Story Hub: [link]
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Mixly and Jastear were at a loss. The cyangel was dangerous and damn near indestructible, but she was so cowardly and uncoordinated that it was hard to tell how much of a threat she actually was. They had already decided to call the keeper, but by the time Jastear opened the comm line, the armored man had already arrived without them realizing.
“Knight Sabre, how long have you been here?” Mixly nearly jumped out of his skin.
“I told you I would follow shortly, and I did,” Sabre answered. “I sensed your encounter with the target and rushed to aid you, and it seems I’ve arrived just in time.” The cyangel, upon noticing the keeper’s arrival, went from hysterical panic to silent fear.
“Our weapons are mostly ineffective, Knight Sabre. We only managed to corner her through a lucky shot and her own weapon jamming,” Jastear explained. “What are we to do?”
“Since it appears this creature is the source of the signal, it is likely a scout paving the way for whatever force has been afflicting the other colonies,” Sabre declared. “Thus, it must be destroyed before it can report back. And, if it is so durable, I shall simply strike it down with a more potent weapon.” With but a thought, Sabre called forth a small construct buckled to his waist. It reassembled into a sword hilt in his right hand, then generated a brilliant blade of equal parts light and psionic energy.
With an even greater threat presented, the cyangel went from silent fear back to screaming hysterics and tried to wield her jammed rifle in defense. However, Sabre just sliced through it like paper. Next, the gynoid tried to fly up using her small wings, and despite her impressive speed taking the two officers off-guard, the keeper caught up to her in mid-air with a simple jump. His first slash barely missed her, slicing through one of the hollow buildings. However, he followed up with a psionically enhanced palm strike that sent her through the building and into an adjacent street.
The cyangel picked herself up from the rubble, coughing and gasping. As she hacked up synthetic blue blood, the gynoid realized she had taken her first real damage in the fight and froze. Her cheek was torn, revealing the mix of flesh and cybernetics beneath it, and she felt vulnerable…weak…mortal…so she screamed.
“And now to…” Sabre landed beside her, ready to deliver a coup de grâce, but her scream stopped him. Not out of a sudden desire to show his wounded foe mercy, but because he realized what kind of cry it was.
“Knight Sabre, why have you stopped?” Mixly asked as he and Jaspear ran through the remains of the fake building. The cyangel continued to scream while occasionally yelling something in the Bulliries language.
“Jastear, what is she saying?” Sabre asked in a deathly serious tone.
“Huh?” Jastear was taken aback by the request but quickly tried to translate. “It’s hard to really tell. I’m only getting every third word, but one I hear a lot is the word for ‘elder’ or something close to it.”
“What kind? Like a parent?” Sabre nearly yelled at his subordinate.
“It’s less of a word and more of a modifier, not like a specific kind of elder, just something comparatively older,” Jastear stammered. “But I don’t understand. What’s so important about her ranting and raving?”
“You two, can’t you tell? That is not the scream of a dying animal. It’s that of a child screaming for its mother to protect it!” Sabre explained. “I’ve made a grave error. This is not a scout! It’s a fledgling! We must regroup before-”
A winged humanoid crashed into the area, cutting Sabre off. It was another cyangel, and a much bigger one at that. She stood taller than the keeper, with long black hair and a giant pair of white wings with a wingspan nearly the size of one of the fake buildings. Unlike the little one, who only wore a uniform, she was in cybernetic armor similar to the keeper’s. However, hers was even sleeker, yet appeared just as sturdy, and was colored pure white with red glowing lines running through it. She wielded a massive construct axe, partially composed of light like Sabre’s sword, but held together by a different force that the keeper didn’t recognize. Her piercing red eyes glowed with a malice one would never expect from a mostly mechanical being, and if looks could kill, Sabre would have died screaming.
“Explain yourselves. Why have you harmed the little one?” The cyangel warrior demanded an explanation.
“Knight Sabre! The signal is resonating even stronger than before!” Jastear’s eyes widened as the device they’d been using to trace the mysterious signal went haywire in the new cyangel’s presence.
“Then my answer is obvious: you two are clearly invaders of a Federation-controlled world,” Sabre held his sword over the young cyangel. “You’d best surrender, or we’ll subdue you by force as well.”
“An empty threat,” the black-haired cyangel mocked him. “I’m no fool, I can feel you trying to probe my mind, keeper. I challenge you to try. See what happens.” Her confidence shocked the keeper, but he had heard plenty of foes boast of their great mental defenses before they were swiftly humbled, and he figured this would be no different.
