure adrenalin alerted his brain that his lungs were having to work harder to draw oxygen from the air around him. Pumping his fists and breaking into a sprint he ran back towards the steps, following the bloody path he had carved.

One.

It had all happened so quickly, but to an old soldier, fighting like that seemed to take so much longer. Time seemed to slow down, opponents would move much more sluggishly than they would normally and every move you made would be much faster and more precise than you would have been in any normal situation.

The explosion would have killed most of the surviving masses instantly. An enormous fireball that had burst forward from the area of the courtyard where the crowd had been thickest, wiping all traces of their existence out in a single instant. The explosion was so powerful that the marble floor and iconic statue shattered and threw debris and bodies into the sky. Those who had survived the initial blast were killed by the hundreds shards of marble that had been thrown up from the explosion.

Nearly fifty people had been killed in less than ten seconds. Neither Spencer nor Salem even batted an eyelid.

The courtyard had been reduced to a singular black smoking crater, littered him the badly burned and dismembered bodies and the dead and the dying. There weren’t even any of the characteristic moans or screams that Spencer remembered from his days in the army after watching his men shelled by artillery fire. There was just silence.

“Precious few would have survived” Spencer remarked quietly as he shouldered his carefully discarded rifle.

“Yeah, wasn’t that the point?” Salem remarked. His voice was strained and out of breath, finally feeling the effects of such a sustained and continuous use of his power.

“Indeed” Spencer said to himself as he wiped the fresh blood from his sword on the orange leg of his pants. “Now we’re leaving. Did you land the VTOL close by?”

“I used the east landing pad yeah, not far.”

“Good. I’d say we have about ten minutes to get off the Acropolis before the entire Artolian military shows up.”

The walking seemed to go on forever...and ever....and ever. Stolz was getting both tired and bored - there simply wasn't anything of interest to look at, save for the unusual company that was traveling with Stolz, thus they decided to get a good look at these people.

They were already familiar with Popsicle Girl, with her unusually delicious looking hair. She had made a very poor introduction, as usually it was preferred to greet a person with 'hello' and not just stare at them, but Stolz suspected this one was just in dire need of a hug.

Next there was Captain Fabulous and his magical super amour of wonders. Stolz has read news reports about some costumed vigilante going about the city and fighting crime, however they assumed it was just a publicity stunt by IBC, plugging another bad show with viewers that can be counted on one hand.

Then there was Mr. Creepy eyes, he certainly had creepy eyes. Stolz had seen worse things before but those were certainly high on the list. And then, walking near him was the girl who had accepted Stolz's offer of assistance. They didn't know her name but she seemed nice, mostly because she hadn't threatened or made any kind of hostile gesture like most of the others had. Also there was the Glasses girl and the Red head....the Red head. Something didn't seem right to Stolz about that one, it was a peculiar feeling, almost like when THEY were around, but it was impossible for her to have anything to do with THEM..... oh and finally there was the weird creature that was leading them back to it's lair to feast upon them, that thing was cool.

Once again Stolz's trail of thoughts had made them oblivious to their surroundings, and so without realizing it the party had arrived at some place...with a door. Doors usually lead somewhere so Stolz could only deduce from watching a lot of television and seeing two intimidating looking bouncers that this must be a secret nightclub full of vampires. However the individuals that had just been ejected from the establishment did not look like Vampires, but rather the kind of trash you find shooting up in some dark corner of the Orange Zone - do not want.

The men then seemed to be looking the direction of the female members of the group, and one of them then said “Well, looks like we got us some pretty-kitties here to play with, don’t we, Sammy?”

Kitties? I love kitties! But I see no kitty cats around here, and these gentlemen don't exactly look like cat people Stolz thought to them self, looking around for said felines. They then missed some more dialogue before something came to Stolz's attention - blood, all over the place. During the moment of Stolz not paying attention, the two men had been killed horrible by the large creature thing, therefore they would not be able to play with the kitties they had spotted earlier.

“Don’t worry, we’ll clean up the mess. Mistress is waiting, and from what I heard it’s taking you a little longer than she liked.” A bouncer said to the group. Stolz was very confused now however since the others began heading inside then that was obviously where to go.

Inside the club was very....peculiar, even for someone like Stolz. Unusual things were all around the place - The walls seemed at one point to be running with blood, then changing colour, and even images of people flowing into one another in a rhythmic fashion. If it weren't also for the bizarre smells then Stolz would've sworn they were back at home watching IBC4's Friday night after hours programming. However suddenly Stolz had an unusual feeling, a strong sense of anxiety....almost felt like something was coming, but they couldn't tell if this sense was real of an effect of god knows what is going around in the air currently. Their eyes narrowed under the goggles for a moment and scanned the surroundings.

What is this? My senses are all thrown off, I can't tell what's going on, weather there are friends or enemies nearby....and this makes me too vulnerable. I need to find out who or what is behind this place...

Stolz's questions would soon be answered as a bouncer ahead of them opened a strange door and said “Mistress is waiting.” before leaving. Stolz wasn't keen on entering this mysterious room however the others seemed to be so there was no choice. Inside was completely black, but not for long, suddenly a bright light filled the room, although Stolz wasn't that bothered thanks to still having the goggles covering their eyes. There also seemed to be snakes on the floor, causing a few of the others to recoil at the creatures on the ground, however Stolz didn't even pay attention to them, nor the walls covered in naked, dismembered people. Stolz was just staring right at the teenage girl seated at the end of the room with the large cat-like creature at her feet. The over-the-top display and freakishly extravagant thrown made it pretty clear that this being was the one behind everything in this establishment.

“Why are you here?” Spoke this new girls voice. “They tell me you came from out of the Orange Zone.”

Stolz then immediately, in a serious and completely different tone to their regular voice, called out "You tell us" However Stolz got the answer they were expecting.

“My lair, my rules. You know when you play in someone else’s house, you play their games.” And shortly after those words the girl suddenly shifted into an adult woman. Stolz however did not flinch, just remained still with both eyes fixed on this....person.

“You’re not like the others…” The 'woman' spoke to her gathered audience once again, to which she was replied to by a voice Stolz didn't pay attention to.

“We can’t really say the same thing about you.”

And with a shake of her head and some eye colour trick, the woman added. “You didn’t come here by choice, you’re looking for something… something more human – human – than you…”

That rules you out then Stolz thought, it couldn't be more clear that this person if you could even call them that was not human. Then a few torsos landed on the floor in front of the group, and once again Stolz paid no mind to them - it was essential to keep both eyes on this figure in the chair as only the gods know what she'll do next.

“I can help you with what you need… a sanctuary…” She said before spasming and screwing around with her image once more. What a hilarious notion, there was no play in this city, above or below, that could be considered such a place.

“Somewhere safe, a sanctuaryAAAAAHHHHH-” The woman then looked like she was suffering from epilepsy, which Stolz knew about all too well from when IBC was airing those old foreign action cartoons with all the flashing lights constantly filling the screen. No now was not the time for a tangent, the creepy woman was spazzing out on the floor, but after a moment stopped...then moved again....then turned to ash....now there's a child with a magical dress that has auto-adjust built into it. After shifting between form a little more, this odd woman now stood right in front of the group and spoke to them once again.

“Long story short, I don’t know who you are. But in a moment, I will find out. And maybe some of you will too.” Which followed with a red mist or gas-like substance started to come from the ceiling and envelop Stolz's companions. The woman spoke again but Stolz paid no attention, as it was clear this person was not friendly. It seemed then that this gas was subduing the others, and they all fell onto the group and now Stolz found them self left standing with, of all people, Captain Fabulous.

This is bad, but if this changeling want's trouble, I'll give her trouble And Stolz placed one of their hands on the goggles, ready to remove them. But suddenly they felt a hand grab them but the back of the neck, followed by the prick of a syringe.

Or maybe not........man this person is a terrible host.....I think they....need to...lay off the...in..ject..ionssss..... And then Stolz slipped out of consciousness.


______________________________________________________________


WESTERN SUBURBS, OSEA


The car pulled up at a tall apartment complex, and Jelanda switched off the engine. She then turned to Major Matsuya and said. "Well here we are Ma'am, I'll leave you here then."

Kijo was about to step out of the car, but noticed Jelanda seemed rather tired herself, and after thinking for a moment, asked. "Where do you live Lieutenant?" a surprising question to the young girl, who then replied "Eastern side of central Ma'am."

The next words were very hard for Kijo to voice, however the more she looked at Jelanda, the more she could see the girl was exhausted, probably been without sleep as long as herself, and remembering what Farant had told her many times, she said.

"It is almost 2 in the morning and East Central is nearly half an hour away from here, I could not just let you just head off in the condition you are in."

These sudden words had Jelanda even more puzzled, the Major was the type who would usually just be all 'Understood, goodbye.' But now it seemed like she was forcing herself to be friendly. All Jelanda could muster up in response was "Ma'am?"

"You may stay here if you like, I have a spare room. It would be no trouble at all." The words seemed stale and forced, however it was clear she was trying to make an effort, and so Jelanda gave a weak smile and replied. "Thank you, Ma'am".

"We're not on duty anymore, so Kijo will suffice Lieutenant." She quickly added, to which Jelanda just as quickly said. "Please, call me Jelanda, it is my name after all."

Kijo gave her a nod then they both stepped out of the car and walked towards the main entrance to the apartments. Jelanda then let out a small laugh and said. "You know, this was the last thing I expected from you, Kijo." Which was met with a quick glance from the other woman followed by the words. "Indeed. However I must ask you do not tell Marshall of this, he will start to think I have gone soft and then I shall never hear the end of it." Jelanda giggled at the words, which made Kijo show a small smile. She hadn't seen such joyful innocence for many, many years, and although she wouldn't outright say so, it was nice to reminded once again.

__________________________________________________________________________


ORANGE ZONE UNDERGROUND, OSEA


That was no fun at all, now I really wish there were Vampires.

Vampires would still have been bad, wouldn't they have tried to drink your blood?

Who? What? Is there someone else here?

I would certainly hope so, otherwise it means you're talking to yourself.

That wouldn't be the first time I assure you, sometimes I've engaged in conversations with inanimate objects.

How riveting those must have been.

Never mind that! Who are you Missy? The voice communicating with Stolz was distinctly female despite a weird echo effect.

"I'm....I'm....uh....I'm not sure."

Well pleased to meetcha Not Sure, I'm Stolz!

Hey that's not what I meant! I mean I have no idea who I am!

Ohhhhh right right, sorry. I assumed you just had some weird parents that decided to pull a bad joke when you were born which would eventually cause you to change your name to 'Francesca Von Heidelberg', invest millions in a floating mansion held up by zeppelins, then die a horrible death when someone lit a match which caused the gases in the zeppelins to ignite and blow you all to kingdom come.

You really assumed THAT?

Yup

I see, well back onto topic, I can't tell you my name or anything about me as I simply don't know.

But you have to have a name! It's important to like, be found when you're shopping and your car suddenly gets towed.

Uh-huh, so then what should I be called?

Hrmm....how about Virtue?'

Virtue?

Yeah, it's also the name of a robot on a TV show I watch a lot, I think it would be good for you also!

You certainly have a peculiar way of coming up with names, but okay. From now on you can call me Virtue!

Hooray! Now we just need you to give birth to a child and name it Nadleeh!

...should I even ask?

Probably not.

So then, Stolz, what happens now?

Well....methinks we should focus on why I am in this unknown space deedly talking to you....which was...ummm...OH THAT'S RIGHT! Creepy shape-shifter gassed people and Injected me with something!

WHAT?! That's really bad! What if she intends to cause you harm?

Or bang my holes for that matter...

Again, should I ask?

Maybe?....on reflection I'm pretty sure at some point I heard someone outside the place I was in say something like that tho I'm not entirely sure what it means.

Right, well it seems you could be in potential danger, so please wake up!

Okay! ...just how do I do that?

Let's see... how about you try counting sheep? If it puts you to sleep while you're awake, maybe it will have the opposite effect while you're out?

Hrmm, I like you're thinking. Okay then, One sheep....Two Sheep...Three Sheep....


Meanwhile, back in reality....


“Oh, and hey – aren’t you gonna hook that kid up to some of that wacko-jacko shit?” Nova flicked his head in Stolz’s direction, who lay unconscious on a mattress in the corner of the room.

“We have other plans.”

Nova rolled his eyes. “Yeah, y’all need to do your thang with him, move yo master plan and all into fruition or someshit. I get it.” He cricked his neck as he turned to face the shadows at the back of the room, raising his eyebrows in curiosity. “But just how important is that kid to youse guys anyway?”

"Oh, let's just say they're VERY important to us..." Said Inveja and she emerged from the shadows, still with her Visor concealing her eyes. The second figure, Vollerei, shortly followed, revealing his appearance. He had an unusual shade of green hair, and wore a sort of military outfit - button up top and matching pants, a harness-like belt with many pouches around his waist, and also sported black combat boots and short black gloves. Additionally he had a large gun of unknown function slung over his back and a combat knife strapped to his right leg.

"This is just too great! All of them, right here in a convenient location. And the best part is we can see into their nightmares! Ah could this day get any better?" He asked to Inveja next to him.

"Actually yes it can - Vana isn't here." She said with a grin.

"Touche. So then shall we go wake our little friend over there?" Gesturing towards Stolz.

"Why yes, I think it's time that we had a little talk." And she began to walk towards the small figure lying on the mattress.

The pair loomed over the little one and just stared for a moment, waiting. The next part they didn't expect. Stolz suddenly jolted out of the forced slumber and shouted "10 SHEEP!" However the spontaneous action didn't phase them the slightest, and Inveja keeled down to look Stolz directly in the eyes.

"Hello Stolz, we've missed you." She said with a grin.

"You? ....you. What do you want?" Stolz replied, once again in their different, serious tone.

"Oh come now, is that any way to treat your old friends?", Vollerei chuckled as Inveja spoke those words.

"You are not my friends." Stolz bluntly replied. That made the pair exchange glances, then look back at Stolz with their grinning faces.

"Woa now, temper temper short fry. Better be careful what you say, otherwise we might just get mad...and you know what happens if we do." Vollerei added, then raised both his hands in claw like gestures.

"Yes....I do. Then get to the point, what do you want?" Stolz said in a blunt and agitated manner.

Inveja placed her hand on the side of Stolz's face and turned their head to face hers "Well you see, we've been dying to meet your new friends, I hear.....great things about them and just had to see for myself." She said, then gently slid her hand off Stolz's cheek. The pair then turned to face the cluster of pods that contained the unconscious Destrillians. Inveja stood up and walked towards the pods, and, without any regard to Jettison and Nova's presence, spoke out loud.

"You see my dear Stolz, these....things, these worthless creatures, are nothing more than old weaponry that have been rusting away in the dark corners of this city. And even weaponry is too kind of a word to use, for they weren't even completed, just unfinished science projects of a fallen company that the world no longer cares about."

Stolz then slowly stood up and began walking towards the pods also.

"Well you know what? I have no idea what you're saying."

"Ha! No you wouldn't, you don't know anything, not about us, not about them..." Inveja said as she pointed at the unconscious Destrillains. "...not about anything. You live out your life wandering the city with a carefree smile on your face, completely oblivious to everything going on around you. I think you should stop this charade and just accept your fate, after all, it won't hurt a bit." She finished by tilting her head forward and grinning heavily at Stolz.

"Veya you talk too much." Vollerei interrupted. "It's about time we got a good look at these 'Destrillains'...." He then leaned over to the nearest pod and observed the person inside, to which he let out a whistle.

"Hoo boy! Look at the rack on that one, never though something like that could come out of a Viola facility." He ogled at the unconscious form of a Red Haired girl with freckles. Inveja stepped over to stand next to him and placed her hand up to the Visor.

"Emma Johnson, Destrillian Prototype number eight. You gonna offer to buy her a drink Voller?" She snarked at him.

"Heh, if only, but you know the boss's orders..."

Inveja nodded then began to walk by the other pods. "Thetis Alcesteos, Kerr Nordstrom, Terra Michaels....hmmm interesting, this next one's from facility #2, Kramskov Niet. It's amazing the sort of trash that shows up in Osea....hold on now we're talking." Inveja stopped right in front of the last pod. She then smirked and looked over to Vollerei.

"Look what I just found Voller, it's number nine." The words made Vollerei smirk and quickly walk over to see it for himself.

"Idris Savage, one of the most dangerous beings that escaped Viola. This IS a great day!" Vollerei called out in joy. Inveja then leaned forward and added "Oh that it is...." and began to remove her gloved. Stolz's eyes widened greatly at the action from Inveja and yelled out.

"Hey! What are you doing!?" Which caused the dark-cherry haired woman to slowly turn her head towards Stolz and reply "What does it look like? This is just too tempting to let pass after all." And with that a black, liquid looking substance began to form around her right hand which emitted a hissing sort of sound. Inveja then began to move her hand closer and closer towards Idris' pod, during which there was some form of objection from Jettison however Inveja just discarded it by raising her other hand in the woman's direction as to say 'you wanna be next?'. However, then as her hand was just about to make contact, a smaller hand grabbed her arm.

Stolz held onto Inveja's arm tight and would not let go, the look on the woman was that of both puzzlement and extreme anger.

"And what do you think you're doing, runt?" She asked in an unamused tone.

Stolz glared at her and boldly stated "I won't let you do it. Not while I'm here." This sudden outburst of defiance from Stolz made Inveja's eyes widen under her visor for a moment, then she smiled in an eerie manner and the dark substance around her hand vanished.

"Fine have it your way...." She said, then leaned over Stolz's left ear and whispered. "...but remember.....you won't always be around. I'm not exactly sure what you're game is, but what you try to protect will inevitably be lost, and you will know despair."

Their little heart-to-heart was then suddenly interrupted by large crashing sounds and the smell of smoke coming from somewhere in the club. Inveja quickly faced the direction and placed her hand on her Visor.

"Fire detected within the building....and I'm picking up the energy signature of another one....no two, nearby." The pair then turned to Jettison and Vollerei scoffed. "Well now....looks like you missed a couple, but don't worry....we'll have this mess cleaned up in no time." followed by a thumbs up, and with that, the pair glared at Stolz then darted out the door towards the location of their new prey.

Stolz turned back to the pod and looked in at the girl that was apparently named 'Idris' for a moment, who seemed so peaceful in her artificial slumber. Stolz gradually turned their head to face the creepy woman and, nearly in tears, said in their regular tone "They....him and her....they are bad people..... and will just come right back when they're done... probably with even worse intentions.... so please.... just let them out..." They then placed their head onto the pod and hit it with their fist once.

"...just let them out."


Meanwhile, in the other part of the Club


Inveja and Vollerei entered to main section of the club only to find part of it on fire. The patrons were scurrying towards the exits in a panic so it was difficult to spot the targets, however the next thing they heard made it very clear there was at least one very close.

“ALL OF YOU WILL SUFFER! YOU’RE ALL TO BLAME! EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU GOD! DAMN!! HUMANS!!!”

The shouting came from an insane looking girl with fiery coloured hair, the perfect camouflage when half the room was on fire. Then it seemed the second target appeared, a male, who grabbed the girl's arm in what looked like a gesture for them to leave. Vollerei then said to his comrade "And what are the names of our two lucky contestants tonight Veya?" To which she once again raised her hand to the Visor and replied

"Fiona Myrwind and Lokka Kayne, one is the fire bitch from facility one and the second is yet another fine example of the crap they were spewing out of facility two....barriers or some shit like that."

