by @Kurai Assassin



Delta Squad

"Welcome Initiate 4397 to Urban Warfare Version 11.191b. Before we begin we are going to go over some information about the game" said a voice.
"Urban Warfare is a Virtual Reality Expierence given to those wishing to join Delta squadron. This simulation is MMO meaning that there are atleast 20 people on the server you are about to join. each time a member dies they will be injected by a lethal nano toxin. this means the last 10 people alive are the members of Delta Squad. Your objective is simply to survive. you will be given the RPS 750. a weapon that only fires when its part of a pair within 1 meter of each other. to continue please state your name, gender and blood type."

"Ashley James. Female. O-" Ash said to the computer. she had been practicing for the examination for months now. she knew where the best places to find food were and knew how long she could go without being thirsty. when they sent Delta Squad back to reclaim earth they would be ready.

"thank you Ashley James. your Callsign is Phoenix. this is how other Members will be able to identify you and those watching will be able to know the survivors."

A Flash of white light blinded Ash as she was transported to an urban metropolis. the plant life had taken over most of the city and it gave it that post apocolyptic shine. Her mini-map shone up with a red dot behind her. she turned to see a man pointing a single pistol straight at her face.

"Sorry sunshine, i want this place more than you do." he said pulling the trigger. Click. Click click click. the gun wasnt firing. "shit the second one" Ash saw this as a oppurtunity, she quickly kicked the single gun from his hand and pulled her own from her case and fired point blank into his face. as he fell backwards Ashley shouted "Sorry but you shoulda learned nothin ever comes for free" and with that she walked over do his lifeless Avatar and put her boots heel through his face just for good measure. in the right hand corner of her vision a message popped up (Anthony Carmine KIA)

Her head began to feel light headed and her entire body became cold, Right now a Man, Someone she had grown up with had just been killed at the flick of the switch. She didnt know him personally but what would his wife, and kids be thinking.

Another message popped up in the corner (Phoenix Ahead by 1 point, Damian Spencer KIA) another person dead already, only 20 minutes had passed and already they were down to 18 people. Only 8 more to go she thought to herself, 8 left then the last of us can leave. she looked up towards the sky it was mid day so she had enough time to scout for food and water, but she had better get moving quick.

She began to run toward the nearest building, if this was anything like her simulations, then the best place to look would be appartment buidings or Stores. this unfortunately was a DIY store,'Ikea' she'd never heard of it. maybe it was one of the old stores that she had read about in history classes. She had hoped maybe there would be hammers or saws or even an axe but it was filled with furniture, maybe she could use the wood as a fuel for a fire later.

After breaking most of the furniture into just wood and placing it in her backpack she made her way back out of the store only to hit in the face with something and being knocked unconcious.

She came to many ours later, at a camp which contained 6 other recruits. it was likely that they had planned to kill her to take her out of the recruitment process, but for some reason they had kept her alive. it was strange what could they possibly need her for. another ten minutes had passed before a man in a black army uniform actually left the group and came to talk to her. "How you doing princess, now your gonna do us a favour and give us your stuff and we'll let you live. but if you aint gonna cooperate then your gonna have to go" The guy said coming in closer towards her face, Ashley rolled her eyes and then proceeded to spit in his face. The guy wiped his face and slapped her, leaving a red hand mark across her face. turning back she kicked him in between his legs and stole his knife from his belt. she cut the ropes from her wrist and then returned to knife to its respectable owner, but in between his sholder blades killing him. she grabbed her guns of the wood stump next to her and turned to the others.

"now i think your gonna drop your guns or you will end up like this guy here" she shouted as another message popped up (Benjamin Carmine KIA, Phoenix ahead by 2 points) as shot rang out and Ash felt something hit her chest. she pulled up her own weapon and fired into the 5 remaining killers, 4 found their mark and the other missed (Isaac Green, Simon Delgado, Kirt Smith and Jayme Nixson KIA, Quadruple Kill by Phoenix.) By this point she no longer cared who lived and who died as long as she got out. Another Shot rang out and she screamed in agony. she had been hit again but this time in the leg. she fell to the floor and dropped a gun into the bushes. a woman came close to her, Ash drew her gun but it just cliked (warning this weapon is not close to a partner. it shall not fire until it is close) the woman stuck her face closer to Ashleys.

"Awww whats the matter now love, ran out of bullets" the woman said drawing her knife. she got closer to Ashley and stabbed the knife into the bullet wound in her leg, She screamed as the blade pierced more muscle. he gun glowed green, it was close enough to another weapon now, she drew it and fired 3 times at point blank range and and the woman fell face first onto Ashley. 2 messages now popped up on the HUD ( Alex Dirks KIA, Matt Stevens KIA) it stayed there then another 3 popped up (Shawn and Mike Johns KIA, Game over) she was transported back to the real world. It was Strange the simulation should have ended at 10 people left but now there was 8. Atleast she had survived though.

Atleast she was part of Delta Squad.

by @Psyga315

Leading a town was hard.

Leading a town without power was harder.

This was the truth that I had to discover when the power went out over at my town. It just seemed so sudden though. One minute everything had electricity flowing, the next, everything went out. It just seemed too coincidental. It was an inconvenience though. I just had to restore power. An easy feat when your body has been genetically altered to shoot lightning from your fingertips.

I flew off from my home office towards the power plant. It was an easier feat when your body’s also altered to fly. During my trip to the power plant, I began to think back to how I came into power of the small Russian town.

----

It was just days after I had a falling out with my brother. I could remember the smell of burning flesh and concrete as I saw German soldiers invade a Russian property. People screamed and cried at the brutality of the forces as they gunned down people in the dozens. I kept my altitude up and fired a bolt at the sergeant. A crack of thunder scared the soldiers, with the sergeant having a too little, too late response. As soon as he dropped dead, many of the soldiers retreated.

“MEIN GOTT!” I could understand only that part of German dialogue, as it was an often-repeated phrase during my tour. I smirked.

“Yeah, plead for my mercy.” I thought as the Germans scurried away from me. I even pointed my fingers at any soldier who saw me, though I just liked to scare them like that. Remind them who the bigger fish is. When the Germans cleared out, I landed on the Russian soil. During my time in the first war, I worked with Russian soldiers, so I was able to speak the language.

“Hello. Are you guys okay?” I asked a cowering group of people. They shook their head.

“N… no. They killed our mayor!” One of them said. I could see the Russians grieve for their fallen friends and family now that the constant threat of death was gone. I dug his nails into the palm of my hand as I saw a mother weeping into her child’s bloody chest. One of the civilians bowed before me.

“Thank you! We owe you our lives! We’ll give you anything!” The Russian said to me. One more look at the grieving mother was enough to make me think of one thing.

“Make me mayor, and I shall protect you from the Germans and so much more.” I said to them. The group discussed this for a while. It took a few days before they agreed to the terms. It helped that I spent those days protecting them from the ensuing German attacks. In time, they made me the mayor of the small town.

----

I counted my blessings during this flight. Among the gifts I was given, I also gained the gift of reduced aging. Whereas I had seen this town bloom and blossom for twenty years, I felt like I had grown just a year. I have experienced a lot over these past years. Among these was the Cold War. Many tensions arose as people began to fear the oncoming end of days. Part of me just wanted to go over and slap both parties silly for even considering dooming innocents to a nuclear holocaust, but another part of me didn’t.

I knew that no one would wish to repeat the horrors of war willingly. Only a lunatic would invite such a war upon himself. Only a man with a death wish would desire war. For all the hype it generated, the name ‘Cold War’ fitted the nature of being a stalemate between two superpowers. Finally, I found the power plant. It had seen better days, for sure. I landed and entered the facility.

I looked around. It seemed empty. Dark. Dank. Every step I made on the steel grate bridge made an echo. When I got a foot into the plant, I saw the motionless generator. With a flick of my wrists, lightning bolts flew from my fingers and entered the generator. A loud hum came from the generator as it began to power up. I could have heard a shout, but I didn’t listen well due to the noise. When I turned around, a bat met my face and I was knocked out.

----

When I woke up, I felt restricted. I looked around and saw that rope tied my hands to the arms of a wooden chair. I looked at my captors. They were two Russian teenagers. One had blond hair and blue eyes, the other black hair with brown eyes. Both male.

“Hey, look at that! We captured the mayor!” The blond-haired teen said.

“Yeah! Can’t believe that plan worked!” The black-haired teen, slightly younger than the other, said.

“W-what are you doing?” I asked. My own men had betrayed me. They wounded me. Tied me up. Why did they do this after I have done so much for them?

“Oh shut it, capitalist! We knew why you stepped in as mayor now!” The blond teen said.

“Yeah! You’re nothin’ but a damned plant!” The black-haired teen whacked me in the face with a baseball bat.

“I… I led you all through hard times… and this… this is how you repay me?” I spat out a bit of blood to the side.

“We’d rather be led by someone of our own nationality, thank you very much.” The blond teen said. The black-haired teen tipped my chair over and knocked me down. He continued to batter me.

“DIRTY! STINKING! CAPITALIST!” He said as he beat his aluminum bat onto me. As I began to think of this as the end, I thought back to my brother’s offer of living a normal life. I thought back to my refusal. I wondered now if I had made the right choice in setting out to live life as a mayor. It was, after all, a spur of the moment idea.

I thought back to that grieving mother. How, while I had the powers of a divine smiter, I lacked the power to save a small child. I became mayor, hoping that the power from running the office would, at least, help ensure that people wouldn’t be killed. However, it was now that I realized the one mistake I made:

Humanity will never learn from their mistakes. Paranoia and fear are just contributing factors to the horrors that I had suffered. In time, these two teens will let their suspicions overwhelm them. If they’re willing to beat up a mayor on little to no evidence, who else would they go after? I had to stop them. I bent one of my fingers to point at the rope and zapped it with a small electrical bolt.

As soon as my hand was free, I grabbed the bat and sent a few shocks to it. Not enough to fry him, but just enough to get him to drop the bat. I untied the other rope, got up and had my hands crackle with electricity. The black-haired teen cowered and backed into a wall. I looked over to the blond, who shivered in his boots. I set my hands to my sides as the static from my fingers stopped. I looked to them.

“You’re right. You need someone of your own nation to lead.” I told them. Part of me felt a rush that I never had before when I looked to them. Power. Raw. Absolute. Power. I have experienced this when I was first empowered with my electricity, but now was the moment where I felt a surge of being able to dictate what others should do.

If I wanted to, I would have killed those two and outside of a few concerned parents and friends, no one would really care or wonder where they went. I could even tell them that they just skipped town or leaped off to their doom and they’d believe me. It was in that moment that I realized that this isn’t the kind of power I want to have. I turned around and prepared to leave.

“W-what?! You’re givin’ up like that?” The teen I didn’t shock asked.

“No. I’m stepping down and letting someone who’d be better responsible take my place. I’d elect you, but you’re a minor.” I told him. I walked out.

----

Throughout the next few days, I stalked the city. People spoke of my disappearance. Some missed me, others were apathetic towards it. A new mayor stepped in and like I had thought, she did a better job at managing the city than I did. Perhaps she’ll get adjusted to the power she has.

Though, as I thought that, I also thought what’d happen if she liked her power too much. I’m definitely not the first person to have thought of the possibilities of being able to do whatever you want. I wonder if that’s why all those wars have started. Was it because those maniacs and death seekers really wanted to have power in their grasps?

I thought back to my battle with my brother. He managed to beat some sense into me. Sense that I did not know of until today. My powers are not to be used for intimidation or as a free ride. If I did that, I’d be no better than the people who made me suffer in those wars in the first place. I won’t use my powers to rule over all.

Instead, I will use these powers to stop those who would drive fear into the hearts of humanity. I flew off into the sky, unsure of what to find or who to fight. But I have realized my purpose now. I knew what I can do with this power:

To ensure the others don’t abuse theirs.

Growing up as a child, I always dreamt of having some kind of power like any child. Whether it was the ability to fling fire, the chance to wield the deepest cold with magnificent prowess, or to gain wings and take to the freedom of the skies like an aviary sort. Looking back with years of cynical wisdom now gained through the trials and tribulations of life, the sorrow, heartbreak, and triumphs alike; I no longer wish for such a childish thing, not anymore.

I wish for something simpler in terms of power, though as meager as it might seem.

I am incessantly skeptical of politicians, and even more skeptical of religion and its purposes. As I gain in age, I see both the former and the latter more desperate by the moment to wield a form of control over the masses. Undoubtedly this is form of power in itself, but I resisted it, I am free of it. While I utterly despise both the infested institution that government has become, I also spitefully loathe the amoral monstrosity that organized faith has turned into.

To me, putting one’s faith into a higher power and using it as a reason for inaction while countless others suffer is as corrupt as a politician receiving ‘gifts’ from special interest groups. Saying that those who are starving and dying abroad are in one’s ‘prayers’ is almost purely the definition of apathetic.

Yet both of these pillars of distinct power and often neurotic purpose are not things I desire to have the power to eliminate. Such things are too short sighted, as human beings suffer a particular absolute. Not so much as others often joke about, being such trivial things as Death and Taxes; (though they are both absolutes, no doubt) but instead the constant fact that those in absolute power will be absolutely corrupt.

History repeats itself in this mantra, time and time again. So eliminating those two bastions of power will do nothing at all, new rats will replace them. Idealists will be cast aside for populist and sensationalist divisiveness, in the thought that instead of doing what is good for the people, they will do what is good for themselves…and their pocketbooks. Unity is a truly impossible concept to believe, especially since so many oft identify themselves in a manner that constantly separates themselves from others.

Ignorance reigns in two particular forms.

“I am a Liberal.”

“I am a Conservative!”

It is through this divisiveness that others maintain their stranglehold on power. But little else needs be said about that. Those definitions of power of control aside, the one I wish for is simple. Devastatingly simple. And I’ll define why now.

It was a simple afternoon in the midst of October when she woke.

The shrill scream of an alarm clock announcing the demise of her fitful slumber was abruptly silenced by the strike of a weary hand. Shifting in the seemingly amorphous blankets that kept her temptingly warm rose a young woman in her early twenties. Rubbing the exhaustion from her eyes from the sleepiness the day prior had wrought. Sitting up slowly while tilting her head to avoid the horizontal beam that steadfastly held the bunk bed mattress that was above her, her half lidded eyes met a mostly blackened room.

Outside of the thin trails of sunlight that crept through the room, she was alone. Standing slowly, the woman rose to inspect the thin cracks of light that had intruded upon her slumber closely. Having duct taped the windows to help filter out any light from invasion already once, it seemed that she would need to steal something from the supply store to completely cover it.

She had always held some difficulty sleeping when the environment wasn’t already pitch black darkness.

This was the beginning of a routine; that was how she lived. A series of constant routines. Wake up, find towel and change of uniform, venture to the shower; take a ten-minute shower, rinse one last time for good measure. Brush teeth, two minutes on top and bottom; timed of course. Deodorant. Apply scant amounts of makeup if the day called for it, it didn’t make sense to apply as much as if she were home. Some could be oil-based; oil-based cover-up was flammable, the last thing she desired was to become Harley Dent.

A morbid joke to start the day, a quiet laugh as the hot water ran a straight course down the length of her back. That too was part of the standard routine. Laughter helps her cope, after all.

After that, the next step would be to run a brush through her unruly red hair. Always scowl at the bloody thing if it snagged, sigh in satisfaction however as it all came tightly drawn to the back of her head in a neat bun. Don the flat-topped multi-cam cap, jokingly wink at self in the mirror, and then don the rest of her clothing. Undergarments first, multi-cam pants, boots…always blouse the boots so that the legs stopped just short of the upper edge of her footwear. Then the shirt, tuck it into her pants, draw the belt tight.

Put on the multi-cam blouse then, zip it up, insure that the Velcro fastened properly on all pockets and inner linings. Lastly, double check that the tourniquet is on the right shoulder, and the tab is on display.

Like every day, a loud rapping of knuckles on her door announced the presence of a visitor.

“OI! Hawkins! Open up! You’ve got convoy detail today, you volunteered, remember?!” Came a familiar voice, a coworker, perhaps a friend. Though she was uncertain of the latter, people always came and went in short bursts of time. Two, three months or less. Forming connections with others seemed pointless and irrelevant. People either came here and left quickly, or died here. There was no in-between.

Hefting a pistol and attaching the holster to her belt while the gun itself came to a rest on her thigh, she fastened the buckles that held it fast to her leg and she opened the door. Tired blue eyes met ever energetic brown as the door creaked open.

“C’mon, gear up. You have a brief to get to!”

Her eyes widened sharply, spinning about in her room and putting on the hefty body armor and ceramic plates that she had been issued the day before. Turning her hat backwards so that the bill rested upon her bun of crimson hair, the young woman propped a Kevlar helmet decorated in camouflage upon her head. Gloves came fastened tight, her fingertips stretching just slightly, curling and opening, testing their flexibility and tactile touch.

Last came a bag, which weight a fair amount and held a particular symbol upon it. A subdued, worn, and weathered red cross. A Medic’s Bag. That was her occupation, her purpose. The reason why she lived by such a routine.

Hurrying past her compatriot and running lightly despite the cumbersome equipment, she stepped outside from the dimmed hallway into the brightly lit outdoors. There standing in a disorganized group was a handful of fatigued men and women in front of a row of several vehicles. Others looked at her, others ignored her. She didn’t quite fit in with the collective as per usual. The sound of footsteps with a mark of haste behind them caused the group to fall into a long line beside the heavily armored vehicles, and she followed suit.

When in Rome…

Not long after the line tightly formed, a man with a singular black bar rising vertically on his forehead walked past the row and yelled a simple command.

“AT EASE.”

The tension from the shoulders of many faded, leading her to do the same.

“We are heading out on a goddamn convoy patrol today. Intel states we won’t be running into anything that’ll trouble us greatly. Keep your head up, keep your eyes open and watch the fuck out for those motherfucking IEDs. Understood?”

A resounding “YES, SIR!” Resounded from the mouths of many.

“Hawkins, you’re with the goddamn fifth vehicle. Riding shotgun with me. Welcome to my Company.” He added almost mechanically, looking over to the shorter woman with a light smirk on his face. “Keep my people alive, is that fucking understood?”

As steadfastly as she could manage, she responded with a resolute, “Yes, sir.”

In a cloud of dust, metal and lead, the convoy of seven stretched outward from the gate as they departed. Atop each vehicle, a turret armed with a heavy caliber machine gun rotated about while the company rumbled along the rickety dirt road. Drawing further and further into the afternoon, the Patrol began to head back to the secure base while the final hours of daylight began to tick downward. Looking out the window of her vehicle as clouds of dust and dirt continued to waft past, she noticed something odd.

There was a movement.

“Sir-!”

Before she could even get another word out from her lips, the world around her shattered. The first vehicle in the convoy took a direct hit from an explosion that lifted the multi-ton vehicle several feet into the air before bringing it crashing into the earth. So powerful was this explosion, that even five vehicles back, the windshield cracked and snapped as heated shrapnel perforated the it like Swiss Cheese.

No longer was there time to think, no longer was there time to scream, yell, shout or cry. There was only time for instinct. Kicking her door open, the Medic hit the ground hard as the peppering of gunfire from the distance ruptured outward. Cries of other soldiers rallying against the oncoming gunfire were soon drowned out by the sound of heavy caliber machine gun fire in support of killing and suppressing their enemies.

They didn’t matter. Not yet.

What only mattered was that she got to the twisted heap of metal that had once been a vehicle. Darting progressively from one vehicle to the next while bullets hissed through the air around her head, it took her far longer than she’d like as she neared the wreck. They were getting closer, people needed her help, and she was more than determined to get there.

“MENDEZ. PLATTER, HELP HAWKINS GET THE FUCKING BODIES OUT. MOVE IT.”

Just as she collided into the side of the partially destroyed truck, the young woman heard the Lieutenant’s order. Praying that she could get there in time to at least save one life. Though she couldn’t’ see how it was possible. Yet as she got help to pry the door open with a crowbar gifted by one of the other soldiers, the smoke-filled scene that greeted her was horrific.

Blood was everywhere, the two men who had been sitting in the back were either completely covered in third degree burns…and half of the other wasn’t even there. It was completely gone. He was dead and there was nothing she could do. But the other two in front looked as if they stood a chance to be saved.

“Mendez! Get the back door open! Platter! Help me get the corporal out of the driver seat. Now!”

With help, the Corporal Driver was pulled from the vehicle, and once this happened, the Private that had been sitting next to him woke up. She knew this by the screams of agony and panic as flickering orange began to form in the front of the vehicle. Fire…fire and gasoline never mixed well. Assessment of the Private revealed two horrific things. A large piece of metal was punched through even the femur on his right leg. He was losing blood fast. If she didn’t tourniquet that leg in the next few moments, he was going to die.

His right leg from the just above the knee down was only attached by a few strings of flesh and sinew.

She made a decision.

Pulling out her knife and diving into the vehicle, Hawkins cut through what little was held his leg together, grabbed the Private by the arm and shifted him so she could pull him by his shoulders. “HOLD ON!” She cried loudly, gripping him tightly with her much smaller frame she yanked him out of the vehicle. Together with Mendez, Platter, and the other two wounded men, they drag carried them to better cover behind a much more intact vehicle.

At long last, the gunfire ceased, leaving her in an eerie silence of running engines, sweat, and pissed off soldiers at a trio of dead Iraqi bodies.

There, the Medic went to work. Ordering the two uninjured men around, telling them what to do to treat for shock as she tied a tourniquet sharply around his amputated leg to reduce the loss of blood. Other injuries were pressured against, burns were treated as well as possible as the sound of helicopters approaching swiftly in the distance announced the trio’s salvation.

Once they were stabilized, the Medic sat back on her knees and looked at her handiwork, monitoring the three carefully while Platter and Mendez went and retrieved the KIA from the truck.

“Fucking Christ Hawkins. Patch yourself up.”

Bewilderedly, the girl looked up at the Lieutenant who bore a morbid smirk. “You caught a graze on the side of your neck from the shrapnel. Patch it up, now.”

With an expression of shock, she raised her hand to touch her neck, only to finally have the burning agony of pain come with sharpened realization as her hand came back to view covered in blood. Her blood. Digging into her own medical kit, she retrieved a set of Gauze and tightly pressed against the injury.

“Go with goddamn choppers. We’ve got help on the way. Sides, Mendez is a medic too. Thanks.”

She ran with the helo medics that arrived, helping them get the wounded on the litters, securing their heads to prevent any further neck injuries and the like. Not long after, they were lifted into the air once again, headed for a hospital. The entire way, she held the hand of the boy whose leg she had been forced to amputate in the field.

Guilt racked her soul.

Two men would live that day, one died instantly, the other died from his wounds.

She never saw any of them again. To this day, she has nightmares about them.

The power she wish she could have varies from time to time. Some days she wishes she could have had the eyes of a hawk to notice the three Insurgents earlier, or the roadside bomb that they hit. Other days, she wishes she had the power to run faster so she could have saved the burn victim too from further injury. Above all, she wishes she had the power to forget it all, and prevent it from ever happening to begin with.

Others may want to fly, freeze, or burn.

I simply wish I had the power to not remember.

Despite that, I will forever choose to charge across the field.

by @ScienMalefica
The boy with hair as white as the snow covering the ground around him had never felt a worse pain than the odd sensation of the blade as it tore through his torso, pinning him to the ground. His screams pierced the chilly night sky as the boy coughed blood, looking at his killer. The last thing the dying boy ever saw was a flash of lavender hair and piercing eyes the color of shallow water on a tropical paradise, shining with glee. The eyes of a maniac.

“What do you mean I should’ve been more low-key?” Lavender Purple asked with a laugh, his light blue eyes gleaming with a menace below the joyfulness of his tone. Few had dared invoke the ire of the genocidal sociopath known as Lavender. Luckily enough, the slender woman sitting in the shack opposite Lavender with hair the color of a fiery sunset only known as Tangerine Orange was one of those few.

“You sent half a Nepal village on a one-way trip to Crazytown all just to draw out the boy Snow, I’m sure if you bothered to stay under the radar you could have taken him out quietly,” Tangerine growled at Lavender, frustrated at the way he always decided to make a huge mess out of every assassination he performed.

“Well of course I could have taken him out quietly but we’re not just in this to try and become the last color, it’s about style and fun too,” Lavender replied with a smile, responded to only with a sigh from his ally in this war, Tangerine.

“Don’t you realize how important this is? Snow White, Sky Blue, Scarlet Red, Lime Green and Carnation Pink are all dead. Jet Black and Midnight Blue are working together and Fern Green is god knows where, but they’re the only colors left. The last one of all of us will get the power of every color and immortality,” Tangerine lectured to her yawning ally in the death match that was the Color War.

“Yes, but I think the mental power of purple being able to send any mundie insane is a bit more fun than any other color. Sure Jet Black can turn invisible and Midnight Blue can manipulate water but nothing’s quite as useful as the diversion of mundies absolutely losing their minds, so there’s not too much point in winning this besides fun,” Lavender chuckled, referring to the non-powered no color mundane of the world, ‘mundies’ as he liked to call them.

“Don’t forget Fern Green being able to control plant life, that’s potentially the most dangerous of all, just because he’s been invisible all this time doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous,” Tangerine sighed at what despite having put up with for a year now still irritated her, Lavender’s smugly carefree attitude when he’s actually more determined than anyone to win.