“Soon I will know everything you do, machine. Your creator was careless to leave you with an organic brain,” Sabre pried deeper into her mind, but just as he peeled off the highest layer of her thoughts, he was hit with terrible psychic feedback that nearly knocked him off his feet. As if a thousand-thousand voices screamed at him to get out. “You horrid machine, how can you live like that?”
“Oh, I assure you, it only takes a little time to understand how such a constant chorus of voices can become comforting,” the cyangel laughed. In less than the blink of an eye, she was already upon him, tackling him off her sister and smashing him through another of the false buildings. Still reeling from the psychic feedback, Sabre struggled to mount a solid defense, but even if he wasn’t, he quickly realized she was already faster than him.
“Know no peace,” Sabre tried to paralyze her with his psionics, but he only managed to slow her down.
“Know only peace and oblivion,” the cyangel brought her axe down onto him, which the keeper barely held back with his blade.
“Shoot her down!” Sabre ordered the two officers. They opened fire, but their shots didn’t even annoy the cyangel.
“Try the ploder charge,” Mixly whispered to his partner.
“We’ll kill Sabre,” Jastear pointed out.
“She’ll kill all of us regardless,” Mixly countered. Jastear acknowledged this, armed the explosive, and threw it at the gynoid. Realizing what was coming, Sabre raised a psychic shield, while the cyangel simply turned to face the object hurtling towards her. With a deafening explosion, fire and smoke engulfed them both, leaving a sizable crater in the ground.
“Did it work?” Mixly asked as the young cyangel flailed, watching her elder vanish in a ball of fire.
“It did not,” the elder cyangel emerged from the smoke, barely scuffed, the keeper now impaled on her axe. “Thanks for distracting him,” she mocked, gripping her axe tightly causing something to pulse through it and into Sabre. The keeper convulsed and writhed before she tossed him aside.
“What did you do to him?” Mixly aimed his rifle at her head while Jastear aimed for her wings.
“The same things I’m about to do to you,” she answered before blitzing the two, stabbing through them both with her bare hands, as if their armor didn’t exist. “Know only peace and oblivion. As you vanish from this world as you are, know that what remains will go on to do wonderful things.”
“What…is…she…?” Mixly struggled to decipher her cryptic words as something poured into him through her hand. He turned to see Jastear’s eyes roll into the back of his head as he went limp. Soon his own vision began to fade as he struggled to so much as turn his head. All he could hear was the young cyangel still babbling and crying. For some reason, for the briefest moment before the world went to darkness, he could understand her.
“….ome….Home…Want to go home!” She exclaimed before Mixly felt himself disappear into oblivion.
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The battle was over, and all three agents of the Federation were rendered incapacitated and convulsing as an unstoppable process overtook them. The young cyangel was barely aware of this as she sobbed into the ground. Her only thoughts and desires were focused on the ever-distant idea of home.
“I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home, I want to go home!” She pleaded to no one in particular.
“It’s alright, little one,” the elder cyangel appeared by her sibling and comforted her. “Soon this place will be home.”
“I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t make this place home. Look, just look!” The younger gestured to all the crude mockeries of buildings surrounding them.
“I know it’s been hard, but now we’ve put down roots,” the elder looked aside and smiled at the three convulsing figures who had begun to rapidly change, especially the keeper. Whatever soul had lived inside that suit of armor was gone, something new was rapidly emerging, and the cyangel couldn’t be happier.
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After Mixly, Jastear, and Sabre failed to return from Upillio and all attempts to contact them failed, Federation Command went into a minor panic. This was the third scouting party in the past two septocycles to disappear without a trace, and while they floated the idea of a search-and-rescue operation, they shelved the plan when two more groups vanished just as suddenly. Their only hint as to what might have happened was that whatever signal Sabre’s group had tracked on the planet had grown in strength, size, and intensity, and by the end of the next geocycle, the planet went dark.
This could no longer be chalked up to bad luck or a fluke. Something terrible was happening in the Federation, and they had barely any idea what. However, some did, not that they wanted to believe it was possible, but there was no other explanation. They were being invaded, and quickly at that. It was only a matter of time before the major core worlds were in this mysterious enemy’s sights, and that’s if they were lucky. For all they knew, this enemy was already in their midst. Unfortunately for the Federation, the truth was far worse.
End Transmission…
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Setting down roots in a new place is a rewarding process with its own host of challenges. A language barrier, hostility from locals who don't like change, growing pains from missing your old home, struggling to carve out your own little niche and so on. But soon you'll find your problems slip away as your home and hearth grows wildly, and if the locals still refuse to like it accept your differences and manage the friction between you and them Make Them.
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy.
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