Vollerei unslung his weapon then smiled. "Alright we know who we've got then. I'm gonna take Mr. Barrier and you can have the flaming fucker next to him." Inveja also smiled and withdrew her Katana from it's sheath.

"Sounds good to me, however first I think the polite thing to do is say hi." And then they took a few steps forward and she called out:

"Good evening Blazing Fury and Pale Shell! You've certainly made a mess here, and we thought we'd show a kind gesture to the owner of this establishment and clean it up for them...."

After which Vollerei raised him gun up to point at the pair of Destrillians and added "So what coat of polish would you two like.... regular or heavy duty?" followed by a sinister smirk.

Despite certain orders they were simply itching to kill Destrillians tonight and right now that's exactly what they intended to do.

Kerr didn’t move from the comfortable chair, furious eyes locked with Abaddon’s on the other side of the long room. Unnatural shadows clinging to his form like dark robes. He dared to mention Ariel to him? He was playing another game with him, trying to get inside his head. Provoke him, make him angry, encourage him into an attack. Something was not right, the weariness from before had vanished, the pounding in his head was gone and he was thinking clearly for the first time in what felt like months. It was as though a veil had been lifted from his vision and his judgements were no longer impeded by his bodies fatigue or his own personal anger and frustration.

“Viola is dead. My allegiances are my own. Where am I?”

The answer clearly was not the one Malcolm had been expecting, the smirk was gone from his cruel features.

“Did you not hear me Number Eleven?”

“Yes, I heard you, and I don't care.” Kerr stood up from his seat, feeling the familiar flood of superiority and power rushing through his body. “I owe you no answers. I owe Viola no answers. No favours. No service.”Viola had been the group that had attempted to kill him afterall. After so many years of sacrifice on his part. He had sacrificed so much humanity to their cause only to have them put the knife in his back. If there was something Kerr would never do again, it would be put his faith in the orders and allignment of a group of treacherous humans. The whirring sound of chain guns was growing louder and more prominent, but the sound was not going unnoticed by the eleventh Destrillian, however his coal black eyes were not moving from their target at the far end of the room.

“You have no idea how much you owe Viola, Number Eleven.” Abaddon sneered, his voice no longer talking in sickly soothing that he had so often talked to Kerr in when he needed him to do Viola’s bidding.

“I know exactly what I owe Viola” Kerr easily retorted, a biting edge to his familiar monotone. It felt like a beast was uncoiling inside him. Mentioning Ariel was the worst thing that this man could have done. All of his anger, all of his hate and self loathing, focused on to one man, one singular point.

“I’m giving you one last chance Kerr.” Abaddon said quietly, gesturing on either side of him towards the four battle drones that were steadily advancing all around him. The closer they were moving to him meant their spotlights were much more concentrated on him and less on Abaddon, creating the eerie effect as though he was being swallowed up by a darkness so vivid that it was beginning to consume the whole room around him. It barely even seemed to be a room anymore, the darkness seemed infinite. The only things in the whole of existence seemed to be the Destrillian, the man and the four robots.

“You told me I know what needs to be done?” Kerr said quietly, in a considered tone.

The advance of the security drones stopped.

“Yes I did, Kerr. You know what the right thing to do is, the only thing that can make your guilt vanish.”

It was that last sentence that shattered everything. In that moment, it seemed as though one hundred things seemed to happen at once.

Using the gravitational pull from the wall of the room behind Abaddon, Kerr was ripped violently from his seat and hurtled over the board room table like a dark comet. The drones had begun firing from their machine guns, shredding the seat where he had been sitting seconds before. But a seconds was it all it took for Kerr to get ahead of their gunfire. Relishing the feeling of his full power returned to him, unchained and unhindered by any other Destrillian or human intervention.

The look of absolute shock on Abaddon’s face would be burned permanently into Kerr’s memory for months to come, even though he only got the briefest glimpse of it before he sank both of his knees into his chest. He felt two ribs crack on impact. But that was nothing compared to the sickening crunch that Malcolm’s body made when it came between Kerr and the wall. His eyes bulged unnaturally, and blood bubbled up from his mouth as his crushed ribs were pushed deeper into his lungs.

Without pausing for a second, Kerr grabbed the doctor’s broken, gasping form by the shoulders and spun him around to come between himself and the advancing drones. The whirring of the machine guns was beginning to start again as their rotating barrels began to pick up speed.

“Now, I know that this isn’t real. But that doesn’t mean that wasn’t satisfying. My guilt doesn't need any more of your help” Kerr hissed into the ear of the dying man. He knew it wasn’t real; the initial confusion had cleared away disappointingly quickly. This couldn't have been real, the headaches and the strain in his muscles that he had remembered so vividly had disappeared completely. And the Viola board room, a room that couldn't possibly have still existed, was hardly the last location he remembered, all he remembered of that place was the aroma of alcohol and smoke, and a great yawning blackness that had enveloped him and his .... companions.

Nobody but his own subconscious would have been trying to promise him so much purpose, promising a freedom from whatever guilt he might have been feeling. Nobody but his own subconscious would have failed to make the argument unconvincing. Trying to offer him the purpose and status of working for a company that had already betrayed him, left him for dead, used him as an instrument for murder.

“Goodbye, doctor.” He mumbled, as the gunfire started again and Kerr engaged him power immediately, his instincts honed to the impossibly sharp degree that only the Destrillians were aware of. As soon as he heard the first round begin to leave the first barrel of the machine gun, Kerr let go of Abaddon and pulled himself up to the ceiling, tucking into a forward roll and landing on all fours on the ceiling. Sparing a moment to watch with a grim look on his face as the body of Malcolm Abaddon was literally shredded, pulled to pieces by the heavy, high calibre rounds that sprayed the wall behind him with an almost unnatural torrent of blood and gore.

The victory was short lived however, as the drones machine guns were soon on him again, following him upwards, tearing streaks of bullet holes and destroyed concrete from the reinforced walls as their targeting system tried to keep up with his fast, unnatural movements.

He knew it wasn’t real. The memories were coming back to him now, slowly and incompletely. But he remembered the hallucinations, vivid and horrifying, he remembered meeting the other Destrillians, and his fight with Thetis. He felt a pang of rage in his chest, however unlike before the rage was quelled, soothed by the familiar and welcome feeling of the power bristling through his limbs and stirring in his chest.

This would be over quickly.

The suits darted off in different directions, leaving Kram to charge at the one remaining there, with his arms folded. At the last second, he sidestepped.


“Barrier charge.”


The black shockwave pulsed out in an explosion which shook the air in the room in a deafening bang, sending everything in a five foot radius around him flying, although the damaging pulse was cancelled by the attack on him. “You’re going to have to do better than this, boy! You’re better than this. Let go of your pathetic failures, put yourself into the machine!” The low rhythmic rumble from the suit could have been mistaken for laughter, a pitying growl for the mere child in front of him.


Tao whimpered as the ground shook and a fresh round of klaxons rang out amongst the chaos. “Krammy, you have to stop them! You… you have to believe! Please! You can’t play with their rules, you’ll only lose! You have to believe in -”

The snap-clack of a rifle rang throughout the facility as a nearby stoppered flask of weak Dark Matter imploded from the impact nearby, cutting her short. One of the armored men had perched himself on a bulkhead, firing shots at Kram, while the others were silently at the ready, waiting to pounce at any given moment like gladiatorial caged beasts, waiting to be unleashed for entertainment by their master, who slouched into a fighting stance as darkness bled into the ground around him.


"Come, now. Stop trying to hit us, and hit us.”

***


Dr. Perkins instantly slipped backwards behind the wall of soldiers flanking her as Thetis lunged for the nearest one. A burst from the soldier's rifle narrowly missed her, and a heavy swing with the butt of the rifle missed its mark as well. The others scattered in formation as she killed him, uncaring of the newly-made meat shield as they opened fire and threw no less than 4 grenades in her direction, hardly pausing to let them detonate into a crest of dirt, shrapnel and smoke.


There was no going back. The very notion of failure was anathema. Every soldier was trained to take down at the very least, a lone Destrillian. The touch of irony, to find her in the place she was taken from so long ago, albeit now a dead wasteland, served to remind them that this was their territory. The Raging Charybdis, Thetis, was not going anywhere. Every team knew it to the core.


Perkins’ voice rang out from everywhere, as if by speakers, reverberating through the thin chill of the wind. “You’re only making this hard for yourself, Alcesteos. In the end, you accomplish nothing. You trap yourself under your façade, you play your meaningless games with humans and submit yourself to meaningless human emotions.”


“… I can take her, Doctor.” A second voice rang out from the nothingness past the soldiers Thetis was fighting, disdain falling from the sky like the wind-swept ice needles of drizzle. “I can deal with that little pest. You’re wrong, Doctor, she is just like the humans. She won’t last five seconds against me. I can rip her limb from limb, Doctor, you know that.”


“Quiet, Number Six.” The wind picked up again, and thunder ripped through everyone’s eardrums like a shockwave as lightning played across the blackness above the fight, a storm brewing fast. “You will have your turn against Thetis Alcesteos. Let her struggle against these mere soldiers so her failure against the gods will be so much more satisfying when it comes.”


***


The shock from the stun baton ran up Idris’ arm and bled out into the floor, the blunt impact from the weapon doing more damage than the less-than-debilitating shock itself. As the soldier was bodily impaled off the floor, the others closed in at the same time, taking their swings at her. Although she was outnumbered, they knew the numbers and they went all in anyway, taking their chances with her as they were wordlessly killed.


More rappelled in from an increasingly blackening room, the roar of the indoor furnace shutting out all other sound at this point, the ceiling becoming less of a ceiling and more of a canopy of soot and smoke. The chill of the metal floor seemed to disappear, eventually warming up to uncomfortable levels.


The twinge returned, a dull, niggling, familiar feeling that reminded Idris of old, darker days in the Viola facilities. As much as she knew she had to fight the system, she was still bound by the rules of the game.
And the game reminded her of that fact.

It wasn’t going to be a full-fledged migraine anytime soon – Idris’ self-consciousness made sure of that, but despite her incessant butchering of the armed men before her, once again she had her limits.


***

The droids were going to make this hard for Kerr, and as another trio of droids burst in from the darkness, another volley of chain-gun fire vortexed towards him as he moved. The soldiers by now were dead, either caught in high-caliber crossfire or killed with a snap of the neck or the crushing of ribs.


The droids began to move away from him, even as the gravity in the room went haywire and lesser artificial intelligence would have been confused by now. Kerr Nordstrom wasn’t quite in control of the situation, but with enough effort, he just might –


And that’s when it struck.
The shadow of a migraine returned, a tiny sliver of pain behind Kerr’s coal-black eyes, threatening to distract him from the problem at hand. It was bothersome that it should appear at all, let alone appear so early. It was apparent that if he wasn’t going to believe where he was, they were going to make him believe it as much as possible, and the longer he stayed in this room, the more likely he would.


Nonetheless, the droids continued to miss by the tiniest of fractions, but as more droids appeared out of nowhere, it was time to make another move.

***

Jettison gave a glance towards the other guests in the room and watched them gloat with their typical sense of understatement on overdrive. Having struck a ‘business’ deal with them, she considered it playing with fire in the very first place, although it was pure luck that these had been the very beings, “destrillians”, that they had been searching for and were now in possession of.


In fact, there were an awful lot of coincidences that had led to this moment. Their encounter in the sewers they had attributed to circumstance, but one-in-a-million events that had piled up on top of each other, hour by hour, had left her a little more than slightly suspicious.


The deals she had made with the mentioned third party were numerous and had been a definite give-and-take relationship that, on the surface was typical friendly bargaining with mutual benefits. Jettison was gifted with knowledge of the nooks and crannies of Osea that very few people knew about and often found things for them that they might have otherwise not found. The three nutcases she liaised with could do certain dirty work that left her hands clean of any implications that would have brought down three kinds of hell from the Big Three in the Orange Zone.


She once considered asking them to dispose of Denann from the inside out, but as he learned from observing, subtlety wasn’t always their stock in trade. Their hits were analogous to dealing with a bug using a chainsaw, or a machine gun, or a chainsaw attached to a machine gun – in essence, they would likely leave a bloody mess and their value as ‘business partners’ was limited by exactly how much carnage they left in their indiscriminate wake.


Jettison could do without the police and the army tearing through the Underground to search for the tell-tale signs of culprits that were by now already on the news.

She took note of the names that they had profiled them with, knowing it was better off knowing them personally if the time came to make a change of plans, which by now seemed very likely. She connected the dots as the three started inspecting the pods one by one.


Number Nine, one Idris Savage, caught their attention far more than the others. Special attention, that as Jettison saw, that would interfere far more than she would like with what she was doing.

Jettison got up from her chair, her headpiece still attached, and with a simple pointing motion, said “Oi.” She wasn’t finished with them yet and her analysis was incomplete. A normal human being would have subconsciously regurgitated all their fears and repressed feelings by now, but these destrillians were mixed bags of emotional hellstorms and shitty past lives. Jettison didn’t even need to probe that hard to get them to throw their own nightmares against themselves.


Inveja’s contemptuous shot directed towards Jettison was a warning, but a warning that was far from backing her down. As powerful as they were, every threat towards her life seemed empty and even those that were not was just another to count towards the already magnificent marks she had from those in the Orange Zone. Nothing surprised her anymore, much less bothered her. She had no intention of interfering, but if it was done, then it was done, and the plan would have to change.

Drastically.


They were interrupted by the child they called ‘Stolz’, and they exchanged tense words that Jettison had not a care in the world for. The kid saved the day, though, because if anything had escalated any further Jettison would have ensured that all hell would break loose.
She was not done with them yet.


Regardless, hell broke loose outside, and the wave of destruction outside was followed by the smell of burning nightclub. The two left with a backhanded comment and she was left with Nova and Stolz, and the gang she had remaining with her. The majority were still alive, but there were a few she simply could not get her hopes up that they were still alive in the main dance area.


“… just let them out.”


What could she say to that? There was nothing they could do at this point. The two outside could completely obliterate the establishment if they wanted to. She wondered – and half-hoped – King was dead. But the destrillians, their lives were forfeit the moment they entered the nightclub.


But she knew what she needed them for. They were the solution to everything she needed, they were the explanation for the voices in her sleep, and they were the help she needed to find the answers that lay in Denann’s past and eluded her memories. She needed to strike another deal, before it got messy – no, it would get messy nonetheless.
But she had to do it.


“Nova.” Jettison stood up, arranging the bargain in her head before she would speak, grabbing the steel quarterstaff at her feet.
Daniel November narrowed his eyes as she walked to the exit, the other black-clad gang members readying their batons and guns as they wordlessly followed suit.

“Yeah, girl?”


“Take care of these guys for me. I’ve got a business deal to make.” She felt the heat from outside rush in as she opened the door, the crackle of fire and the scream of victims. She gave the hand signals for the others to keep their distance from her. She didn’t need any more people getting killed.


“Hey, girl, you doan need to do this, those crazy sonofabitches can do whatever they like.” Nova started towards her, but she raised her hand for him to stop.

“These guys can help us.”

Nova hesitated, and then slowly walked towards the desk of headgear. “Well, if you’re going to face those motherfuckers, I got ya back, aiite?”


She sighed as she lowered her hand, walking down towards the chaos ahead of them. “I know, Nova. That’s why I need you here.”

As the rag-tag bunch of science experiment rejects made their way through the sewers beneath the Orange Zone of Osea, Emma allowed her senses to wander, picking up on all of the life forms around them. There were plenty of rats, and as they made their way along the occasional apathetic homeless person or drug addict, not paying attention to them or even caring that there was a glowing leopard parading in front of them.

But the girl didn’t care about any of that much. In fact, reaching out her powers was all she could do to distract herself and keep her temper in check. She was latched on to Terra and held on to her tight, whether to support the shorter girl or more to support herself she wasn’t quite sure. What she did know, though, is that she was angry. She was angrier than she had ever been, at least recently. She wondered if the others could sense it, too, even without powers like what she had. If Kerr was really responsible for what was all happening, for all of their lives being disrupted like this just because of his ego-power trip then he had a good fist to the face coming to him.

Before she realized it they were in front of a maintenance door down in the sewer. Except that, perhaps it really wasn’t for maintenance. She could hear music coming from the other side, and there were people milling about everywhere.

It was a dance club in the sewer. No doubt a dirty place where the undesirables of the Orange Zone congregated away from the reach of the law, not that Emma ever got involved in such things. The very idea of it was interesting enough, though, and perhaps it would get her out of her bad mood.

Just then, the door opened and out tumbled a pair of men. The bouncer that had thrown them out simply wiped his hands and said, “That’s yer second strike, boys! Next time we kick you the fuck out, you stay the fuck out!”

“Yeah, fuck you, too!” one of the men spat back. He then picked himself up and noticed the group standing before him. Well, looks like we got us some pretty-kitties here to play with, don’t we, Sammy?”

The second man replied, “Sure do. Gawrsh, lookit them.”

“Bitches, them’s what’s for dinner,” remarked the first man.

“Excuse me?” Emma said more than asked, standing slightly in front of Terra, ready to fend the two men off if necessary. She could feel the first man’s eyes glance over her; it was almost enough to make her gag.

However, Emma seemed to not have needed to go on the defensive, as it didn’t seem like the man heard what she said as The Dark Rider had decided to once again play the part of a hero and place himself between the two thugs and the rest of them.

“In case you’re wondering, these ladies aren’t interested. So back the fuck off ok?”

The red head’s eyes widened in disbelief at the utterance of these words. Perhaps this Rider fellow would turn out to be an asset after all. The costume had made her leery, but his heart seemed to be in a good place.

The first thug, the one doing all of the talking, was just the opposite. “The fuck you looking at, you… wait, what the fuck is this? This ain’t the costume party, bug-face.”

“The party going on at that club is going to be your wake if you don’t back off, clownie. And I doubt anyone’s going to mourn that ugly mug of yours,” the Rider spat back.

“I think he’s in the wrong place, Willums,” said the one named Sammy.

The Rider seemed to have taken great offence to his words. “Although I can kick your ass in the right places, grandpa.”

“Yeah, you know what? This’ll be a sweet end to my day. Waste a couple’a shitheads, bang a few holes, and I might’a even be in a good enough mood to not cut the bitches’ necks.”

“I would LOVE to see you try.”

Emma had prepared herself for a fight. However, that fight was not to take place, for at that moment the mysterious large cat that they had been following had come up behind the men and with a movement faster than any of their eyes could see it had sliced off the two men’s heads with it’s claws.

The Dark Rider was sprayed with the blood gushing from their necks, and poor Thetis, too. She could feel Terra tense up with horror beside her and the feelings of shock and revulsion from the rest. Emma herself, however, felt the sting of the energy releasing from their bodies rush over her body. If she hadn’t already been holding on to Terra tightly she may have fallen over, but in a sudden reversal of roles she found that holding on to the girl is what kept her standing. Spreading her feet apart to better anchor herself, she struggled to regain her composure. Luckily the feeling of these two deaths wasn’t as overwhelming as usual, or Emma may have collapsed to the ground, taking Terra with her.

It still wasn’t a pretty site, however, and Emma began to question their decision to follow the cat. The Dark Rider seemed to be especially unhappy about the sudden turn of events, as he was swearing at the cat still standing before them.