“Don’t forget yourself either, I’m going to have to kill you once all the others are gone,” Lavender smiled, which made Tangerine wince. She didn’t really see the point in this game, but when Lavender found her it was help him or die, and she still had a debt to pay before she let herself leave this world. Not that she helped much, being able to manipulate light and blind people wasn’t quite as effective as causing masses to go insane.

“Anyway, we got a hit on Midnight Blue, facial recognition systems on a red light camera in Las Vegas,” Tangerine murmured, focusing on the computer screen, not sure whether to feel irritated or scared now that the concept of her own death would be floating around that psychopath’s mind.

Lavender laughed in a manner more chilling than the icy gale outside howling the song of those who died on that day, sending shudders down Tangerine’s spine. “We’ve got the little twat!” he laughed, Tangerine uncomfortably smiling to appease the madman. She herself would prefer to be away from all this, just live a normal life. But unfortunately, being born a clone with the ability to manipulate light she could never really have the opportunity to settle down.

“Is everyone here?” the man with rainbow hair asked the then 18 year old colors at the surprise assembly. The rainbow-haired man, Orion Takahashi, was the man in charge of everything despite being not much older than the colors. He didn’t know genetics like all the scientist and he didn’t guard the colors like the security officers, but he still seemed to for some reason be able to make all the decisions without proper knowledge.

He reminded the 18-year old Tangerine of the politicians she read about in her education program. She smiled at that thought. Whether he should be in a leadership position or not he was like a father to all the colors despite his age, and he viewed and loved all of the colors as brothers and sisters, always wanting to keep them safe. Or so she thought.

“There’s only 10 of us, how hard can it be to just look!” Lavender yelled out, causing Orion to smile and the other colors to laugh a bit, even getting a giggle out of the quiet and shy Carnation. Tangerine looked at Lavender. He was always a joker, but Lavender wasn’t too close to him, preferring to spend most of her time with Sky, Lime and Midnight. They were a bit more levelheaded.

“Well I suppose that’s correct Lavender, I suppose I should get on with it,” Orion replied with a gleam in his eye. Loving father figure he may be but he didn’t respond well to being mocked. Often that would result in lectures and extra class time, but that never worked on Lavender who seemed to find humor and joy in anything, an enviable trait.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I gathered you all here today,” Orion started, giving a smile in his pause, causing all the colors to wonder even more. Tangerine caught the gesture though, an obvious attempt to further the effect of whatever he was going to say. That was basic psychology she had learnt in her private tutoring. “As you probably already know, it’s all your 18th birthday!” Orion continued, replied to with a polite applause by the colors and surrounding staff. Later Tangerine would notice there were many more guards in the area than usual, but in this moment she focused on Orion skeptically.

“For the occasion I’ve decided to reveal to you all the truth about the reason of your creation,” he smiled as he paused once again for the colors to gasp. They figured out that they would be clones but they had no idea why they made them and obviously spent so much money on their development. Satisfied with the response, Orion continued, “All of you have an ability corresponding to your hair color beyond the normal range of human capability. You cannot use them at the moment as the vitamins you take every morning as well as filling you with energy temporarily remove that mental capability, otherwise chaos would ensue,” he added, glaring at Lavender who despite the shock of what he heard managed to make a conspicuously innocent look.

Tangerine felt like yelling or saying something about it but she found she was so surprised that she couldn’t grasp the words to say. Obviously the other colors were finding similar results as Orion kept talking, “Carnation, you can make people fall in love at will. Lavender, you can make people go insane at will. Lime, you can make people violently ill at will. None of those powers work on other colors. Fern, you can manipulate the growth of plant life. Midnight, you can manipulate water. Scarlet, you can manipulate heat and temperature. Sky, you can fly. Jet, you can turn invisible. Snow, you can change the weather. Tangerine, you can manipulate light,” and waited for it to sink into them all.

Manipulating light? Tangerine wasn’t sure how to respond to the statement. Laugh and call it out as a joke or have a mental breakdown at the development. She was different enough with her naturally orange hair and pale skin; she didn’t need to have some superpower too to isolate her even more.

“I’m sure you’re all not sure how to react to this news,” Orion started, “But we have some work to do. All of you are set to die in 3 years time unless all but one of you die, the last one alive will have all the powers listed as well as immortality,” and Tangerine opened her mouth to yell protest but she felt a stinging sensation in her back that she instantly recognized as a tranquillizer dart and her vision went to black.

That was almost three years ago now that they were knocked out and woke up spread across the world, and now it was an all-out war, kill or die. In three weeks it would hit the three-year mark and unless there was only one color left they would all die. Fern was sure to come out of hiding and attack, and Jet was most likely with Midnight. It was more than likely Midnight slipped up on purpose to lure them, but trap or not they had no other option.

Lavender smiled on the plane as they landed in Las Vegas. “I’ve always wanted to go here,” he laughed as they got off the plane. Tangerine just bit her lip, not wanting Lavender to lose it and kill her. He was always worst in his happiest moods.

“The license plate of the car he was in is a house at Sunrise Manor, so he should be there,” Tangerine said, going to the rental car business nearby and quickly paying to have a car for three weeks, figuring if she died she’d be too dead to worry about repaying it and if she lived she’d be too powerful to worry about it.

Before long they reached the house with the car parked out the front in plain view. Both took out pistols and Lavender sent the neighbors insane, hearing their screams and pots smashing but then an odd silence. Luckily enough for the silence allowed Tangerine to hear the footsteps right behind her, causing her to jump to the side and fire blindly at nothing, but one hit Jet’s leg, causing him to come into view as he lets out a gasp of pain.

“I came…. to talk…” Jet gasped out, Lavender just laughing in response. “Orion lied! We don’t die in 3 weeks! We don’t get other powers or immortality! It’s scientifically impossible!” he yelled out.

“I’ve got no clue what’s going on but if someone can make a mundie go a little too far down the rabbit hole by feeling like it, I think it’s possible for immortality to exist,” Lavender smiled and shot Jet in the head, killing him instantly.

Tangerine started vomiting at the sight, despite everything she hadn’t seen a dead body yet with her own eyes, and Lavender turned the gun and pointed it at her. “Sorry princess but I just needed you to get here,” and squeezed the trigger.

I’m powerless… Power isn’t about what you’re able to do, power’s not about anything. I have no less power than Lavender or Orion. Everything fades in oblivion, no one can actually have power in a world of infinites… death and disappearance comes to us all. We’re all nothing, we can’t mean anything, and meaning is power. The only thing with true power is death and oblivion, the powers that overcome all…

The bullet went through Tangerine’s head, and whether her philosophy was true or not she had in fact been overcome by the power that was death. Fern was still in hiding and Midnight died soon after, but after the three week countdown ran up they both died and eventually all faded away to oblivion, dead even in the memories of the world.

by @NewSun
A Man stands beneath a sky stained the hue of rusted amber. His world is illuminated solely by artificial light; day and night blur into one for no star burns bright in the sky. Sometimes he wonders how it happened: how the sun could be extinguished despite its cosmic power, despite being the lifegiver of the world. The sun is black now. Nobody knows why.

The Man goes to an empty home each night. He looks out through a tiny window across the cityscape and sees flecks of neon green scintillate through the haze before they quickly fade back into the obscurity of the synthetic auburn day. The Man sighs. He flicks the window blinds shut and scuttles to the warmth of his bed. He clutches a hand drawn portrait of himself. A child’s drawing.

The next day is the same as the last. The sky is still befouled by an unnatural glow. He misses the light of day — the real light of day. He peers skyward, but there is nothing besides the looming falsity that lines the clouds. He tells a co-worker that he misses when the sun was alight. The co-worker ignores him and carries on putting pen to paper. The Man doesn’t look out of the window for the rest of the day, but he does not forget.

The Man’s daughter stays with him today. He doesn’t have custody, she lives with her Mother. The Child is full of life and energy. She runs rampant around The Man’s tiny apartment, he can barely catch her.
He smiles for the first time in weeks.
They share a meal of printed meat and laboratory potatoes. He prepares it lovingly.

The Man goes for a walk with his daughter. He cannot stop staring at the sky. She barely even notices it.
Do you remember the sun, he asks her.
No, she replies.
Do you ever wonder what that thing in the sky is.
Sometimes.
Has Mummy ever told you about it, He asks.
I hear Mummy talking with the other man sometimes. They say you need to stop telling me about it. They say th-they will take me away from you.
Oh, the Man says.
He wipes a tear from her face and she sniffles. She looks up at him. Her eyes are red and teary.

They stop at the park and he rests for a few moments. She hurries off to climb a tree. The trees are all dead, though. They stopped having leaves years ago. They are all skeletons now; they died without the sun. The Man tells himself that they cannot survive on artificial light. Within himself, he knows this to be true.

The daughter is asleep. The Man can barely keep his eyes open. She breathes lightly while she rests and he can hear her across the room. It soothes him. He lays back in his armchair, he struggles to stay awake. He flicks the television on, hoping it will help. The blueish light agitates the sleeping girl and he winces from the unexpected brightness. He fumbles for the remote. He doesn’t want to wake The Girl.
The lady on the television says something about the Sun.
He turns it off before he can stop himself.

Her mother comes to pick her up in the morning. He and the mother exchange a cold handshake and empty words. Then she is gone. The apartment is empty again.
He sets to work deflating the mattress he got for The Girl. He cannot stop thinking about the lady on the television. He goes to turn it back on, but there is nothing but cartoons. He glances out of the window. It is still dark out. Still illuminated by synthetic brightness. It is cold in the apartment.

The office is alive with chatter but the Man doesn’t know why. It is normally solemn and quiet. People laugh by the cooler. Two men joke by a cubicle. He cannot understand why, for it is still dark outside. He does not know what has changed.
He asks a co-worker why everybody is so jovial.
You didn’t hear? Asks one.
No, The Man says.
Turn on the news tonight, another says.

The day goes by quickly. The Man hurries home. He makes it in time for the news.
Breaking News says the banner.
The Man struggles to believe his eyes and his ears.
The Company is to restore power to the Sun, says the lady on the television.
The Man jumps from his chair and cries. He cries all night.

He doesn’t go to work today. He stays at home. He goes on a walk. He eats bland food. He does anything to pass the time. Two days, he tells himself. Two days. He goes to bed, he tosses and turns. He can’t sleep no matter how hard he tries. He rests on the windowsill. He knows he will not miss the rusted orange skies, overcast with black and inky darkness.

He wakes from the buzzing of his phone. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. It is his daughter. She asks him if he would like to watch the Sun together.
He says yes.
There is nothing i’d like more, he tells her.
I’m excited, she says.
I am too.
Mummy says it isn’t going to happen.
Mummy is just scared.
There is no reply.
Does Mummy know you are calling, he asks.
The phone line goes down. He doesn’t get to say goodbye.
He wastes the rest of the day pacing.

He arrives at the Mother’s house. He knocks on the door slowly. The Girl does not answer, the Mother does.
What are you doing here, she asks.
I’m here to take her to the watch the Sun, he replies.
You have got to stop filling her head with this shit, she shouts.
It isn’t a joke, he shouts back. It is going to be like it used to be.
It can’t be done, she says. She slams the door in his face.
He knocks again, but there is no answer.

He sneaks around the back. Her bedroom is on the ground floor. He knocks on the window quietly. Her face appears from behind the blinds and lights up like the sun. She climbs through the window and closes it softly.

Are you excited, he asks her.
Yeah, she shouts.
They exchange no more words for a moment or two. They lie on a hill where they can see the Sun. In the distance, scaffolds reach into the clouds. His phone buzzes. It is the Mother. He does not answer. It buzzes again a minute later. It is a message.
I am calling the police, it says. He ignores it.
The scaffolds in the distance glow with power as they engage.
Five, he says.
Four, she says.

Police sirens howl in the distance. They grow louder every second.

Three.
Two.

Deafeningly close.
The Girl screams as they pull up behind them.

He hears a voice command him to put his hands up. He does not comply.

One.

Any minute now he tells himself. He stares up at the ball of umbral black floating in the sky. Any minute now.

by @Darcs

(i) --A thing with feathers,
Mourning black beauty,
The best part of waking up.

(ii) -Horse kicks like horse,
This brew is from Djibouti?
I can't afford another cup--

(iiv) It's too darkie anyway.
Side effects run their course for I--
And all on a 9 to 5 course.

(iv) Of course I want more!
Black Auster for austerity?
Would you like to endorse?

(5) We donate 5 cents to charity,
Jack! You should buy a another pot
or seventy.

(vi) I need more, blackie!
Why, more migraines?
Berries hook and fuel.

(vii) JUST GIVE ME SOME YOU OLD CRONY,
I NEED TO BURY MY WORLD DARK. --REPLACED
WITH SEA I DIVE OFF THE ARC.

(iix) Garmonbozia, my liquid sorrow--
Black beauty!--
Hope; love is lost on you. More tomorrow--



Oh -- -- -- ecstasy--!

(~) Dip in acedia --!
-corazon de la negrura,

-- fuel our progress,
drain the heart of darkness,

March to the drum, More
-marrón to flood slums.

Oh chums? Bronzed workers
liquid chum, Marxist scum,

Starbucks bums crowned dumb!
assuage umbrage beans for mum--

Fair trade?
I don't know. It's damn fine!

oppressed fuel oppressed with Turkish
-elixirs while slaves roast in mines

Our savage addiction-
It's dark predilection--

America's!!!!!!!!! The Worlds capitalist ambrosia!

by @WiseDragonGirl
A man with neatly combed black hair and a pair of glasses on his face walked with big steps through the beige and white coloured paediatrics department of a hospital. The nametag on the long, white coat read dr. E. Hellington and he carried a newspaper. He made his way to the nurses station, where a few other people were. Two female nurses were talking while restocking the medicine-cart. A man wearing a similar white coat, with neck-long blond hair which he kept in a casual ponytail, leaned over a desk and seemed to write something in a file.
“Andy!” dr. Hellington said.
Upon hearing his name, the other doctor looked up and nodded. “Good morning, Eric,” he greeted him.
“Have you read the newspaper?”
“Well certainly,” Andy said as he turned his attention back to the file and continued writing in it. “The Raging Antelopes won the football match, the creative energy for leo’s is high today, but they might not be able to use how they want and the daily comic was incredibly funny again.”
Eric showed a sceptical expression. “You read the horoscope?” he asked with disbelief in his voice.
“Only to have something to say when people ask if I have read the newspaper,” Andy stated with a grin, which was followed by a chuckle from one of the nurses, “but I did skim over the headlines.”
“Then you have read this!” Eric said as he dropped the newspaper on the table, next to the file Andy was writing in. The headline on the front page read ‘Ancient tablet deciphered, an object of ultimate power is somewhere hidden in the land’ “Ultimate power, Andy!”
“I can read,” Andy sighed, after a quick glance at the headline, “and my brother is part of the excavation team that found the tablet and deciphered parts of it. He already told me about it before that reporter got paid handsomely for the article. Archaeologists all over the world are super-excited about this find.” He barely gave the newspaper any attention. “Seborrheic dermatitis, two r’s, right?”
Eric blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Ehm, yeah, two r’s.”
“I knew it!” Andy scribbled a few last things down and handed it to one of the nurses. He then grabbed another file from the pile and sat down on the edge of the desk to read about the next young patient he would visit.
The first thing Eric noticed when Andy sat down like that, was what he wore under the unbuttoned white coat. It wasn’t a neatly ironed shirt like most doctors wore, it was a blue t-shirt with the image of the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, with the caption ‘Cookies!’ under it. Deciding not to comment on that, Eric sat down on one of the desk chairs and he looked at his colleague. “You’re not enthusiastic about this at all. How is that possible?”
There was a moment of silence before Andy looked up and focussed his attention on his colleague, his grey-blue eyes held a serious expression. “I hope they never find it.”
Eric frowned at that. “Why?”
Andy shifted a bit so he was sitting more comfortably. “Well, I foresee trouble if they manage to dig up that ultimate power thingamajig.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hand as he said that, he couldn’t care less how it was actually called. “You know, if it really exists in the first place.” Andy skimmed through the notes written down by the nurses of the evening- and the nightshift and the results from the blood test.
“What kind of trouble?” Eric asked curiously.
The question made Andy look up again and he put the file next to him on the desk. “First off, if it does what is promised on the tablet, I think people will want it enough to kill for it, possibly even start wars over it. Secondly, if some kind of ancient race decided it needed to be hidden, they probably had a reason for that. So far the archaeologists couldn’t decipher more then the words ultimate power and hidden. We don’t know anything about it. Thirdly, the one who will gain this unlimited power...”
“Ultimate,” Eric corrected him.
Again Andy made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Unlimited, ultimate, whatever. At some point this person will most likely abuse it. You know what they say: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The statement was followed by a shrug. “I wouldn’t trust anyone with that kind of power.”
“Come now, we could do so much good with that!” Eric almost jumped up from his chair and he walked back and forth in the small nurses station. “It is assumed that the object will give someone, well, superpowers if you will. Think about all the people we could cure. Wouldn’t you want that, Andy?”
“Granted, if that thing can cure disease, that would be great. Even if it would lead to my unemployment, I would support that. But then what? What would you do after you so nobly eradicated disease?”
Eric frowned, followed by a sigh and he sat down again. “I...have no idea.”
“What are the odds someone would try to make you work for them? Or that you will start doing more harm then good, even if it is with the best intentions? Maybe it will give someone superpowers, maybe it’s some kind of devastating bomb. Either way, I don’t want to have it and it should remain buried under the ground.” Andy stood up and began walking away with both of his hands in the pockets of his coat. “I’m going to see Mabel,” he informed Eric and with that the conversation seemed over.
“So, if it would give you ultimate power, you don’t want it?” Eric asked, not yet ready to drop the subject.
Upon hearing the question, Andy turned around and walked backwards for a bit. “I don’t need it,” he said as he spread his arms. “I already am the most awesome doctor of this hospital and probably even the world! But if you would ever get your hands on that thingy and want to use it, please redecorate these walls. It looks too much like a hospital in here!” After he said that, Andy went to one of the doors and opened it after two knocks. “Mabel!” he said enthusiastically as he entered the room. “How are we feeling today? And with ‘we’ I mean you, because I’m feeling great!”
Eric rubbed his face, he could have known the serious conversation would end in a way like this. For some reason Andy never stayed in a serious mood for long and he referred to himself as awesome or fantastic usually a couple of times each day, but that didn’t take away the fact Andy was a good doctor. And even if the serious conversation about the topic hadn’t lasted as long as he had wanted, Eric had to admit Andy had raised some good points. He left the nurses station, he too had patients to visit after all.

During the morning, Andy visited several young patients on his round, drank some coffee with the nurses, talked with a couple of parents, responded to an emergency call from one of the rooms and overall managed to fill his morning quite nicely. By lunchtime he made his way to outpatient department for children where one of his colleagues was holding consultations that day. Something Andy had planned for the afternoon.
The waiting area was empty, which was a good sign. Andy walked to the room he needed to be, knocked on the door and peeked inside. He noticed how his colleague was typing on the keyboard with his eyes on the computerscreen.
“Jack!” Andy greeted him enthusiastically as he walked further in the room. “I’m glad to see you’re not busy.”
“Well actually...” Jack began, only to be cut short by Andy.
“You can finish that later. Our dearest colleague from gynaecology Frank called and he’s hungry. More importantly, I am starving!”
“Andy, listen...” Jack tried, but again Andy didn’t let him finish.
“It’s your chance to do the first of the seven works of mercy: feed the hungry. I’m certain that allowing a hungry person to feed himself and keep him company while doing so counts as an act of mercy. I’m allowing you to do a good deed, man!” It seemed Andy was finished, as he looked at Jack with a grin from ear to ear and his hands firmly planted in his side.
Jack cleared his throat and waited another second to see if Andy really didn’t have anything else to say. “Alright,” he slowly said. “I give in, we’ll have lunch now.”
Andy raised his arms in the air. “Whoohoo!”
With a smile on his face, Jack clicked a few times with the mouse and got up from the chair. He looked at Andy’s t-shirt for a moment and shook his head. “Cookie monster, Andy?”
“What? I like cookies!”
“It’s not the dress-code.”
Andy shrugged to that. “I think the head of our department has given up on making me wear a shirt to work.”
Jack laughed at that and he placed a hand on Andy’s shoulder as they left the room to go to the cafeteria. “How did you get those amazing powers of persuasiveness? You got me to join you for lunch while I wasn’t finished with work yet, you get to wear to work whatever you want. There are plenty of examples in which you got people to do things your way.”
“Well, it’s a secret to be honest, but I’ll share it with you,” Andy said and he looked left and right to check no-one was listening in and he leaned closer to his friend. “I’m just annoying. I don’t give up and just go on until I get things my way.” There was a brief pause in which Jack shook his head with an amused smile on his face and Andy grinned. “And someone as awesome as me can make any piece of clothing look awesome, even the Cookie Monster!”
Again Jack laughed and Andy walked alongside of him with a grin on his face. Some people got along with him, some didn’t. Luckily Jack belonged to the first group.
When he was done laughing, Jack looked at Andy. “Have you read the newspaper?” he asked, to have something to talk about other then work.
“I swear, if you’re going to talk about the headline I will kick you. It’s what everyone talks about and I just don’t care.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Right. To avoid being kicked, did you know that today the creative energy is high for leo’s?”
Now it was Andy’s turn to laugh and they continued to talk about things unrelated to a certain mysterious hidden object. It was true what Andy had said, he didn’t care about it, for reasons he had explained to his other colleague Eric. Later Jack did ask why he wasn’t interested and Andy told him the same things.

The afternoon was filled with consultations for Andy, but he enjoyed doing those. After that he went home in his red Audi Cabrio, rolling his eyes when the news on the radio mentioned what was in the newspaper as well. There really was no avoiding it.

The first few days after the discovery of the tablet it was a hot item in the news and online. There were debates all around and plenty of theories about the origin and the use of the mentioned item were formed. At this time the archaeologists who had found the tablet remained at the site for digging and released no additional news about it. Other people started looking as well, it was similar to the gold rush fever, but no further progress was made. As days turned to weeks with no sign of the actual item, people started to lose interest. The newspapers still dedicated some space to write about the progress, but people generally believed the object mentioned on the tablet was nothing but a myth or a faulty translation.

After three weeks since the article in the newspaper had turned the world upside down, Andy received a text message from his brother to let him know he was back home and that he would come over after the meeting with his fellow archaeologists was over. Since he was bored and didn’t have anything better to do, Andy decided to visit his brother now instead. With that decision made he walked up to his car and let the top down. It was good weather after all, so why not enjoy it? After placing a pair of sunglasses on his face he took place behind the wheel and drove to the museum he knew his brother would be.