“I ordered the ambulance for these guys, not the fucking obituary!!”

Before anything else could be said, one of the bouncers, a woman, stepped forward and addressed the group. “Don’t worry, we’ll clean up the mess. Mistress is waiting, and from what I heard it’s taking you a little longer than she liked.”

Mistress? Emma thought in her head. She didn’t like the sound of that at all. Just who were they going to see? Should they all really be so confident that their abilities would keep them safe?

Anything to get away from the military, another voice in her head seemed to say.

True.

The group stepped over the bodies and entered the club. Before doing so, however, Emma quickly attempted to close off her senses to all the people around her, expecting an onslaught of emotions from all the people that must be inside. When they finally got inside she found that she had been right about the emotions, but there didn’t seem to be any way to close them all out.

They stood there overlooking the dance floor just above a few short steps that lead down into it. There seemed to be people everywhere; on the floor, on the wall, coming out of the ceiling even. The scope of everything she was seeing in addition to the mixture of alcohol and blood she could smell with her heightened senses was enough to make her woozy, as if the barrage of life energy from everyone in the club dancing while entranced wasn’t enough to do the trick.

The dance floor sunk down a foot or so below them, and the waving arms of the people dancing there were about at her chest. They waved back and forth as the bodies all grinded and wrapped together. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, gentle and rustling, like grass.

And there she was, walking through a field of grass with no recollection of her time in Viola, no recollection of her life in Osea, nothing, because none of that had happened yet. A gentle wind was blowing, bending the tall grass as she made her way walking through the foliage. Emma looked down at her hands and saw chubby, dirty fingers as she plucked at the blades of green all around her.

She was nothing more than a small child. She closed her eyes and felt the warm sun shine on her, giving her nutrients like it did all plant life.

Then there came the sound of a voice. A male voice, one she had never heard before and yet, somehow, seemed so familiar.

“Emma, don’t use your abilities to such an extent around strangers. You never know what will happen if they see what you can do.”

“But why?” she asked, still happily playing with the grass and not quite grasping the scope of the man’s words.

“Because, Emma, they can’t be trusted. There are bad people out there who will want to take you away if they know what you can really do. There are people who will want to control you and not let you live your life freely. There are people who will want to use you to do bad things. You mustn’t let them.”

“But why?”

“You’ll understand one day. Just promise me that you won’t display your powers in front of anyone, okay? Promise me that you’ll be careful. Promise me that you won’t let them make you do bad things. Okay?”

“But why?”

“Just promise me, Sweets. Promise me. Please?”

“Okay, Daddy, I promise.”

“That’s my girl.”

With a giggle the child version of Emma looked up to smile at her father, but he wasn’t there. In his place was a large semi-truck, barreling down the field at her at top speed.

“DADDY!” she screamed, falling over. She threw her arms up in front of her face and braced for impact…

…but it never came. Emma quickly opened her eyes and found herself on the floor of the night club. She sat there for a few moments trying to regain her bearings, not quite sure if this was real or all just a dream as well. What snapped her back to reality was the sight of Terra falling a foot or so ahead of her, still in a trance. Emma rushed to her side and helped her to stand.

“Terra? Terra! Terra snap out of it!” she begged, holding the girl and trying to shake her slightly. Eventually the shorter girl came to, clutching Emma closer and shaking hard as if she were shivering. Emma hugged her close as they climbed a staircase and whispered words of encouragement, not knowing if her terrified charge was hearing them or not.

Then the same bouncer as before interrupted them again. “Mistress is waiting.”

There was an open door that looked as if it lead into nothing on the other side. The leopard rushed past them and entered the room, and the rest of the group followed. Whatever they were getting into didn’t seem right, but what else was there to do? Emma struggled to suppress the emotions of the other people in the club and then decided to follow suit with Terra.

She immediatly regretted the decision. All of Emma’s senses were immediately thrown for a loop upon entering the room, and she had a harder time trying to surprise the free-flowing energy in there than the energy of all the people outside in the club. She let go of Terra and reached up to grab her head, trying hard to suppress the uneasiness that permeated throughout her body.

“Why are you here? They tell me you came from out of the Orange Zone.”

Emma looked up to see a teenage girl sitting in an elaborate chair before them. It was red and it contorted with what looked like human faces. She stared at the ever changing pattern of eyes and mouths and noses, then looked up at the ceiling and walls in horror. They were covered with different body parts, covered in various liquids she didn’t want to try to guess.

The girl and the other members of her group carried on a conversation that Emma didn’t clearly hear, for she couldn’t tear her attention away from all of he strange things happening in the room. She felt as if she were on the verge of a panic attack, her senses were so off the loop.

Everything around her was spinning and blurry. She could see shapes; maybe people, but she couldn’t tell who any of them were. She tried holding her head, but the feelings kept getting stronger and stronger, until she lost her balance and fell over. It was an almost instantaneous effect; as soon as she hit the ground the world stopped spinning. What scared her, though, was that she could no longer sense any of her comrades around her.

Emma could feel a light, tickling sensation on her skin, and she opened her eyes to see that she was laying on grass. She looked up to see tall trees looming above her. The entire area seemed familiar, as if she were reliving a memory. Maybe she was. The area she was in reminded her of the day, around seven years ago now, that she almost escaped from Viola. The last time she had seen Natasha.

She could almost hear the scientist’s thick accent now. “Emma, listen to me. I do not want you to show too much of your powers to other people, okay? Show them only to me, please.”

“Okay, Natasha.”

Then came another voice. “No, Emma, Sweetie, no. You shouldn’t do that in front of other people. It’s too much. You’ll attract the wrong kind of attention. Please.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“I know you’re holding out on me,” said a third voice, cold malicious with intent.

“No, Dr. Thomas, I swear I’m not!”

Emma slowly rose to her feet amidst the voices in her head.

“Don’t show anyone.”

“Remember, it will be our little secret, okay?”

“I don’t believe you. I know you can do far more than this. Just last week you showed improvement. Don’t tell me you’ve reverted backwards.”

Show them…

More voices eventually began to join the chorus.

“Emma, wil u stae w/me 4ever?”

“Tina, hun, what would you do without me?”

“Hey Beautiful, you free tonight?”

“What? Natasha got assigned to another project and now you’re stuck with Dr. Thomas? You poor thing! Dr. Thomas is such an ass.”

“I’ve always loved your freckles, Emma.”

Who cares…

“Because I am your father! I’m only doing what’s best for you!”

“I have something special planned. Think of it as a project. But don’t tell anyone what they are for, okay?”

“Try harder! Show me what you can really do!”

…if they get hurt?

“Em-ma halp me…”

“Terra? Terra where are you?” the plant Destrillian cried out.

“Tina? Tina! Tina what’s going on?”

“Chris? Oh Chris I…”

“There she is! Get her!”

Emma heard the voices from somewhere far off into the trees. Was she being attacked? If this was indeed a memory of that night seven years ago, then the answer was yes. She needed to think quickly and formulize a strategy if she was going to be able to both escape and save Natasha at the same time.

Use the trees…

Yes, the trees. Use them this time; don’t just wait until it might be too late. Emma reached out with her power to try to form a barrier around her, but too her surprise she found that the trees seemed to be moving on their own. On the contrary, they were closing in on her, not to protect her but to pin her down and strangle her. One branch shot out and wrapped around one of her arms, another grabbed an ankle, and then one wrapped around her waist, pulling her down.

“No! Stop! Why is this happening?”

The echoing of the voices of her friends and Dr. Thomas continued on, becoming inaudible. All except for one voice that she knew she didn’t know at all.

You aren’t trying…

“Yes I am!”

No, you’re not…

“I’m doing what I always do but it’s not working!”

Doing what you always do won’t help this time. You need to start being honest with yourself…

“Honest?”

Do you remember what things were like before Viola?

“No. I’ve never been able to regain my memories like the others have.”

Do you really think that voice you heard earlier was just a figment of your imagination?

“You mean…”

At that moment five guards wearing Viola uniforms burst through the trees. They encircled her where she lay and pointed their guns down on her.

“Those memories, they are real? So then, before I even became a Destrillian I could…but how?”

No time to think about it now! Just admit to yourself what you are!

“Em…Emma…halp!”

“Tina!”

“Sir! What should we do with her?”

Emma closed her eyes and concentrated. In her mind she saw something akin to a light switch, and she imagined reaching out and flipping it on.

It’s what you are.

"Good evening Blazing Fury and Pale Shell! You've certainly made a mess here, and we thought we'd show a kind gesture to the owner of this establishment and clean it up for them...."

As Fiona experienced a ferocious red haze, she heard a repulsively arrogant voice pierce through the flurry of screams. The fire destrillian spun around to where the voice was coming from and found a pale woman with a smug look about her to be staring her down. A strange sensation ran through her body as she acknowledged the stranger. In her current fury, though, she didn’t spend much time wondering what it was. Fiona was set purely on extinguishing her pent-up anger until she felt satisfied and this moron who dared to challenge her seemed like the perfect victim. A deranged smirk appeared on her face as she called out to the new arrival.

"If it will make you happy, I’ll make it even messier by painting the walls with your organs!"

Inveja paused for a moment as though the words had stunned her. She then smirked, then giggled, then burst out into loud hysterical laughter, followed by glaring down her opponent and remarking.

"Worthless creature..."

And as the words left her mouth she practically leapt from her spot and lunged at Fiona with her Katan held drawn back in a stabbing position. She, unlike her comrade, appeared to be intent on ending this in one devastating strike.

Before the fire prototype could reply to the insult, the stranger was almost on her with a large blade. Shit, who the hell is this bitch? For all of the drugs and alcohol pumped into the destrillian, the strange vibe this new person gave off introduced an abrupt and keen focus. At the same time, the outsider displayed a speed that matched—if not surpassed—#004’s own in one, single leap. Not that she would ever admit something like that.

Fiona sidestepped the sword as it rushed toward her and backhanded the arm that held it. Flames engulfed her other hand as she formed a fist aimed at the side of the woman’s ribs.

"Don’t think you can just show up and try to fuck with me, stupid cunt!"

Inveja twisted her body around to dodge the blow from the girl, then swung her Katana around at her. The blade grazed Fiona's arm and cut the surface of her skin, leaving a small crimson trail along it. Inveja next stood upright, raised the weapon's blade up next to her face and licked the blood from it, then sinisterly smiled at Fiona.

"I think I'm going to really enjoy killing you, cheap imitation."

She then flicked her hand with the Katana out to her side and charged at Fiona, making multiple slashes in an attempt to land a fatal blow on her arrogant opponent.

#004 hissed as she felt the stranger’s blade so easily slice a fine line in her arm. She jumped back several feet and stared down her opponent with a deadly gaze. Her countenance shifted into an outright snarl as Fiona watched the skilled swordswoman lick her blood from the blade and insulted her. This gave the fire destrillian the time to notice a large, open bottle of alcohol resting next to her on a table. She saw the stranger coming back at her with the katana, now slashing every which way to get a good hit on her. Fiona simply wouldn’t let that happen. She grabbed the bottle and jumped back another good amount of distance. The prototype readied herself into a defensive pose waiting for the right moment. As the adversary charged right at her, #004 ducked and dodged the first few swings of the blade. As it came straight down on her, Fiona blocked with the alcohol, causing the container to be sliced right in half. With precise reaction time, the fire destrillian concentrated on the airborne liquid right in front of Inveja and set it ablaze, causing it to set off an impressive, little explosion.

"Eat that, you self-righteous whore."

The explosion engulfed Inveja completely from Fiona's view, leaving the fire destrillian to believe she had incinerated the woman. However her victory was short lived as a demonic image came hurtling from the flames, and Inveja was once again attempting to impale her sword through Fiona's head. The attack was easily dodged by the fire-user and Inveja spun around after missing to keep track of the girl. She was then getting slightly frustrated by the resistance being put up and bluntly asked.

"Why can't you just be a good girl and die?"

Fiona cackled in sadistic amusement as her adversary poorly handled the small inferno that embraced her. It had been quite some time since she was treated to a real challenge of any sort. This had to be her lucky day: first the big payout from the silly mob crew and now a stranger that was able to test her! It did irk her that the mystery woman somehow knew who she was—no one had referred to her as Blazing Fury since, well…

The female foe’s words came to a crescendo in the fire destrillian’s ears as “die” was uttered. #004 had been swiftly circling the challenger as her face contorted into a mix of a snarl and a smirk.

"Dying isn’t something I’m particularly good at, you silly bitch!"

With that, Fiona charged another fiery fist at her opponent—right at her face.

For an extremely rare moment, Inveja was caught off guard. Perhaps it has been the words of the girl that caused her to be distracted in amusement, however the following was not so amusing as Fiona's fist firmly planted itself between Inveja's eyes, smashing her Visor in half along with sending her stumbling backwards. After composing herself, she pulled off the remaining half of the Visor still on her face and looked up at the girl, revealing her Dark Magenta eyes with their long, reptile-like pupils which gave Fiona a piercing cold stare. The enraged woman then stated in a deadly cold tone

"Now you've gone and done it fire slut....I'm not going to hold back anymore."

And with those words she pulled off her left glove and held her hand up in the air, after which a dark, molten substance with a peculiar hissing sound began to form around it. She then had a grin on her face once again and called out to the other girl.

"It's time you proceeded on your way to oblivion."

Fiona’s eyes boldly met with the stranger’s as her visor fell and was pulled away from her face. They clearly weren’t normal, which added more mystery as to who exactly it was the firestarter was dealing with. She’d figure that out after her corpse was hanging from the ceiling.

#004’s opponent made a threat that made her chuckle, seeing as she had the upper hand through most of this fight so far. Sure this lady had swords skills, above-average speed and creepy eyes, but she couldn’t possibly have much more up her sleeve. Could she?

Attention shifted to her left hand that was now exposed. A plasma-like substance formed around it and Fiona almost thought the drugs came back for a second wrong of fooling with her mind. No, this was real. That, and the strange sound that came from the same direction—somehow. It had been some time since Fiona encountered anyone with abilities like her and Thetis’. The obscurity behind her opponent only caused frustration and anger. The second threat didn’t help, either.

"It’s time you shut the hell up and burn!"

The fire prototype put a step forward and pitched a large fireball at the strange woman.

"TOO SLOW!"

Inveja threw her head up as she spoke the words and almost instantly her pupils shifted into a pair of glowing red spheres within her eyes, and as the fire was merely inches away from her hand the black substance seemingly leaped at the flames and began to engulf them, converting every single particle of the fire into itself before collapsing into a large pool of the substance on the floor between the two.

The fire destrillian couldn’t touch the stranger now, not with these "Strangelets". Her fury only grew with this realization and kept her eyes locked with her opponent’s, pouring all of her rage into her eyes.

Inveja laughed at the display then addressed Fiona once again.

"You second rate amateur. Did you really think you had a chance against my Strangelets? Anything they come into contact with will be immediately converted into Strange Matter, including your fire, and only I can make them go away, so game over for the little imitation."

"Who are you to keep calling me some kind of bad copy? Huh?! Who the fuck are you?!!"

She was just about to make her move when a voice called out from another section of the room.

"Yo Veya! This asshole just keeps hiding behind his goddamn shields and it's pissing me off....SWITCH!"

To which Inveja sighed and gave a glance at Fiona. Then, without breaking the stare darted sidewards in the direction of Lokka, and as she passed Vollerei, the pair grabbed one another's arms, spun the other around and launched off each other at great speed in the direction of their new opponents. Vollerei came hurtling at Fiona so fast she wasn't able to react resulting in both his hands catching her around the neck and slamming her against the nearby wall. The force was so strong that an impression of Fiona’s body became permanently part of the décor. The man's face was right in front of her, glaring into her eyes with demonic red spheres that were his.

"Well hey there, what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"What’s a douchebag like you doing in my face?!"

The end of the sentence came out in a growl as she tried to knee him. This new adversary countered immediately with his leg pressing her own against the wall.

"Oh don't be that way babe. Here, try one of my homemade brews....I call it 'Corrosive Spritzer'!"

Vollerei then raised his right hand up which oozed with some kind of acid, and just as he was about to burn Fiona's face off, he suddenly stopped. A voice had caught his attention and caused him to sigh and state in an unhappy tone.

"Aww geez why'd you have to go interrupt me right at the fun part..."

The weapons the men used against her could have been thumbtacks for all the good they did their wielders; the girl with her metal claws slashed the batons to bits and then turned upon the invaders to do the same. Blood flew and mixed with the smoke and fire and the smell of burning bodies began to permeate the air—it was downright nauseating, but Idris had long since lost any sense of illness over death and carnage.
But no matter how many she cut down, more simply dropped from the hole in her ceiling and engaged her in increasingly difficult battle. The room was clogged with smoke and fire; even the Destrillian herself was beginning to have trouble with her vision. She’d just begun to fight with her eyes closed, a dangerous but very possible move. That moment, when her eyes shut, was when she felt it.

It was just a twinge.

Just a twitch.

Just a little titch of bother.

But Idris knew what it meant. The bad old days were returning to her more and more clearly, as if in spite of the sense-dulling atmosphere; endless days, weeks, years in the deep underground of Viola with nothing but her headaches to keep her company had deeply impressed upon Idris where, precisely, her limits were.
They were still far off in the distance, but the teeny tiny little nudge in the back of her head told her that they would come, oh yes, and sometime crucial no doubt.
So Idris did what she could to buy herself time. She threw her arms out to her sides and sloughed off all the metal from her skin in one go, impaling two men into opposite walls while she was at it. Then, she let the smoky room enclose about her, shielding herself in the thickest of plumes, listening beneath the roar of the flames for footsteps, weapons clicking… and even deeper, the subtle singing hum of every man’s pulse. She could feel it vibrate in her bones.
And she used it as a crosshair.

For a time nobody could be able to tell you the length of, the blonde Destrillian shot from the heat and the dark to break a spine or a neck or to crush a skull with her bare hands, retreating immediately into the relative safety of the soot and the smoke. It was taxing her lungs so terribly, what with breathing in all that soot (which, she had to keep reminding herself, was fake) that the woman was going to have to get out of there sooner or later.
That was going to be a problem, if she had this much on her hands just in her room.

“Idris, sweetie, come out! Where are you?”
And then there was that. Those voices that somehow cut straight through all the other noise and begged her incessantly to run and show herself to her family. It was increasingly difficult to ignore, so desperate were the pleas. Idris dived forward into a roll on the ground, taking a deep breath of the cleaner air near the floor to clear her head before springing up again into the air. She forced her limbs to comply in the sweltering heat and executed an almost perfect flip, landing on all fours like some deadly feline monster on the head of one of her opponents. Her force drove his head into the ground and it crushed against the heated metal floor like an egg. The voices called for her, and the men regrouped, and Idris carried on.

Then, a lot of things happened at once. Another group of enemies dropped from the hole in the ceiling at the same time as the glass in the windows heated to a point where they cracked and exploded outwards into the night, creating a horrible high-pitched screeching, scratching noise as they did so. As this happened, the first real little jab of what could be thought of as pain occurred to Idris in the back of hear head, and she knew it was high time to get out of there.
The windows had freed plenty of the smoke from the room and the rush of oxygen from outside left her feeling giddy.
How ridiculous, she thought, to be feeling anything but pain and annoyance right now. Still, the returned clarity gave the small woman the strength to leap up and over one man, vault over the back of another, and land mere feet from her door.

“Idris Savage, where on EARTH are you?” The horrible, wailing, broken-voiced call nearly ripped her heart from her chest, but Idris just wiped sweat and grime from her brow, gritted her teeth against a reply, took two great running steps forward and slammed down on the door with the flat of her foot.
The hinges were already melted from the fire, and with the superhuman force she employed, the door simply broke and whirled off into the hallway. Idris tumbled on after it, landing in an undignified but unharmed tangle of limbs.

She looked up from her place on the floor, stunned for the slightest of moments. Above her was a figure, one she almost remembered. They looked taller than they really were from her vantage point, but the face was the same – a serious, contemplative face, skewed by the flickering shadows of the fire but still easily recognized. A face still barely clinging on to childhood, with baby cheeks only starting to go gaunt and a long nose to match Idris’ own. A face with sandy bangs falling in its sharp grey eyes.

“Idris?”
She leapt away like she’d been burned for the first time since this whole nightmare started, and her older brother’s figure melted away into smoke and embers. The Destrillian backed against the end of the hallway, into a small pocket of air that hadn’t been too clogged up yet, and stared where he had just been.
You survived this, older brother of mine. She forced her hands, shaking from strain and shock and tiredness, to still. You survived this horror and so did Mum and Dad. The irony of it all, she thought while gasping in lungfuls of comparatively clean air, is that after all of this, after years and years of waiting and longing to see you all again… and of escaping and finding that no, it wasn’t the fire that killed you in the end, but something else ENTIRELY? After finding that out, it’s here that I see you again—here, where this whole mess started.

She raised her chin and wiped tears from her eyes.

You survived this, brother. You survived, Mum, Dad. You survived, Idris Savage, and you’re damn well gonna do it again.

And with that, she hopped once in a preparatory sort of way and then booked it down the hallway to the other end. The men never saw her coming and she didn’t bother to grace them with seeing their killer – she just bolted on ahead while they fell like stones behind her. The use of physical power instead of elemental control had allowed her to suppress any worsening of a headache until now, but with a final, perfectly-executed aerial, Idris landed at the top of the grand staircase that led to the ground floor and felt a stab of real pain. Just one, but it was enough to remind her that she was approaching something that could be thought of as a hard time.

She placed her fingers at her temples to start backing the headache down, and waited for what would come next.
She had played this game long enough to know that it could only get worse.

Where was she? Wasn't she outside an office? No, this had changed again, like it had in the club. Only there weren't people, or even a single person here, there were trees, hundreds of them. And evidently, they were able to move of their own free will. When the tree near her swung, she was hit, but able to stand up, far more easily than she used to be. But... again, in where ever she was, she was able to move, and run as she formally had, and she could feel Emma nearby, which gave her a surge of confidence. She was concerned, however, since she wasn't there previously, that much was obvious. Even in her other trance she'd imagined some sort of transition between being in the club and being in that strange whiteness. How had she gotten there when previously she had been elsewhere? She honestly couldn't remember.

A tree swung at her, and some strange will of the Gods caused a wave of dirt broke the tree. She was terrified she was going to be next. But she wasn't next. It couldn't have been... she wasn't the one causing this, was she? She'd never been this powerful, these were the sorts of things that those scientists had tried to get her to perform, but she was so scared, so unsure that she could do anything, that she never even attempted to advance within the ranks of the other Destrillians. Now she could... it was almost an impossible thought, but now she was as strong as they had hoped she would be in the past, and not pathetically left behind by the skills of the others.

For a moment, she almost felt confident she could find Emma. But then the voices started. The echoing voices of her brother and her father, her siblings, Emma, and yet none of them, accused and berated her, screaming abandonment. No, that wasn't true, that couldn't have been true, she loved them, she never wanted to leave them, she had been forced to.
The voices, they were lying, right? No, no, she'd never abandoned her family. She didn't want to forget her dad and how much he loved them, that was why she'd fought with her brother about selling her glass--
Terra was struck hard in the side with the branch, biting hard onto her tongue. She assumed that she was bleeding now, but when she spit out the liquid filling her mouth, it grew gritty and slimy. There was no way... was she spitting up dirt? Flecks of saliva-dampened earth hit the ground beneath the girl who had been controlling it. What the hell was going on? She attempted to inhale, but everything inside of her, lungs, throat, mouth, just seemed wrong.

DON'T YOU LOVE US TERRA, DON'T YOU CARE? WHY DO YOU HURT US, YOU'RE THE ONE WHO ABANDONED US.

Another root twisted through the ground around Terra's ankle, picking her up and sending her flying. She landed in some sort of quicksand that couldn't have been sand. Dirt was forcing its way into her nose, her eyes, her mouth, she was being buried alive. She could hear the screams of voices she didn't quite recognize, but blunted screams that occasionally, she thought she dreamt about. The screams of the people back in that building she buried alive. Now she would be joining them as well, she supposed, her limbs starting to feel fuzzy.

Terra. You can't die yet. You can get out, you know it.

But she was tired, and her brain was working slowly. She didn't WANT to get out, she was fine where she was.

Split the ground with your thoughts. Split the ground with your thoughts. Split the ground with your thoughts. SPLIT THE GROUND!

Almost inadvertantly, Terra had parted the ground above her and forced herself up. She hacked up a mouthful of dirt, but otherwise, she was able to breath again. Moreover, the brown-haired girl could feel her friend Emma nearby. Maybe she was in trouble, and Terra wanted to help.

WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE, TERRA, AFTER ALL OF THE PEOPLE YOU'VE HURT, IT WOULD BE FOR THE BEST. STOP RESISTING.

She was getting annoyed with the voices, she needed to find Emma. She wasn't as useless as she typically felt at this moment and she needed to use that to her advantage. A flick of her wrist sent a wave of dirt at the tree, cracking its trunk and toppling it backwards. Horrid screams issued from it, so many that she had to plug her ears against the sound.

Golem: an artificially created human being that is given life through supernatural means. From medieval Jewish legends about automatonlike servants created from clay and given life through a spell. Tragic that she can't even control it properly.

Another nasty voice mumbled through the trees, forcing Terra to uproot several at a time as they all laughed at her.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaare you going to Scarborough Fair... Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme... Remember me to one who lives there, she was once a true love of miiiiiiine... you wouldn't ever forget your friends, would you? But then again, you don't really care for anyone but yourself, do you?

Terra, are you alright? I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I can make it. You'll have to go on without me.

YOU NEVER CARED FOR ANY OF US WHY PRETEND YOU DID, YOU LEFT US ALL. SELFISH, SELFISH, SELFISH, SELFISH!

Terra covered her ears, she didn't want to hear any more. The trees weren't talking, that was impossible. Trees have no mouths, or tongues, they could not talk. The words that bounced around in the forest were stabbing her heart like a knife, she never abandoned anyone. She never forgot anyone. She'd never leave her friends behind! A branch slapped her across the face, knocking her to the ground as the spiteful words continued. The voices were lying, weren't they? They had to be, there wasn't any other explanation.

Lost in her thoughts, earth whipped around the area, buffeting the trees. Though it stopped the branches and roots, it didn't have any effect on the voices, but Terra couldn't calm her mind enough to stop it. She started to feel a strange and familiar sensation of sparks dashing around her brain, like she had back at the facility. She was going to lose her newfound ability to walk, wasn't she?

Terra, stop thinking. Think about something else.Think about how much you want to see Emma again.

Though her thoughts were swirling, she did as The Voice told her to. She could feel Emma's presence nearby, she was certain. The voices probably continued, but she the only thought she allowed into her head was concern and determination for find Emma. Dirt that had been flying around previously had stopped, as had the terrifying static that had creeped quietly into her brain, but the trees were no longer kept at bay.

She continued to march forward through the forest, ignoring the voices, the beatings by the limbs and the occasional toss by the roots. Perhaps she wouldn't make it in one piece, but she was going to find Emma, and make sure she was okay.

The brunette was doubting that she was getting anywhere, and she was certain that enduring these beatings were going to leave her rather battered.But she was sure that she was getting near the end of this hell, despite getting thrown around like a rag doll. Even through her focus on finding her friend, she was starting to feel a dull pain in her muscles, and a great weariness.

WHY DO YOU LEAVE US, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS ABANDON US? WE CANNOT ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE US AGAIN.

A root rose up in front of Terra, cobralike, and struck her straight through her stomach. If she were a normal person, her life would have certainly flashed before her eyes. However, being able to control earth made her far from a normal person, and she experienced something that she had during the rare moments when a bullet managed to get through her skin in the old days. Her vision slowly filled with red and she felt a strange sensation of floating. By the time her vision cleared, a tree had been uprooted and several of the nearby trees had been cracked across the trunks, knocked over and bending smaller trees in its way. The girl nearly collapsed in exhaustion, but she was still motivated to find Emma.

Bloody, tired, and dirty, she walked through the faint whispers of the forest until she saw Emma. "Oh. Glad to see you." Terra said, before falling onto the ground, feeling quite fuzzy and sore.

Wilhelm Grant walked down the street, breath steaming in the damp night air. Today was shaping up to be quite the day! And he had to laugh to himself that the rumours on the news about super-powered beings within the city seemed the least fantastic of it all.

He’d been apprehensive yesterday when the boss had invited him to dinner at the fancy restaurant tonight. He knew there were some redundancies being made in the company, and assumed they must have been letting him go gently, especially as his boss was an old friend of his dad’s, not to mention Wilhelm’s godfather.

He couldn’t bring himself to tell Kate the night before. She was having a lot of trouble finding work herself at the moment, despite her qualifications and easy-going personality. The idea of them both being out of work… He shuddered slightly at the thought, even now.



“Ah, Will. Sit down,” Mr. Vermillion had said as he entered the restaurant. Even though Wilhelm was five minutes early, his boss was already waiting there. “How’re your folks?”

“The-they’re doing well, thanks sir,” Wilhelm said.

“Good, good. Glad to hear it. Your father was quite the hell-raiser in the old days, you know. It’s good to know he’s slowed down some. Your fiancée… Kate, isn’t it? How’s she keeping?”

“She’s good, thanks sir. Except she’s finding it difficult to find some work,” Wilhelm replied.

“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that, my boy. Unfortunately, it’s somewhat a sign of the times,” Mr Vermillion smiled. “Now, Will, as you’re no doubt aware the company is going through some… well, it’s what my bosses call ‘structural rearrangement’. It means we’re having to reconsider some people’s positions within the company.”

“I-I see, sir.”

“Yes… Now, you know how highly I think of you Will. You’re a bright kid, and if I’d ever found time for kids, I hope at least one would’ve turned out like you. However, this is business. I’m not allowed to show any personal bias.”

“I… I understand, Uncle Dyne,” Wilhelm sighed. “And, I have to say, I’ve--”

“AND SO,” Dyne Vermillion said, talking over his godson, smiling. “You can imagine my reaction when the board of directors sent me down a memo with your name as the subject header. ‘Good lad’, it said. ‘Bright ideas’, they said. ‘Why the hell haven’t you promoted him yet?’ they demanded. Well, not the exact wording, but…”

Wilhelm blinked. His mind was absolutely frozen. Finally, he managed to croak out;

“You… you mean…?”

Dyne chuckled. “You’ll still have to call me sir, but you know old Holden is retiring the end of this month, to spend more time with his family? Well, you can have his job as section supervisor. You’ll have to report to, and work more closely with, the section head, namely me, but I think we can live with that, eh?”

“Y-yes, SIR.”

“Good lad. I put the idea to the board yesterday, and they’re quite happy with it. However, to make the wages department balance out right, we have to start paying you the new salary at the end of the following month. Bureaucratic nonsense, if you ask me. So, here; the balance of your wages upfront, from my own wallet. Not as your boss, you understand. That wouldn’t be right. No, it’s a loan from your godfather, understand?”