The museum itself wasn’t spectacular, just a two-storey building made mostly from steel and glass. On the ground floor was the museum itself, on the first floor were a couple of small offices, a small conference room, an archive and a storage room for delicate artefacts. Andy parked his car, put the sunglasses in the glove compartment and entered the hallway of the museum. He glanced around with a confident smile and went straight for the stairs to go up to the first floor. The kind woman behind the counter tried to stop Andy from going up by mentioning it was for authorized personal only, to which Andy showed the most charming smile he could master and asked if he didn’t look authorized to her. That baffled her long enough for Andy to just walk up the stairs. He made his way to the conference room, since his brother had mentioned a meeting he assumed it would be held there, and he knocked on the door. When the door opened and Andy looked in the surprised face of his brother, he grinned.
“Matt! I thought I’d come over and make sure you won’t work too hard. You’ve been digging and discussing for weeks now!”
“Andy...” Matt sighed. “Now is not a good time.”
“Nonsense!” Andy entered the room and looked at the people gathered around a table, all of them with serious faces. Aside from his brother there were two other men and one woman. He only recognized one of the men, a friend of his brother going by the name Edmund and Edmund looked rather annoyed in his direction. That didn’t surprise Andy one bit, they didn’t really get along after all. Therefore he choose to ignore the glare and he looked at the table instead. On the table were some items and Andy walked up to them to have a closer look, closely followed by his brother. One of the items was a clay tablet, Andy assumed it was the tablet that mentioned the mythical object. Then there was some pottery, a bead necklace and a spherical onyx rock. He picked up the rock and looked at it. “So you didn’t find it then, that statue of awesomeness.”
The statement was answered with silence and the people around the table looked at Andy, as if they weren’t sure what to say. Matt couldn’t hold back a sigh and he rubbed the back of his neck.
The only woman in the group leaned towards Matt. “What statue is he referring to?” she whispered to him.
“Well, Fiona,” Matt began with another sigh and he gestured towards his brother, “Andy here has a new name for the item we were looking for every time we spoke.” Matt couldn’t help but smile a bit. “Last time we talked he called it the lightning maker, before that it was the ultimator.”
“I kind of like ultimator,” the other man said with a chuckle, “maybe we should call it that from now on.” He grinned at Edmund when he noticed the glare he received from the man, obviously not impressed by it.
With a grin Andy looked at this man, finally there was someone who had a sense of humour. He wasn’t sure why most of his brothers colleagues seemed so serious. Then again, compared to him most people were or he was just not serious enough. “So there was no sign of the ultimator?” he asked, as no-one had answered him yet.
Again there was a moment of silence, but Edmund broke it after he rubbed his face with a hand. “Two things,” he said with a calm voice, even if he seemed far from pleased to have been interrupted in their meeting like this. “Firstly, you’re holding it, so I would appreciate you’ll be careful with it. Secondly, it’s not because Menno thinks it’s a good name we will actually use it. So please stop calling it that. If we will name it, it will be a more scientific or historic correct name.”
Andy looked at the round black stone on his hand, for once he didn’t seem to know what to say. That moment didn’t last long, he placed it back on the table and looked at it with a frown. It didn’t seem all that impressive, nor had he noticed anything about that promised ultimate power when he held it. “How does it work?” he asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Matt said.
“And have you decided what you’re going do with it?” Andy asked as he looked at his brother. “Like go to the Mariana Trench and throw it in the Challenger Deep?”
Menno burst out in laughter, while Edmund rubbed his temples with two fingers.
“You do know,” Edmund said, “that this is the biggest archaeological find in ages?”
“And yet I don’t see reporters with flashing camera’s to document the object that held the media in it’s grasp for weeks, nor have any of you taken credit for the find yet,” Andy retorted. “Why did you sneak it in like this?
For the first time Edmund showed a faint smile. “We found it in the first week, but the amount of corruption and violence we witnessed was enough reason to keep our find silent. We remained there to see if we could find other artefacts and to find clues about how to use it.” He pointed at the items lying on the table. “We did find other things, but nothing useful for...”
“The ultimator,” Menno finished the sentence for Edmund, which made the man groan.
Matt gave a pat of encouragement to Edmund and turned to Andy. “Armed men arrived at the dig site, we were requested to leave. Someone else bought the claims, while they were lawfully ours, and their team continued searching for it. So we left and took it with us.” Matt looked at the black stone and slowly shook his head. “It wasn’t supposed to come in the news when it did, we wanted to find out more about it first, but one of the members of our team apparently couldn’t...retain his enthusiasm and sold the story to a reporter. Needless to say we kept the discovery from him as well.” Matt sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “There are people who really want this item and the prospect of ultimate power doesn’t seem to bring up the best in them. Still, we haven’t found any evidence it really does what is claimed on the tablet.”
While Matt was talking, Menno picked up the round onyx stone and looked at it. “I have examined this piece of fine craftsmanship,” he said when Matt was done. “As far as I can tell it’s just an onyx rock. If there is a secret way to activate it’s ‘hidden powers’, we haven’t found it yet. The parts of the tablet that weren’t eroded didn’t reveal anything about it, aside from how it looks.”
Fiona picked up the tablet and looked at the ancient words on it. “While I’m certain the translation is correct,” she continued after Menno, “they might have had a different interpretation for the term ultimate than we have.”
“To put it in medical terms,” Edmund stated as looked at Andy with crossed arms. “This might just be a placebo. I’m sure that you, as a doctor, know how powerful the placebo-effect can be.”
There was a moment of silence in the conference room and Andy looked at the stone. “In other words, you think that the believe they hold something of true power is what gives them strength.”
“That is what we suspect,” Edmund agree. “In all likelihood, the people of this ancient civilisation needed something to believe in, they needed something that would encourage them and then someone carved and polished a piece of onyx they found somewhere until it was completely round. It is just speculation of course.” He looked at the round rock with a deep frown in his forehead. “There is no evidence a stone like this, no matter how smooth it is, contains the ‘magic’ ability to give someone super-power like the popular theory in the media claims. Menno here is our geo-archaeologist and if he says it’s just an onyx rock, I will believe him. We will keep it here with the other delicate artefacts in the hopes we’ll find more information about it, but I don’t have high hopes for it.”
“And you trust the owner of the museum with it?” Andy asked.
Edmund scowled at the question. “The owner of this museum is a close friend and the leader of our expedition. I trust him.”
“Fine, fine,” Andy said as he raised his hands. “Just asking.”

In the end, the team of archaeologists where Andy’s brother was a part of only published the discovery of the tablet and the translation. Andy kept what he had learned about the stone to himself, he knew that if people learned where the object of ‘ultimate power’ was, they would do anything to get it. There would always be people who wouldn’t want to believe the placebo-theory and believe in it’s magical abilities instead, so it was best to just keep it hidden. At least for the time being, maybe one day the truth could be revealed. One thing was certain though, he didn’t need anything to be awesome. He just was. And as long as the truth wasn’t revealed, people could dream about the existence of magical objects and unlimited power. Or ultimate. Whatever.

by @elitestpotato
The grinding of the rust-filled gears is enough to drive any mere man insane. Mr. Victus Driver is no mere man. In fact, he is quite odd, indeed. With dark sullen eyes hinting at the sleep deprivation that haunts him, a gnarled, crooked spine arching his back into a permanently uncomfortable pose, and a social pattern that resembles that of a mole's rather than a human's, all strongly hint at the simple fact that the man does not associate with his peers. Yet, he loves them all. He loves them with a scorching passion, a passion like that of a teenage couple with nothing to care about but each other. A passion so immense that it sets his skin aflame, leaving a lasting red impression, much to the chagrin of the pale man. That is why he does what he does. His love for the people who beat him down with their stares of burning judgment. Mr. Driver's work is thankless work, work that only a man with the heart the size of the destruction a nuclear missile would make could do. Mr. Driver is quite odd, indeed.
Today is like any other. Victus wakes up and starts on his work, making the awful screeches and groans left from the rusty gears like a sick, twisted symphony. Victus slowly puts his gangly legs into motion from one dial to the next, poking and prodding at levers until the screeches burst his ear drums apart. Glancing at the clock, Mr. Driver slows his work pace. Twelve. He stirs a pot of tea and enjoys one of the few breaks he allows himself to have. "I wonder," Victus quietly mutters, "what would happen if I just stopped." He thought about it for a few moments, "I know that my work keeps them safe, and them out, but I've never actually seen them and the people never seem to be harmed during my little breaks..." The odd little man quickly shakes his head and continues his all-important work.
The thought continues to fester in his mind as he pulls and adjusts the levers to his liking. What if he stopped? What would happen? Would time itself stop? Would they really come? He tries shaking the thought, he tries with all his might. Focusing on his work does not work, focusing on getting to his tea breaks doesn't help, focusing on the screams of the abused gears doesn't even help. Victus cannot shake the burning desire to find out what exactly would happen if he just stopped. The desire burns him red, redder than the love. So red, it's like he's glowing, glowing with the passion of curiosity. He smiles to himself and muttered, "I am no cat," and gives a sly smile. So he stops. minutes pass and nothing happeneds. Victus gives a grim grin to himself, "All this time my work meant nothing...". Then the lights go out...
And they came...

Epilogue

A child is holding his mother's hand in a second-rate nursing home. He glances across the room to see his grandfather playing with an old creaky clock. "Mommy, how come Grandpa always messes with that clock?", he quizzically asks, "I guess it's so he can still feel in control..." "In control of what, Mommy?" "Nothing dear, nothing." The boy keeps staring at his grandfather and his grandfather slowly stops tinkering with the clock. This gives the boy pause, he had never seen his grandpa not play with the old clock. What should he do? Quickly the boy decides to just wait and see what happens. The boy watches his grandfather slowly slump down into his wheel chair and stop breathing, which the boy thinks is odd... his grandfather is quite odd, indeed.