Wilhelm grinned. “Thanks, Uncle Dyne!”

~~~​

Wilhelm was still smiling to himself. He’d always been unhappy with the engagement ring he’d bought for Kate, but it was the most they could afford at the time. But now… There was a great jewellers down on Vandemar Street. He passed it on his way to work everyday. Just the other day, he’d seen the most perfect ring in the window…

OK, they would have most probably sold it by now, but it shouldn’t be too much hassle to get them to order in another, right?

“Ugh…”

Wilhelm paused.

“Gods damn…argh!”

It was coming from down one of the alleyways. It sounded like someone was in pain.

Wilhelm was in that state of altruism people obtain after receiving exceptionally good news. The thought that another being might be in need was anathema to him. Normally, he would have baulked at stepping into such a dark alley, but tonight, he gathered his courage and good will, and stepped into the shadows.

As he took a few steps down the alley, he realised it wasn’t as dark as he had first thought. The full moon was shining its silver light down one of the adjoining side alleys, lighting the path adequately enough to see where he was stepping. From the other side of the light, there was a constant muttering and cursing. Too low to determine what was being said, but enough to know the speaker was in distress.

“Hello? Are you OK?” Wilhelm called.

The person on the other side paused and stepped into the moonlight warily. Wilhelm blinked in recognition. He’d seen the man before. Where… Ah, of course. He’d come into the restaurant at one point, begging for some food. He’d been pretty soundly seen off, from what Wilhelm had felt.

“Hungry…” the man said, his eyes not leaving Wilhelm.

“You are? Well, don’t worry. I’m sure there’s somewhere near here we can grab you a bite to eat,” Wilhelm said with a cheerful smile.

The man just stared at him for a moment, before a slight smile flickered across his face.

“So, so hungry…” he muttered, before drawing back into the shadows.

Wilhelm frowned. “Well, come along. Don’t worry, it‘s not a scam--”

He was cut off by an unearthly shriek. He could faintly hear tearing and gasping. The artificial stupor caused by his good will had worn off. Deep from the base of his spine, he could feel something primal telling him to turn and run.

He was just about to do so, when a little thought came up: ’What if he’s being attacked?’

Wilhelm felt himself begin marching towards the shadow.

“I say!” he heard himself saying, before he saw--

What little thought processes he still retained told him not to worry. What he was seeing could never be possible. His mind wasn’t sure what this was right now, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be reality. For one, everything seemed too in focus. Nothing in reality was this vivid.

This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t.

These thoughts repeated through his head. As such, the last thing his brain registered seeing was several seconds before his last moment. As this meant that he never saw the flashing fangs and slashing claws which brought his demise, it was something of an act of mercy.

If Wilhelm Grant had been able to think, he might have remembered about the gruesome killings that had been reported in the news.


The man blinked awake at the dawn sun, mind fuzzy. Who was he? Ah, yes.

Osiris. He had other names, true, but this was the only one that had any meaning to him.

The Sekhmet Animus pulled himself upright, lips smacking uncomfortably at the coppery taste in his mouth. The sight of the remains of his clothing hanging off him in tatters confirmed what he suspected from the mild amnesia and the taste of blood: he had given into the Hunger last night.

He pulled himself to his feet, muscles rippling beneath his bloodied skin. He ran a hand through his short tawny blond mane of hair as he walked to the sink full of water in the corner of his den. This block of abandoned apartments was perfect for his needs. True, there had been other vagrants already inhabiting the building, but they had swiftly moved on, whether he needed to convince them or not.

Osiris washed the worst of the blood off of his face, chest and arms. He slumped down beside the sink, before nodding to himself, and reaching a hand back up to release the plug. The broken water pipe above the sink would swiftly refill it. He would need new clothes…

It was then he spotted the body.

Dropping to all fours, Osiris crawled across to the mangled corpse. He took a few fastidious sniffs at it before visually inspecting it. Male, he would guess. Female humans tended to have more… MORE on the upper torso than the males, or female Animus for that matter.

The build was thoroughly average, what remained of the face was almost indistinguishable from any other human, the hair colour mid-brown, not one thing or the other.

Osiris suspected the man had led the same boring life of all his kind: there was another human he clung to and rutted with when he left his humdrum occupation. Shuffling papers, most likely.

Osiris studied the man more closely, before tutting in disgust. The clothes would be too small for him. He would need to find new covering elsewhere.

Standing in one fluid motion, he hefted the corpse to his shoulders. Before looking for more clothing, he’d best dump this body. Somewhere far enough from here not to draw suspicion, but not too far to walk in his current state.

Osiris grinned a feral smile as some of the previous night’s memories returned to him. The alley where he’d confronted this man wasn’t too far from here. It would be perfect. Better, there was a shop where people left clothing they had finished with to be sold to others. Even at this time, there was usually at least one unmolested bag of clothes.

It couldn’t have been real, Thetis thought, for all of this to happen at once. Her father, Dr. Perkins, the soldiers; it was all too convenient; too perfect. A rush of air as she ducked beneath the swing of a rifle, and her hand gripped the jaw of her victim. It certainly seemed real enough, especially when Thetis felt the soldier’s bones break around her fingers as she forced his body to the ground. The ease with which Thetis murdered the first guard barely caused the Violan troops to bat an eyelid as they fanned out around her. Snowflakes of dirt and dust fell as the Destrillian ducked around the explosions of several grenades that mangled the already dead landscape. Bullets hissed in the air as they flew past Thetis, who responded by hauling the corpse of her previous victim to his feet. The prototype listened as seemingly hundreds of rounds of metal slugs sunk into the macabre shield, each shot making a dull thud as they pierced through Kevlar and flesh. The cover gave the prototype time, if only a little; to fully evaluate exactly what had happened since she had woken up.

She was standing in her very last memory before Viola. But things were different now, the grass was withered, the trees were dead, and she was a Destrillian. Thetis could finally fight back. Her earliest guess had put the enemy count at approximately ten, but now she could count fifteen, maybe even twenty humans – including Dr. Perkins. Thetis winced as a bullet plucked at her shoulder, drawing blood as it ripped through the fabric of her shirt. The whole scenario reminded her of the tests she used to go through at Viola. Except this time there wasn’t much room for failure.

A dip in gunfire as three or four men began to reload, and Thetis saw her chance. She deserted her cover and sprinted to the nearest soldier, sweeping him off his feet before crushing his trachea beneath her own. Without hesitation, Thetis moved onto her next victim, driving her knuckles squarely into the man’s face. As he staggered backwards, the soldier may have heard the sickening crunch of one of his teammates being hurled into a tree by a jet of water. However, he didn’t hear the sound of Thetis firing his rifle before the bullets left through the back of his skull. Spinning round to face those who had managed to close in on her, Thetis fired a single shot into the closest soldier’s left knee as he fumbled to replace the magazine in his rifle. He floundered helplessly on the floor as his head and shoulders were engulfed by a sphere of water, glassy eyes watching as two of his comrades were devoured by a small tidal wave. Dr. Perkins’ patronising tone rang in the prototype’s ears.

“You’re only making this hard for yourself, Alcesteos. In the end, you accomplish nothing. You trap yourself under your façade, you play your meaningless games with humans and submit yourself to meaningless human emotions.”

Dr. Perkins hadn’t just touched a raw nerve; she had tugged and torn it away. Thetis felt like screaming. She bit her tongue; any sign of weakness and the prototype would end up like the dead soldiers. But how did Dr. Perkins know about that? She had always been able to get under Thetis’ skin. #006 may have been human once, but now she was a Destrillian. They weren’t created to have doubts or anxieties- Destrillians were created to kill humans. Humans like Dr. Perkins. Thetis had never before felt such a primal urge to kill, a sadistic need to make sure her oppressor suffered agony at the hand of her creation. The water prototype searched for her former doctor, balling her fists to stop them trembling with anger. She was nowhere to be seen; probably cowering behind the wall of soldiers that were slowly encroaching on Thetis’ position. Her frustration manifested itself in the tendrils of water she used to hurl a couple more troops into the air.

“You don’t know anything about me!”

Thetis’ voice tensed as she pulled a soldier’s face into her knee, the sound of splintering bone muffled as the previous two men hit the ground with a nauseating thud. There seemed to be no end to the soldiers – as soon as one fell, another seemed to take his place. If she could thin out their numbers enough, she could probably reach Dr. Perkins. Darting towards the sound of Dr. Perkins voice, Thetis ducked and dived under the hail of bullets. The Destrillian deftly dodged the arc of a combat knife, smiling slyly as she slipped behind her aggressor and broke his neck with a satisfying snap. No sooner had he fallen to the floor had Thetis leapt to her next victim, knocking him onto the grass as she pulled a small strand of water from the air to slit his throat. A gasp, a gargle, and the man was dead.

“… I can take her, Doctor,”

Cool drops of rain stung Thetis’ cheek as clouds churned and darkened above her. A moment’s distraction was all it took for the soldiers to surround her again and for one of the men to drive a rifle butt into her stomach. The prototype collapsed to her knees as she felt the air rush from her lungs, spluttering and gulping for breath. Thetis wouldn’t be cornered here. She couldn’t endure another humiliation at the hands of the woman who had taken everything from her. Thetis heard shuffling and the click of a rifle being trained on the back of her head.

“I can deal with that little pest. You’re wrong, Doctor, she is just like the humans. She won’t last five seconds against me. I can rip her limb from limb, Doctor, you know that.”

Everything happened so fast. The eerie, disembodied words of that familiar voice brought Thetis’ rage to boiling point. A torrent of water tore its way not only through the abdomen of her supposed executioner, but also the soldier behind him. Thetis screamed, no longer able to put her frustration into coherent words as she mercilessly slaughtered the soldiers surrounding her. Rain punched holes in the dead soil as it fell from the heavens in lances, spearing through those who still dared to stand in her way. She was a Destrillian. Not a human. Slowly raising herself to her feet, Thetis glared at the remaining squad members, yellow eyes slowly scanning each face to search for any sign of Dr. Perkins.

“Quiet, Number Six.”

Thetis faltered as she strode towards the soldiers. Was Perkins talking to her? Surely she would have recognised Thetis’ potential after this unbridled display of carnage. She was in her element, the bodies that she had strewn across the dead landscape were a sign of that. There was a stab of pain in the back of her skull that made her eyes water. Even Destrillians had weaknesses.

“You will have your turn against Thetis Alcesteos. Let her struggle against these mere soldiers so her failure against the gods will be so much more satisfying when it comes.”

Struggle? Thetis smirked. What had transpired over the last few minutes was hardly taxing. She could see now. A Destrillian could never live as a human. Humans were no match for the utter destructive force of the Violan prototypes. Living as a human? That was a struggle. But killing human soldiers? It took as much effort as squashing a bug.

“Call it a struggle if you want –Doctor- Your soldiers were only trained to kill me,”

Thetis stepped forward with confidence, stretching out her palm as streams of water danced within it.

“I was made to kill them,”

"Good evening Blazing Fury and Pale Shell! You've certainly made a mess here, and we thought we'd show a kind gesture to the owner of this establishment and clean it up for them...."

The voice boomed over the roaring flames. Lokka turned to see a pair entering the main club area from another room. He was deeply unsettled by the fact that his Viola codename was used, that wasn't information you could just come across. Lokka could not sense what these people were but they were far more powerful than the average human. The woman that had addressed him was obviously also talking to the girl that Lokka had just interrupted. The male then stepped forward to talk. Lokka's attention was now fully on the pair, but he maintained the barriers that kept the nightclub up right.

"So what coat of polish would you two like.... regular or heavy duty?"

The fire destrillian could handle herself here and it looked as if the other woman was engaging her directly. The cocky male focused his attention on Lokka by the looks of it. Lokka grinned at the man.

"If its one on one, your gonna need far more than heavy duty to get through me"

Vollerei laughed at the newcomer's words, and simply replied.

"Well now, you certainly are a confident one.....good. And since I'm such a generous guy I think I'll give you a demonstration of the regular brand first."

As the words ended he faced the large chain gun-looking weapon at Lokka and pulled the trigger. The barrel began to spin and in an instant a hailstorm of red pulse energy was spewing from the weapon in the Destrillian's direction.

Lokka had a momentary feeling of panic, which was unusual for him. He was an expert in the field of technology and he'd never seen anything like this. He knew he could only be afforded a few second to stand in awe of the weapon before acting. He forced his right palm up in front of him, holding his arm with his left hand to stabilize it. In doing so he managed to re-route the energy he was sending out to the club so that it was placed directly in front of him, effectively shielding him.

When the energy hit the barrier Lokka felt an overwhelming force. It was surging up against the shield forcing it back. He knew that holding off this guy was going to be a lot more work than it first seemed.

Thinking fast, Lokka dropped his left arm and reached for his side pocket, still forcing the barrier in place with his right. He dug through the contents and found the distrum capsule. He forced it into his neck then dropped it. Feeling the initial pain he flinched but realized that in doing so he almost completely lost his protection.

Feeling the relief he'd just administered, it was time to try out his plan. Forcing his left arm up again he doubled the magnitude of the shield and threw it forward, launching it at Vollerei. The barrier encapsulated some of the red energy as it launched forward.

Vollerei stood his ground as the barrier hurled towards him and released the gun's trigger, then as the barrier was seconds from contact he launched both himself and the large firearm upwards, did a forward flip over the barrier and landed in a crouch on the ground. He then stood himself up, took a glace at his pulse gun, and tossed it aside before looking back at the man in front of him.

"Guess I'll have to do this the hard way then.... but as a friendly piece of advice I'd die quickly if I were you before I start I get mad."

Vollerei withdrew the knife from the holster on his right leg, flicked it around into a a backwards grip, then charged at Lokka.

Lokka was astounded by the agility and strength the man in front of him possessed, especially whilst carrying such a large weapon. He drew energy around his left arm the create a small round shielded area. He drew his pistol in his right hand and fired the trigger several times at the charging man.

"I dont know what you are but I intend to find out. I'm not dying tonight, I assure you"

The men exchanged a few blows as Vollerei lunged with the knife and Lokka repelled him with his left arm.

The Green-haired man jumped back after his attack was blocked and glared down the Destrillian.

"This all you got fucker? I'm mildly amused at best."

He darted forward in another assault, dodging bullets the other man fired at him with great ease. Once within range and had gained a clear line of sight between him and his opponent, Vollerei charged and with a quick maneuver, threw the knife hurtling straight at Lokka's head.

Lokka barely managed to dodge the knife. He could begin to feel the fatigue in his body spreading throughout. Looking up at Vollerei he sensed no such exhaustion. No mere human could fight like that.

He took out another capsule of distrum and quickly let the syringe pierce the tissue in his neck as the liquid seeped in. He dropped the capsule and ran at the man full charge. Shortly before coming in to arms reach of Vollerei, Lokka jumped up a few feet and landed on what had been a completely invisible barrier. He ran along it and threw his entire body into a sliding tackle, aimed right at the Green haired mans throat.

Vollerei was dazed for a split second as the other man seemed to slide across the air, and only at the last minute did he catch on and tried to evade, however he wasn't fast enough and ended up catching the entire force of Lokka's body right in the chest. The impact sent him flying back right into a cluster of chairs, followed by a table and several glass's falling on him. The scene stayed silent for a moment before the table literally melted and dissolved, and Vollerei stood up, with glowing red spheres in the center of his eyes. His hands were oozing with what appeared to be some kind of acidic substance considering the manner in which he has disposed of the table.

"You know, I was starting to have fun......but man now you're really pissing me off."

And with that he threw one of his arms forward, hurtling acid through the air in Lokka's direction. This time he meant business.

Lokka was dumbfounded. This wasn't a new weapon of his, this was raw genetic power. But he wasn't a destrillian.
Lokka pushed himself off a wall to evade the acid but it caught his left arm, completely disintegrating the material of his clothing around his shoulder. The liquid burned into his flesh as he writhed in agony, tripping over a chair during his evasion.

What the hell was this guy?

Lokka tried to ignore the pain as he focused back onto the man in front of him. He released some of his nearby energy, allowing some of the ceiling around Vollerei to completely fall through. Whoever this guy was he was too focused on killing Lokka and hadn't noticed something important.

Lokka smirked as he glared down the man as he took out another capsule, the last one, and injected it.

"I assume you know a lot about us Destrillians, and yet you overlooked something. I've been pumping Distrum into my body for the last few minutes. I wont be feeling as fatigued as usual now and you certainly have more to deal with. So come on scum, lets see what you can really do"

As Lokka finished his sentence, Shields glinted around his flesh and in the air around him. He'd been playing the defensive card for the duration of the battle, eying up Vollerei and his abilities, but now it was time to go on the offensive. He thrust his injured arm forward and the shields nearby flew full force at the man with incredible speed.

"You think you can beat me THAT EASY?!"

Vollerei spoke as the leaped sidewards to avoid the shields, he was clearly aware of the Distrum yet hadn't cared until this point, as it was obvious that this person in front of him was only going to hide behind his shields and keep trying cheap shots. Finally he had gotten fed up and called out to another part of the room.

"Yo Veya! This asshole just keeps hiding behind his goddamn shields and it's pissing me off....SWITCH!"

Following the words he bolted in the direction of the person he had been addressing, and as they crosses paths, the pair grabbed one another's arms, spun the other around and launched off each other at great speed in the direction of their new opponents. Inveja then landed a mere couple of feet in front of Lokka and glared at him with the same sinister glowing eyes that Vollerei had.

"So you're the one who can conjure barriers then? Well, let's see how your barriers fair against my Strangelets!"

She next made her hand into a fist which immediately became covered in a dark, shiny substance and threw a punch aiming for Lokka's chest.

If it hadn't been for the distrum then Lokka would barely have been able to launch himself off his shield. The punch missed by a few inches but what concerned Lokka the most was this strange energy signature this new woman was emitting, especially in her hand.

As he jumped over the tables Lokka threw more energy at his opponent. He didn't know who these people were but they weren't human and they weren't Destrillians. That was the most frightening part. It didn't matter. Lokka had no choice but to engage and defeat them in this circumstance, and he couldn't dwell on it now.

Forcing tables out of the way he started to run rings around the woman, firing more and more blasts at her with little care for their trajectory. He wasn't hoping for them to connect. He was trying to encapsulate her and by the looks of things it had worked.

"Are you sure you don't want your big friend to switch back with you lady?"

"No I'm good. And unfortunately for you I'm no longer in the mood to play games."

Following the words Inveja then slammed her left hand onto the ground and the black substance began spreading along the floor in a large mass that kept growing and growing. She looked up at Lokka and smirked, then the Strange matter began to spread out and move fast along the floor in his direction and surround him. It kept getting closer and closer, enveloping everything in it's path, until it suddenly stopped. Inveja's smirk then changed to an expression of disappointment which seemed to have been caused by a new presence in the room.

"Seems like it's your lucky day, but next time you won't be so fortunate."

And with that the mass of Strange matter began to subside and as it shrunk back to a pool in front of Inveja's feet it disappeared completely. She gave Lokka a smile and tilted her head to the side slightly, then walked over to a nearby bar stool, placed herself on it and called out to someone unseen.

"Alright what is it you want now? We were kinda in the middle of something ya know..."

OSEA, SOMEWHERE IN THE WESTERN SUBURBS

The streets were quiet, families had retired to their homes now that the sun was down, and engaging in the usual evening activities such as preparing dinner and watching television. Everything was calm and peaceful, at least it was, as the sound of a motor vehicle could be heard driving down the empty streets of the suburbs. The vehicle was a black sedan which looked to be a rather expensive model, all shiny and clean as though it had just rolled off the assembly line. The car turned around a corner, and cruised down the road before slowing and finally coming to a graceful halt in front of a fairly ordinary-looking house.

The car's back door opened and a woman enveloped in a long green cape with beautiful orange hair stepped out of it and looked up at the dwelling that stood before her. Vanagloria then made an expression of satisfaction as this was definitely the correct destination, then motioned towards the unseen driver in the front of the vehicle to wait and began walking towards the house. As she pushed the gate open and stepped through, she suddenly heard a low growling noise and noticed a mid-sized dog standing between her and the house, obviously intent of preventing her from passing. Vana ignored the creature and took another step, then the dog barked at her and began to leap in attack, however suddenly there was a quick purple flash followed by silence, and Vana continued walking.

The porch lights lit up as clearly someone inside had heard the dog's noise. Vana stopped in front of the door which opened seconds later to find a man who was about 30 staring at her, puzzle at the fact there was a young girl standing on his porch staring at him.

"H-hello can I help you miss?"

Vana smiled at him and calmly asked.

"Greetings sir, might I inquire if this is the residence of a Helena Oakley?"

"Well yes it is, I'm her husband Warren."

"A pleasure Warren. I came here hoping to see her, I'm an old acquaintance who happened to be in town."

Warren hesitated for a moment, but since this sweet-looking girl with an innocent expression seemed friendly enough, he turned around and called out into the house.

"Helena? You have a visitor at the door." And as the sound of another person's steps got closer a voice replied

"At this hour? Who could it possibly-" She reached the doorway and stopped as she saw the woman standing there. She looked puzzled for a moment at the young girl, wearing what appeared to be an over-extravagant outfit under a cape of all things. The attire made her wonder if this girl was an Audoulan noble as only such people wore outfits this unusual. Trying hard to remember if she knew this person, she then noticed her long Orange hair and matching eyes and something in her mind clicked.