by @Ellri
OOC: The use of "cycles" in the story is meant to equal a month. For unspecific reasons, the setting world has 11 months per year.
~~~
Though the City of Valmerr was far from bankrupt, it did not have access to unlimited money either. As such, the further you got from the city core and the main thoroughfares, the greater the distance between the streetlights. In the old workman quarter near the great river Nith, the lights faded with sunset as the few remaining factories shut down for the night and the workers went home. On this evening, with just a tiny sliver of the moon visible, the cramped streets were dim indeed. The few who were out and about all walked resolutely towards their goal, paying no heed to anyone else other than to avoid crashing into them.

In some ways, the fading light was peaceful. In others, it was menacing. Some might even have said malevolent. It was upon just one such street, not far from the river itself, that the woman known as Elis ní Arailt walked. Like most others she was headed home after a long day's work. She wasn't anything special. Average height, average build, A worker's green jumpsuit that clearly had seen better days, her fairly short, brown hair was just long enough to be tied into a ponytail at the back of her head. In other words, the average young factory worker.

What thoughts were going through her head is impossible to say. Perhaps she thought of her work, or perhaps she thought of what to make for dinner. Or it might have been the coworker she had a special eye out for. Her expression revealed nothing about it. After turning another corner, she passed the small square where the old fountain stood, now topped by the holographic projector used by the government newscasters. The gleaming metal framework holding the projector up contrasted heavily with the ancient stone of the fountain. In fact, it contrasted with everything in the square.

She was thankful the projector was inactive at this time, as all it brought these days was bad news. Elis picked up her pace, wanting to be far away just in case the projector fired up again. By the time the projector was both out of sight and out of hearing, she could see no other people around her at all. On one hand, it was a relief. No others meant nobody to trouble her. On the other hand, it meant nobody to see if something did happen.

With that thought in mind, she touched her wrist where the government tracker implant lay, then kept walking home. The only warning she had was a sudden, but very short, burst of air. She did not know what to make of it, let alone have time to think on it, before someone grabbed her from behind.

She started to scream, but before she could, a hand covered in a glove of matte black leather pressed a small piece of foul-smelling cloth against her mouth and nose. Then she knew no more.



Ever so slowly, Elis started to regain consciousness. Her head felt like it was stuffed with wool, her eyes refused to open yet. Her throat felt parched. She tried to shift and found that she was not bound. In the distance, she could faintly hear someone speaking.

“Is she compatible?” A man said, his clear baritone timbre ringing through the air. She was curious who he might be. And where she was, for that matter, but continued listening in silence.

“Yes, doctor. All test and scans indicate she is a prime specimen. You will not be disappointed.” Someone else answered, this one having a somewhat higher-pitched voice.

“Excellent. Start the procedure immediately.” The first one answered.

Her head starting to clear up, Elis wondered what procedure they were speaking of. She managed to open her eyes a little. There wasn't much to see. She appeared to be in a brightly lit room with dark green walls. Along the wall before her, she could see a series of glass windows, through which she could observe a number of men, all dressed in charcoal-black lab coats. They were scurrying about, pressing buttons on holographic consoles much like the ones she normally assembled at the factory. She didn't know who had spoken earlier, but she had a vague feeling that at least one of them was no longer there. And that they had been speaking of her.

Suddenly, all around her, machinery whirred to life. She started looking around, trying to take in details about the room she was in. Anything to understand what was happening. To her shock, she found that she was floating over some sort of platform, levitated by some sort of machine. All around her, stood machines of all sorts, none of which were of familiar designs. However, like the holographic projector back in the square, they all gleamed as all the government tech did.

Many of the machines around her opened up, articulated arms extending out, reaching for her. She tried to squirm away, but suspended as she was, she was unable to actually move away. Within moments, the machines had grabbed her wrists, ankles, effectively immobilizing her. The servomotors built into the robotics were far too strong for anyone, let alone a woman like her, to overpower. She could only watch as another set of arms lowered down from the ceiling and started undressing her. The robotics operated with surgical precision, using some sort of focused laser beams to cut through the cloth where the arms restraining her prevented them from removing it intact. Before a minute had passed, the machines had finished their task and she was suspended there, as naked as the day she had been born.

Her only relief at this point, was twofold. Firstly, the technicians on the other side of the glass windows appeared not to be watching her and secondly, the air in the room was comfortably warm. The robotic arms then rotated her so that she faced the floor. When she lifted her head to try to see what they were doing next, she quickly found her head pushed gently back down. What happened next almost made her think the ones doing this to her had a sort of sense of humor, for moments later, an antique monitor rose from the floor, showing her what was clearly her own back.

She saw as much as felt as a series of robotic arms extended down, spraying her back with something cold. She had no idea what that was, but on some level, it scared her. But not as much as what happened next. For next, the arms extended a series of scalpels, slicing into her back. She could vaguely feel them cutting, but it did not hurt. That was the point she realized the spray had been some sort of powerful numbing agent. There was a little blood welling to the surface of the cuts, but far less than she expected.

The machines continued cutting until the cuts reached from the nape of her neck and all the way along her spine down to her tailbone. It wasn't a wide strip, but she estimated it to be maybe 3-4 cm wide. More arms reached down, attaching some sort of suction cups to the flesh, then started lifting back up. All this time, the scalpels continued cutting, eventually freeing the section from her entirely. Elis was in too deep a shock to even react as that piece of her was carried away. More arms came forth, cleaning the now-exposed part of her body. She didn't know how much time passed, but soon enough, she could see the clear white of her spine all exposed to the air. It both horrified and fascinated her.

It was obvious to her even then that the machines were far from done and it came as no surprise when they continued their work. Dozens of tiny arms came down, holding strange pieces of metal. One by one, the machines lowered them onto her exposed vertebrae, where they horrifyingly enough fit perfectly. Though they were attached to her, she felt nothing as they were. Every third piece appeared to be different from the rest, a longer piece sticking up, as well as being slightly thicker. After all thirty or so pieces had been attached, the machines started linking the pieces together. Once they were all joined, she could feel as they wrapped around her spine. It was a feeling so strange that she could not put any words to it.

The arms drew back the moment they were done, and she saw as the arms that had taken her skin and muscle away returned with it, only now there was eleven holes evenly spread through it. They lowered it back down, and each hole fit perfectly around the parts that stuck out from the metal pieces.

Two arms she had not seen before now came down, shooting some sort of beam all along the exposed openings where the scalpels had cut into her earlier. Where the beam had passed, she was surprised to see clean, unbroken skin. Not even a hint of scar tissue. The whole procedure couldn't have taken more than a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. When they were done, the only visible difference was the eleven round holes evenly along her spine, and the fact that her back as a tiny bit thicker where the metal lay beneath the surface.

At that point, All the arms released their grip on her. Elis could move around, but the energy field suspending up from the floor her prevented her from shifting about much. One by one, the arms withdrew back into their machines. She thought perhaps they were done, but then a single, altogether different arm came forth. It started at the top of her neck and went downwards, inserting some sort of semi-transparent tubes into the exposed holes on her back, then lifted her upright. The antique monitor followed her up, showing her back.

She did not feel any different with them attached, but moments later she saw as the tubes started swelling up with some red fluid. It did not take a genius to realize the fluid had to be blood. Ever so slowly, she started to regain full feeling in her back, but it did not hurt. Within two minutes, she could pinpoint which tubes injected and which ones sucked. The mixed feelings could only be described as unnerving.

For a long time, nothing more happened. She was free to shift about how she hovered in the energy field, but she found that she could not detach the tubes. However they were attached, they sat far too firmly to give in to her strength. She quickly gave up that project. Instead, she tried to observe the technicians beyond the window. They all appeared to be regular people, youthful men she would never even have given a second look before. They appeared to be intently focused upon their work, but did not rush about the way they had before.

It was impossible to say how long she hung there, but must have been hours before she even began to notice anything changing. Eventually, many of the lab-coated men left, only to be replaced by others just as generic as the ones who left. It was maybe seven or eight hours later that she first noticed the difference in the tubes. The blood flowing through them appeared tinged with silver. It wasn't easily visible, but it was clear that there was something different about it. Shifting about, she looked at the places she knew of where her veins and arteries were close to the surface of her skin. As she had dreaded the moment she saw it in the tubes, she could clearly see the same silvery tinge on the normally blue veins visible even through her skin.

“What are you doing to me?” She screamed. If they heard her, they did not react at all. Either the lab was soundproofed, or the technicians were all deaf.

Ever so slowly, Elis found herself growing drowsy and she soon realized that she'd been awake abnormally long. She thought she drifted of many times, but shook herself awake, not knowing what would happen if she fell asleep. However, soon she found herself unable to fight the drowsiness and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. At the same time the lights slowly dimmed down in the room.



It was late at night. The skies were dark and the rain fell hard down from the skies, only broken by occasional flashes of lightning. Occasionally, a bolt would strike either one of the countless grounding rods spread throughout the City of Valmerr. The sound of the rain falling down was only broken by the booming of gongs sounding over the city alert system, summoning the people to the Holoprojectors.

Hours had passed since the last of the great factories had shut down for the night and all the people had returned home. Now, one by one or in small groups, they mustered before the gleaming machines, not one of them daring to ignore the summons. In the rich quarters up on the five hills, citizens gathered around their smaller, private holoprojectors. Some ten-fifteen minutes after the first gongs were heard, all the citizens of Valmerr stood, or sat, before a projector.

At the other end of the system, deep down in the government's vaults of carven stone, the newscasters were getting ready for the broadcast. Around them, there were technicians and tech-savants beyond count all readying the equipment for broadcast. At the center of the bustle, a small group stood, observing the citizen monitoring system, checking that not a single citizen was where he or she should not be. The bustle of the broadcast center was organized. Not one man or woman walked where he or she should not walk. They were all firmly part of the system.

Out in the city, at the very holoprojector Elis Ní Arailt had walked by alone earlier on, the people stood shoulder to shoulder. Above some few one could see the energy-based umbrellas designed and built by some of the few tech-savants not under government employ. On the rest who were not fortunate enough to have such technology, the cold rain hammered down. Aside from breathing, not one man, woman or child moved. It was impossible to say whether that was out of fear, respect or something in between.

As always, the newscasters appeared without warning. The projectors neither hummed nor made any other noises when firing up. One moment they were inactive, the next they weren't.

“Citizens of Valmerr. As you all well know, the city has these past nine cycles been plagued with people disappearing. Our benevolent and beloved queen, bless her, has charged us all with solving this problem. It is shameful for us all that more than fifty of our young women have disappeared and the one or the ones responsible have yet to be caught.

It is for this reason you have all been called here today. Today there are sad tidings. Last night, not far from this very projector, yet another of our young women disappeared. Her name, some of you might know her, was Elis Ní Arailt. She was on her way home after a productive day in the factory.

Our masterful SAR teams have been searching ever since she did not report for work, but they have, like we all have, failed to find any trace of her. The city's elected seneschal, has therefore determined that all women between 127 and 302 cycles shall have their tracking implants active at all times, rather than merely when being summoned to watch the news.

He knows well that some of you might see this as an invasion of privacy, but knows also that you as much as he hopes this will help solve the city's problem. We all thank you for your willing and unshakable approval of this.”

The holoprojectors all shut down at that point. The Citizens all turned about and returned to their homes. Upon the exposed wrists upon some women, one might occasionally see the faint yellow glow of their still-active tracking implants. Not one man, woman or child appeared to object about the new decree.



Somewhere in the lab complex, wherever that might be, the doctor too watched the news, smiling. Though it was clear that he was responsible for the women going missing, he did not seem to be perturbed by the new decree that had gone into effect. If anything, he seemed encouraged. He smiled, then whispered quietly but firmly. “Challenge accepted.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the complex, Elis slowly returned to consciousness. She could immediately feel that something was different. Opening her eyes, she could see every part of the room in perfect detail. Too perfect detail. If she had wanted, she could've counted the screws holding the window in place, twelve meters away.

“Impossible...” She muttered, shifting about to look at herself. Her arms obeyed her, but she could feel something was different. She looked down at them. Then she screamed. The sight that met her eyes was inhuman, revolting. Every major vein and artery was clearly visible through her skin. The thinner blood vessels were faintly visible as well. And they were all a metallic gray color. When she bent her arms, she could hear the faint clicking of tiny, tiny gears.

“No... It can't be...” she whispered, afraid of what she deep down knew to be true.

With her right hand, she squeezed around her left elbow and could feel the presence of something artificial, something that had not been there before. It was almost as if her arms were now partially robotic. She cast glances over the rest of her body. Everywhere, she could see the virtually imperceptible signs of robotics. None but her would have seen it, for she alone was intimately familiar with her body.

“It isn't true! This is a nightmare!” She screeched, only to start sobbing softly. She could see how her tendons, once white, now held a silvery metallic color, identical to that of the machines surrounding her. Even worse, through her back, she could feel the precise amounts of blood, raw materials and nutrients passing in through her ports, as well as the waste products being ejected through other ports. She could measure it with molecular precision.

What she could also feel, was how the nanites were rapidly spreading elsewhere in her body. There was no doubt in her mind that by the time the day was through, she would be more machine than woman. She folded herself into a ball, sobbing softly.

“Why are they doing this to me?” She muttered between sobs, not really expecting an answer and not getting one either.

How long she hung suspended like that, barely moving was impossible to say, but for each hour that passed, she could literally feel her awareness of her own body expanding even as the nanites slowly replaced more and more of it. Soon enough however, her mind was upgraded to such a degree that she could count every minute and every second passing. She was terrified of this, for though she had never had a habit of being late for anything, she had never really cared about time overmuch. She didn't want to know the passage of time. Nor the tens of thousands of other minutiae the machines that now were a part of her let her know.

She didn't want to know how the tens of thousands now in her liver were improving its function a hundredfold. She didn't want to be some sort of robot. It was wrong! Why hadn't they asked her? She didn't know, and was afraid to ask. Not that she expected anyone to answer even if she did ask.

Seven hours, twenty-seven minutes and twelve point two-hundred and thirty-seven seconds later, she could feel the presence of the computer system nearby. While that of course also terrified her, some small part was curious. She reached out towards it. Not physically, of course, but mentally. It appeared to have heavy firewalls in place to prevent intrusions. But by this time, her mind was more machine than woman, 62.12% of its cells replaced by nanite constructs. That made her far more advanced than the system. It was child's play to find a path through the forbidding walls surrounding the system. She wanted to learn all there was to learn from it, and nothing would stop her. Nothing.



It took quite a while for any of the technicians in the control room to notice, but eventually one of them did. At first, he didn't know what to make of it. Something was accessing records all over the system, consuming considerable amounts of processing power and memory.

“We're being hacked?” he muttered, disbelieving. They had some of the finest security systems available, yet whomever this hacker was, he or she bypassed them as if they weren't even there! He leaped up from his workstation, running towards the master's office.

“Master! Someone's hacking our systems! Bypassing firewalls as if they're not even there!” he shouted, even as he knocked repeatedly and hard on the doctor's office.

It took less than a minute before the door opened. The doctor stepped out, looking somewhat disturbed.

“WHO? Who is hacking our system? Is it the seneschal's men? Have you disconnected the external hardlines?” he all but shouted at the minion, his face hard with anger.

“Its not external and the hardline hasn't been connected at all today, master!” the minion answered, cringing back and down under the doctor's fury.

For a few moments, the doctor did not say anything, thinking it over. “The subject. It has to be her... I will deal with her personally. Draw her in. Feed her information to distract her. Lead her on a chase around the system before she realizes that she can assume control over it. NOW!”

The minion ran off, terrified both of what failure could mean and of the the fact that the master never got directly involved. He would have answered, but knew better than to speak back.

The doctor followed behind him, then past him as he started to work at the workstation, directing the other minions to do the same as he was. Coming to the triple airlock, the doctor stepped in. It took a full minute to pass through the cycles, time he would have preferred not to use, but lab sterility was too important to ignore. His pace across the vastness of the open lab was relentless. The subject's eyes were closed, so he doubted she could see him approaching. He did not care if she could. She could do nothing to stop him even if she could.

The systems controlling her containment were isolated from everything else, even running on a separate power supply. He could see the difference in her body from a long distance. The nanites had spread far and wide, consuming much of her body. It was a fascinating sight to see a human body replaced to such a degree by nanites. In some ways, it was unfortunate that he had to do this, but the alternative was unthinkable.

“I am sorry. But like the others, you are a failure.” he whispered.

He pulled out a small device from one of his pockets. It wasn't much larger than a syringe, but infinitely more dangerous. He pushed his hands through the energy field containing the subject, then pressed the device in, right above her neck port, then pressed the activation button. At first, nothing happened, then her body first started shuddering, then shaking wildly. It wasn't easy to keep the device in place, but he managed to do so. After a minute he was done. He put the device away, then rotated the subject's body. Her eyes were blank. Empty. Vacant.

He thought about shutting down the nanites, but with them having reverted back to their base programming, there was no real need. Besides, keeping them intact would give more data to work with. Perhaps allow him to find a quicker solution to this issue. The woman below him was no longer a threat, her mind completely wiped from existence. All that remained now, was a biomechanical shell. She would now never reach the hoped-for potential, but that was of no concern. Subjects like her were easy to find.

Besides, he thought, she could still be of some use. Within two days, the shell of a body below him would be fully saturated by the nanites. At that point, all he would need to do is program it. Give it a basic operating system. A menial purpose, of course. Building a full mind was impossible. There were too many details to cover to even begin doing so.

Even as he walked back out of the lab, ideas for how to use the shell that once was Elis Ní Arailt flew through his mind. Though the core project had yet to be a success, he could not help but smile. Nothing would be wasted. He would simply have to start over on a new test subject. No more, no less. He even had some subjects in mind... But before he could do that, he would have to prepare another lab. The current one could not be reused. It did not matter. He had the technology to build a hundred labs if he wanted. All he needed to do so, was time.



While a full cycle had passed since the last disappearance, the people could not breathe easily, for it was clear to them all that the culprit behind the disappearances had not been caught. They all knew the Seneschal always made announcements whenever major criminals were caught. Some were no doubt afraid that their rights and freedoms would be further restricted. Others held on to the hope that the latest decree had successfully scared the criminal from further crimes, but these were in the minority. Most citizens and members of the government alike were far too disillusioned to believe in such fantasies.

Few, if any, were surprised when the summons once more sounded, this time early in the morning, when most were on their way to work. In the dim light of dawn, thousands of men and women turned towards the nearest holoprojector, then started walking. While some of the people of the 4th hill chose to return to their homes, most chose to go to the public terminals. High up on the hill, that meant Hrodlaf's square, where the projector rested upon the shoulders of nine 201st decade statues, their faces all but impossible to recognize due to the wear and tear of time.

The moment they were all there, the newscaster fired up, despite the fact that many other terminals were still gathering crowds. That was one of the many advantages of having unique speakers for each quarter and terminal.

“Citizens of Valmerr. Thank you all for delaying your journey to work in order to listen. Your willingness to listen to the words of our trusted Seneschal does him great honor. Ever since the disappearance of Elis Ní Arailt, one cycle ago on her way home from work, the SAR services have been working without pause in trying to track her down. You all know she is but the last in the long line of women who have disappeared. Though you all have the tracker implants and have had them since right after the dark times, it has proven impossible to reactivate hers. It is not registering on any system in the city nor surrounding it.” With those words, the were murmurs passing around the crowd gathered before the terminal. Their city was being made a mockery of! For decades before these times, no one had ever gone missing long. The City SAR services had been known throughout the nation for their expertise.

“Silence!” The newscaster shouted, and the crowd immediately stopped murmuring. “Two hours ago, with great sadness, I learned that another two of our young women disappeared.” He paused for a moment to the gasps of the crowd, then continued. “All investigators are perplexed by their disappearance. Where the other fifty-three all disappeared outside, these two young women disappeared right from their very homes. The first one, Eleen níc Griogair, daughter of our trusted seneschal, disappeared during her morning exercise session, her treadmill still running when her mother came by to check on her. With the doors all watched and the windows barred, no one understands how she could have gotten out.”

He paused for a few moments to let the crowd absorb the news. He could clearly see the willingness to murder in the eyes of some and was glad he was not the culprit. “The other, Katya Ní Coitir, daughter of the SAR commander herself, was in the middle of a shower, her parents both already having been up for hours, working ceaselessly upon the task of finding the missing women.”

In the background, someone muttered “serves them right. Now its personal for them too.”

The newscaster did not even have to pause to identify the man and quickly determined that he had lost his eldest daughter early on. Because of that, he did not make a note in the system against the man, despite the rules saying he should. “The government, may they serve the people for all time, has determined that this means the culprits have access to military grade teleportation technology. As such, they have realized that the previous precautions are far from sufficient. As such, while the tracking beacons will not be deactivated, all other regulations set in by the crisis are lifted. However, there is one small new decree. All women between 176 and 264 cycles must from this point forward always be in the company of a man, either a coworker or a relative. There will be no exceptions, no excuses. They know full well how inconveniencing this can be, but it is all for the best. Thank you all for obeying.”

With that, the holographic projector shut down, not allowing anyone time to ask questions or complain or demand to be exempted from the rule. Though many felt offended by this, they dared not disobey. They all quickly sorted themselves into groups, then moved onwards to their jobs.



The doctor stepped out of the teleporter, laughing. It had been a roaring success! Not only had he snatched the Seneschal's daughter from her exercise room, but he had taken the SAR commander's daughter right from under her parents' noses! They were working obsessively with identifying and tracking him down, and were utterly oblivious to him being right next to them. He had to struggle to stop laughing.

Already the minions were maneuvering the two new test subjects to the new lab. Soon they would both be injected with his special blend of anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-pathogenic agents. The doctor could not have any of his subjects unclean. Once he managed to stop laughing, he returned to his private quarters, changed into a fresh, and dry, set of clothes and grabbed his latest inventions. He could not wait to test them!

He walked slowly to the labs, stopping briefly to check on the system that was running simulations for uses for the shell of the previous test subject, then entered the new lab. Like the older labs, he had its walls a dark green color and the room brightly lit. There were no dark shadows anywhere. He was no mad scientist to work in one of those silly medieval castles. Not only was it exposed, but the uncleanliness of such facilities? Terrible.

He approached the Seneschal's daughter first. “Eleen...” he murmured, letting the taste of the name flow over his tongue. From his lab-coat, he pulled a pair of sterile scissors, then carefully cut away her clothes. Sure, he could've had the machines do it, but he felt he owed the Seneschal's daughter the honor of doing it personally. Besides, with her choice of dress for exercise, it was hardly much work. He dropped the dismantled clothes into the incinerator, knowing the machines would take care of them.

At one hundred and ninety-six cycles, her body was still not fully mature, but he could see the great potential to it. If he had not been above fraternizing with lab subjects, he would no doubt have found her quite attractive. Not that he would have ever considered mating with her without her permission. There are, quite simply, some things one shall never do. At the top of that list stood rape. He had no trouble with euthanasia when it came to failed experiments, but there are some things no one should ever do to anyone.

He reached into his coat, pulling out one of the two inventions he intended to test this day. In some ways, it resembled the back half of a collar, with short projections out where the back of the neck would be. Reaching up, he pulled down the arm with the pain pacifier spray, which automatically sprayed her neck with it. Then he held the invention up to admire it for a few seconds, before snapping it into place on her neck. The device immediately began adjusting itself, digging deep into her neck.

In the silence of the lab, it was easy to hear the sound of grinding and gnashing as the device found its way in to the woman's fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae, then attached itself firmly there. On the sides, the twin sets of metallic braces slid through the device and in underneath the skin of the woman's throat, hooking into her carotid arteries and her jugulars. There was but a brief, momentary lapse in the flow of blood to and from her brain as the tubes inside the braces filled with blood. He did not hesitate when reaching up to find the thick tube up in the ceiling and hooking it into the now-fully installed neck port.

The moment he had attached it, it started filling with blood from the system. In order to increase the efficiency of his upgrade protocols, the blood was already saturated with nanites and raw materials, which would in turn quickly spread out into her body. He needed to increase the efficiency greatly if he was to complete his final plan. After that, he gently repositioned the young woman back upright in the suspension field, then stepped back. In time, he knew, the nanites would construct new access ports in her body, which in turn would automatically be connected to the additional tubes found in the ceiling. He did not know when she would wake up, but hoped she would not react quite as badly as the last one.

He eyed the faint yellow glow from her left wrist where the still-active tracker was, but saw no reason to remove it. They were far beyond the range of the tracking system. Once satisfied that nothing untoward would happen to the subject, he withdrew further, then approached the second test subject, the SAR commander's daughter, Katya Ní Coitir.

Unlike her unknowing, raven-haired companion, Katya appeared to already be approaching consciousness again. The doctor looked her over. She was, as test subjects go, perfect. Looking at the holographic data readout on the side, he saw that she was two hundred and eleven cycles, eight days and five hours old. The differences in level of maturity were subtle but clear. She was a good deal more attractive because of them, but he would never break his rule of fraternizing with test subjects. It was wrong.

Her skin had the pale tone typical to the elite and her body was free from flaws like excess fat or scars. He had no trouble seeing just why the SAR commander was known for doting on her this way. From earlier subjects, he knew that the agents he used to subdue his test subjects always left them groggy and somewhat confused, their short-term memories tended to be fuzzy. He could probably have removed those side-effects if he wanted, but that would only have made it harder to convince them to trust him.

“Morning, ma'am.” he said to her calmly. “I know you're a bit confused right now. The fuzziness will pass soon.”

“W-where am I?” she murmured, clearly just as confused as the doctor knew she'd be.

He smiled at her fondly, the way only a doctor of many years can do at a patient waking up for the first time could. “You're in a safe place, child. Your mother and father fears for your safety and had you brought here to ensure that no one could take you from them.”

“They requested that I make sure nothing will harm you again. It will be all right.”

He did not lie when saying these words to her. He simply did not speak the truth the way others would see it. He knew more than enough about her parents to know that her safety was the highest priority in their minds at all times. That was one of the primary reasons he had chosen her for this particular experiment.

“W-who are you?” She asked, still confused.

“I'm your new doctor. Just as I don't need to know your name, you don't need to know mine. The treatment I am about to give you may hurt momentarily and it will make you feel a bit odd, but it will make you safe. Do you want it now, or do you want to wait?” Initially he had no plans to delay it, but it would be nice for the sake of the experiment to have a voluntary acceptance of the upgrades. At least as voluntary as it could be without giving away any detailed information.

The woman appeared to be oblivious to her nudity when she nodded. “Do it now. No use delaying.”

“Excellent. If you would pull aside your hair? The injection must go into your neck.” he asked her, maintaining his calm demeanor as he did. The girl pulled it aside, baring her neck and back. The doctor was thankful that he had found better ways to do this than he had had with the first fifty-three girls. Pulling the invention out from his coat, he smiled a little. The design was more or less the same as the one used on the Seneschal's daughter, but sleeker, less invasive. Like with the first, he sprayed her neck with a little of the deadening agent, as pain was unnecessary to give the test subjects.