"Maria... Artois LeClerc?"

The girl responded to the words in a positive tone

"So you remembered?"

"Yes, it was difficult to forget since you were always persistent on people calling you by your full name." She then paused for a moment and awkwardly said "I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but honestly I thought you were dead since I remember hearing you'd disappeared after some incident nearly eight years ago."

The words made 'Maria' giggle before replying

"Oh my my people jump to such silly conclusions. No actually I moved to Audoula to live with a relative there."

"Oh I see, well please, do come in." And motioned for her to enter. As 'Maria' walked in, Helena couldn't help but notice a very peculiar-looking symbol on the back of her cape that seemed like some bizarre ying-yang eye in front of a diamond shaped object. She was still very confused by the visit as the last time she had seen Maria was eight years ago during a beauty pageant that both of the girls had entered in. She also recalled the other girl as being very prideful with narcissistic tendencies, and practically took the term 'sore loser' to the next level when she lost to Helena and stormed out in a terrifying rage. A few days after that there was some kind of incident involving Maria's family but Helena couldn't recall what it was, she'd thought something had happened to Maria but considering she's here now it must've been something else. But still something seemed very unusual for her to just turn up out of the blue after all these years...

"My what a lovely home you have here" 'Maria remarked as she walked into the living room.

"Thanks, it's nothing too flashy but hey, it's home" Helena replied, after which a pair of small children came darting around the corner, one possibly chasing the other, however the pair stopped in their tracks as they saw an unfamiliar girl stranding in front of them.

"Mommy? Who's the strange lady?" One of them asked.

"She's an old acquaintance of mine who came to visit, but never mind that, you two should be getting ready for bed so hurry now." And motioned for them to head to their room, to which they gave 'Maria' another puzzled look then charged off one after the other.

"Sorry about that, they can be very straight forward at times" Helena said embarrassingly.

"Quite so." She then paused for a moment and added.

"However....I can't stand putting up this charade anymore, and it's just so dreadfully boring." After which her pupils suddenly shifted into long, reptilian-like slits.

Helena was confused by what she had just said. Charade? What was she going on about now, could she honestly still be spiteful after eight years? No that would just be sil-

Her thoughts were cut off as the lights suddenly went out, then a loud noise followed by a purple flash, and the next thing she knew, 'Maria' had turned around with her arm extended, and Warren was slumped against the wall, with a large burn mark on his chest.

"WARREN!" Helena screamed out loud, then turned to the other woman.

"MARIA!? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

'Maria' simply lowered her arm and with a dark expression bluntly stated.

"That's not my name." 'Maria' replied and closed her eyes.

"What?!"

She then suddenly opened her eyes which were now dark masses with small round pupils that glowed red and stated in a sharp tone. "My name is Vanagloria, remember it well pathetic creature."

Helena was completely terrified, this person that stood before her had just killed her husband by doing some movement with her hand and now had glowing eyes. All she was certain of now was that whoever they were, they clearly weren't human.

"Stay back! What do you want from me?!" She pleaded at the grinning figure before her, who simply made a thinking gesture before replying

"Hrmmm let's see.....how about retribution?"

"Retribution? Is this all because you lost to me at that pageant?!"

"To be straightforward....yes."

"But why?! It was just a silly contest. What kind of disturbed person dwindles over unimportant things that happened long ago then decides to go after the person who happened to place better than them?"

Vana then simply laughed at the words, and bluntly replied.

"....me."

The next thing that happened seemed virtually impossible to Helena, as a series of purple streams of energy manifested out of thin air and began circling around Vana, who then starting walking slowly in her direction. She backed up into the kitchen, then common sense kicked in and she darted towards the phone, but was too late as one of the purple streams circling Vana then broke off and slammed into the phone, vaporizing it and a section of wall behind it. The sudden impact made Helena stumble backwards and she fell onto the kitchen floor. As she tried to get back on her feet she was kicked in the chest by Vana who was now looming over her with a large, sinister grin.

"Decisions, decisions....what to kill first I wonder? You, or those little brats you spawned."

Helena's heard froze at the words. It was clear her own life was going to be ended at the hands of this psycho....but not them....anything but them.

As a last ditch attempt she tried to launch herself off the ground past Vana and hopefully be able to make it to her children's room and get them out of here. However as she moved past the other woman and though she was going to make it, she was stopped cold by a sudden impact in her back. Had something hit her? She couldn't tell but knew she had to keep moving and tried to get back up, but then felt another impact, which then made her look over her shoulder to see two kitchen knives sticking out of her back. The pain then began to rush through her body as her nervous system finally registered the wounds, and yet still she tried to get back up.

The resistance Helena was putting up was really starting to piss Vana off. This pathetic human needed to die right now, and as painfully as possible. So Vana removed two large kitchen knives from the drawn, and with the entire force of her body lept onto her prey and plunged the two sharp utensils into their back. She then leant over the woman's ear and whispered

"Oh by the way, I never did get to congratulate you on winning the contest....but better late than never right?"

She finished her sentence by violently twisting the knives, causing Helena to scream uncontrollably at the agonizing pain. Blood was pouring from her body at an alarming rate, and the pain was starting to numb as her body started shutting down, however Vana had no intention of letting her victim slip away so easily. She pulled both the knives out of the woman's back, turned her over so this person that she hated so much could see her face with the demonic eyes glaring down at their pitiful existence, and finally she placed both knives on either side of the human's neck.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I GIVE YOU THE WINNER OF THE 7017 OSEA BEAUTY PAGEANT, MISS HELENA MAYER!!!"

Those words would be the last thing Helena would ever hear, as Vana pulled both knives across the helpless woman's neck and completely tore it open.

With her opponent now a bloody wreck on the floor, Vana stood up and looked down on the corpse. She had the most insanely joyous expression on her face and began to tremble with joy, then began laughing so loud it was almost like screaming.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH HAHAHAHAHA!!! I DID IT! I I WON! I WON THE CONTEST! THERE'S NO ONE PRETTIER THAN ME NOW! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"

Elsewhere in the house, the two small children could do nothing but hide in their room and listen to the screams of their mother being killed by a monster and tremble in fear. The house was now dead silent, but neither of them dared to move. As they continued to hide the sound of footsteps became louder every second until they stopped right outside the room. Shortly after, the door began to slowly open, revealing a dark shadow with glowing red eyes gazing right at them. The demonic figure then raised it's right arm, which was holding something that seemed like a ball, and tossed the item into the room. As it rolled across the floor it stopped in the moonlight leaking in from the window, which revealed the ball to have eyes, a mouth, nose, even hair. The two children were now staring in horror at the severed head of their mother and started to cry, to which Vana started laughing at.

"You didn't think I'd forgotten you were here, did you? Silly, silly children."

Bright purple screams on energy began to form and circle around Vana once again....

Eyes wide with alarm, the shadowy pulse of a headache had disappeared back into the recesses of his mind as quickly as it had come. But it had been there. He had felt it.

A bullet tore by him, tearing a thin line across his shirt sleeve. It certainly felt real.

Thrown off balance by the emergence of the migraine in this dream world Kerr was forced to go on the defensive, narrowly dodging and avoiding another burst of bullets that cracked the floor he had been standing on just moments before.

For such large droids, they moved surprisingly fast. Not quite fast enough to keep up with their rapidly moving target however. They were certainly faster than he remembered; was this a consequence of being in the dream like state? Or was he simply less competent than he had been before he had escaped Viola?

The doubt momentarily lingered in his mind, keeping him stationary for a fraction of a second too long. Then there was a sickening crunch and before he knew it he was on the ground, his vision blurred and covered in a thick milky red haze. He was aware of the fresh blood leaking from a wound to his head and running in rivulets down the side of his face, but not quite aware enough to locate it. His entire skull felt numb from the blow, and trying to process what had just happened was taking time; it was completely unintelligible.

Don’t think. Just act.

Instinct.

He saw the soldier looming over him, three droids close behind. The man was sneering at him, his grin wide and overconfident, his face brutal and scarred. He was raising the rifle – time seemed to be slowing down, but maybe that was just from the concussion. Blood was dripping from the rifle butt. His blood.

Move. Move or die.

There was the faintest clicking noise as he began to squeeze the trigger.

The bullet smashed a tile on the formerly pristine white floor.

The guard barely had time to register a scream as a bloody Kerr drove his fist into the man’s neck, doubling him over and making him gasp scratchily as his crippled body forced itself to try and inhale air through his destroyed windpipe.

The headache was blinding as Kerr snatched the guards assault rifle from his hands as he fell to the floor, he was barely standing up straight and his eyesight was obscured by the sweeping wave of blood that was flowing freely down the right side of his face. Bringing up the rifle with one hand he fired a short burst at the nearest droid, holding down the trigger just long enough to feel the effects of the recoil on his wrist. He had aimed for the optical sensor and sure enough he was rewarded with the shattering of the red blinking screen located on the ‘head’ unit of the droid.

Time. This bought him a little time, he thought as he leapt across the table; hitting it and sliding into a roll off the far side, he landed on his back, slightly more painfully than he intended, but alive and free from bullet holes. The door was close by, just a few meters away. The next few minutes passed in a blur, the concussion had definitely blurred and darkened his vision and the coppery taste of his own blood was making it difficult to concentrate on evading the bullets.

He dove through the double doors of the Viola conference room and out onto the corridors. It was all so familiar, even though he had only ever been here a few times. He could barely remember those few and far between experiences of the upper levels of Viola and he definitely had not passed through this higher level of the building during his escape from the facility. The dream world seemed to reflect this, mirroring what he was able to recall. The pitch black shadows that seemed to flood the formerly grand corridors and board rooms were probably filling in for the blank gaps in his memory. Whatever this place was, it was being created from what he had been able to remember before he had come to this place, wherever it was. His memory was still a bit spotty on that particular issue.

As he broke into a short jog, ducking through the ever increasingly labyrinthine and more shadowy collection of corridors, his mind began to focus less and less on the guards and drones that were pursuing him and more and more on the location of this place. This recreation of Viola was not nearly accurate, not now that he was branching out through doors and down corridors that his actual physical body had never passed through. More and more of the blanks were being filled in with shadows. Invisible walls, whose blackness seemed to go on infinitely but prevented him from straying from this predetermined path through the maze. The effect was more than frustrating, it was maddening beyond comprehension and bordering on the insane.

The more he felt the claustrophobic nature of this place prick at his mind and nerves, the less conscious he became of his pursuers. The shouts of the guards and the slow, metallic clank of the heavy droids footsteps seemed to be fading away to nothingness. This place itself was becoming his enemy; it had found a new tactic with which to torment him, given that physical provocation had not resulted in his destruction.

The darkness had begun to spill out onto the floor now, barely illuminating the way forward as he followed the snakelike twists and turns of this spider web of corridors.

Perhaps it went on forever.

Perhaps that was the point.

Various human cultures and religions had personified this idea as something called Hell, where those wicked souls were sent to be tormented for all eternity to repent for the crimes they had committed whilst alive. While Kerr had traditionally scoffed at the idea, he could certainly see how the term would apply to his present situation. He had escaped one group of torment to one that was even more infuriating to his keen, logical mind.

He was lost, there was no clear directive or mission to follow. The path swerved and doubled back on itself, forcing him to choose crossroad after crossroad, more than once forcing him into a dead end. It was as though this place he was in was itself sentient, reading his mind and forcing him into situations it would think he would find challenging, both physically and mentally.

He was no stranger to physical altercations, so the initial challenge had been nothing major to worry about, but this feeling was forcing a nearly crippling level of hopelessness upon him. No new direction to go in and no mission to follow...for the first time since he had left Viola he was surrounded by uncertainty, literally – in every direction the formerly familiar walls of the Violan facility had melted away completely into oblivion, leaving only a pale grey path along the floor.

Trying to lessen the effect that this place was having on his mind, Kerr began to rack his memories about how he came to be here. Nearly as frustrating as the place itself was the murky haze that surrounded the most recent events of his life. He remembered reuniting the with the other Destrillians, guided to the memory by the anger he had felt about being bested in combat by Thetis Alcesteos.

No, not bested. It had been a draw.

He felt his head throb again, but this time he smirked. Now the head wound made sense. He remembered the impact of Thetis hurling the fire hydrant at his head; he remembered being masked in the blood from the substantial gash above his eye.

He remembered how much energy he had exerted in that fight. He remembered feeling so weak.

His limbs began to ache and the familiar flame of anger igniting inside him at the mention of the word weak. The smirk on his face grew wider; between this aching feeling and the savage cut on his head, he could tell that his consciousness was nearing the surface. Whatever this place was, it was beginning to fail to contain his mind. Minute by minute he could feel more sensation. He felt more and more like his old self, the self he had been before he had been taken to wherever here was.

His memory flashed back to the club, to the vivid hallucination. He had been with all the other Destrillians, were they in a similar situation to him now? Had they experienced the same bizarre hallucinations he had?

Were they all trapped in their own personal hells too?

Flash. The newcomer, Stolz, goggles and ash blonde hair. This had to have been his doing. Surely? Appearing on their location like that, demonstrating such Destrillian power and yet being recognisably not Destrillian. He had led them into this trap. This place of nightmares, and memories.

Flash. He remembered the hallucination. A bloody, skeletal corpse growing flesh across ruined features, growing the familiar black and white choppy hair. Like piano keys.

His mind reacted instantly. This place was reacting to what was most damaging to his psyche, first throwing physical challenges at him, then a claustrophobic maze and confusing atmosphere to torture his mental faculties. The last thing he wanted was for it to react to those memories.

The grey light on the floor dimmed. The blackness was swallowing it all, drowning the light, spreading over the path like oil over a polished surface.

“No!” Kerr shouted. His voice was raspy. “No! No, you are not doing this!”

There was no more light present. He was alone, a solitary speck of dust in an ocean of blackness that stretched out further in every direction than any mind could have ever imagined.

“Don’t.” The last word came out as a plea, a whisper. Full of anguish. The dark world around him seemed to shudder in response. Maybe it was laughing at him.

“Don’t do what, sport?”

Kerr whirled around and was rewarded for his trouble by the wet cracking sound of a fist breaking his nose. For the second time he found himself on the floor, fresh blood flowing freely from both nostrils, and he could already feel the deep, dark bruises erupting around his shattered nose. He lay spread eagle on the floor, soaking in the pain and not bothering to move, glassy black eyes looking up at the sky, listening to the familiar voice and watching the familiar figure walk over and sit down next to his prostrate form.

“Aren’t you going to say anything? It’s been a while you know,” Ariel Regan asked, looking down at him with inquisitive eyes. Her hair was still the same black and white, and she still wore the matching pants and vest that she had worn during their stay at Viola.

Kerr stayed quiet. Truthfully, he had considered what he was going to say if he ever saw Ariel again countless times in the back of his mind, hundreds of ways to say ‘I’m sorry’, thousands of ways to explain his actions, to find ways of blaming somebody else.

“You aren’t even real, what would be the point?” he asked without even thinking. It was an instinctual response. His mind was still catching up to the shock of seeing her here with him again, still lingering on this dreamscape he had found himself in.

Ariel shrugged her shoulders, “Did that punch to the face feel real? Would you like another?”

“My mind makes it feel real.” Kerr responded in his familiar monotone.

“So if I was to shoot you in the chest, your mind will make that feel real too?” she said coldly. There was barely any discernable trace of her usual easy-going voice in that sentence.

Kerr didn’t reply. He just lay there on his back, trying to ignore her presence.

“You think about me every day Kerr. You can’t just ignore me,” his guilt said, reading his mind.

“What do you want?” he asked flatly. The initial shock of seeing the visage of Ariel was wearing off – this person was not Ariel. It looked, talked, and sounded like her...but she was dead, and this wasn’t real. Not real enough to waste an apology on.

“Thought you might have something to say to me,” she said.

“I have nothing to say to a figment of my imagination,” Kerr fired back, and Ariel gave him a nasty smirk.

“This whole place has been a figment of your imagination and you still managed to give Abaddon a piece of your mind. Can’t spare the time to do the same for me? Somewhere else you have to be, Kerr?” she said slowly, her voice brimming with hostility, but controlled enough not to let it spill out.

“You aren’t real, so it wouldn’t matter,” Kerr repeated with a tired sigh, pulling himself into a sitting position so that he was sitting next to the being that was wearing Ariel’s face.

“Doesn’t mean that the apology wouldn’t matter; you’ll never be able to move on unless you do it,” Ariel persisted, noting Kerr’s scowl as the Destrillian of gravity got to his feet.

“Maybe I don’t want to move on yet,” he said wearily.

Before he could even react, Ariel’s foot had shot out and hit the side of his knee, instantly knocking his legs out from under him and causing Kerr to fall flat on his front. He had barely had enough time to throw his arms up in front of his face to prevent further damage to his head, but he could tell that his knee was possibly broken. The pain was so blinding and raw that he had to fight not to scream out loud.

Then the world in front of him turned bright white and he unintentionally gave a harsh cry of pain as Ariel’s foot connected with his nose for a second time, snapping his head back and lifting him onto his back. The pain was unreal and overwhelming, eclipsing everything else. His opponent, his guilt, and the surreal and nightmarish world he had found himself in. Absolutely everything withered away in its wake.

“Stop being stupid!” Her voice seemed far away now, even though she was shouting, sounding very much like the Ariel he remembered.

“I’m not,” he choked out, voice cracking from the lightning shots of pain radiating from his broken nose.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?!” Ariel yelled, reaching down and grabbing him by the scruff of his tattered shirt to pull him to his feet. Her eyebrows were furrowed in anger and her face mean and hard. “And yes Kerr, yes you are doing this to yourself!”

She let him go, and Kerr found himself barely able to stand on his feet. The pain was so overwhelming he was barely able to stay conscious from the pain in his face.

Kerr didn’t reply; he knew that whoever this being was, this manifestation of his guilt brought to life by this place, it would be able to read his mind anyway, and judging by the look on her face, she had done just that.

“You’re pathetic you know that? And what happened to me will happen to you before long if you don’t change that. Some poor idiot will put a bullet in your back for their own dumb cause. Or because you’re too stubborn to stop ignoring all the times you’ve fucked people over, one of those Destrillians, the closest thing you have to a family, will do it.”

Kerr didn’t say anything, trying not to let anything she said register, trying to submerge himself in the pain as an excuse to stop listening to Ariel’s tirade.

“Shut up,” Kerr snarled back at her, like a defensive and vicious, but wounded animal that had been backed into a corner.

Instead of shouting at him some more Ariel’s face contorted into a vicious expression of frustration at Kerr’s stubbornness, throwing her arm back into an enormous haymaker punch.

Kerr flinched, expecting the same sensation of blinding pain he had experienced before.

Her fist made contact with his face, but the pain never came.

And everything went completely black.

More and more dark energy began to bleed from the ground in tarry rivulets as their world around them began to collapse into emptiness. The lights above them flickered, the room becoming more and more unstable by the second.

The giant suit hefted two of them up by the feet and literally flung them towards Kram, both of them swinging sword and whip with murderous intent. The swings drove gashes into the ground where Kram would have been, relentlessly driving forwards as the giant entered the fray as well.

Kram’s sidestep was followed up by a pushing blow of energy that forced the suit with the whip backwards, but not before it lashed outwards to barely brush the side of Kram’s cheek with a caressing blade.

Kram openned his two palms and focused on the strength of his mind, attempting to harness his new powers for this fight. dark matter flowed out of his hands and shot out a swarm of dark grasshoppers towards Liner.


"Shit!" Liner said with irritation as he tried swatting the dark matter grasshoppers aside, most of them landing on his body and began draining his energy.

"Fool. Ssssstep back." Snake hissed as Liner foolishly struggled removing the dark matter induced grasshoppers from his body. Behemoth charged past them in an attempt to land a critical strike on Kram.



"DECADE. KIVA. DELTA. ORGA. SUPER CLIMAX. SHINING. ULTIMATE RISING. MARK VI. DULLUHAN VALKYRIA. " Behemoth's malfunctioning belt continued to spout colourful yet random words , to Kram it was a surreal feeling hearing these words as a large armoured monstrosity continued battering the laboratory in an attempt to kill him. His swift movements and gymnastics knowledge only preventing him from being struck by one of Behemoth's attacks.

A whip then darted from behind Behemoth and struck kram's right shoulders, sending the young man flying towards The Clock Up Chamber's glass. He wheezed for a moment as blood began blossoming from his right shoulders, the whip and Behemoth's imposing figure charged directly at him.

Kram jumped to the left and darted further as Behemoth crashed against the reinforced glass of the Clock Up Chamber, frightening Tao inside.