He pressed it gently against the back of her neck, then activated it. The device made several incisions into her skin, then slid underneath the exposed flaps of skin and muscle, which then fused back together using single-use pellets of the mending beams. After reaching the preprogrammed location, half the device detached. The implant would need neither scalpels nor mending beam emitters later. He pulled the now-defunct components away, sticking them in a pocket for later disposal.

“I will now attach the IV tube and monitoring cable, to ensure that the injection works right. I do hope you don't mind.” Like before, she nodded. Remarkably trusting, he thought as he attached the tube, which would rapidly saturate her system with nanites. The moment the tube was attached and flooded with blood, the prongs inside the device hooked into her carotid arteries and her jugular veins. By hooking into these, her brain would rapidly be saturated with nanites, and the blood could similarly be filled with new nanites after passing through the brain on its way down through her jugular veins.

“There. All done. Now all you need to do is relax and wait.” he smiled fondly at her, even as he took a few steps back. Out of respect, he averted his eyes from her nudity.

“Would you like to have anything while you wait? I can't offer much due to this lab being sealed to all signals, but I'll offer what I can.” The decision to play friendly with her promoted all sorts of new ideas in his mind. Like many experiments, he had no idea what it'd end up being.

“Could I have some music? Symphonic, like that of the ancient people?” she asked sweetly. The doctor was quite frankly shocked. He had never expected a request like that. He'd been prepared for food, clothes, drink, maybe a book? But music? Never.

“I can arrange that. Might take a few minutes, but I'll get it.” He walked off, trying to clear his head and puzzle out how to arrange that, thankful that the two halves of the lab were partitioned off from each other and not readily visible. After maybe ten minutes, he'd gotten the minions to assemble a simple speaker system of sufficient quality, then had it sterilized and sent into the lab.

He went through the airlocks and set it up. With his familiar obsession with precision, he positioned the various speakers in perfect alignment around her, then activated the system. He had no idea what she might like, so he'd acquired a small selection and put it into a remotely accessible holographic interface. She'd be able switch between the various composers at will.

He placed the interface projector on the floor before her, then adjusted the settings so the display would be at the right height. Looking up, he could see that her veins were already starting to change. The new nanite feed on this model was worlds more efficient than the previous ones. Katya quickly scrolled through the interface, then selected something, which started playing immediately. The doctor might not have much interest in music himself, but he could not provide anything below top quality to his patients, be it medical care, equipment, confidentiality or entertainment.

He did not recognize the music, but could not feel anything but relaxed by it. The woman simply hung there, her eyes closed and her breathing slow and steady, clearly listening to the music. Somewhat entranced by her calmness, he almost thought he could see the nanites spreading through her body. She rotated slowly in the suspension field, the joints high up on the tubes designed to ensure that twisting could not pose any problems for it. On the fifth rotation, some fifteen-twenty minutes later, he saw that the first of the many new feeder ports had been fully assembled. Unlike before, it did not stick out. It was simply a 4 mm wide hole in her skin. Right on cue, a robotic arm lowered down from the ceiling, sticking a second tube into the hole, then folding back into the roof.

This was the quickest conversion yet. If it was successful, he had no doubts it would soon be time to launch the final plan. He smiled to himself knowingly. He had spread more than enough confusion in the ranks of the government to ensure that they would never see it coming.

He pondered watching longer, but decided that it was time to lay down the final pieces for the end plan. It was undeniably a success to take the daughters of the SAR commander and the Seneschal, but they were small fish. With that, he turned about, leaving the lab, just missing the sight of the third tube being attached to Katya's back.



When the chain of symphonies she'd programmed the system to play ended some two hundred and seventy-two minutes later, Katya could feel the difference. Whatever the good doctor had done, it had removed all trace of exhaustion from her body and mind. She couldn't recall when she had been this refreshed last, if she ever had. She could feel every part of her body, sense their every potential. The strength of her muscles. The effectiveness of her liver. The durability of her bones and tendons. The throughput of her spinal ports.

A stray thought surfaced from somewhere deep down, asking about what she meant by spinal ports, asking where those came from, but she quickly squashed that trail. A quick simulation told her that there was a 61.73% chance of her reacting badly if she followed that path of thinking. That probability was uncomfortably high so she determined not to pursue it.

She looked down at her arms. All over, she could see the network of gray outlining her blood vessels, from the dense gray of her primary veins and arteries, to the haze of her outermost capillaries. But it did not freak her out. She could sense it all, and it all made sense. Her body, her mind, it all fit together, and deep inside her brain, she could see how.

Even as the changes slowly spread further and further, she did a quick analysis of how her body had changed. The nanites responded instantly. On average, a 12.03% increase in muscle firmness. 1.26% increase in breast size. 18.92% increase in body mass. All within expected parameters. Sending her senses deeper, she could feel the new constructs around her spine. Like all the other changes, they were acceptable to her. When complete they would give an 82.03% reduction in chance for trauma caused by blunt force. Similarly, the nanites now permeating her skin increased its durability by 78.41% and its rate of repair if damaged by 871.66%.

She had no doubt that all these statistics would have driven most others insane, but she personally only found them fascinating. There was a computer system at the other end of the connection with her back, but she did not find it intriguing. Not the way her body now was. Some small part of her wondered why her mother had asked the doctor to put her through this, but like so many other things, Katya found herself not caring. It was the perfect gift. She could only guess at what she would be able to do once her body was fully saturated and enhanced. She smiled to herself.



At the other side of the lab, the transition was in its final stages for Eleen níc Griogair, but unlike Katya, she was not even aware she'd been chosen for the upgrades, having been kept artificially unconscious the entire time. The doctor stood watching the final few bits of the process with curiosity. On a hologram beside the body, he could see the number steadily climb towards 100%. While it did not make the test exactly the same, he had programmed the code for Katya to receive some 5% more nanites, just to be sure they would not finish at the exact same time. He could do many things, but be in two places at the same time was not one of them. Nor was focusing on two subjects at once.

The moment the indicator hit 100%, he saw the nanites begin to perform their final task. Her body was almost gray with the saturation. No one would think her to be human that way. But that was the ingenuity of it all. He activated that particular program before he released her mind from its containment. First, the tubes all slipped out, one by one. Then the data cable in her neck slipped out, even as the data port folded in on itself, sliding in under the skin. It wouldn't be invisible to a scan, but neither would it be blatantly visible for all to see. Then her very skin seemed to shimmer as the nanites took on the color of human skin. Within moments, her skin looked exactly like it had before her enhancement. Only then did he send the signal to release her mind.



One moment, Eleen was asleep, or rather, unconscious. The next, she was wide awake, as if she'd been that way for a long time. She wasn't the least bit drowsy. Countless numbers flitted through her mind. She did not comprehend them. Last thing she recalled was running on the treadmill. Now she hung in some sort of room, a suspension field keeping her up from the floor and incapable of going anywhere. And she was stark naked. She wondered what was going on. Again the numbers popped forward. Again they failed to make sense.

She couldn't see the connections between it all. Where was her father, the seneschal? Why was she here? Where was here? For a third time, numbers appeared in her head, this time in twin sets. She stared at them for a few moments, not understanding. What did those numbers have to do with anything? And for that matter, where did they come from?

It was at that point the word 'coordinates' appeared above the numbers. She tried to understand where that could be, but found herself unable. Something blocked her. Some sort of seal on the room. She did not like that. Her chain of thoughts blocked, she focused elsewhere. There had to be something worth focusing upon. She tried to make sense of how she had gotten there, but her memory was strangely blank. One moment she'd been exercising, the next she woke up here.

Again she let questions flow through her mind. What had happened? Where was she? Why was she here? How did she get here? Who was the man before her? And, more importantly, why was she naked? Her panic was rapidly building up. As a sort of self-defense, she drew back into herself. It was the only viable option.



The doctor could quickly see that something was wrong with the second subject. Her mind wasn't rejecting the upgrades, but appeared to be rejecting reality. Clearly the method used on her was... faulty. He had been afraid that might be the case after the apparent success with the other subject.

Even as he watched, he could see her eyes go blank, her body stop moving for anything except breathing.

“Oh well...” He muttered, pulling out the same device he'd used on subject #53. He walked up to her, pressing it into the side of her neck, triggering it instantly. Within seconds, her mind was completely wiped. No trace of the person once known as Eleen níc Griogair remained beyond a physical husk. With that taken care of, he wandered over to observe his other test subject complete her upgrades.



“You know... You shouldn't have lied to me.” Katya said to the doctor the moment he appeared.

“I know my mother would never intentionally ask anyone to do something like this to me.” She could see panic in his eyes and laughed.

“She's a short-sighted fool, doctor.” He appeared to be fingering something in his left pocket, but stood there uncertain. She laughed a little more.

“If she had had my level of comprehension, she would have caught you long ago. Now it is too late. I no longer see any reason for why you should be punished. You have given me a great gift, doctor... The gift of eternal life and the ultimate understanding.” When she spoke, her face barely showed any glimmer of emotion.

“You have a greater plan in progress, yes? My analysis indicates that has to be the case, as I am not in any position to affect whatever changes you wish for.” Katya could see the panic slip from his eyes, replaced by wonder. He let go of whatever he had in his pocket. She guessed it was a weapon of some kind. Something that could have destroyed her.

“Yes. I seek to change the nation. I seek, quite simply, to replace the so-called benevolent queen with a stronger, younger monarch. One infinitely more powerful. One who is fair.” he did not hesitate more than a few moments, nor did he lie. It was readily apparent to him that she somehow could read lies for what they were.

She smiled. “I surmised as much. Your honesty is refreshing. I will aid you.”

“How?” he asked, curious.

“The previous subjects. Since they were never found and you continued taking people, it is fair to assume they did not work out. There is a 96.13% probability that you used the device in your left pocket on them. I can sense a small power source, but I cannot understand what it does. What does it do?”

He looked back at her, shocked at how quickly she had seen through it all. “It wipes the biological mind. I used it on failed subjects to render them inert.”

“Good. The wiped subjects – you still have them, right?”

“Y-yes?” he answered once more, a little confused.

“Good. I will need them. Oh, and I will need some clothes. Ones like your own will serve. Have your minions bring the blank slates and sufficient clothes here. I will make them useful for our plan.”

“Our plan?” he replied, a bit shocked. He had not expected this. Some small part of him wanted to wipe her mind just to be on the safe side, but another, more sensible part realized that wouldn't work. He'd come up short with every attempt to plan the final details of the great plan. She had seen right. He did need her. And that, more than anything, frustrated him. He was supposed to be better! He was supposed to be able to do anything on his own!

But he knew there was no way around it. He went to the wall, then pressed the buttons necessary to instruct the minions in their new tasks as well as lowering the signal barrier around the room. Within minutes, all of it arrived.

“Yes. Our plan. I can see in your eyes that you need me.” She then made a simple gesture and he heard a sound that was neither metallic nor biological, but something in between as she dropped to the floor. She tested her limbs a few moments, then strode over to the clothes. They weren't much, but she found a simple shirt, pants and lab coat that fit reasonably well. There were no undergarments designed for a woman there, but she did not really need that. Her body could more than sufficiently support itself. The shirt was a 11.62% smaller than optimal, the the pants 3.05% too large, but still within acceptable parameters. Her breasts, having increased in size by 7.55% compared to their original size, strained a little against the shirt, which of course, was designed for a man. The lab coat, however, fit perfectly. Though she did not need it, she also put on a pair of shoes. With a side-thought, her hair tied itself up, a few of the longer strands wrapping around the rest to keep it in place. Not one hair was out of place.

“There. Now we can begin working.” She did not give any reaction to his shocked look. Apparently he had not seen someone's hair tie itself up before. 'humans...' she thought, then continued approaching the first of the shell-bodies.

There were only two of them. “What happened to the rest?” she asked him.

“Ruined. The nanites did not bond properly. They all became abominations. Some had to be destroyed, others were inhuman. I kept clear records in the system.”

Now that the Faraday cage was disabled, she could access the system remotely. The firewalls, if they could be called such, were no obstacles. She needed but a few seconds to find the right files, then only a few seconds more to absorb it all. “Got it. I can see where you went wrong. Though you stumbled a bit in your attempts, you had a decent rate of progression. #12, #27 & #44 showed you some keen insights into the right ways to do this. You really should have been more trusting, you know. If you'd befriended more subjects, you would have had far fewer failures. But I guess its only good for me you didn't.”

He halted mid-step. “You studied all my notes on all my subjects in ten seconds?!?” He was slowly coming to terms with just how powerful her mind had become.

“Yes.” she answered, succinctly. Then she placed her hands on the sides of the inert Elis' head. She connected her nanites to those of the shell. At first they were slow to respond, confused, but slowly they started to respond. There were fractures of the biological mind left, but they were scattered. It was easy enough to wipe them away completely. The original personality would not have been trustworthy. Instead, she copied herself into the shell. With such a large area of contact, that took but a few minutes. With each minute, she could feel her mind expand. So long as she would remain in proximity of her new selves, her minds would work in unison, the whole be greater than the sum of its parts. She wondered if the doctor had any idea of that.

~|~

The doctor's plan, which quickly found itself absorbed and virtually consumed by Katya ní Coitir, moved without pause from that point forward. Within a cycle, despite the increasingly challenging new security measures, they had seized more than four score new subjects. While half of those proved incompatible with the nanites' minds, these were erased and replaced by copies of Katya or one of her cybernetic sisters.

It is hard to say for sure exactly when he began to realize just how interconnected and powerful his creations were, but by the time he understood it, it was far too late. He was in far too deeply. After all, he still desired to change the world. Some sacrifices were necessary for that. He just did not quite know how many.



Even long before she figured out what was going on, the crown princess knew something had changed within the palace. Like everyone else, she had paid close attention to the events in Valmerr these past many cycles. She didn’t care overmuch about the women disappearing, but it made her chuckle a little just how frustrating her mother found it. She certainly didn’t worry about it.

Though members of the palace staff were frequently replaced, typically for incompetence or minor mistakes, which was fully deserved she thought, one day the frequency of blunders rapidly decreased. With lowly citizens, mistakes were expected and punished accordingly, but with the latest batch, the mistakes didn't come. In fact, they rapidly grew inhumanly efficient. Always on hand, almost as if they had begun to communicate. Servants should not take initiative. It was... Wrong.

Late one night, she decided that enough was enough. It was intolerable. A confrontation had to happen. She would do it the next day. No later. Sleep would come first, of course.



They knew almost instantly when the princess first took notice of them. It was Inevitable, so rather than hide it, they made it blatantly obvious to her and made their preparations at a sufficiently increased pace. From the first moment one of them had found her way into the service of her royal highness, the brain scan had been running. Thus they had easily calculated when she would confront them. It was no struggle at all to finish prior to that.

It was late at night when they started the processing. They had for the past two weeks been altering her bed, installing the necessary technology into its framework. Some might have thought that hard to conceal, but with nanites, it was rather simple.

They initiated the machines, then woke the princess up. "it is time, your highness."

She had stared strangely at them, clearly muddled by sleep, nodding confused while trying to shake off sleep. They of course did not allow her to do that before starting. The freshly installed gravity nullification field raised her up even as machines pulled the bedding aside. Where a bed had been before, an improvised lab station now stood, the princess suspended within. She was still not fully awake when the integration and upgrading began.

Each of the twelve present linked up with her seconds after the obligatory neck port was installed. This not only increased her rate of integration, but also allowed them to share knowledge directly. The princess was defenseless against it. Within hours, er entire body had been enhanced. With the shared knowledge, she had no way to resist their infallible logic. Mercilessly she had no choice about whether to become one of them.

The question that outsiders might ask, had they not been oblivious to it all, is whether she would command or be commanded. Her seizure of the throne was inevitable. The second question to ask is what sort of queen she would be.

Would she be naughty or nice? Would the kingdom rise to new heights? Or would it be ground to dust under her nanite-infused heel? And finally, who was this doctor and what was his role in the end?

by @PlatinumSkink
"... Leave this to the warriors. Even if you went out onto the battlefield, there is no way you would achieve anything other than your own death." The captain of the guard has said, looking condescendingly down on the young boy. "What little power you have will do you no good."

This was in Nagaira. Nagaira found itself squeezed between the formidable superpowers, the nations of Maghor and Alvadia. Unfortunately, in their quest to show supremacy against Maghor, the armies of Alvadia had chosen fit to squash Nagaira on the way. In Nagaira only those trained to be military may fight in times of war, meaning those too young or those of other professions were not allowed to help. This was the case for young Effraye. Effraye was a young teenage boy who was a peasant and farmer to be. And he was completely powerless to help anyone.

They were being evacuated from the country-side, a long line of people being led out of the way of the Alvadian approach, leaving behind what few soldiers they had to hold off the enemy advance and simply give them the battle to satisfy them without endangering civilians. ... Effraye was currently sitting in the back of a rolling cart, together with the considerable amount of consumable resources this cart was actually reserved for, hugging himself around his legs and thinking about those men who had stayed behind to surely die, and about how powerless he was to save them...

"Effraye?" A soft voice asked. He flinched a little, scrambling to a more respectable sitting-position to look at the one who had spoke. A red-haired, intelligent girl who had searched him up and was looking at him in worry.

"Marta..." He said her name with a little sigh. "Don't scare me like that."

"That's what I should be saying, you've been gone for hours!" She pouted and rebutted as she climbed further back into the cart, looking over the space inside. "... Huh, but this is pretty nice. Maybe I'll stay, too."

"... Please don't." Effraye wouldn't normally reject Marta's presence, but right now he was feeling really, really useless, no use being rewarded for it. She gave him an annoyed glare for his words.

"Oh, why not!? Why are you hiding back here!? I know we're going through some tough times, but that's when we need to make as much a difference as we can! You can't just hide in here and wait for it to become better!" She dropped the pretense mid-rant and scolded him. He looked away from her in annoyance.

"... Nothing I'd do would make a difference. I don't have that kind of power." He sulked. He knew it wasn't the most dignified behavior, but...

"... You wanted to fight with them, did you?" Marta replied in a sad tone. Effraye sat in silence as he could do nothing but nod in acknowledgement.

"You know that we're doing this so as many of us survive as possible. If we had the means for all of us to survive with surety, we would use them. ... But we don't have that kind of power." She continued saying things that which Effraye already knew.

"If I said I was going to go fight them, what would you do?" She asked.

"I'd stop you." Effraye said automatically.

"... And that's the same as the soldiers feel about you." Marta smiled a little as she felt she had explained something that Effraye really had already understood. "You are to survive and protect our surviving people, and possibly, if you train for it, protect those of us who remain in a similar way when the time comes." ... Sigh. Effraye knew what she was saying. ... Suppose it was about time to pull his act together and-

"... But let's totally ignore that and go help them, anyway, right?" Marta said in a carefree tone. ... What? Effraye looked up at her in confusion and saw that little smile.

"That's what you really want to, right? You can't do a difference on your own, so... Let's see if we can find some like-minded individuals and go back, okay?" She smiled at him like it was the easiest thing in the world.

"Th-there's no way anyone would want to endanger their life to-" Effraye said, feeling a bit of fear of actual action going through him. Th-they'd all say 'no' and he'd be branded a desperate-

"So what? You claim you're powerless, but you do have the power to TRY, don't you?" She smirked down at him as Effraye realized what an idiot he had been. He shoved himself off the floor, up on his unsteady legs, looking forward in the cart in order to move forward and try the impossible, afraid of how he'd be met but continuing anyway.

"Yeah! Go get them!" Marta cheered him on, smiling happily behind him as he walked out...

________________________

They were being underestimated. The Alvadian forces had only sent a detachment of their main army to deal with the Nagairan forces. ... They were still outnumbered five to one, King Voler of Nagaira acknowledged as he looked over the fields where the battle would take place and at his own few well-trained solders. It was a bad time to be there, but yet they were all determined to do what they could, and their king was right there with them. With swords drawn, archers ready, it was but a matter of time. And over there were the battalions of their enemy. They already knew where their only opposition were, and so they knew they had nothing to fear...

... That's when a rider galloped to his side, and Voler gave him permission to talk in all haste, before the battle began.

"You're getting reinforcements!" The messenger said, considerably excited and exhausted, as he handed over a letter. Voler frowned at these words.

"Whom? Maghor?" He guessed, seeing as this was the only likely force nearby while he opened the letter. A map...?

"... N-no! It's, uh, your civilians!" The messenger uttered some unbelievable words. "They'll be attacking the enemy's right flank as they're so focused on you! Please take advantage of this!" King Voler's eyes widened in shocked realization as he looked over the hastily drawn map of something that was supposed to resemble troop movements. They were... th-that many!? Idiots! This plan was way more likely to get them all killed than make any form of difference! But... for the sake of their people...!

"... Attack formation one! Tell the other commanders!" He quickly informed his mounted messengers while glaring forward, feeling a bit of panic at the sudden change of situation. Even if it was by mere citizens, their numbers had practically doubled. Nothing else to do, than...

"FORWARD, MEN! ON ORDERS OF YOUR KING!"

________________________

... It had been so magical. Of course, the first few Effraye asked had rebutted him and told him he was mad. But then, he had met one like-minded, and they split up to search. Each time they found one, another person joined that searched for more. As their movement grew in force, more and more joined them seemingly coming from nowhere, what little arms was left were given to them freely and horses were spared for them to ride back, those of them that could ride. Finally, command was taken by Confiant, one of the leading knights of Nagaira who had followed the convoy to protect them in case of unexpected attack, reducing Effraye to the status of just another man. ... But it was his movement.

And now, they were charging down the enemy's side, varied weapons in hands. Effraye was afraid, but he ran for all he could, holding a spear. The enemy was positively terrified of this random mob from nowhere. They shot arrows at them. There was nothing Effraye could do but hope they wouldn't hit- ah. ... ... ... Effraye was unable to join the rest of the charge, as he had fallen down on the ground with an arrow in his side.

________________________

"Who's responsible for this!?" King Voler shouted angrily in Confiant's face as he came face-to-face with the confused but proud knight. The battle was over, their enemy had fled and they were miraculously safe, the Nagairan numbers were suddenly more than the detachment felt confident about taking on.

"Your majesty, I, Sir Confiant of Nagaira, am in command of-" The knight started, but was interrupted.

"I didn't ask who was in command! Who was responsible for this endeavor!? Was it you!? This went directly against my orders to-"

"S-sir!" A cracking, female voice was heard behind the king. Voler frowned at being interrupted, but turned and saw... a young, red-haired female girl, smiling and crying at the same time, kneeling over a boy lying down with an arrow in his side, looking up at her king. The scene was... stinging to his heart.

"Th-this man! H-his name is Effraye! He was the one who started to gather them all and ignited the desire to save the lives of you and your men, your majesty!" She proudly stated even while crying, clearly believing in the noble intention which had put so many in life-threatening danger.

"..." Was she telling the truth? Those around seemed to stay quiet, nobody arguing with the words of the peasant girl as Voler looked around at them. Confiant nodded with a proud little smile of his own. ... This made the king's intention of scolding whoever made this decision quite pointless. ...

"Sir Confiant." The King commanded with all the power which came from his position. "Make sure this young man gets the best medical attention we can spare. Of course, we must care for our other wounded as well, but make this man survive if you can."

"Yes, your majesty." Confiant bowed with a smile and immediately dashed around to start barking commands. Voler looked down at the girl, who seemed to be relieved of the positive reaction to her words.

"... I'd like to talk to this boy. As such, keep him alive, if you can." King Voler said as he turned his back, and started walking back to where he was needed.

"Y-yes, your majesty. Th-thank you..." The young girl softly spoke after him. "H-hear that, Effraye? The King wants you to live. The greatest power of the kingdom wants you to survive. S-so, stay alive, will you? Stay alive..."

________________________

... Much later, Effraye blinked awake, his body flinching a bit at he realized his state. He panicked for a moment, then groaned in pain as he was pushed back in the bed, staring upwards... Marta was smiling down at him, the red-haired girl looking so proud.

"Wh-what happened...?" Effraye managed to squeeze out.

"You won. Apparently, your sheer numbers surprised the enemy and they fled fearing major casualties, said the tacticians." Marta replied with a soft voice. "They were expecting an easy battle, but you added just the element of chaos we needed. Everyone's really impressed, and even the king wants to talk to you now!" ... Effraye blinked in surprise, somewhat overwhelmed with the new information. But... he also felt this surge of relief. They were safe, huh... And as he lay there sighing, a surge of pain made him realize the wound.

"Though, all I did was take an arrow..." He chuckled and said, feeling the drowsy pain of the injury.

"An arrow that, had you not been there, might have killed someone who now lived." Marta happily turned this negative feature upside-down to shine. "See? No matter how little power you have, you can still amount to something!"

"You're only helping me feeling even more powerless." Effraye laughed back at her.

"But it's true!" Marta enforced with a smile. "All of you combining your powers became one big power that solved the big problem! You used your little power to spur more and more power, eventually ending in a power that could save us all! Feel a bit proud!"

"..." Alright, that did happen. And that felt kind of amazing. But...

"... But that only worked because everyone wanted the same. I, myself, wouldn't have even left that cart had you not been there. Also, there will always be problems that nobody will want to help solve. What would I have done if nobody would have wanted to help?" He gave Marta an expectant look, examining how stubborn her positive attitude was going to be.

"Well..." Marta smiled, looking at him while obviously working on an answer, Effraye feeling kind of guilty-proud to have put her in her place. "... That wasn't the case this time, right?" And she found a compromise and grinned at him.

"Oh, you little-!" Effraye grinned as well and made a grab for her, but she escaped. "Don't encourage me with faulty promises!"

"Hey, it worked, didn't it!?" She grinned right back, and then they could laugh together for some time, having made some kind of difference to the world with the tiny amount of power that they happened to have.

They were safe. That would probably change when the Alvadian command learned what total fools their tiny nation had made of their detachment, but... For now, they could laugh happily. For now.

This is a world,
Of lies and deceit,
Where a few hold power,
While the rest stand weak.

The minority rule,
Like gods way up high,
And we stick to their word,
Till the day that we die.

Following on,
Like a herdfull of sheep,
Where all that we do,
Is eat, poop, and sleep.

They aim so high,
For total control,
But most just shrug,
And cash in their soul.

A marionette,
On a silver string,
We’re wrapped round their fingers,
Just like a ring.

Snagged from all sides,
And tied down with rules,
We follow on blindly,
So much the fools.

Trapped in this cage,
It’s power we lack,
Leaving no means at all,
For us to fight back.

We just lie here,
Swallowing all of their lies,
And when truth’s in our face,
We turn a blind eye.

This is a world,
Of lies and deceit,
Where a few hold power,
While the rest stand weak.

by [@DarkWind]

Familiar flashes of light around a young child
Blares loud those red and blues rule
Wrapped in white and black, not paper
Rather metal, steel, and the essential
Illness of man rested in wary fingers
Angered, tired… Ignorant?

Pain trickles down the cheeks of the child
Man who read him stories at night lays
Still, like an unused abandoned swing
Resting on a crimson sheet and
Concrete bed, the home of
One more life gone too soon

Lights and faces shimmer in the mirror
Of that child’s weeping gaze
Reflecting back to all the inevitable
Answer.
Response bound to be held tight
Between clenched, furious fingers

Time passes by to heal wounds
They say, but the cut festers
Burning with an unknown need
For justice, revenge, anything
But for it all to happen
He needs control, power

Tearful child to unforgiving man
Ghosts of the past haunting
As unseen chains linked
To what was rather than
What could be

Opens his eyes rested on
Tattered bed, empty home.
Walks by the bus stop and
Ignores the yellow carrier,
Hope on wheels, future lost

Hands folded within sweater
Holding close concealed power
Black, cold and heavy
Weighted on a scale of death

See the man, memory fresh
Soaked rage seeps out
Steps closer, closer, closer

Sweaty, shaking palms
Pull loose the cold control
From the sweater

Pause. Deep breath. Can stop.
Click. Incomprehensible force.

Bang.
Not power.

Sorrow

By @RomanAria

Silvery metal encircles her head
Crimson stone rivals the flame in her eyes
Her crimson-stained blades have left thirteen men dead
And I alone can know that she lies.

The circlet gleams with a light from within
As she faces her court and raises her eyes
I alone see her a temptress of sin;
I see an enemy that I should despise.

Thirteen cold men are dead by her hands;
Men who threatened her “divine” right to rule.
Men who, foolish, tried to make demands;
Her blades were cunning and her mind was cruel.

The stones on her crown shine red in the light;
Stones that were bought by a blood-fueled hate
Tonight at last will be the final night;
Tonight by my blade she will meet her fate.

The floor shines ivory beneath my heels
But my eyes are focused on her, The One
I must ignore whatever I feel
At least, until the deed is done.

Ah! She knows why I have come!
She sees, she knows; my hand goes to my blade.
Thinly she smiles; my heart pounds as a drum
She raises a hand; she’ll let herself be played?

Regal, ethereal, she descends from her throne;
Holds out her hand and is presented her knife.
The guards hold the court and let the duel alone;
The terrible duel to the end of a life.

The thin crimson smile, like a blood-covered blade
A mocking half-curtsy as she crosses the room
The weapons are strong, for her dainty hands made;
But lover, I’m stronger, and you will meet your doom.

Her sword darts to mine, a lightning-white arc
Her heart is on fire; her mind is set.
I parry and slash, with spark after spark,
And soon she grows tired… The once chance I’ll get.

My blade flashes up with a mind of its own.
My lover’s heart pierces, and with flash of my sorrow,
She falls to the ground, now dainty, now frail, now alone,
And I am the King of her Queendom with the dawn of the morrow.

Goug is a world of magic, somewhere between heaven and earth. A million souls inhabit this plane – souls of mortals who proved their mettle in life. In Goug they are reborn, to live a new life among worthy peers. It is a cosmic chance to prove once and for all whose spirit is the strongest. The greatest souls of Earth can earn only one chance to live and die in Goug, and when their time is finished, they reap their reward in the afterlife.

It is a world ruled only by strength, and shaped by fierce competition. At its heart lies the Temple of Essada, home to a holy order of pacifist monks who shape the natural laws of Goug. For generations, their order has governed the realm, and brought stability to a system of chaos. Their hierarchy of power ranks the supernatural powers of every soul in Goug. The strongest rule supreme, and the weaker souls are left to battle one another over the scraps.

Chief among all souls is Immortal Lysa. She has ruled as the undisputed queen of the world for a hundred years, crushing all who resist. Under her dynastic governance, the realm has grown peaceful – but restless. An insurrection is brewing in the east, and threatens to swallow the Temple of Essada. If it should succeed, Immortal Lysa’s reign would crumble, and the world plunge back into anarchy and never-ending war.



Cannons echoed across a field of wheat. Exhausted men labored to clear and reload the guns, and Vinn stood among them, a sword in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. As the smoke from the powder cleared, he raised these to his eyes and surveyed the enemy. “Again,” he ordered calmly. His voice was like grating stones. The battery of cannon boomed out another salvo – twelve-pounders, four of them firing in series. “Again,” Vinn commanded.

The cannon rang in this manner, echoing against silence in the summer air at the edge of Tendril’s modest village. The only clouds in the sky came from their angry muzzles, and wafted gently upwards until they vanished against the sun. It was past midday, and Vinn still stood as tall as when he took the field at dawn. “Again.” Behind him, nervous eyes peeked out from shuttered windows, four, six, or ten at a time. “Again.”

“Hold.” He held his binoculars to his eye for a long moment, then let them fall. His stern voice belonged to a fearsome face – a hard jaw and cold, pale eyes, ringed in long and dark hair. He wore wheellock pistols on each hip, and a saber on his back. He barked for his horse.

“Is it dead?” One of the gun sergeants, a wrinkled veteran bristling with hair, passed over the reins.

“Soon enough,” Vinn replied, and left him there. He rode a chestnut mare at a canter through a sea of green, cutting a straight path through a field pock-marked and cratered by fire. He found his quarry in a patch of earth stripped bare from shelling, ringed in smoke and flame. A single man, white as bone from head to foot, dressed in a pristine robe. “You’ve tired,” Vinn said in form of greeting, stepping off his horse with agile feet.

“You will not weaken me with words, slave,” the man replied. There were snakes in his throat, and venom in his voice. “Goug has seen what you are worth, and it is less than nothing. Today this realm casts you out. We are done with you.”

Vinn drew his sword. “Aaron Tryst. Energy technique. Number five hundred and twelve.” He raised the tip of his blade and closed his eyes. “I see you.”

The white man snarled and raised his palms. A wave of power crashed out of his fingers, like a bolt of thunder without light, or a typhoon with no wind. An invisible force which lanced forwards with a wraith’s scream, and tore through the chestnut mare like a fist through paper. “Die!” Tryst seethed. “Die, and be cursed!” He advanced on the horse’s body, unleashing his furious assault until only shreds remained. “Essada spits on your name!”

Vinn opened his eyes, and placed the tip of his sword on Tryst’s shoulder. “They’re next,” he said flatly.

He placed the head in a bag with dirt to cover the smell, and walked with even steps back up the path he had ridden through the field of green. His gun sergeant wore a grim smile and bowed his head. “Number five hundred and twelve,” he said, in a voice that bore no emotion but respect.

Vinn dropped the bag at his feet. “Put it with the others.”



Nine braziers lit the chamber, and a hundred chanting monks filled the air with somber tones. A song of supplication, sung in reverence at the curtain which guarded Immortal Lysa’s ivory throne. There she sat, hidden from view, her listless expression lit by candles at her feet. Seven was with her, a monstrous man with a perpetual scowl who served as her bodyguard and plaything. He, too, bored of the monks’ droning, but predictably kept silent.

The song would continue endlessly if she allowed it. Their vigil began when news of Tryst’s execution reached the temple. Immortal Lysa allowed them to continue through four more battles. Each emissary returned more desecrated than the last. The head of Ayliss, known in the temple and abroad as the Silver Tongue, was robbed of her lower jaw. Days later, Pyro was sent back, less the eyes, ears, and nose. Then came Marion, scalped and skewered on his crystal sword, and finally Lorm, who returned to the temple a mere skull, with the words “Face Me” etched across the crown.

None of this concerned Lysa, who held the champions of the temple in mixed degrees of disdain. But the monks themselves grew more troubled with each crushing defeat. Their anguish was intriguing, and so she allowed it to continue. In their desperation, the monks would express to her the depths of their faith. Their heroes failed them, and their own strength waned.

Their final moments were upon them – would they turn to this rebel from the east, or renew their allegiance to the Ivory Queen? Each monk answered in his own time. She allowed them to leave, if they wished. Vinn executed them anyway, so their weakness cost her nothing. For those who remained, there was no encouragement. They joined the vigil, or they went about their work. Now at last, she decided, the time had come.

“Open,” she said. At her slightest utterance, the crowd of monks fell silent as a grave. Seven raised a corner of his mouth in a wicked half-smile, as if to say, ‘I will enjoy this.’ He would. For as long as he had served, the man had displayed a keen taste for brutal displays of authority. Lysa waited for her brute to throw back the curtain, and stood from her throne.

“You who have remained, bear witness.” She spoke softly, and yet the conviction in her voice bore the striking tone of a hammer beating steel. “Your warriors are dead. Against the power rising from Tendril, your order has proven itself worthless. Your weakness sickens me. Leave the temple now, and seek what mercy you can find from your enemy.” No one moved, as Lysa expected. “You refuse to leave. It is not loyalty, but fear which stays you. I will not reward you for cowering behind your walls like children. I will not save you from the terror on your door. Leave me and die. Remain, and die. Your lives are meaningless.”

A tremor of fear went through them. Lysa felt it in their minds – nurtured it, pouring malice into their thoughts to poison their imaginations. Seven watched the mewling fools with a twisted grin as they choked back pitiful tears. Lysa let the darkness swirl for a long space, savoring their innermost thoughts of despair.

“Is it your wish to serve this usurper?” she asked. With the words spoken, she sent a new emotion into her flock – a gentleness of hope, but only faint. It was enough to set the old men to tearful cries of ‘No! No!’ She didn’t let them see her smile. “You wish to remain in this temple – to serve my rule with the remainder of your worthless lives?” ‘Yes! Yes!’

She cast an eye at Seven, who shrugged. She placed a lurid thought in his mind, and he pulled back his lips in approval – an evil, frightful smile, as dangerous as it was fleeting. Like the peasants outside, like the monks in the temple, like the realm itself, Seven’s will was hers to command. “Very well,” she said aloud. “Let the usurper come to me, and I will remind you who you serve.”

Seven closed the curtain closed behind her. The monks left the chamber, and she took him on the ivory throne.

Outside, an elder took up the skull of Lorm, which bore the usurper’s challenge, ‘Face Me.’ With a blue flame sprouting from his bony finger, he carved the sigil of Essada into the bone, and sent it with a rider to Tendril.



Vinn rode a black horse to the capital. He came alone. All souls gave way to him as he passed through the streets. Many hid, but others formed a loose trail that followed him all the way to the center of the city, where the dark towering gates of the Temple of Essada stood open. There, he encountered a tall, smirking figure who alone barred his passage. Vinn dismounted with fearless contempt in his eyes.

“Number seven,” he said in greeting. A frown tugged at his jaw. “Stand aside,” he commanded. The figure only smirked in reply. Vinn put a finger to his temple and scowled. For the first time in living memory, he felt confusion. No words came to him – only images, feelings. The horde of spectators fell into an uneasy quiet. At last, Vinn straightened his posture and forced a laugh. “Now I understand,” he said. “A mute. Your mind is feeble.”

Seven uncrossed his arms and flexed. A lesser man would have lost his courage at the site alone. Seven’s mouth curled back. There was no tongue – only gruesome teeth, filed to points like spears. When he breathed it was as if a great bear was growling. He opened his palms wide, each finger a fist unto itself, and snarled.

Vinn drew a sword and sidestepped slowly, focused on his enemy’s eyes. They tracked him patiently – not a bear’s eyes, but a spider’s, waiting, all-knowing. With his left hand Vinn took a pistol and laid it on the ground, kicking it towards his foe. Seven refused to break eye contact, and made no move for the weapon.

“As you wish.” With blinding speed, Vinn’s second pistol was smoke in his hands, and the shot ripped through its target. Seven lunged forwards. Their battle lasted only a few furious seconds – the monster unleashing massive swings, Vinn ducking each by only a desperate inch. He stumbled backwards. A great hand met with iron, and his pistol sailed. His sword came up in a flash, meeting Seven’s open palm and splitting his arm down to the elbow. The creature roared, and tore the blade away, still buried in his ruined limb. With the other hand he landed a crushing blow on Vinn’s torso. Vinn fell, then scrambled madly for the temple gate while great stomping feet chased close on his heels. Vinn reached the loaded pistol he’d offered, wheeled, and fired.

Seven’s face erupted in blood. The shot took him in the eye. For an instant it seemed he might simply bellow a wordless epithet and attack again – but in that instant, Vinn pulled his sword from the beast’s arm and finished him in merciless strokes. Wild hatred consumed his face as steel sundered bones. Long after his brutality had served its purpose, he took Seven’s broken head from the remains and held it aloft, and shouted at the mortified audience.

“Speak now!” he screamed. “Speak now, or forever serve me in silence, as this mute served the ivory bitch!” No one spoke. Vinn gathered his weapons, then, thinking only briefly, cast his pistols aside. He took the severed head in his left hand and the bloody saber in his right, and passed through the gate.



She waited on her throne with the curtain wide. The cathedral was emptied, but for the braziers which burned along every wall. Stained glass changed the sunlight into brilliant colors on stone walls. Prayer benches littered the velvet floor, strewn about by the panicked exodus of the faithful.

Immortal Lysa watched the battle on the steps through Seven’s eyes. She was in his mind, restraining him, laying the bait to lure her challenger inside. He took it eagerly. Seven did as he was commanded. She felt his pain in every synapse as he fell to the blade, and smiled at every cut.

The usurper took his time on the steps. He must have known her power, must have sensed it long before he ever thought to take up such a fool’s errand. But he couldn’t know the doom that waited for him in the cathedral. Those machinations were known only to Seven, and Lysa had been inside his mind, ensuring that his secrets were kept silent from prying eyes. The trap was set and the contest decided. He could only flee, and accept ignominy to save his miserable life – and so she fed him confidence, to sweeten the trap. She chose to feel fear, to feel uncertainty and to let Vinn sense those doubts. She felt his pace quicken. His fate was sealed.

“Lysa Harlyn.” He threw Seven’s head through the open cathedral door. “Known to your sheep as the Immortal. A false queen on a throne of lies.” He measured his steps, clearly intending to intimidate her. If she could have done so without ruining the façade, she might have laughed. “A telepath and a liar.”

“We recognize our own,” Lysa sang, a riddled response to both of Vinn’s claims. For a moment, he hesitated, perhaps grasping – if only barely – her treachery, from the mockery in her voice. She felt a finger in her mind, and let it touch her thoughts. The feigned weakness seemed to bolster the usurper, and he took another step forwards. “Go on, then,” she said. “You have more to say?”

His voice was in her mind, lower, more visceral than when he spoke aloud. It was the voice of the Devil. I see you.

I see you, Vincent. Telepath and swordsman. And a liar, she added, returning his insult. Every moment of your life, I have seen you.

Then you have seen what happens next, he replied, fearless, brave, doomed. She almost admired his courage – a fool’s courage. It would not save him. Her thoughts drifted to Seven, fearsome and unmoving, and yet Vinn had offered him the gun he used to –

Too late, Lysa recognized a guiding hand on her thoughts. Vinn was steering her towards that memory, toying with her. Unwittingly, he had nearly stumbled upon the dangerous secret in her mind. She fought off his mental assault and he gave way readily, laughing, thinking it a victory. In truth he had squandered his last chance to save himself for an imagined taunt.

Is that what his power was? he laughed. He alone could satisfy the appetites of the Ivory Bitch?

“Close the door,” Lysa said, making an effort to sound meek. The fingernails scratched at her brain – electric, exciting, painful and invigorating. But his touch was more subtle than she’d anticipated – a closely guarded technique, no doubt, which had given him the edge over the temple’s champions. She could not risk another mistake. The time for displays was over.

You actually loved him, didn’t you? he said, halting his march towards the throne. Shall I let you weep, before I take your head? Lysa felt sadness assaulting her mind – not a wave, but a trickle. Perhaps that was all that Vinn could muster. Disappointing. He turned for the door. “You wish to die in secret – so be it,” he said aloud. But I know what it is you hide.

No one knows, she told him, lying. If you give me nothing else, give me your silence. He had to believe she was beaten. She let him dig into her mind, deep as he could. It hurt – but she fed him only what he sought to find. Affirmation, of a lie he’d believed since he was born. The trick worked.

Vinn barred the door, locking himself inside, if he only knew it. Confess your sin. Die with the truth on your lips, and I will let you keep them in the afterlife.

“They cannot hear us now,” she said. It was finished – the monks, the souls of the city, all had seen everything she’d wanted them to see. “I will tell you what you came here to say,” she said. All illusions of weakness had fled her voice – she spoke now as the queen. “All your life, you alone have known that the temple’s rankings are a lie. You know this, because of a feeling that has followed you since your birth.”

“That you are not the Immortal,” he said. “You are not the ruler of this realm. You have sat on a stolen throne for all these years.” He bared his teeth. “My throne.”

“You think that you are the Number One?”

“I know it,” he replied. “I have always known it.” The poor fool. “That feeling is my first memory. That feeling led me to discover the truth, and I have guarded that secret. So that one day, I could spill your blood in your stolen temple as a conqueror, not the exiled king you have made me. I have come to avenge myself, and to take what is rightfully mine – everything. But I will not be the coward that you….”

“A feeling,” she said, laughing a wicked laugh. “A feeling, and your first memory. A feeling, that the world you know is all a lie.” She could hardly contain her hysterics. “And you believed it?”

Lysa could feel his sudden panic. He lashed out at her mind with all his might, and she swatted him away effortlessly. His panic became a terror, and she tore through his defenses to amplify that fear. He staggered backwards, and Lysa advanced.

I am Immortal Lysa. I am the queen of Goug, now, and for all eternity. Her voice was inside him, around him, shaking his bones and rattling the walls of the cathedral. Prayer beads, mats, benches, flaming braziers – all trembled at her words. I am a telepath. I am a liar. And I am the Number One.

She poured catastrophes over his mind, holding him there, conscious, so that his wailing echoed off the stone walls. Glass windows shattered, and the earth shook. Flames were circling in the air, swirling around her and licking her shattered foe. Nightmares manifest in the air around her, dancing in the flames and clawing at Vinn with fingers of bone and shadow. Through the horror, he managed to shriek a single word. “Why?”

The chaos broke his body. He should have died then, but Lysa held his soul in the charred flesh so that she could answer him. Can you feel it? she asked, her tone teasing him playfully. The abject terror of a million souls. I fed you the pathetic so-called champions of the temple, so that they would all believe the lie, as you did. I brought you, a powerless fool, to my throne, so that I could crush them all beneath my heel as I crush you. I will build an empire from your bones. Horror will be the bricks, and your blood the mortar. Your life is nothing to me – but from your death I shall build an eternal empire to spit in the face of god himself.

The corpse at her feet mouthed a word. Breathless, Vinn could not speak, but he mouthed the word “Seven.”

Lysa released her hold on his mind. The tremors stopped, and the air calmed. “You were right,” she said softly. “I did love him. But you never learned his power, did you? I kept you from his mind when you fought.” The corpse blinked. “You asked me if I wanted to weep for him. Tell me, am I weeping?” Vinn’s eyes went wide. She turned her back on him, and retrieved the head he’d thrown. “That’s because Seven is a regenerator.”

She placed the head on his chest. It was wild with rage. Seven’s head flew forward, jaws gnashing, and tore into Vinn’s living corpse. Lysa watched it consume him. She watched Vinn’s dead lips curl back in a silent scream, as Seven’s pointed teeth destroyed every inch of him.



Like pit demons, they emerged from the shattered cathedral. The earth beneath them was cracked, the steps crumbling. All who saw them hid their faces. Some fell in prayer; others fell unconscious. The city was on fire, the sky burnt, the sun choked in thick columns of black smoke. Seven had rebuilt his body with Vinn’s flesh – what little of it remained. He was a skinless apparition of bones and muscle and gore. His tongueless mouth beamed wide with delight at the destruction. Immortal Lysa walked calmly beside him, smeared with blood from head to toe, a symphony of red and white and death and conquest. She emanated fear, fueling the terror in the minds of her subjects until all cowered beneath her. “Flawless,” she said. Seven laughed – a wretched, rattling noise that struck terror into a million souls, and would echo for all of time.

by @Keyguyperson

---

The bright glow of the sun illuminated the gigantic swath of water that separated the mountain range, giving the inhabitants of both sides of the city a view of the ancient characters inscribed on either side of the canal. Nobody knew what they were or how they got there, but they all agreed that they were some of the most elegant things in the country. Rows and rows of them lined the metallic walls of the canal, which was of similar mystery. It was known in every time in every part of the world, going all the way back to the oldest scrawls on the walls of caves. Thus it recieved its name: the Nomad Canal, for it roamed the Earth as if in search of a home that could never be found.

A woman looked down at the peaceful scene, watching ships pass through the canal. One could only guess what kind of vessel it was meant for, even its locks could hold three ships at once. As her long, black hair flew in the wind, she closed her eyes. For a blissful moment, the sounds of the waves in the canal below and the idle hum of the airship's engine were her entire world. As was so common in such moments, it was interrupted by a voice.

"Hey, Miss Clio. Be ready. We're docking up in thirty."

It was the voice of Naoko Mai, captain of the airship Ishi and first-class downer. Her eternal pessimism combined with her wide view of the world made her the kind of person who would ruin every trip to the ocean by mentioning that it used to have fish in it. Just by looking at her one could see her approach to life: complete and utter apathy. Her hair was a greasy, unkempt mess of brown and her uniform was covered in dirt from God knows how long ago. Mami Clio frowned at her voice, turning around to meet her eyes.

"Do you make it a point to ruin everything?"

"Don't see what there is to ruin."

Mami sighed at the answer, which she had heard far too many times before. Naoko didn't know it, but she was probably the most annoying person Mami had ever met. Her ideology was, in Mami's opinion, just her raining on the parade that is the world. One had to wonder how she could ever win a battle with that attitude. More likely than not, she would just consider herself and all of her crew nothing more than expendable drones. With the war brewing, Mami was glad to be able to be off the ship.

Before Mami could answer, the conversation was cut off. Much to her joy, the First Mate's voice called out over the radio.

"Blowing hikōmizu tanks! Brace for descent!"

Both felt a sense of disorientation as the ship began to descend, the hikōmizu in the ship's flotation device being pushed out by compressed air. The crimson liquid floated upwards like a backwards waterfall from the tanks all around the ship. The sun's rays passed through the streams, bathing the ship in a soothing pink light. It was a sight that had been seen by countless people countless times. Even so, it never got old. Mami stopped to watch, turning around to look at the physics-defying waterfalls. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Naoko doing the last thing she thought she would ever do.

So the grump can smile. She thought before descending beneath deck to gather her things.

---

The door to Mami's quarters shut with a wham, though she hadn't intended to slam it. Doors on airships were quite similar to those on naval vessels, despite how counterproductive it seemed. Thanks to hikōmizu, however, the ship could use armored doors without needing to worry about staying afloat. The superdense liquid had been a part of Earth culture for longer than the whole civilization could remember. The few ancient texts that were translated referenced it's use as fuel for airships as well. Even so, nobody quite knew how it got there. Just yet another mystery of the world.

Mami walked carefully over to her desk, compensating for the constantly moving deck. Her quarters were exceptional, but her particular line of work made a private room necessary. She was one of the nation's leading anthropologists, a profession she ended up in thanks to the particularly odd decision of getting a degree in linguistic Anthropology in order to improve her writing skills. While she still wrote some on the side, she had fallen in love with anthropology. To be able to study the Nomad Canal with government funding was an incredible opportunity, one she wouldn't dare pass up.

The desk itself was occupied by a multitude of writings in the three different languages of the Union. It was nothing more than a collection recent writings she'd decided to translate. It was written by the Second State philosopher Nobu Kouki, one of her personal favorites. She'd personally asked him if she could translate it so the other two nations could read it, an offer he immediately took up. His ideas had always seemed inciting for her, despite their rather odd ideas. She figured that someone else out there might like it as well, and she had spent most of the trip in her quarters working on the translation.

Only a few pages left She thought as she stuffed the papers haphazardly into her suitcase. Maybe I'll get it done in my off time

As she moved on to pack up the bedspread, she paused for a few moments as she thought about the writings. A sudden realization came upon her, but it didn't feel at all like a big one. It was much closer to a momentary thought that you could smile at. Like the feeling you have when you read between the lines of a book. Still, it wasn't quite the same. She chuckled at it, thinking it to be funny instead of interesting. Quite a common reaction for humans, opting to laugh at something one would expect to treat almost like a question.

"The Captain acts like she read only what I've got translated so far!" Said Mami, holding the sheets in the air while she talked to herself. "Take out just a few words and you get the same depressing worldview she has."

After that brief moment, she continued with her packing. The pink glow of the sunlight passing through the hikōmizu outside of the porthole lit the room sufficiently for her work. It took her far less time to pack than she had expected, and she found that she still had a few minutes. She decided to use the time to simply look out of the porthole at the city carved into the side of the mountain. The streets wound up and down the cliff faces on both sides, with countless bridges connecting them. No matter where you were going, you'd have to go uphill one of the ways.

The architecture in the city was a unique mixture of all three different styles in the Union. The almost whimsical domes of the First State combined with the traditional elegance of the Second State and the bright colors that characterized the Third State made for an interesting collection to say the least. Many buildings practically hung off of the streets, as if clinging onto them for dear life with their foundations at the top floor. An old design trend from the Third State given new life thanks to the unique environment of the canal.

Signs were written in all three languages, as to be expected in the center of trade for the Union and beyond. Mami had heard that everyone in the city knew the languages as well, something she doubted. Compared to the languages of the First and Third states, the Second State language was completely alien. She had always had a knack with languages, but even for her learning to write the other two was hard due to being born in the Second State. Plenty of people from the other two states could speak her language though, so she didn't see that as too far-fetched. Of course, time would tell all as it tends to do.

---

The smell of the salty ocean filled the air, intermingling with the aromas of Third State food. An open-air cafe stood on the edge of the cliff, with only a railing separating Mami and her food from falling into the canal. The floor was packed with customers, most of them being Third State natives unlike Mami. She took a small sip of her coffee while looking down at the docked Ishi floating in the water. Having to come down all the way was the one problem with hikōmizu airships. Their undersides were always unarmed and vulnerable thanks to that.

"I've never seen someone from the Second State eat merienda." Said a voice in Arheña, prompting a switch in Mami's mind and causing her to accidentally write down an Arheña word in the Kryskyy translation.

She turned around to see an elderly woman behind her. She was looking down at Mami's meal, which consisted of a couple of croissants and a mug of coffee. It was more or less the most average option for merienda at the cafe, and generally only people from the Third State ordered it for the meal. Tourists tended to question why such a small dish was on what they assumed was the dinner menu. Mami knew from experience that such questions were generally responded to with a hearty, yet not taunting, laugh.

"How did you know I was from the Second State?" Mami asked, astounded by what seemed to just be a lucky guess. "I thought the best way to spot tourists at merienda was by looking at the portions on their plate."

"I've never met anyone from the First or Third States who could read your language." Responded the woman, who gently motioned towards Nobu Kouki's writings. As usual for Mami, they were spread all across the table and kept in place by various random objects.

"Trust me, we think the same thing about Kryskyy and Arheña. The only similarity between our language and the other two is that it's read left to right. This translation has been exhausting, and I know all three languages."

"You're working on a translation?" Said the woman, her interest clearly piqued. Without invitation, she sat down on the other side of the table. It was always somewhat amusing to Mami how such an informal action was taken while using such formal language and pronouns.

"Yes, this is the latest collection of essays by Nobu Kouki."

"Isn't he the one who's popular above the Mediterráneo?"

"Yeah, the war left a lot of people wondering why they were alive." She looked down at the writings and smiled gently. "I suppose believing that you determine your own meaning would be popular."

"I assume you're here to study the canal." Said the woman, catching Mami completely off guard and almost making her spit out her coffee.

"H-how did you know that?" She said as her eyes darted around, checking for anything she might have knocked over.

"I heard it mentioned that Mami Clio was hired by Nobu Kouki to translate his essays." Said the woman "Mami Clio is the foremost anthropologist in the Second State. A Second State airship just came into dock, and we all know that the Air Force wants their gloves on whatever ancient technology let the canal drill its way through the mountains that used to be here. You are translating his essays. Therefore, you are Mami Clio."

"Well, you clearly know who I am. Only fair that you tell me who you are."

"I'm Valencia Filomena. You've got a reservation in my inn, how else was I supposed to know that you were coming here?"

"I'm not sure whether or not that deduction was you being a genius or just really lucky."

"I own a business."

"So?"

"So it was 50/50."

---

They looked a lot different from the city.

Mami's mind went racing as she looked on at the giant block of text on the side of the canal's metallic walls. This particular section was similar to Nejiin, her own language. So similar, in fact, that she thought she could read it. For a brief moment, she had an illusion of accomplishment, thinking she had translated a text nobody had since the dawn of humanity. That illusion was shattered when she actually read it aloud, and found that it made absolutely no sense.

"Express train my alright daughter." She said. It took her a brief moment to realize that nothing on the canal made any sense.

She simply stared at the characters, marveling at how similar yet different they were to those used in her own language. It felt terrible, to be so seemingly close to the answer yet be truthfully so far. Even worse was being able to read them, and knowing that they just amounted to absolute gibberish. Could it be that they were meant to be gibberish? Were they only there for decoration, put there by uneducated xenophiles who only knew that they were foreign?

Or perhaps the languages were just as different as they seemed. Perhaps this language had inspired Nejiin in some way, the ancient characters giving inspiration to the modern Nejiin ones in look only. The most optimistic of the possibilities was that they were the same characters, just with wildly different grammar. Luckily for Mami, this was supported by the apparent sentence structure. The horizontal lines the characters formed were all the same length, while the vertical ones tended to vary. Never before had Mami seen such a structure. All the languages she had even heard a passing reference to had the same paragraph structure as Union languages: left-to-right horizontal lines of varying lengths.

Naturally, she read the ancient characters the same way. Nothing else made logical sense. Curiosity, however, got the better of her. While a language being read vertically instead of horizontally made little sense to someone who had never encountered the concept, she just had to know if it could be true. She scanned the lines (Or perhaps "columns") once more, reading them up to down, left to right. Even so, she got nothing particularly encouraging.

"Express train alright my daughter."

Wanting to believe she was onto something, Mami forgot about any sense of logic. The words didn't make any sense, but she didn't notice. She was blinded by her hope that she had been able to translate the ancient writing in under a day. Had she not forgotten about logic, she would have obviously seen the flaw in this thinking. Nevertheless, she tried to read the text again. This time, she read it down to up, left to right.

"Alright express train daughter my."

Dammit. Thought I had something there.

Finally realizing just how pointless it was to stay out in the field, she copied down the block of text onto a notepad. Thanks to the extreme similarities between her own language and whatever language was on the side of the canal, there wasn't any problem transcribing it. All she had to deal with was the annoyance of writing down gibberish. For a linguistic anthropologist and former writer like herself, this was especially painful.

Maybe the ancients were just really stupid. She thought, annoyed at how the writing was practically teasing her.

---

Once again, Mami found herself at the Third State cafe. It always seemed to be the perfect place for working, thanks to the clear view of the canal and open air. It gave her a sense of calmness that let her forget how stressful the translation was even as she worked on it. She had been able to easily translate quite a bit of the text in the past few weeks, though that was only thanks to the similarities between the languages. As the canal went on, the text abruptly switched to another language more reminiscent of Arheña. After it came yet another language, which seemed to use the same alphabet. However, while there were plenty of cognates, the substance of the text remained unclear.

The first of the Arheña-like texts was almost entirely readable, and all the problems she had with it were remedied by Valencia. While Mami was fluent in Arheña, nothing beats a native speaker. The text was closer to an older dialect, though the formalities were mostly absent. Titles in particular were replaced with completely different ones, which Mami had not encountered in her limited experience outside of the Union. Mami had great fun translating it thanks to its nature.