"Hey, dumbass! I'm right here!" Kram called out smugly to the incapcitated Behemoth. It turned its large monstrous head and tilted, looking back and forth at the glass it destroyed and got itself stuck in, while looking at Tao inside as well, shaking but standing firm and watching the fight inside.

"Hey, big guy! Stop dawdling like a dumbass! You're embarassing us for fuck's sake!" Liner angrily called out from beside Hopper's safety point.

"Liner, shut up and save your energy.." Hopper said indifferently. Liner growled as he slowly caught his breath from the barrage prior.

"If you gotsss time to dawdle and whine like a pusssssy, Liner. Then sssstep up and take that little sssshhhit down. We're not the only onessss who want him dead. " Snake hissed back at his incapacitated comrade as he charged another whipping strike at Kram. Kram dodged them accurately as Behemoth slowly recovered and shook its head from the concussion of the charge.



"Behemoth, there'sssss the boy! Take him down!" Snake hissed at Behemoth, pointing at Kram who quickly stole another sheet from the lab's various instruments to clean his fresh cut from the whip, Behemoth charged again, its fists flailing as it jumped high and crushed the desks Kram had fought in against Shark Spear and Sniper Rider prior.

"ZANKI. KABUKI. PUNCH HOPPER. GAI. RAIA." Behemoth said as he flailed the desks aside like cardboard paper, Kram backing to the corner slowly as his opponents edged onto him closer and closer.



"Hah! without the desks, the kid's just a sitting duck! Go Behemoth!" Liner said smugly.

"Tread carefully, Liner. Underestimate the boy and you'll die... We don't have Sniper to cover us anymore, if those two don't break the boy in 2 minutes, we'll be forced to take matters into our own hands..." Hopper said as he observed Snake and Behemoth harrasing Kram.

"Heh! No need to tell me, boss." Liner said as he stretched to regain his motor functions after seemingly losing them from Kram's prior attack.

***

Death was an endless sense of falling. An emptiness of the space underneath. But unlike the true feeling of falling in the other world, there was no air, no wind to brush against Kerr’s face, no way to orient oneself to the up or down. Simply a feeling of falling from an immeasurable height through an intangible medium down an endless abyss in simple, infinite blackness.

There was no way of knowing whether his body was lying face up or down, because there was no body to see. No foothold to grasp at, no matter how vainly it may have been. No ground, no wall, not even a supposed death trap to break the fall.

Even the despair that would normally come with such a concept seemed muted and faded. Virtually devoid of emotion, with only the metaphorical atmosphere of finality to support him. Even acceleration seemed moot for a place so far disconnected from reality.
No matter how close he reached light speed and beyond, it was impossible to gain mass from the firm laws of physics because there was no mass to begin with, and more importantly, no describable magnitude of speed, or acceleration at which Kerr was accelerating.

Just a vector.

Downwards.

A mass of nothingness travelling at a velocity of infinity down a distance of undefined with an acceleration of undeterminable, with a pinprick of despair wrapped around a singularity of thoughts that had no pull of gravity that could ever hope to counteract the direction or magnitude of the gravity of death. Not even gravity that Kerr could conjure up could ever hope to counteract the final fall either.

This is what I deserve.

The thought was emotionless, a statement directed at no-one, not even himself. Matter-of-factly. Others cycled around in this singularity, into a single direction but also downwards within Kerr.


This is what I deserve, and this is what it feels like.
This is what happened to me when I was reborn.
This is what happened to me again when I killed Ariel.
This is where I was when I was sent to stop the others from leaving.
This is where I stayed when Viola abandoned me.
This is where I stayed when I continued to hunt down the others.
This is where I was when I tried to kill Thetis.
This is where I always was since I was born.
This is where Ariel is.
This is where I deserve to join her.


This is not you.


It was an anomaly, a seemingly contradictory thought, but no less emotionless and matter-of-factly as the ones that preceded and succeeded it.


This is me.
This is what I did to the others who I killed.
This is the cause of my purpose.
This is who I am.


This is not you.


Again, it remained, an anomaly that was just as crystal clear as the others, lacking bias or emotional impact. From nowhere, against all odds of the constancy within death, others grew and manifested themselves like an infinitesimal tumour of the mind.


This is not you.
This is what happened to you when you were reborn.
This is what happened to you again when you killed Ariel.
This is where you were when you were sent to stop the others from leaving.
This is where you stayed when Viola abandoned you.
This is where you stayed when you continued to hunt down the others.
This is where you were when you tried to kill Thetis.
This is where you always were since you were born.
This is where Ariel is.
This is where you deserved to join her before.



The change was impossibly small, a single, logical change that split like a zygote into something different.

This is not you - now.
This is what you can stop right now.
This is the cause of a purpose you can change.
This is what you deserve.


The oblivion within Kerr’s fall did not falter, but then:

But this is something you can change.




Kerr woke.
He did not wake instantly. Only Jettison could detect the change in consciousness, but for all intents and purposes, he was barely conscious.
Feeling returned. An indescribable mixture of emotions made his heart constrict and his stomach muscles spasm, but functional control of his body eluded him. He remained motionless as he attempted to move. His eyelids remained closed as he tried to open them.

Emotions died away once again into nothingness, but upon the skin of his cheeks, he could feel the faint, long-forgotten, but unmistakable sensation of dried tear tracks.


***

The lethal shower continued to rain down upon the battleground as Thetis further pushed the soldiers further and further back, faltering under the unstoppable penetrating power of the unholy rain.


“Very well, Number Six. Alcesteos is yours to do whatever you desire.”


As they faltered back into the darkness, a cone of water jackknifed into the ground, blasting the trees around them in a shockwave of wetness, stalling the fall of rain until the blast dissipated.
The rain began to collapse, heavier than ever, raging into a torrent as a figure stood up from the muddy crater around them, the disdain slicing through the air as raindrops gravitated towards both Thetis and the other.
Number Six's silhouette was framed by lightning, as she rolled her neck. "I'm going to enjoy gutting you, Thetis... Alcesteos." She drew out sibilance from her tongue, as the mud under their feet turned into a swamp-like slurry.


Aside from the sodden, untied blue robes hanging from her slight frame, Number Six was naked, and parting thick white bangs of hair away from her forehead revealed feral, yellow cat’s eyes, almost the same as the ones Thetis had seen in the mirror so many times before.
Not quite the same.

Shards of raindrops deflected off Number Six’s body and clothes and cut gashes into the ground around her, covered in a second impenetrable, glistening skin of water as the deadly rain intensified around them, turning all debris into finely-turned mulch.


“You remember yourself, at the very least, good.” Number Six caught Thetis’ expression with a twisted smirk that mirrored her contemptuousness and the true look of death in her face, the foremost and overwhelming desire to extinguish life.

“You remember the past. You remember everything that made you what you are now. You remember all the soldiers you slaughtered back then, how… powerful it made you feel. You took no pleasure from it. But I,” she said, motioning a glistening claw of water towards her chest, “it was the time of my life. Not even Distrum beat it. That was your life. You lived up to the expectations the humans made for you.”


The rain began to pool at Number Six’s feet, large tendrils of water began to gather at her arms and back, slowly growing longer and thicker, until they were longer than her arms, snake-like and writhing in hatred and bloodthirsty rage. “But you forgot ONE thing, Thetis.”


For a moment, the extensions of water seemed to falter into the slick around them as Number Six reached down to grab fistfuls of mud. But when she rose to scream at her, she pulled out from the ground massive, crushing, whip-like tentacles of water that extended out for more than a hundred feet, the width of a man and enough force to completely smash a nearby tree into splinters effortlessly.


“YOU FORGOT, ALCESTEOS, YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE ELSE! YOU DON’T NEED THE HUMANS, YOU DON’T NEED A HOME, AND YOU CERTAINLY DON’T NEED THAT LITTLE WHORE YOU LIVE WITH!”

Two of the massive whips swung together as it tried to crush Thetis into a flattened pulp between them, sending up a crest of water-logged mud.


“I am what you could be, Thetis – no, I AM WHAT YOU SHOULD BE! And when you are finally mine, when you are me, I WILL BE THE GOD THAT WE WERE MADE TO BE, AND I WILL BE ALL THAT YOU WILL NEED!”


***

The world around them warped back into normality as the young woman materialised from nowhere, leaning lightly on her metal staff. Jettison remained standing as the fight subsided. Black-clad figures moved around the walls of the nightclub, disappearing into darkness as flames were rapidly put out and the nightclub was gradually restored to its original state.
"I need these people."

Jettison motioned towards the two Destrillians, slightly confounded by the change in pace. "I need them for something, and I can't let you kill them." Her voice was flat, without a trace of irony or sarcasm.


Vollerei's expression dropped lower than it was before, obviously unimpressed by Jettison's request.

"Man you really are a buzzkill..."

After which he released his grip from Fiona's neck, brushing his hand across her shoulder as he walked away.

Inveja, perched on a barstool, just let out a short 'hmph' before adding in a mocking tone -

"Whatever, do your thing, play your twisted little games. But we have our orders and will not wait forever while you wank off in some virtual fantasy..."


A small sting surged from where the strange man made contact, but Fiona thought nothing of it. The fire destrillian was far more concerned about the fight that just ended without her beating the shit out her opponent. Fiona wouldn't just let this fight end like this. Her body and mind ached, but that didn't matter. She pulled herself from the personal mould made in the wall and followed after the strange acid man.

"HEY! You think this is over, asshole? No one starts a fight with me and just fucking walks away!!"

"Now now, someone needs to control their temper..."


And before the destrillians could react, Vana raised a bar stool above her head, and swung it down with all her force onto Fiona's head, sending the fire user unconscious.

Before any other blow could be made, however, Jettison blocked Fiona’s body with the pole in her hand, hefting Fiona's limp body over a slender shoulder, turning away from them. "There is unfinished business."
Sensing the need to explain herself, perhaps further than she would have liked to, she turned her head back towards them. "You know there are others out there making these sick war machines out of people. The more we know, the better."

A corner of her mouth turned upwards in a backhanded gesture, as she shifted the weight of Fiona on her shoulder. "After all, I think taking out Denann and what remains of Viola is doing you as much of a favour as it is doing myself one."


She walked off with Fiona draped over her shoulder. “I’ll send Nova over to continue discussing business.”

They remained seated while she walked back up to the chambers with the pods, the rest of the gang silently filing up behind her in their black garb as they entered. Nova was sitting at the desk with the headgear, looking disinterested, but Jettison knew he was anything but.


“Nova, I need you to negotiate with the trio down there. Keep them satisfied with the terms.” Jettison placed Fiona on a mattress at the side of the room, while Nova jumped to his feet like an eager dog, pulling a business suit jacket from nowhere and forcing it onto his torso – the shoulders instantly ripped with an inch-long tear on each side, pushing a pair of tatty reading glasses onto the thick bridge of his nose.

“Better me than you, girl. Damnit, woman, we’re playin’ with fire here, you know that? I ain’t worth much, but you – you got empires to fuck up, and those bitches aren’t gonna fuck themselves, ya know.”
Nova hefted a thick briefcase and adjusting the lapels of his suit jacket, he walked towards the door as gang members opened it for him. “Shit’s getting’ real real soon, girl, and you ain’t the half of it.”

“I got your back, Nova.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll call if I need ya.”

The door silently closed behind him, although his heavy footsteps could be heard creaking the floorboards and stomping down the stairs. Jettison turned back to Fiona, stroking the back of her hand down an incredibly pale alabaster-skin cheek and paling lips, her eyes glinting at the sight of the mattress staining red from under Fiona’s head. As she ran her fingers through Fiona’s limp hair, stuck strands separated from her clammy forehead and were pushed back by Jettison’s motion. She found it, wet sticky damp at the back of her head which matted her hair, smelled like wood ashes and tasted like burnt rust as Jettison sucked it off her fingers.


Her voice dropped to an inaudible murmur as she inserted Fiona into a chair and put her headgear back on. “If you look into the abyss, when does the abyss look back into you..?”


***

Nova stepped downwards with a definite stride in his step, gripping the briefcase with a meaty hand as he ran the plan over his mind. This was something he excelled at, a negotiation with enough muscle to intimidate, or at the very least (in his mind) impress. Those three were mighty fine work, and in a different time he perhaps would have been hanging along with them, punching out some bitches or taking some motherfuckers down, but as it stood he and Jettison were just the opposite side on their coin, and as their normally quite attractive faces were skewed with boredom, it became just as apparent when Nova decided to take the toughest looking bar-stool remaining to sit down on.

“So, we’re here again.” Nova folded his arms as he placed the briefcase on a table between them, tearing another inch of suit jacket shoulder on each side as he did so.

“This, ah whatchu call it? Destrillians? Shit, we have plans for them as well. Now, I know that you got your master plan, girl, and y’all gonna get that soon enough. No-one sayin’ otherwise. But we got business to take care of first. We all got business to take care of. And those bitches we got hooked up upstairs, they’re our go-to guys. We gonna take out two birds with one stone. We can take a motherfuckin’ load of birds out with one stone.”


Vana flicked her hair to the side, and looking away from Nova simply replied, "And why should we care what business or plans you have with these little destrillians? Our cause is the only thing that matters, our cause takes priority over ev-ery-thing."


“Aiite, I get where you’re coming from, girl, and I’ma let you finish, but I’ma let you finish when I’m finished. So, just need ya to shut the fuck up for a sec. Won’t be long.” Nova wiped the light sweat off his forehead with the back of a meaty hand. He was always the master of being offensive and moderate at the same time, and marveled at his own self-restraint. If he hadn’t known any better, he would have already punched someone by now.


“We got a couple bunches of guys we’re targeting right now, and this ain’t just the normal hits we get done every now and then. I ain’t baggin’ yer skill, because I’d be fuckin’ stupid to do that. We’re talkin’ the big fish here, but we gotta do it nice and quiet. Can’t be anyone they know. Has to drop off the face of the earth, like the motherfuckers never existed. Not a trace. Nothin’. As much as I like to see you and that hot ass of yours blowin’ shit up and tearing it apart, anythin’ less than fuckin’ surgery ain’t gonna do. So that’s where these guys come in. And I know for a fact that someone somewhere in the Big Three tagged all yer faces. We take these clowns from the news, this whole thing’s just another accident.”


Inveja and Vollerei scoffed at the man's words, and Vana simply smiled.

"Big Three? You think beings such as ourselves are concerned with such lowly scum as organized crime? The REAL big three would have those hooligans crying to their mommies. We have so many high power connections that could wipe them out at the drop of a hat. HA! As if we'd have to worry about such inferior creatures..."


“Y’all wanna be gods, right? Let ‘em simmer for a moment. Let ‘em cause all the shit in the world. And then, at the right time, take ‘em out. Then the world’s in your hand. Besides, we’ll have an eye on them. We’ll know what to do.”

The trio were in complete silence for a good ten seconds before erupting into terrifying laughter.


"You think THAT is what we're after?"

"Geez all the crap you put in the air down here must be really affecting your brain..."

"We have our orders and our orders are that the Destrillians must cease to exist, it's as simple as that my dear. Our leader wishes it so and therefore it will happen, regardless of if you permit us to or not. So word of the wise sweetie, when we've decided you've have enough time, you and the little girl better get out of our way."

Nova listened, raising his eyebrows at their remarks. This was going to be a long talk, and, if it got bad enough, he’d have to use his real assets.
He’d hate to take it out on such fine ladies, but the gentleman could suck on knuckle candy for all he cared.


***

The room was completely empty, although she instantly recognised it as her bedroom despite the pitch black darkness that her eyes took a while adjusting to. The air was still, and almost felt heavy like water. The silence felt like it was begging to be broken, but by what Fiona could not determine. The noise of bare feet shuffling on the carpet alerted her to another standing at the opposite side of the room, and she sat up to catch the sight of Thetis standing in front of her.

“Thetis? When the hell did you get here? What’s going on?”


Thetis ignored her, slowly walking towards her in a quiet shuffle. The air around them began to condense and it became harder and harder to move, the closer she came to Fiona.

“Can you answer me? What the fuck is wrong with you?”


Her jibe was met with only more silence as Thetis slowly pushed her back to the ground, which was when Fiona realised that they were both naked. The air around them condensed further into the viscosity of honey, and the world seemed to meld into one as the floor and ceiling melted into one single blur while Thetis ran her teeth down her neck and chest. Fiona tried to reach up to grab Thetis, but the longer their bodies touched, Fiona found it harder and harder to move, until her whole body was literally pinned to the floor while Thetis mounted her at the waist.

Her mind flooded with emotions that polarized into animal satisfaction and fight-or-flight suspicion.

WHY CAN'T I MOVE?! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!


Thetis' tongue ran up Fiona's body from navel to neck and ended with a sharp bite on the right side of Fiona's face with a jolt of pain that failed to ring alarm bells in her head until it was too late, and her eyesight dimmed to nothingness but Thetis' silhouette and a pair of feral yellow, doll-like and emotionless irises, which seemed to pierce through Fiona's own into the mind beyond her eyes.

“The..tis..why...stop...”


She managed a few strangled words before the weight of the air and the woman's body on top of her forced the air out of her and the world around her immobile body was replaced by a flood of water that forced its way down her nostrils and mouth, down her esophagus and through her spasming windpipe, while the doll-like Thetis on top of her continued to press against her and literally drag her nails and teeth down her body, hard enough to leave cuts that bled minute clouds of blood into the pinkening water around them.

The world in Fiona's mind collapsed as Thetis shapeshifted, maddening whispers forced into her mind as she was completely paralysed. She changed into someone completely other than Thetis. The others she had spent nights with before. Fleeting memories of grotesque humans as they took revenge on her, her whimsical actions of throwaway gestures of lust. They spent themselves on her immobile body and mind, drawing more and more cuts on her with their nails, teeth and tongue, forcing their way into her with overwhelming waves of pleasure and pain and a minute, needle-like undercurrent of outrage and shame.

The silences drilled themselves into her, as they further shapeshifted into Violan scientists, Violan soldiers, all the lives she had destroyed, all of the past that she had buried behind her. They spent themselves on her over and over again, rhythmic pulsing stabs of hatred, anger and fear, while her eyesight and mind lapsed further and further into nothing but a pink haze of the non-Thetis and the water clouded with her own blood.

Lokka - Jettison's Club


"Seems like it's your lucky day, but next time you won't be so fortunate."


Lokka examined the black matter that dissipated around Inveja. The fight had been cut short by another presence and it was clear it wouldn't resume any time soon, considering his opponent's stance and concentration had made a drastic change. He let his guard down a little but was still majorly aware of possible threats. He spun around to see this new figure almost materialise in the room. The appearance of the newcomer took Lokka by surprise as he saw a scruffy girl at the centre of everyone's attention call out to them whilst wielding a metal pole.
　
"I need these people. I need them for something, and I can't let you kill them."

The girl spoke seriously as she commanded Lokka's previous opponents. They seemed annoyed at this but obliged the girl nonetheless.

The firey Destrillian from earlier showed her anger as she demanded the fight resume but a swift attack from one of the enemies incapacitated her. Lokka barely had a chance to react to it but a look in the young staff-wielder's eye somehow made it seem like it wouldn't be a problem.
Lokka threw another glance at Vollerei and Inveja who had both relaxed at this point, fighting no more. Lokka was still overly confused by the situation.

What the hell was going on and who the hell was this new kid?

The girl, now showing unusual strength, hurled the Destrillian over her shoulder and proceeded to walk further into the club. She threw Lokka a glance and he knew was to go with her. There was no way he was staying with these three freaks anyway. He wiped the dust off his coat and followed the girl, leaving behind the trashed and charred battleground of the club.

Lokka waited patiently as the girl spoke with her subordinate and sent him to keep the three agitators busy. When they were done speaking, Lokka felt he should make the pleasantries.

"So I figure your not just a scrawny little kid. Who are you anyway?"

She barely gave him a second glance as she carried in her arms and lowered her into one of the pods. "I am the leader of the Soldiers Espain. You may call me Jettison." She sat at the tables with the headgear once more, emotionless.

Lokka had heard of these guys, Another of the many gangs here in Osea. The data on their leader had never been very clear and he'd never had the opportunity to deal with the group in person. Jettison may not have looked the part but she definitely suited the type of person you'd find leading a gang such as this.

He took the time to look around the room as Jettison was clearly preoccupied with more important things. Lokka soon realised what was going on. Looking around him he saw people laying unconcious in makeshift pods. Closer inspection and his senses him confirmed that these people were all Destrillians.

Impossible. I've been trying to track these guys down for the last 2 years and suddenly they appear in one place. What the hell was going on?

He looked at each of the Destrillians individually, still astounded that they were right here in the flesh. He'd read and memorized a lot of their individual files in the past with the hope of coming across them. He recognized the faces of Emma Johnson, Terra Michaels, Idris Savage and Thetis Alcesteos from his routine files on the other Viola facility. He also came across a male by the name Kerr Nordstrom. He had been an interesting case, as recorded by Viola, as he had not initially rebelled against the company.

Lokka looked closely at the girl Jettison had just laid down, the same girl that had torched the club and fought with the same pair that Lokka had. He'd already deduced that this must be Fiona Myrwind, the fire Destrillian, and this only confirmed that. He noticed another person in the room aswell. This person was adorned in a some kind of power suit, the kind of thing a super hero would wear. Judging by the build this person was male and in the same kind of trance that the other Destrillians were in. Lokka called out to Jettison.

"Who's this guy? Another Destrillian or something else?"