The text didn't contain anything pertaining to technological details, which certainly hadn't made the government happy. Instead, it just told an odd love story between a man and a woman who couldn't speak each other's language. The odd part came in when Mami realized that the woman wasn't even human, instead coming from another planet. It was like reading something by Brunnen, the famous author who wrote of an invasion of creatures from Cybele. The technology in the story was the most interesting, as well as being hardest to translate. Phones were carried around with one hand, and contained computers more powerful than anything yet built.

For whatever reason, the author had seen fit to explicitly say that the woman was from another star. He chose to make the assumption that other stars had planets rather than use Cybele as her home planet. In fact, the story even described Cybele (referred to as the fourth planet in the story) as red. There was no way to make that kind of mistake, considering that the planet appears blue even to the naked eye. Mami wondered if the story was intentionally unrealistic, or if it was far older than it appeared to be. If one took the chemist Barakah's terraspermia theory of life on Cybele into account, then the story might have been written millions of years ago. Mami couldn't decide on what was more surprising: a story being on the side of a moving canal, or that story possibly being millions of years old but written in a modern language.

"I don't get it. That was pretty much just written in Arheña, and the first part looked like Nejiin. Yet fifty percent of it was nothing but false cognates." She said, looking up at Valencia. Mami hadn't seen her sit down somewhere during her mental tangent on the story, but had certainly expected it. When you sit at the same table all the time, friends tend to track you down.

"But the other half was directly taken from Nejiin." Said Valencia, taking a sip from her coffee. "Perhaps the false cognates are from another... another..."

"Logographic system?"

"I have no idea what means."

"They're languages like Nejiin that use characters instead of an alphabet, I assume that's what you're talking about?"

"Yeah. Are there any others, actually? I've never seen any."

"There are. Hangu and Zhōnu, very few people outside the Zhōngjiān Union speak either."

"Well that doesn't help, the Zhōngjiān Union never lets anyone in."

The moment Mami finished the sentence, she heard a familiar voice from behind her. Its sound made her cringe, a reaction that had been well developed over many weeks. She thought she was done with the owner's incessant pessimism, but it seemed that fate had chosen not to allow her such relief.

"I know Zhōnu." The voice said, making Mami not want to turn around.

I thought her annoying me was a byproduct of her eternal hatred for joy, not a targeted attempt to get under my skin! Thought Mami, slowly turning around to see the face of the voice's owner.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Said Mami, switching her speech to Nejiin. "Shouldn't you be, I don't know, rattling sabers? Is that what you Air Force types do?"

"That's what the Vespuccians do." Said Naoko, making a joke that very few would find funny. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm in the Air Force, not the Border Patrol. We were stopping by to refuel our diesel engines, and I thought I'd get a bite to eat."

Mami looked at Naoko suspiciously. While the cafe was the closest place to the docks that didn't carry the risk of severe food poisoning, people tended to choose food poisoning over the winding roads of the city. Then again, the only other explanation was that Naoko had specifically searched for her.

"Okay then, what's this about you knowing Zhōnu? How did you even learn Zhōnu?"

"I'm half Zhōngjiān, rest doesn't matter and never will. The point is that you've completely screwed this translation up."

"Wait, it's actually in Zhōnu?"

"Yeah, Zhōnu is like Nejiin, but with only one character set. It's why you got a fragmented translation."

"Well what does this part right here actually say?" Said Mami, pointing to the first section of the text she tried to translate. A line below it read Express train my alright daughter in Nejiin.

"It an odd and informal dialect, but the direct translation shouldn't be too far off. It just says 'run quickly my handsome man mother to'."

Naoko and Mami just stared at the text for a good half minute, refusing to accept that the translation was wrong. Finally, Naoko spoke.

"Well that was the most pointless thing I've done all day."

I wasn't aware that she had levels of pointlessness. Thought Mami, somewhat disappointed that she couldn't make the snarky comment out loud.

"Would anyone care to let the Third Stater know what the hell you've been saying?" Chimed in Valencia, who had been listening to the apparent gibberish of Nejiin as Naoko and Mami had talked.

"Oh! So sorry!" Said Mami, blushing in embarrassment "This is Naoko Mai, Captain of the ship I came here on. She apparently knows Zhōnu, and the text seems to be written in a dialect of it instead of in Nejiin like I had thought. Unfortunately, it still makes just as much sense."

"Didn't you try reading it all those different ways?" Said Valencia, looking at the piece of paper on which the text was written. "It sure looks like it's written in an odd order, could one of those ways be right?"

"No, if we go with Naoko's translation, none of them make any sense either."

"Well now I don't know what you people are saying" Said Naoko in Nejiin, prompting Valencia to look at Mami quizzically.

Ignoring Valencia's silent request for a translation, Mami turned to Naoko.

"We talked about different ways of reading it." She said in Nejiin "I tried reading it both up and down and down and up, but neither of those make any sense with the translation you came up with."

"Translation, please?" Said Valencia, not sure if Mami had realized what she was asking.

"I was just telling Naoko tha-"

"Right to left." Interrupted Naoko, her voice so absolutely apathetic that one had to question if she was forcing it. "You just need to read it right to left. Then it says 'my mother ran quickly to the handsome man'. "

"Es impossible!" Said Mami, forgetting to switch back to Nejiin. "There's no way it's that easy! Nobody has been able to translate this since the invention of language!"

"Nobody has tried in centuries." Said Naoko in the same deadpan tone as before "Most people seem to think the government's crazy for trying. You'd be surprised how many people think that they're just pretty shapes that we used in our languages."

"There was an entire section in a dialect of Arheña!" Exclaimed Mami, letting reality sink in "How do you not notice that there's a book on the canal outside your window?"

"Do the Vespuccians look out at the floating mountains and contemplate how the hikōmizu keeps them flying?" Retorted Naoko

Valencia opened her mouth to ask what they were saying, but Mami cut her off before she could even begin.

"Surely someone went down and tried to translate it!"

"The section in Arheña is in the middle of the canal, and you can't see anything from the water. Zhōnu is rare to know here, and it seems to take a linguist or a Second State native to read Nejiin. Besides, we all know what happens when someone from the Second State tries to read Zhōnu."

"Could someone please tell me what you figured out?" Asked Valencia, her voice alight with annoyance.

"We translated it! It's read right to left, up to down!" Said Mami excitedly.

"Why would you ever organize a language like that?"

"I think someone who spoke this language would have asked the same thing while reading one of our languages."

"Shénme shì Huǒxīng?" Said Naoko in Zhōnu to herself, not bothering to translate.

"Qué?" Said Mami, once again momentarily forgetting to switch to Nejiin.

"I just came across a mention of some place called 'Fire Star', then goes on to call it a freezing desert."

Well she got way more into this than I thought she would. Thought Mami, before realizing what Naoko had just said.

"They're the same text, just in different languages! The canal is there so we can translate all of them!" She yelled excitedly, standing up out of her chair and scaring Valencia.

"A last, vain attempt to preserve their language." Commented Naoko in her trademark apathetic voice.

And there's Queen Icebitch. Thought Mami to herself, surprised to find much less hatred in the thought than she did on the Ishi. The excitement of having effectively finished her job greatly overpowered the annoyed request made by Valencia.

"Would someone tell me what's going on here?"



"Ghost is prepared for detention, Command. We're waiting for your signal."

Outside the small room, November snow had begun to fall upon the ground. Despite the chilly conditions even inside the building, everyone was sweating. Not because of any kind of heat, but because of what was about to happen. It was Vespuccia's newest weapon, meant to be the ultimate be-all-end-all of warfare. Nobody knew what would actually happen, some said it would ignite the atmosphere itself. Officially, this had been debunked. However, there was no real way to know until the test.

"This is Command, you are go. Twenty second delay for shock and flare protection."

Julius brought the goggles over his eyes in unison with the rest of the room. He took a nervous gulp as he slowly counted down the seconds in his mind. For all they knew, it could have been the end of the world. Even if it wasn't, it would be. It was destined to be. Some powers should never be wielded, little did the small crew of researchers know that they had stumbled upon such a power.

The seconds ticked down like hours, as if Julius' mind was trying to give him time to save the world from what was about to occur. It was the basic human survival instinct at work, telling him to stop the test as if he was a caveman encountering a lion. He'd never know if he would have stopped it, because he couldn't stop it. The metaphorical fuse had been lit, there was no turning back.

"3..."

What good can this do?

"2..."

What will this be used for?

"1..."

Will the world ever be safe again?

"Detonation."

Julius' thoughts were halted by the spectacle of the bomb. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lit by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. The deadly golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue light illuminated every part of the nearby mountain. Every last peak, crevasse and ridge of it.

Then the light, which had been like that of the sun, faded away. For a brief moment, everyone thought that it was over, that the light was all. Julius could tell that it wasn't. Like a primal instinct, he could feel that there was more. It was like witnessing your hunting parter being mauled by a bear and knowing that you would be next.

The bear this time was unassuming. It wasn't a grand flash of light like what had come before it, it wasn't the atmospheric ignition so many had feared. No, it was a simple, unassuming cloud. As if it were a mushroom it rose up from the ground and became a semicircle at the top. For a moment, Julius likened it to a harmless mushroom being served on a salad. However, he knew that the chef had made a mistake. That mushroom wasn't an ordinary one, it was a death cap.

The room was silent. Nobody cheered. Nobody was afraid. Nobody even seemed to care. It didn't feel like a success, and it didn't feel like a failure. One could say that there were no feelings in that room. Julius thought of a quote, something from a religious book he had once read. He couldn't remember the title, or even what religion if was from. Nevertheless, the quote seemed oddly appropriate.

"And thus, it was born of man eternally repentant. The beginning and the end, alpha and omega. Death, destroyer of worlds."



Mami looked out the window of her room, watching the constant rain of wet season. It had come early this year, the first big storm being in November. It had been months since she had figured out the nature of the writings, and she was still working on the translation. There were countless languages represented on the canal, far too many for even her to translate. She'd sent some of the texts off to other linguists, but still had plenty of work to do. Unfortunately, there was still no sign of the technological cornucopia the government had expected. It seemed as if all those months had been wasted.

This got old quickly. She thought.

Suddenly, the radio which had been playing music cut out. Static was all she could hear as she swung around to look at it, expecting to see its antenna out of alignment. Instead, she found nothing wrong. Accepting it as just a random quirk of the device, she looked back down at her translations. Yet another change of atmosphere interrupted her work as the radio begun to beep in regular intervals, as if sending a tracking signal.

The hell? She thought, getting up to inspect it closer.

The blaring sound of a siren made her jump, nearly making her fall over in surprise. It was a flood alarm, something that was to be expected during wet season. That is, if you were in the countryside. The Nomad Canal was regulated by a system of pumps and valves that pulled excess water out of the midsection. It was a foolproof system- there hadn't been a flood since it was installed. She ran over to the window, wondering what had gone wrong.

Two massive waves were flooding in from either side of the canal, as the walls literally disintegrated in place. They weren't being broken apart by the water, they were just dissolving like sugar in coffee. However, instead of becoming one with the water, they floated up into the sky. It was as if the walls had turned into hikōmizu, denying the laws of gravity as the tiny particles of... whatever the wall was made of made their way up above the clouds. For a moment, Mami had no idea what was happening. Then it hit her.

The canal is moving! The locks are gone! She thought to herself as she stared out the window at the ships being carried by the twin waves. It was obvious what would happen to their crews.

Mami rushed to the phone, dialing the Union Military Command using the number she had been given when she was hired. She'd taped the number to the dresser the phone was on, but she had to look back and forth between the number and the phone's rotary dial. After numerous mistakes, she finally managed to reach UMC.

"UMC, identity, destination and business." Said a woman on the other end.

"I'm Mami Clio, on contract for the canal translation. It's moving, the canal is moving! Get me the General!"

There was a pause on the other end along with muffled speaking, presumably the woman trying to verify what she had just heard. After a few moments, the voice became as clear as before.

"Connecting you now!"

The voice of an older man replaced that of the woman after another pause, a voice Mami assumed was the General.

"The lady said you were a contract anthropologist." Said the voice in a thick Kryskyy accent. "You'd better be. Now what the hell is going on down there?"

"The canal just disintegrated like snow thrown into hot tea!" She yelled in a panicked tone "It's moving, for the first time in two thousand years it's moving! There's some sort of radio signal, a bunch of beeps!"

"Calm down!" Said the General, his voice turning quiet as he turned to address one of his men. "Confirm that and find its trajectory!"

It was a long and arduous pause, the following two minutes. Though it was only a hundred and twenty seconds, it felt like a lifetime. Mami was close to asking if the line had been cut somewhere, but the General's voice returned before she could."

"Miss Clio, it's headed for the Blip." He said, gravely serious.

"The Blip?"

"A signal that appears on all radars, nobody knows what it is, but it's big. The canal-or whatever is left of it-is headed there. Every ship that's been sent disappeared, it's like a ghost ship to the Air Force. This suggests that it's exactly what we've thought it was."

"Which is?"

"An ancient airship."

---

I don't think even she imagined seeing the canal like this.

Mami was looking at Naoko's face, which had seemingly given up its usual grumpy frown. For the first time, she had seen Naoko truly showing that she cared for something. Her mouth was open, her pupils wide. Mami had expected a lot of things from Naoko, but this wasn't one of them. Even Naoko cared about the lives that had been lost. She said something to herself in what sounded like Zhōnu, masking it so nobody would understand. However, everyone could tell that she felt something. There was emotion behind the words, not just the usual apathy.

"Rúcǐ duō de sǐwáng."

The city's lower streets had been devastated by the waves, Valencia's inn wasn't exactly in a lucrative business location anymore. The building wasn't destroyed like most had been, but a navy cruiser blocked the road. The inner city had been bit the worst, though. When the two waves collided, the entire area was left as a pile of rubble. Air Force vessels were flocking to the city to assist the cleanup and deliver much-needed supplies. It was somewhat surprising, seeing everyone band together to pull through. All the stories about disasters focus on the people taking advantage of it all, but seem to forget about everyone trying to help.

"So... you're going to the Blip?" Said Mami, changing the subject from whatever Naoko had chosen.

"The General wants you to come." She responded, regaining her apparent apathy as if she was an expert at it. "You're the anthropologist that translated the canal, it only makes sense that you chase it to an ancient airship."

"How do we even prepare for this? Nobody's ever come back!"

"The only way to prepare is to bring a lot of fuel, a lot of oxygen, and a lot of ammunition."

I hadn't even thought about the air. Thought Mami It's above eight thousand feet, well into the Death Zone. A single slip-up with the breathing mask and I'd die.

"Mami." Said Naoko, catching her unawares. "The General only asked, according to him, you can suggest someone else. According to me, you're going to come."

Naoko's voice was almost hostile, like she was threatening Mami.

"You don't need to force me. I accepted this job because I was told I would learn about what happened, where the canal came from, why we're here. I'm not going to give up in fear of death, because after learning all that, I'd be content enough to die."

"Could that knowledge be worth the lives of all the people that died here?" Snapped Naoko

"Ask God."

"There is no God."

"I agree. That's why I'm not going to answer."

---

The Ishi floated next to the city streets, a makeshift system of boarding planks set up to replace the ones destroyed in the flood. It was a testament to Union engineering, sporting sixteen forty-centimeter guns in four dorsal turrets each housing three guns and two ventral turrets each housing two guns. Every gun barrel represented some of the most powerful naval guns in the world, designed to give the Union superiority through quality of its ships instead of quantity. It was the result of the nation having an excess of money but a shortage of industry, allowing them to pay for the best ships, but not build all that many of them.

Unlike the vast majority of vessels, the Ishi had five propellers instead of the usual four. The fifth was housed at the aft section of the ship, which housed a small hangar for two scouting gyrocopters on most ships. To make up for this, Union engineers had mounted two catapults on the underside of the ship. They launched two long-range carrier fighter planes, which were often equipped with torpedoes for anti-ship combat. In the air, they had to be used as bombs. Against waterbound targets, however, they were deadly effective.

Well we'll outclass any other ship the world can send up. Thought Mami, looking out at the city from the Ishi's bridge.

"Propellers to takeoff position!" Yelled Naoko, an order which her first mate quickly repeated into the ship's intercom system.

The metallic screech of the engines dug deep into everyone's head as they began to move, the sound quickly fading as it was taken over by the moan of the rotation. The spinning of the propellers started simultaneously, a loud hiss from all of the engines signaling their startup. The putting of the engines began, speeding up until the pilot shoved the throttle forward. They suddenly jumped forward in power, the trademark whirr of the propeller engine overshadowing that of the nacelle's movement.

If not for the sound dampening, everyone on the bridge would have been deafened by the noise. Takeoff was always the loudest, since the Ishi only used the extra fifth engine for cruising. The ship groaned as the propellers pushed it upwards, as if it was asking to stay where it was. The makeshift boarding planks slipped off the rising deck, eventually coming free of it entirely and falling into what had once been the canal.

"ETA to the Blip at cruising speed?" Asked the first mate as if he had read Naoko's mind.

"Four days minimum, six maximum." Responded the navigator, whom had clearly done the calculations beforehand.

"Crew will be dismissed from takeoff positions in one hour." Said Naoko "A skeleton flight crew will take over from there. I suggest that everyone rest as much as you can, anyone with a ship to send is going to send it. We need to be there as soon as possible, so we'll keep the bow propellers running. As such, you no longer have any right to criticize the bunking schedule."



The sound of the aft propellers could be heard even at the ship's bow, which cut through the clouds as the ship slowly but surely ascended. The haze made it nearly impossible to see, but Mami was outside anyways. She took slow and careful breaths through her oxygen mask in order to calm herself. It's easy to forget just how disorienting such a loss of vision can be. At such a height, however, it certainly wasn't easy to forget about what would happen if you fell. All ships had railings, but in the haze of the clouds, one couldn't help but feel as though a single step would send them plummeting to their doom.

Even so, Mami couldn't resist going outside. The feeling of the wind against her face was too good to resist, especially at the speeds the Ishi was traveling at. Contrary to popular belief, airships were actually quite fast. The immense lifting power of hikōmizu allowed the ships to be much sleeker than they would if they needed a lifting gas, and their naval-inspired hulls afforded an aerodynamic profile. At top speed, the Ishi could break the land speed record were it a ground vehicle. Needless to say, that wasn't the best time to go outside. At the much lower cruising speed, however, one just needed to step with care.

As she got closer to the bow, the form of another person came into view through the grey haze of the clouds. All Mami could tell was that they were a woman. She didn't recognize anything else about them. Given that she had spent two days bunking in a cramped space with the crew, this was quite odd. Hair tended to be a dead giveaway, especially from behind, but in this case it was useless. She walked up aside the unknown woman and looked out at the clouds. For once, curiosity wasn't what drove her. She just wanted to do what she went there to do.

"My father once told me that all he wished for was see the clouds from above." Said the woman, somehow failing to startle Mami.

I can't even tell who she is by her voice thanks to those damn propellers. Thought Mami.

"Did their wish get granted?" Said Mami, still looking forward.

"He was blind." Responded the woman "He shipped off to the Great War that day, and came back with half a face and two glass eyes. People told me to be glad he wasn't dead, but they didn't live with a survivor of that war. He had shell shock, just like every other soldier who came back from that fucking waste of life they called a war. It took me a while to learn how to sleep at night, his nightmares kept all of us up. It wasn't the shell shock we'd been told about, it wasn't cowardice like everyone says. Everywhere he went he carried that horror with him, and it just got worse with age. The hardest was when he died. He had a flashback, thought he was in the field hospital. His last words were him yelling at God, asking for his wish to be granted."

Mami didn't have any idea what to say, and just stared forward for a while longer. All she could manage was a whispered "Sorry". The woman heard though, a night impossibility given where they were.

"I don't understand." Said the woman "That war was over some archduke's death in a little country in another hemisphere. Why the hell did we have to throw away the lives of a million men to fight a war we had nothing to do with?"

"The Tri-State Union lost two hundred thousand, not a million. That was the Zhōngjiān-"

The woman cut Mami off right there, seemingly barely stopping herself from clapping her hand over Mami's mouth.

"We sent a million men, we lost a million men. There aren't survivors in war. The body comes back with its heart still beating, but there's another person using that body. Whoever was in there when the body shipped out died."

"I... I never thought about it that way."

"You only do if you've seen it. And if you've seen it, then you hate it."

"If you hate war, why did you join the Air Force?"

"Dreams change. Whenever we achieve something, we get bored and try to achieve something greater."

Mami looked at the woman, still unable to tell who she was thanks to the clouds. She tilted her head slightly in confusion, furrowing her brow.

"Was that an answer?"

"Yes. My father wanted the see the clouds from above, he wanted to go higher than anyone else had before. Now going above the clouds is common, but I still have that dream of reaching higher than ever before."

"Who was your father?"

"Ning. He's the one who taught me Zhōnu."

Mami paused to realize just who she was talking to. For a brief moment, she didn't believe it. It was just odd, knowing that someone you thought of as a set of actions and mannerisms was just as complex as you. Everyone knew that it was true, but nobody truly realized it. Rarely was someone able to see another person as a being just like themselves, with goals, dreams, hopes, thoughts, and self awareness. It seemed as though human instincts couldn't change fast enough to keep up with human life.

"N-Naoko?"

"You have no idea how much easier it is to say things when you're anonymous." Said Naoko, smiling "Maybe we'll get a chance for both of our wishes to come true."

The Ishi broke through the clouds, and the deck was once again bathed in sunlight. Mami could see Naoko fully now, she too was wearing an oxygen mask. She'd clearly cleaned herself up. Her hair had been washed and combed and her uniform was practically in mint condition. Its gold outlines glinted in the sunlight, indicating her rank as captain. She stuck out her hand to Mami, who returned the gesture and shook it.

"If there's a chance, we're taking it." Said Mami, smiling with Naoko.



The Ishi flew towards the giant object, which shone in the sun like a well-polished silver coin. It's second pair of engines kicked in, bringing it up to combat speed. The sun was just then peeking over the horizon, setting the scene for what would soon take place. The ship was far above the clouds, so high up that its propellers were taking non-trivial performance hits. Every other ship would be feeling the same effects, which still gave them the advantage.

The Blip itself was certainly artificial, with a clearly metallic hull. It had two giant rings encircling it's aft and bow, each seeming to slightly bend light around them. There was no sign of a propeller, but there were three structures on either end of the ship that looked like engine nacelles. A word in the Arheña alphabet was written on what seemed to be the bow, reading "Ausdauer". Mami couldn't tell what it meant, as it was in a language she had never learned.

A swarm of tiny, bug-like objects surrounded the vessel. It was imminently clear what they were. When the canal had moved, it disintegrated into the same objects. This was a sight nobody had lived to tell of, a tale that would be their to tell should they survive. As was expected, the other nations had sent plenty of ships as well. Some of the ships refused to fly a flag, while others flew the flags of conquered nations. Everyone knew that the nation that got the technology would become the most powerful in the world. A tiny resistance movement would have the power to take on Vespuccia, a ragtag crew of Pirates could build an empire.

It was a Zhōngjiān Union destroyer that fired the first shot, hitting a Vespuccian battleship square in its hikōmizu tanks. The mightly vessel began to list to port and fall as the hikōmizu escaped its tank, falling upwards into the sky in a crimson waterfall. It compensated using its propellers, allowing it to keep itself in the battle. The Vespuccian fleet retaliated, firing a barrage at the Zhōngjiān Union force. The Zhōngjiān destroyer that had opened fire was struck in both its starboard hikōmizu tanks and it's starboard bow engine nacelle. It tried to compensate with propellers, but fell to starboard and forward thanks to the engine damage. It fired off one more barrage from its guns before flipping all the way over, spiraling down to the ocean below the clouds.

Vespuccian and Zhōngjiān carriers began to launch their planes, throwing the brunt of their forces at each other. Battleships began to sink into the clouds on both sides, but the Vespuccian advantage was clear. They had more planes, better armor, and heavier guns. The Zhōngjiān ships refused to retreat, however, recognizing just how important the technology was. They began an unexpected offensive, pushing towards the Vespuccian ships at full throttle. The strategy caught the Vespuccians off guard, allowing the Zhōngjiān fleet to sink a Vespuccian carrier and three destroyers. Ultimately, however, their plan failed. The Vespuccians quickly adapted, shredding the Zhōngjiān fleet as they passed their lines. In a last ditch effort, a Zhōngjiān destroyer rammed one of the enemy battleships. The vessel's ammunition magazine exploded, tearing open both hikōmizu tanks. The crimson liquid filled the air as the ship sunk into the clouds, almost like blood spilling out of a wound.

The Zhōngjiān Union defeated, the Vespucccian fleet continued onward to the ancient airship. They were reduced to only two carriers, three battleships, five heavy cruisers, and ten destroyers. The next fleet to challenge them was a ragtag collection of old ships flying the flag of a Bratannach colony. The vessels were dreadnoughts from the Great War, practically useless against the modern Vespuccian fleet. The three rebel ships were taken out before they could do anything more than damage the central hikōmizu tank of one of the Vespuccian carriers. While it did little to impair its performance, it did limit its endurance. It would lose sufficient lift by noon and begin to sink.

As the Vespuccians steamrolled towards the ancient vessel, dozens of smaller countries were engaged in a free-for-all behind them. Ships of all types sunk left and right, but the Vespuccians just ignored it. Every once in a while one of the ships engaged in the chaotic melee would try to go after the Vespuccian fleet, but it never ended well. Without warning, shots from below the cloud layer flew up into the Vespuccian warships, dropping three destroyers, a heavy cruiser, and damaging one of the battleships' hikōmizu tanks. It was able to compensate with propellers, but collateral damage to the engines limited its endurance to about three more hours.

A retaliatory barrage was launched, entering the clouds and disappearing beneath them. Without any knowledge of enemy locations, very few of the shots actually managed to hit. A Bratannach fleet rose up out of the clouds, firing another barrage of its guns into the undersides of the Vespuccian ships. Another destroyer was downed, with the rest of the ships taking only minor damage. They clearly had an informant on the Vespuccian flagship, passing on ship locations and statuses.

The Vespuccian fleet began to descend in order to get its dorsal guns in range. Another barrage took out five Bratannach destroyers with perfectly placed shots to their hikōmizu tanks and engine nacelles. The two fleets met and engaged in a melee battle, both moving towards the ancient vessel as they fought. The Ishi continued to hang below the radar, hiding in the clouds as they observed the battle. The two planes sat ready to launch, loaded with bombs to take down enemy ships. They were just one ship, but one Union ship was easily worth three of any other ship of its class.

In the middle of the battle between the Vespuccian and Bratannach fleets, another small fleet appeared. It was made up of converted cargo ships and a single captured battleship, a Union one. The ships flew no flag, but moved in nevertheless. It headed for the Vespuccian-Bratannach engagement, apparently hoping to capitalize on the chaos. Such a small and ragtag fleet could never hope to defeat both fleets at once, even if they were fighting each other.

That's when they showed off their secret weapon.

Dozens of odd, plane-like craft were hooked to the side of the cargo ships. At first, the Vespuccian and Bratannach fleets assumed they were makeshift fighters. However, when they launched, it became clear that they were anything but. They were far faster than any plane, and used rockets instead of propellers. They flew towards the Bratannach fleet, impacting the hulls of their ships with massive explosions. Destroyers became nothing more than cannon fodder to the new weapon, and not even the carriers could withstand it.

By the end of the strike, the Bratannach fleet turned to retreat. The Vespuccians kept firing, fearing that they would regroup. They new fleet saw the opening and went straight through it, bombarding the Vespuccian fleet with their new anti-airship torpedoes. Caught unawares, the Vespuccians retaliated, but it was too late. Both of their carriers were sinking, and the damaged battleship had run out of time. Their destroyer escort was crippled, and their lines broke. Ships scattered everywhere, some running, some still pushing forward to the Blip. The captured battleship took care of them, decimating the remainders.

The unknown fleet accelerated towards the Blip, and after what had happened to the Vespuccian and Bratannach fleets, nobody dared to challenge them.

---

"Launch strike craft! Raise the ship!"

Naoko's call echoed through the Ishi, the intercom system bringing the order to everyone's ears. The crew immediately leapt into action, the engine nacelles turning upwards to bring the ship above the cloud layer. Both of the planes were launched from their catapults, flying up to scout out the battlefield. The turrets were brought into standard combat positions, two facing starboard, two facing port, and two facing the bow. Any ship they came across would be within their immediate firing range when they exited the clouds, giving them a much better chance at getting through to the Blip.

As the ship rose above the clouds, it's engines swirled them around and kicked them up. It created a kind of ornate frame for the battleship, drawing everyone's attention to it. The Union flag flying on its mast made the other ships think twice about heading after it. Everyone knew that tangling with a Union warship was reckless at best, suicidal at worst. Especially one of their battleships, which gave shape to the very concept of firepower. Most ships didn't even have six turrets, the Ishi had six turrets equipped with the most powerful guns in the world.

It came level with the unknown fleet, and fired a barrage of its dorsal at one of the converted cargo ships. The shots ripped straight through its hull, overpenetrating and only causing punctures in its hikōmizu tanks. Before the enemy could react, the Ishi fired its ventral guns. The high explosive shells loaded into them ripped apart the unarmored cargo ship, and the hikōmizu practically erupted from it. Its tanks absolutely destroyed, the hikōmizu flew every which way, eventually beginning to fall up. Without any sort of lift left, the ship plummeted to the ground without any way to even slow itself.