"They are all the same." Jettison's replies seemed noncommittal, distant as she immersed herself into the Destrillians' worlds. Her attention was distant, but her immersion into her surroundings kept her spatial awareness of everything sharp, including Lokka's persistence at conversation.

Lokka examined the man on the table again. If this guy was a Destrillian then he'd no doubt have had his data on file somewhere, but there was no way of knowing who it was while he was in the suit. Lokka fought the urge to take off the mans helmet and moved his attention away from him.

Lokka must have been in a dazed state due to the fighting because he failed to notice the presence of another individual in the room. A young looking girl had been there the whole time and in a concious state nonetheless. Well to Lokka it looked mostly like a girl. She seemed distressed by the situation she was in.

"Hey. Are you alright? Whats your name?"
　
The small child turned around, revealing an expression of viscous intent. However after they had given Lokka a glance over for a moment their expression suddenly became friendly, opening their bright eyes wider and giving a warm smile.

"Oh hai. I was about to impale you until I sensed your energy signature was the same as all our pod people over here." And patted their hand on one of the large devices next to them. "My name's Stolz by the way, and in case you hadn't figured it out by now - we're all going to die!" The latter words were spoken in an oddly perky tone.

Lokka took the words with a pinch of salt as the being in front of him definitely seemed in some way distressed with whatever was going on. He shot Jettison a quick glance, realising that she remained in deep concentration, connected to her system. He looked back at Stolz and gave a smile.

"Dont worry kid, I'm sure everythings going to be fine. We gotta stick together right?"

He patted Stolz' shoulder and winked.

Lokka wandered around the room a little more. If Jettison cared that he was snooping around then she sure was hiding it well. He begun closely examining some of the technology in the room. It was remarkable really. The Destrillians in the pods and the armored one laying in the corner were obviously somehow connected to Jettison herself, but how it worked exactly wasn't clear at this time. He didn't want to tamper with anything in the room with the fear that it would be harmful to the Destrillians.

Realising he wouldn't get anything more out of Jettison, and feeling too exhausted from the previous fight, Lokka decided to pull up a chair and rest for the moment. He kept a keen eye on Jettison and the Destrillians but more importantly, he watched the door.

Thetis – The Dream

Soldiers fell and corpses spasmed as they were cut down by rain that tore through the air like razors. Thetis smiled grimly as faceless cadavers jerked in the mud, flesh chewed away by the relentless torrent of water that fell from the sky.
“Very well, Number Six. Alcesteos is yours to do whatever you desire.” The troop of soldiers fell back, swallowed by the darkness as the rain intensified. Thetis watched faces fade to black as she roared back into the abyss.
“I’m not finished with you yet, Perkins!” The water prototype bounded in the direction of the disappearing soldiers, only to be thrown on her back by the impact of a cone of water ploughing into the ground. A flash of lightning, and the figure raised itself from the centre of the crater. What little colour Thetis had left in her face drained away. Her confidence fled, and for all her boasting and taunts – the water prototype was silent.

"I'm going to enjoy gutting you, Thetis... Alcesteos."
A voice rang clearly through the hiss of the rain. The face was fractured with a hungry grin, a sadistic mask that made Thetis wince as she looked at it. It was her, only, not her. Thetis’ mouth went dry as her lips parted in awe. “You remember yourself, at the very least, good.” The double’s words were cutting and cold. Blue hair hurled wildly over the doppelganger’s left shoulder, robes hanging awkwardly off her frame in a way that suggested little desire for modesty. Her body was nothing like Thetis’ toned, albeit skinny figure, each limb sculpted with the perfect musculature.

“You remember the past. You remember everything that made you what you are now. You remember all the soldiers you slaughtered back then, how… powerful it made you feel. You took no pleasure from it. But I,” Thetis scowled as the doppelganger spoke with pride that she longed to feel. How could she forget what she longed to deny? Yes, it was her ability to kill that made her different from humans, stronger, even. To kill, and feel no remorse. It was the Destrillian way. “it was the time of my life. Not even Distrum beat it. That was your life. You lived up to the expectations the humans made for you.” Something about number six’s tone of voice made a shiver run up Thetis’ spine. Expectations? Dr. Perkins had often spoken of those, or more accurately, how Thetis had never met them.

“But you forgot ONE thing, Thetis.” The water prototype tensed. Every cell in her body ached, every fibre of her being screaming at her to run, to run and survive. “YOU FORGOT, ALCESTEOS, YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE ELSE! YOU DON’T NEED THE HUMANS, YOU DON’T NEED A HOME, AND YOU CERTAINLY DON’T NEED THAT LITTLE WHORE YOU LIVE WITH!”
Number Six’s words made Thetis flinch. She felt like she was back at Viola, being lectured by Doctor Perkins.
Part of her wanted to cry.
She didn’t understand why this being, who was so much like her, could speak to her with so much hatred. Thetis had always wanted this power, yet at the same time, she was scared of losing herself to it. To start killing, only to find that she would be unable to stop. She had tried so hard to be herself. She had a life now, her own place, a job, and of course, she had Fiona. Number Six was right - Thetis had everything she wanted. Then why was she so unhappy?

Thetis screamed at her double, the shadow that spoke the truth that Thetis never wanted to hear.
“NO! SHUT UP!” The ground swelled beneath them as Number Six screeched, her voice scratching at Thetis’ eardrums like an iron nail on glass.
“I am what you could be, Thetis – no, I AM WHAT YOU SHOULD BE! And when you are finally mine, when you are me, I WILL BE THE GOD THAT WE WERE MADE TO BE, AND I WILL BE ALL THAT YOU WILL NEED!”

There was little time to respond as Thetis ducked beneath the two colossal whips of water, the landscape blurred by the unyielding downpour of rain. She was scared. Scared of the girl she had buried within her so long ago, scared of the being she could have become, this Destrillian who was sustained by this berserk frenzy, this constant desire to kill. Against this harbinger of death – a true Destrillian - death was the only outcome. But then there was that other part – the one that wanted to stay and fight, to see what was possible if she hadn’t been so weak. A tiny teensy part of her. But a part of her nonetheless. Thetis knew that she could never win, but the least she could do was prove herself. If she could kill those soldiers, maybe she stood a chance against Number Six.

Wishful thinking.
“You don’t know anything about my life!” The sound of her voice was drowned out by the squelching of mud under her feet as Thetis walked towards her opponent. She wouldn’t let herself be frightened, especially if Dr. Perkins was watching. No, this wasn’t it. Thetis needed to fight. Water coiled around her legs and arms, writhing under her control as it rose from the swamp beneath them in tens of wiry tendrils. They launched themselves like spears towards her opponent, who continued to stare at her right in the face as she blocked them with a whip of her own. They glanced off at angles away from the other, piercing through the spaces behind her, piercing through entire tree trunks like knives through paper, while Number Six's grin widened.

"You'll have to do better than that, I know you can! Even with your pathetic headaches. WAKE UP, THETIS! You know what we're fighting over here! WE'RE FIGHTING OVER YOU!" At this remark, her scream of laughter was accompanied by a crest of energy that surged upwards around her body, creating a pulsing bubble of needle-like projections of water that enveloped her. Number Six’s words made everything that was unreal, real. A mist surrounded Thetis as she flexed her muscles, moisture bending to her will as wind howled in her ears. Bolts of lightning struck at the ground around them as if attracted to the power the two Destrillians were harnessing, splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen and back again into water and spreading the smell of ozone throughout the battleground. As if levitating, the doppelganger bodily lifted herself off the ground as she harnessed water around her.

"You're right about one thing, Thetis. The good Doctor Perkins thinks you're still a Destrillian proper. She doesn't know anything about your life. She knows the you, the me, the everything that was meant to be, but she doesn't know the old you, you, standing here in front of me, now throwing these weak attacks of yours at my face like they make a difference. When you were taken so many years ago, you should have died right there. But no, you STAYED and PERSISTED, AND I WAS LEFT TO SIT AT THE BACK OF YOUR MIND, AS YOU ESCAPED FROM OUR MASTERS!"
Yes. Number Six was the only reason Viola hadn’t terminated her. Number Six was the sole reason for Thetis’ existence- she was the real Destrillian. And she was right. Every time Thetis had killed someone, there had been a little twinge of satisfaction, of pleasure that she had tried so hard to deny. Number Six was right – she had always been there, buried deep within her subconscious, escaping only from the fracture that appeared each time she used her powers. She could never succumb to her, lest she lose-
Lose what, Thetis?
Your humanity?
The tiny voice that echoed in Thetis’ ears was an unwelcome reality check. She had been born a human, but Viola had taken that away from her fourteen years ago. It was the one thing Thetis could never get to grips with; humans were so weak. Limited physically and emotionally, they had no power beyond that of greed. They had no concern for anyone save themselves, four years in Orange Zone had taught Thetis that. Most of all, they were frightened. Too scared to accept their condition, to attempt to learn from what they could never understand.

The cruel reflection staring back at Thetis, now virtually in midair, drew back a long whip of water with her clenched fist, and opening her palm sent a dense column of water at Thetis' body with the intention of rendering her into giblets under a beam of liquid, screaming with hate and fury. Thetis didn’t have enough time to react as the aqueous shield she had raised in seconds was decimated by the force of Number Six’s attack. The pain of being thrown into a tree by didn’t quite hit until Thetis felt splinters of broken wood dig into her back. The dull ache made her feel groggy, but the ringing of Number Six’s laughter in her ears felt even worse. Thetis pulled herself to her feet, and broke into a sprint towards her doppelganger. She was beginning to get angry; and she knew that was all Number Six needed.

“When will you understand?” Thetis plunged her hand into the mud beneath her. With a scream of effort, the water began to bubble as Thetis struggled to subdue the migraine that prickled in the back of her mind. “The only thing that makes me weak is you!” A pillar of water shot towards Number Six in a dirty geyser and Thetis leapt back, the column of muddy water threatening to consume her.

"Oho! Much better!" Number Six cackled as she thrust a palm out, halting the water in her advance with a heavy column of her own. After a brief struggle as the two beams crashed into each other, the water exploded outwards in a shockwave that temporarily parted the ground into a massive crevasse that swallowed up a gulf of mud from the torrent of water raging around them. "I thought this was going to be quick, but it seems I'm going to have a little fun with this!"

”Don’t underestimate me, Six!” Thetis shouted as Number Six pushed her other hand outwards, and with a roar of concentration, condensed more gallons of rain into a compressed ball within the palms of her hand. The earth started to shake from the focus within Thetis' and Number Six's presence together, although from so much water raging about the tremors were indiscernible from the chaos erupting around them.

"You don't get it, do you? I am your strength! I am your punches and kicks, I am the hand that breaks necks and rips apart opponents like they were paper! You have nothing to prove in this fake world of ours!" The rain seemed to falter at the word "fake", but then returned to its regular downpour.

Thetis wavered.
Fake? It couldn’t be.
Could it?

"That's right, Thetis! Wake up! You think that's air you're breathing? You think this is really water that we're throwing at each other? THINK! We're in your head, you miserable little girl, and if you're as weak as this even in your imagination then there's *definitely* nothing stopping me from taking over and destroying every pathetic little thing you held dear, including your little precious you sleep with!" Blue hair whipped around Thetis’ face in the wind as she paused for a moment. No, it couldn’t have just been in her head. The pain of her injuries and the corpses of the men she’d killed had been far too real for that. And what about her father? And Dr. Perkins? Had they been fake too? Thetis stared at Number Six in horror as water gravitated towards her. She opened up her palms, sending a fresh torrent of water in Thetis' direction again, a primal roar sending out fresh shockwaves that halted the rain in its fall before they collapsed again.
"IF YOU DON'T WANT YOUR LITTLE BITCH FRIEND TO DIE, THEN THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO WIN, AND YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO BE ME TO BEAT ME! STOP BEING HUMANLY RATIONAL AND FIGHT WITH THE STRENGTH THAT YOU KNOW I HAVE!"
The continued insults and bullying had mostly gone ignored, but this was too far. A red mist descended, and Thetis finally snapped. She would never let herself be taken over by such malevolence. She didn’t care about her human life – no- Number Six could shatter that world if she wanted to. But to have the nerve to even threaten to take Fiona away? If this was fake, not even the headaches could hurt her now.

Thetis spread her fingers, the water around her snaking into a sphere of water, mirroring Number Six’s own.
“FIONA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!” The sphere shuddered as a jet of water broke free, colliding with her opponent’s attack. This conflict had been inevitable; a Destrillian could never lead two lives. “There is no you! I am Thetis Alcesteos, I am Prototype Number Six, and I AM THE EMBODIMENT OF WATER ITSELF!” Her screams were inaudible as the two masses of water met in mid-air. If the force of the explosion had not had been enough before, it was like a mere firecracker compared to the force of the second collision of the deadly streams of water.
The world around them shifted out of place as the water-logged ground beneath them and the walls of rain collapsing on Thetis and Number Six displaced. The rock, dirt and grass under them, now mud, was torn from its position below the Destrillians' feet to leave nothing but a rapidly deepening chasm. But there was no ground to be needed in this virtual sea falling from the sky as pure hatred, burning rage and cold determination were the footholds that Thetis and Number Six held under their feet.

The world around them gravitated towards their two attacks as the waterlogged mud was forced into the space within their outstretched palms, straight and true towards each other. Rain no longer fell straight downwards. There was no waste of resource in their attacks, like a perfect physical system: All the water from the sky and ground was pulled into the fuel of their singular attack towards their opponent. The water was forced under unimaginable pressure, molecules packed into a magnitude of space beyond comprehension. The infinitely dense, fusing spearheads of their attacks pulsed like a blue giant star threatening to go supernova.

And sure enough, when the undeniable laws of physics finally reigned dominant even for Thetis' psyche, concentric pulses of water escaped the point of collision, blade-like halos of water with so much kinetic energy within them at the point of release that they temporarily resisted the Destrillians' godlike mastery over the liquid around them. They were quickly dissipated by their power struggle and recycled into their attack, the unrelenting storm around them only furthering the see-sawing of focused energy into inconceivable proportions.

The noise would have made any ordinary human go deaf. The rush of a waterfall, magnified thousands of times, the pulsing of escaping water cutting through the air with a siren-like whistling noise. The crackle and snap of intense static electricity, the physical manifestation of the Destrillians' focused power, befitting the clash of two goddesses.
And, as the compression of water reached critical mass at the centre, ready to tear all known matter apart in one universal shockwave, the single sound of two herculean screams, echoing above everything else. A supernova of energy, the thundering cacophony of the earth splitting in two, and the pair of women were thrown backwards as the very fabric of existence unravelled into white.

The top floor of the Dion Hotel housed an ornately decorated hall, often hired out for functions for the most influential members of society in Osea. Opposite the entrance was a massive glass wall, opening out onto a terrace looking out over downtown Osea.

Amaria Vidras walked through the small hallway leading to the main hall with grace, but it was an affected grace. Under closer scrutiny people might have picked up on this, but despite being an unfamiliar face here she garnered little attention from the other guests. And for once, Amaria was thankful for the fact, and that none of these people here had seen her back in her room, practising all alone in the mirror how she would walk or the way she would stand. Hopefully no one noticed the slight mistakes or awkward adjustments she was making to her demeanour. It had been a while since she had been in this level of society. And never as an equal to the other guests.

If nothing else, she was dressed the part. A black dress with a soft sheen, a few pieces of simple golden jewellery (though some looked slightly bulky), a small handbag hanging from her side, and a think shawl draped over her shoulders. Every piece of the outfit a brand item, with a price tag that would put them out of the means of a majority of citizens in Osea.

Amaria stood at near a wall and surveyed the room, attempting to not make it obvious. So many of the men in the room looked the same. Dark suits, grey or greying hair. Picking out a specific one seemed a difficult task, but Amaria liked to think she had a keen eye for noticing subtle differences.

It was roughly ten minutes before she found the man she was after. Hagan Braun was a department head with the intelligence agency in Osea, and the reason she was at this event.

She had the whole thing mapped out in her mind. The way she would weave her way through the other guests. How she would 'accidentally' bump into Braun. Make a fuss over him, ask him if he's okay. Apologise profusely.

He introduced himself first. Not quite how she had planned it, but if it was a sign of interest then it worked in her favour.

“Charelle.”

She smiled as she spoke. It was imperative she didn’t give her real name here. If the wrong person heard, she would be in trouble. Her smile turned into a smirk as she thought about how important all that made her sound. But behind that smirk, there was the voice of a cynic at the back of her mind. “What would it matter what name you used. No one would know who you even were, anyway.”

She pushed these thoughts out of her head as she focused on making polite conversation with Braun. Her part consisted mostly of smiling and nodding, laughing at his jokes and softly placing her hand on his arm.

A few minutes in, an acquaintance of Braun's took his attention away for her for a moment. While his back was turned and his drink out of his sight, Amaria lent over and pulled on the stone of her ring. As it opened up a sprinkling of some kind of powder fell down into Braun's glass. When his friend had moved on, Amaria handed back the glass, smiling and watching as he took another sip.

As the conversation moved on, Amaria had increased the level of physical contact between them. Braun was slightly more suggestible now. She was able to leave him to a seating area on the terrace, where she sat rubbing her foot along his leg. Soon, she started looking through her handbag. Braun didn't know, but she wasn't actually looking for anything.

“Sorry, I think I need to get back to my room, I've forgotten something.”

She got up from her seat and looked down at Braun.

“Are you coming?” She gave a slight smile.

***

The Dion Hotel was a group of three buildings, joined at certain floors by bridges. Each building had a different rate on its rooms. The first tower with the event hall was the highest priced of the three. Amaria and Braun walked across a bridge leading to the third tower, with the cheapest rooms.

“I'm afraid the company would only shell out for the lowest price room it could get.”

Amaria walked a few steps ahead of Braun, laughing a bit at her own comment. She was getting out of breathe from trying to keep ahead of Braun. She slowed down as they got through the doors into the next tower.

“Do you mind if we take the stairs? It's just I don't think give much of their budget towards maintaining this tower. I don't trust the elevators here.”

She laughed some more as she spoke. She was starting to think maybe she was laughing too much, but Braun didn't seem to have taken much notice. He hadn't said much since they had left the hall.

Amaria was the first to go into the stairwell. Braun, getting slightly unsteady on his feet now, followed her. Three or four steps in and a figure stepped out from the shadow behind the door, striking Braun at the back of the head and felling him to the floor. Amaria stopped in her tracks and brought her hands up to her ears at the sudden commotion.

“Damn it, Nate. Some warning would have been nice.”

She walked back down to join the figure, Nathaniel, next to Braun's unconscious body. Nathaniel crouches down and went through Braun's pockets, pulling out a wallet. He got back up and handed it to Amaria. She flipped through it and withdrew several cards. She handed it back to Nathaniel.

“You keep the rest.”

Amaria sat down on the stairs and began looking through her handbag, finally taking out what looked like a silver, square-shaped compact. She took each of the cards and put them into a small slot until it was completely enveloped. After a few seconds there was a beep and the card re-emerges. She continued the process with the rest of the cards, while Nathaniel arranged Braun's body against a wall. The hope was that should anyone stumble across him, they would simply assume he got drunk, fallen down and gone to sleep. He shouldn't remember much about the last hour or so once he wakes up. Nothing about being lead here, and nothing about 'Charelle'.

Once Amaria had finished with the cards, she and Nathaniel went up back out into the hall, though checking to see if there was anyone in the corridor before they did. They were staying in the hotel, but they were in the second tower. There wasn't any need to go back to the hall, so they made their way back to their rooms. The walk back was a silent one. Nathaniel wasn't very talkative, and Amaria just didn't feel like talking.

***

Amaria returned to her room. Nathaniel had a separate room. She needed to have the privacy, some time alone to be herself. For nearly 4 years her life had been keeping up an act, and now here she is. In the city she left 4 years ago, but this time juggling between two different characters.

Nathaniel didn’t know any of this, of course. She had just give him a line about simply not wanting to share a room with a man. It wasn't a lie. In fact, it was especially true in Nathaniel's case. It had been Nathaniel who gathered the money for their stay in Osea. She didn't like to dwell on what fate befell whoever he had gotten it from. Being around sometimes made her feel nervous, and being alone in a room all night with him seemed like a nightmare prospect.

Still, they had been lucky with whoever Nathaniel had found. The Dion was not a hotel just anybody could stay at, even at the cheapest rates. They had enough funds to cover their stay, only planned to last two or three weeks at the most. Closing the door behind her, Amaria looked around her room, sleek and modern. The whole thing was a picture of expensive taste, and she tried not to stand out from it. A sizeable portion of the money that wasn’t reserved for the hotel payment or food had gone on filling her wardrobe with dresses and gowns. More than she really needed, in all honesty.

She took the shawl off and put it over the mirror. She wasn't in the mood to have to look at herself tonight. She sat herself down in a chair, with a drink from the mini-bar in her hand. She hadn't even bothered with getting a glass. She listened to the television in the background, though didn't give it much of her attention. A familiar jingle signalled the start of a news programme.

“... in the Orange Zone, there was a new development in the trial against former Viola Corporation Jason Spencer, with the revelation of the human experimentation undertake by the corporation under his command. Known as the 'Destrillian Project'...”

At this last comment, the television finally gained Amaria's full attention. It wasn't a word she was meant to have known, but it was one she had heard before.