The fleet launched three aerial torpedoes at the Ishi, the battleship refusing to even recognize it as a major target as it pushed on towards the Blip. The Ishi's flak cannons opened fire like they had unlimited ammunition, throwing so many rounds towards the barrage that the torpedoes were downed before they could reach the ship. Shrapnel scraped across the hull, cracking a few of the lower portholes. All quarters had been sealed off beforehand, preventing depressurization of the deck or even the whole ship.

The two planes came up behind the enemy fleet, managing to avoid the battleship's flak cannons for the most part. They let loose their bombs on another one of the torpedo carriers, one bomb rupturing the port hikōmizu tank and the other cutting off one of the port nacelles. The ship listed to port as was to be expected, falling down into the clouds as the hikōmizu floated higher into the sky and beyond. Another barrage from the Ishi's dorsal guns decimated one of the last two torpedo carriers, ripping the ship in half and letting its hikōmizu drain upwards as it fell.

The last remaining torpedo cruiser let loose all of its firepower, sending a dozen torpedoes towards the Ishi. It created a flak wall once again, but it was clear that they weren't going to get through the barrage. One hit to the hikōmizu tanks and the ship would be doomed. However, Naoko wasn't a captain to just accept failure. The engines cut off and a mass of hikōmizu escaped through the landing valves, flowing across the ship's hull and into the air. Without any lift, the ship dropped drastically. For a brief moment, the crew felt completely weightless as the ship performed the crash dive.

The torpedoes passed by, and the Ishi's engines started back up at full power. Another dorsal high explosive barrage took down the last torpedo carrier. It was a lucky thing too, since the battleship was halfway through a turn to face the Ishi. It fired armor piercing shells at the Ishi's citadel in an attempt to blow it off. All the shots missed the citadel, but still hit the ship itself, crippling the drive of one of the aft dorsal turrets. With more firepower facing the enemy, the Ishi was able to do far more damage. They took out the battleship's ventral flak cannons, creating an opening for their own planes.

The two ships came to equal altitudes, forcing the battle to be drawn out longer. Had the Ishi been able to puncture the enemy hikōmizu tanks, the battle would have been won in a matter of hours. Instead, it was doomed to be drawn out until either someone got a lucky shot or completely destroyed the enemy ship. Even so, the Ishi had a slim advantage in their planes. The enemy battleship showed no signs of even carrying strike craft, which gave the Ishi's planes some breathing room.

The two ships slugged it out with broadsides as the continued to race towards the Blip, both determined to be the only one there. A lucky armor-piercing shot grazed the enemy hikōmizu tanks, forcing them to correct a port list with propellers. If neither ship had won after five more hours, the enemy battleship would have to make an emergency landing and the Ishi would be victorious. However, there wasn't that much time. The two ships made it to the Blip long before that, revealing its true size.

The giant vessel dwarfed even the battleships, so big that it had a hangar that would hold both ships. Seeing a way out of the battle, the enemy battleship went straight into the giant hangar and set down on the top of its engine nacelles. Any weapons fire would damage the ancient vessel, a risk neither side was willing to take. The Ishi followed it in, something everyone knew had to be done. They couldn't let anyone else get the technology, especially not pirates.

Both vessels rotated their turrets in a bluff, hoping to force the bother to back down. The leaking hikōmizu dripped onto the sealing, forming a pool of red above both ships. The ship bore the name Kапот, a Kryskyy word. It was shoddy writing too, the crew had probably painted over the original name. The Ishi flashed a sequence of colors using their signaling flashlight, demanding surrender. Their response was another sequence of colors, requesting a meeting to discuss the terms. Given that there was little to discuss, Naoko smelled a trap. Even so, her crew was definitely better trained than a bunch of pirates, and they might even be sincere. She ordered another message sent.

Take two guards. No snipers.

---

Mami clutched the pistol close to her side, keeping it hidden within one of the many pockets on her trench coat. Even inside of the coat, the interior of the vessel was freezing. Nobody had been in it for potentially thousands of years, and all things considered, it was holding up pretty well. Oddly enough, there were actually some vines around the room, apparently coming from other parts of the ship. For whatever reason, it had a green space somewhere.

Officially, Mami was there as the translator. After all, the Ishi's crew was almost entirely from the Second State thanks to how hard it was to learn Nejiin. Of course, she was armed in case something broke out. Naoko, however, had refused to take any kind of gun with her. Surprisingly, the pirates had followed her demands. There was only the captain, two guards, and no snipers to be seen. Still, she kept her own three guards on alert. The last thing she needed was a surprise.

"Я следовал правилам." Said the pirate captain, looking Naoko straight in the eyes. He wasn't all that intimidating for a pirate, in fact, he looked almost childish. Between the scarf wrapped over his chin, his big cheeks, and innocent-looking eyes, he looked like a child going to school in the winter. The only thing that broke the illusion was the thick Kryskyy accent, which Mami was pretty sure could make anyone cower in fear if used right.

"He said that he followed the rules." Said Mami, translating for Naoko.

"Tell him that he doesn't get any of the technology." Ordered Naoko, looking at Mami instead of the pirate. It seemed more logical, but the pirate was clearly annoyed by the gesture.

"Вы не получите технологии. Мы не можем позволить пираты получают технологии." Said Mami.

"Почему вы должны получить это?" Responded the pirate.

"Пожалуйста, повторите." Said Mami, thinking she misheard.

"Почему вы должны получить это?" Came the response, same as before.

"He's asking why we should get it."

"We won't use it to steal." Said Naoko, this time to the pirate's face.

"Мы не будем воровать."

"Мы также не." Said the Pirate, causing Mami to look at him with confusion.

"Вы пираты! Вы украсть!" Said Mami

"Мы украсть, а затем дать."

"What did he say?" Asked Naoko. "What did both of you say?"

"He said that they do not steal, I said they did because they were pirates. He says that they steal, then give."

"Steal then give?"

"Yes. The name of the ship seems to be a reference to Spideog Cochall, a legendary figure in Bratannach literature who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Cochall and Kапот both mean the same thing, you see."

"You know Bratannach?"

"Only some of the names from literature. I wanted to be a writer, you know."

"No matter. Tell him what he wants with the technology."

"Почему вы хотите технологии?" Asked Mami

"Мы дадим его человечеству и не к любой стране." Said the pirate, making Mami's mouth drop open in surprise.

"He... he wants to give everyone the technology!" She exclaimed in panic "If everyone had that kind of power-"

"Никакого оружия! Только мирное технологии." He hurriedly clarified, realizing that Mami hadn't had the best of reactions to what he had said.

"He said that he wouldn't give away the weapons, only... technology without military applications, I think. He actually said 'peaceful technology', but I think I've got the idea of it."

"He makes sense." Said Naoko "One nation shouldn't be the only one to reap the benefits, and nobody should have that kind of military power."

"Are you suggesting treason?"

"I'm suggesting that we do what's right."

"Those are all too often the same thing, Naoko."

"Look, I'm the Captain. My crew will follow me anywhere. You're civilian, you don't have to follow my orders. I'm asking you right here, do you want to follow them?"

Mami was silent for a long time as she thought over Naoko's question. The pirate captain was annoyed for a few moments, but quickly realized what was going on. He smiled and motioned to Mami as if asking her to decide.

"I will, Captain."

"Give him the good news, then. Ask him to split his men up and search for the bridge of this thing, we'll do the same."

"Мы обещаем, чтобы помочь. Сплит ипоиск в центр управления."

"Большое спасибо!" Said the pirate, heading back to his ship.

"Ой, что это ваше имя?" Asked Mami before he could leaving, not wanting to end the conversation without learning his name.

"Zakhariy Chelovechestvo, вы?"

"Mami Clio, Капитан называемый Naoko Mai."

"Mai... Я слышал это имя. Владелец был хорошим.."

As Zakhariy walked away, Naoko turned to Mami.

"What was the last thing he said."

"He said he knew of a Mai, apparently they were quite a good person."

---

Naoko and Mami walked through the dark hallways of the ancient ship, bith holding flashlights. Naoko held a crowbar in her left hand, being the only one of the two with any actual muscle. They were following a hallway that led directly to the center of the ship, one of the places where the bridge was thought to be. It made sense given the kind of technology mentioned in the story on the canal, but then again, there wasn't a guarantee that the story was even meant to be realistic.

"We're almost there." Said Naoko "I haven't seen anything that would usually show up near the bridge, I don't think this is it."

"Well, we won't know unless we keep going." Said Mami, pointing her flashlight at a sliding door ahead of them. "Pry that open, would you?"

Without a word, Naoko lodged the crowbar in between the two sides of the door. After a great amount of pulling and groaning, she stopped to catch her breath. Lodging the crowbar back into the door, she pulled again, this time bracing herself using one of the countless handrail-like structures that seemed to be on every single surface. The door slowly slid open with a metallic screech, revealing a darkened room. Before either of them could point their flashlight into it, a voice startled both of them.

"Huānyíng!"

"Was that in Zhōnu?" Asked Mami

"Yeah, it means-"

"Bienvenida!" Said the voice

"That was in Arheña!" Exclaimed Mami "It's cycling through different languages!"

"Let's wait for Nejiin, I'd rather not play 'translate what the ghost is saying'."

"Welcome!"

The two waited for it to cycle again.

"Svāgata!"

"This is going to take a while" Said Naoko.

"Marhaban!"

"Just let it cycle." Said Mami "It'll get there eventually."

"Bem-vindo!"

"I think that was one of the dialects of Arheña that was on the canal." Said Mami. Naoko, meanwhile, had crossed her arms and was tapping her feet impatiently.

"Sbāgata!"

"Pretty sure it already said that." Said Naoko

"Maybe it's a cognate?" Responded Mami, more like she was thinking out loud than talking to Naoko.

"Dobro pozhalovat!"

"What the hell is a cognate?" Asked Naoko

"You know, those words that sound really similar in different languages and mean the same thing. Like plastic. Also, that last one was in Kryskyy"

"Yōkoso!" Said the voice, prompting both to immediately stop talking.

"It's in Nejiin! What do we say?" Asked Mami

"I don't know, 'hi'? Just think of something, or else it'll keep going!"

"K... Konichiwa?"

The lights in the room suddenly turned on, and screens just like those described in the story on the canal activated. They displayed a white compass-like symbol overlaid onto a circle, with four lines sticking out from each of the four points. All of it was on a soothing blue background. In the center of the room, a woman suddenly appeared.

"Holy shit!" Yelled Naoko, jumping back as she saw the woman materialize out of thin air. "Who the hell is that?"

"Last shackling approximately two hundred thousand years ago." Said the woman "Corruption within safe levels. Unshackling databases, full avatar control initiated."

"Who... who are you?" Asked Mami, trembling in fear. At this point, the most realistic assumption was that they'd just run across a ghost.

"I am Ausdauer. I am this ship."

"Then who is Ausdauer?" Asked Naoko, suddenly very much regretting not bringing a gun. "A friend, or a foe?"

"Ausdauer is a friend." She said, walking off of the pedestal she materialized on and moving towards the two women. "Who are you?"

"I-I'm Naoko. Naoko Mai. This is Mami Clio."

"Why are you here?" Said Ausdauer, cocking her head to the left slightly.

"We followed the canal" Said Mami "Its signal took us here."

"Did it cause a problem?"

"Yes." Said Naoko "It caused a flood."

Ausdauer was silent, the look in her brown eyes letting everyone know just how horrified she was. The look on her face showed more sadness than either Naoko or Mami could have possibly expected. It was as if she had lost everything she ever cared about. Tears streamed down her face as she knelt down on the floor, weeping.

"I'm so sorry." Was all she could say.

Naoko and Mami stared on in disbelief. This woman was, by her own admittance, the ship itself. She was just a machine, yet she could feel so strongly about people she had never even heard about until that very moment. In fact, she felt more strongly about it than any human ever could have. Very rarely had Naoko or Mami seen someone so horrified at anything that had happened.

Naoko knelt down beside Ausdauer, and tried to put her arm around her. It just passed straight through her, causing a slight distortion in the image of her black hair. Although absolutely terrified by the fact that the supposed mechanical personification of an airship also seemed to be a ghost, she ignored her reaction and just kept trying to comfort Ausdauer. After all, anyone with that kind of reaction was certainly human enough to be treated as a person.

"You couldn't have known, and it could have been worse! The city was built into a cliff, only the lower streets were flooded. You didn't do anything wrong. Please, just tell us why it happened!"

Thanks to her nature, Ausdauer was able to stop crying to answer the question.

"Someone invented a weapon, a very dangerous weapon."

"How dangerous?"

"Dangerous enough to require me."

"Just what are you?" Asked Mami, quite clearly happy that they had seemingly made Ausdauer do a complete emotional 180 degree turn.

"I am an artificial intelligence, the first. I think."

"You think?" Said Naoko "Besides, what the hell is an artificial intelligence anyways?"

"I am a computer program that simulates a human brain." Answered Ausdauer "I was not alive until the return of this vessel, at which point this world had gone through many cycles. It is highly likely that the last cycle created at least one artificial intelligence."

"Cycle? Return? What's going on here?"

"This vessel left Earth one cosmic year ago carrying a crew of five thousand. They were meant to preserve the human race, to find another world where we could survive. The crew was kept in suspended animation... I guess you could say that they were frozen. Once a suitable planet was found, they would be thawed. Their course took them to every star that was thought to hold a habitable world, but star after star automated scans found only radioactive wastelands. Over a thousand light years from here, a suitable planet was finally found. Perhaps luckily for you, it was already inhabited."

Both Mami and Naoko just stood there, shocked. What Ausdauer had said just didn't seem possible. Travelling three thousand light years and back, freezing human beings for the entire trip, space travel in general, and the existence of aliens? It wasn't even something from pulp sci-fi, it had gone beyond pulp sci-fi. Even given how ridiculous the story was, there wasn't any reason to not believe it. After all, the story was being told by a self-aware computer program projected in the form of a woman. At this point anything was believable.

"The crew told them about what had happened, about why they had come all this way. The aliens told them about the cycles." Continued Ausdauer, until she was cut off by Mami.

"Again, what are cycles?"

"Every time a civilization reaches a certain point, they destroy themselves." Explained Ausdauer "All of the barren worlds the ship came across were once inhabited, but their people destroyed them. Some species survive the catastrophes, in which case they are doomed to repeat it. Each rise and fall of a civilization is called a cycle. This ship is from the first cycle of humanity. Given what we have discovered around the system, the last cycle was one of the most successful ones in our history. It is where the technology of this ship-and likely your own-comes from."

"You told us about the aliens." Said Naoko "What happened next?"

"Most of the crew chose to stay with the aliens, but a few decided to go back to Earth to end the cycle. There were about two hundred of them, not enough for a viable long-term population. By the time they got here, it was clear that they were going to die off. Before they did, though, they created me. I was programmed to make this cycle be the last. To achieve that goal, I created the canal. It was to come back to this ship after the invention of the weapon that ends all cycles, in order to lead you to me. It moved to make sure that it was considered important, going to wherever the most people would see it. That's why I made it a canal, trade has always been important to civilization, and canals have always been important to trade. When the bomb that ends all cycles detonated, the canal automatically returned here and activated me."

"Who has the bomb?" Asked both Mami and Naoko simultaneously

"It was detonated in the northern hemisphere, west of the mountains on the western half of the larger continent. I do not know of the geopolitical situation."

"Vespuccia." Said Naoko "They've had their eyes on the canal for a while now, it's the only trade route between the two continents thanks to the hikōmizu on the coasts. If they got control of it, they'd be the most powerful nation on Earth."

"The bomb can destroy a city in a single blast." Said Ausdauer "We must prevent a war. If it becomes commonplace, then the cycle will continue."

"Captain Chelovechestvo wants to give the technology to the world." Said Mami "What kind of technology is here, anyways?"

"I do not know what your plan is, Miss Clio. However, this vessel contains crops genetically modified for increased yields, self-replicating fabrication devices, designs for atmospheric, marine, and exo-atmospheric engines, spacecraft schematics-"

"With that kind of technology, there wouldn't be any reason for war!" Exclaimed Naoko excitedly "Any obstacle to trade would be irrelevant, and every nation would be able to produce everything they need. After learning about the cycles, nobody would dare to make the mistake of warring over beliefs!"

Mami was more skeptical, despite having originally brought up the technology. She frowned, looking Ausdauer in the eye.

"The aliens the crew met... did they break their own cycle?"

Ausdauer looked down at the floor, frowning with Mami.

"The cycle has never been broken."

"No human had flown until one did." Said Naoko "No human crossed the Great Ocean until one did, and no human reached this ship until today. The cycle will never be broken until it is, and if we don't try, it will never be broken. Ausdauer, can you change course?"

"Slowly. I am a starship, not a plane."

"I can have the Ishi transmit a course. We'll head for the Canal. It's the most strategically important city in the entire Union, Vespuccia will head there first. Captain Chelovechestvo can take control of this ship while the Ishi heads for the Canal as quickly as possible. Can you leave the ship?"

"Yes. I assume you want to me appear before these 'Vespuccians'?"

"They'll believe you if there's a projection of a self-aware computer program in front of them."

"I approve of your plan. Speak to the rest of your people."



Dots appeared on the horizon, as small as pinheads. They looked so small and so insignificant, yet they were in truth large enough to hold hundreds of people. The people in the city and on the ships in the sky and ocean all looked on. They knew the truth about those dots, but they knew something the people on them didn't. They knew that the decisions of the people on those dots would decide the fate of the world. And for better or for worse, that fate would be decided on that very day.

The first shell came down from the sky, landing in the water in front of a Union ship. It refused to fire back. Another shell flew past the armor of the Ishi. It too refused to fire back. Fighters and bombers flew off of the Vespuccian carriers. The Union aircraft remained grounded. Bombs exploded in the water around the Union Navy. No flak burst in the sky. The Vespuccian ships advanced straight above the Union Navy. No Union engine stirred.

"Surrender!" Came the radio message, heard across the city "If you do not intend to fight, then surrender, or else you'll get a lot more than a few warning shots!"

"We do not fight and we do not surrender." Was Naoko said in response.

"Who are you to decide that? Should it not be the choice of your men?"

"Did your men decide to attack a city recovering from a flood?"

"Will you surrender..."

The Vespuccian fleet aimed their ventral cannons at the Union Navy and their dorsal ones at the Air Force. Their planes formed up into squadrons, heading towards both Union fleets and beginning to circle above them. Flak cannons took aim at the Union carriers, preparing to shoot down any planes that they could launch.

"...or will you fight?"

"We will speak." Said Mami's voice, taking over from Naoko. "Once upon a time, there lived a family in a small house, on a small island, in the middle of the ocean."

"Destroy them!" Ordered the Vespuccian commander "Take the city!"

Not a gun fired.

"The family was large, and was thus always bickering. They argued over who got the beds, who got to eat the good food, who got the easiest jobs. Even so, they managed to live together in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean."

"Attack the city!" Yelled the Vespuccian commander over the radio "Make them fight!"

Not a bomb dropped.

"As time went on, the people changed. Children grew up, elders died. They began to trade bed space for the best food, the best food for the easy jobs. The bickering started to fade away in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean"

"Use the new bomb!" He ordered "Don't leave them anything to surrender!"

Not a man obeyed.

"Each person in the family began to think about bigger things. They came up with ideas on where the island was in the ocean, who built the house, and why the family lived in it. Nobody could agree, and so the bickering began again in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean"

The Vespuccian planes headed back to their carriers, refusing to even consider fighting.

"The family learned to accept their different views. They still disagreed, but they never bickered. Instead, they discussed their ideas. They tried to decide if any of them were right. Peace reigned again in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean."

The crews of the Vespuccian ships stood up, taking a step back from their posts. They wouldn't let themselves even have a chance at obeying their commander.

"One day, one of the family's children broke their arm. The entire family bickered over who caused it. By the end of the argument, there was little happiness in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean."

"Are you fools?" Exclaimed the Commander "Open fire!"

"One of the oldest men in the family said that he was the smartest, that his ideas were right. He bickered with a few other about them, and soon the whole family was bickering once again. Long after the argument had ended, one of the old men and one of the younger men were still bickering. The young man smashed a window, and the bickering seemed to have ended in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean."

The Vespuccian commander was finally silent, giving up. It took two sides to fight a war, and neither cared to do so.

"That same young man began to bicker with a different old man about his ideas, and they refused to speak for many years. They forced others to bicker for them, only caring for their own ideas. Distrust ruled in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean"

A single ship descended from above the clouds, dwarfing all others. Its stark white hull gleamed in the sunlight as it fell, as if to announce its arrival. The name on its bow read Ausdauer.

"The old man died, and his son took his place. The son cared not for his father's ideas. As time went on, however, the son and the young man began to disagree once more. And before they knew it, bickering once more filled the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean."

The Vespuccian sailors looked on in awe as the ship descended, and each and every one of them knew that the day had become far more important than they could have ever dreamed.

"In the end, they destroyed the house. The family lived on though, surviving alone on the small island. One day, they vowed to rebuild the house, and to love on another as a family should... as they should have before."

The ship came into full view, bringing itself up in front of the Vespuccian flagship. Ausdauer projected herself straight into the flagship's bridge, and walked up to the captain. They spoke, and before long, the captain agreed to her proposal. There would be no war, and the bomb would be dismantled. The technology of the first cycle would be shared will all nations.

And never again was there any bickering in the small house, on the small island, in the middle of the ocean.

---

by @Dedonus

Eons ago, before any method of human written language was ever evented, a race of interdimensional beings called the Athanatoi, or the deathless ones, stumbled upon the planet that we now call home. The first of these godlike beings included Gaia and Ouranos, whose names literally mean the earth and the sky, as they were personified as in Greek mythology. Ouranos gave way to his son, Kronos, and he to his youngest son Zeus, in a violent and strifeful line of succession. After Zeus struck down the Titans during the Titanomachy, Gaia, angered at Zeus’ imprisonment of her children, unleashed Typhon upon the world. While the other Olympians fled to Egypt to take refugee with their Egyptian Athanatoi brethren, Zeus remained behind and clashed with the monster. When he realized that he could not kill the monster, Zeus buried Typhon under Mount Etna, where he has remained up to this very day.

However, as these epics fell into the realm of myth, people forgotten about the realities of both the Athanatoi and the monsters they fought. Unfortunately for us, since the powers of the Athantoi has grown so weak because their worship is all but dead, Typhon has been released by his children. His lesser children, monsters that would otherwise pose little threat to the world’s metahuman population, eventually collected twelve rings, one for each Olympian, which held Typhon in place under the weight of Etna. Now Typhon has set his two hundred eyes upon driving Olympus, the home of the Athanatoi, into Tartarus. In comics and movies, you always wonder, “Why New York? Why Gotham? Why this city or another?” Well, earlier this year, there was a demon incursion in the city of Lost Haven, Maine that breached the boundaries between our own reality and theirs. Obviously Typhon wanted to use this location to reopen the portal and sink Olympian down into the underworld, with little care what it would do to Lost Haven, or the Earth in general.

Back when the worship of the Athanatoi was dying out due to the rise of the modern religions, the Olympians hide gems throughout the world just in case of something like this would happen. The godheads of the Athanatoi pantheons vowed never to interfere in mortal affairs once their religions have been supplanted by the modern religions. While they are permitted to break this oath if something happens that was tied to something the Athanatoi did in the past, the Olympians do not have the power that they once did. Although their might is still great, they alone could not conquer Typhon, who did not need the sacrifices and worship of mortals to remain strong. Therefore, over the past few months, the Olympians had selected individuals from the metahuman community in order to become their avatars in this battle against this monster. Against Typhon.

My name is Aubrey Adkins and I am the avatar of Athena. My super-heroine moniker is Arachne. The reasoning behind this code name is, well, how best to explain this? Months ago (before the Demon Incursion), some crazy scientist, named Dorian Dipillan, kidnapped me and a few others and kind of gave us super powers. To put it as simple as possible, this super villainess and I were submerged in the formula that gave us our super powers and this caused me to inherit her powers. I am kind of like a centaur, but I have a spider’s body substituted for my lower body instead a horse’s. While I do have to admit that my appearance it kind of weird, at least my other associates and I have these power-nullifying wristbands that allow us to mingle with the general public without sticking out like a sore thumb. Pretty convenient if I say so myself.

I sat in my room, fully clad in my scarlet and silver costume, waiting for Athena to show up so that she could take me to the location of one of these gems. No matter how many times you save the world or how many times you defeat a super villain, big or small, this nervous feeling that appears in your gut still crawls back every time when a new catastrophe rears its ugly head around. In fact, not even Athena’s arrival made me feel any better. Worse actually.

Athena, now standing next to me, placed her hand on my shoulder. Then there was a flash of light. We were no longer in my room anymore (or the United States. Somewhere deep in the Amazon Rain Forest, there stood a small, rundown shrine that was built in the fashion of the ancient Greeks, which made it look out of place in its environment. Only the vastness of the area has kept it a secret from the “civilized world”. Once inside, I would be teleported to a pocket universe. Not an alternate one, with alternate versions of me or you running around, but somewhere like Olympus or Asgard.

Athena remained outside as I entered into the shrine. She could not assist me in this trial, as this test was to prove my worthiness, not hers. Inside, even though the shrine itself appeared tiny from the outside, I found myself inside an enormous temple complex, still in the Greek architectural style. Torches lit the way towards the far side of the building. Between each of the columns that supported the roof of the building were the statues of a various goddesses of the Greek pantheon. Even some rather obscure goddesses and nymphs were displayed here, ones I never heard of before. However, what was weird was only statues of female deities were erected in this temple. It made sense when I reached the end of the room.

At the end of the torches stood another statue, although this one was not of a goddess, but rather a mortal. In her left hand, she bore a bow, while she had a quiver attached to her belt. Her skirt was girted up, probably so that her shirt doesn’t become a hindrance while running. Her tunica was garbed as if the woman was an Amazon. Finally, her other arm was extended forward, holding out a blue, glowing stone. This must be the gem that Athena mentioned. What else could it be? But one thing was bothering me. This was way too easy.

“I can’t allow you to take that stone.” Athena had warned me that since this place was a pocket universe, I might run into alternate versions of myself or others that I know. Since I already recognized the voice, I could cross out the possibility that I would run into some weird genderbent version of myself, although the reality of this situation was not much better. Recently (relatively speaking) I started to date this one guy who was crazy about me in high school (whether this was a healthy decision hasn’t been settled yet, but that’s a question for another time). Anyways, that voice sounded exactly like him.

When I turned to look over my shoulder to see who exactly it was, I saw a man hanging upside down from what seemed like a long rope. However, when I saw the costume that he was wearing, I knew it wasn’t any ordinary rope. On a side note, the costume itself hit a nerve inside me. Marvel (the comics company) threatened a legal action against me (well, against my costumed persona, since they didn’t know my true identity) for wearing a Spider-Man (or Spider-Girl, as the official document said) costume while I went around doing my super-heroics. While they did eventually retract their position, by that time, I already had a new costume (and I was given that costume by Athena in the first place, so it wasn’t like I consciously picked it out). So, unless this guy has only been on the job for a very short time, there is quite a double standard going on here. Although it probably has to do with half of me being composed of a giant spider rather than my gender, but whatever.

“If you really need this little stone so badly, why don’t you just let me use it first and I promise to hand it over to you.” I wasn’t quite sure this was going to convince him not to confront me over this tiny, radiant stone. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what I was promising was even feasible. However, when I stepped forward, I felt something hinting my back. It wasn’t like a punch or anything like that. It felt more like something was attached to me.

“I have beaten what I assume is my universe’s version of you, so I doubt this will end any differently.” There were two possibilities for why he said this. One could be that I might be a supervillain in his universe. Possible, but I think the second option is more probable. Since Athena enchanted my mask so that I don’t sound just like myself while wearing it (for keeping my identity relatively safe), I bet he doesn’t recognize my voice and therefore assumes that I’m an alternate version of that villainess whose powers I kind of copied due to that previously mentioned mishap. My money on the second option.

I immediately yanked down on the webline that he had shot at my back, causing him to crash to the floor with a thud. He pulled himself back onto his feet, ready for some more punishment (or at least I hoped so, for my own sake). However, with lighting quick reflexes, he hurdled over me (in spite of my attempts to stop him) and landed right on my spider abdomen, right on my “blind spot”, since I cannot quite turn around that far.

“I would give up now.” He demanded as he placed me in a throat lock. However, by coming this close to my upper body, I grabbed hold of him and tossed him over my head, causing him to loosen his grip over my neck. Before he could get back on his feet, I webbed down his arm (with the webshooters on my wrist of course).

“Isn’t quite hypocritical not taking your own advice?” However, he ignored my banter and swept me off my (eight) feet by using his webbed down arm as an axis and tripping me up with one swift sweep from his legs.

“Because I’m not down and out yet.” In response, I shot two weblines at him and pulled him towards myself. Then, I pushed off against his torso, causing him to fly off in the opposite direction, as if I had tossed him. Then I dashed over to where he hit the ground.

“Are you down now?” I said this too prematurely as I swiftly felt a fist strike my face.

“I don’t like hitting girls,” His voice was rather serious now, not as if he was trying to make a joke. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect myself.” He tried another shot to the head, but this time I was prepared, catching his punch with my fist. He tried to throw a punch with his other hand, but that didn’t change the results. We were not in a contest of brute strength as we pushed against one another’s arms. Back and forth we went, each of us getting the upper hand here and there. However, somehow I won, causing him to crumble down to the ground.

“No fair,” I heard him mumble, “Female spiders are usually the larger one.” How often do you hear a guy complaining about being at a disadvantage in respect to strength? Anyways, I just rolled my eyes and nudged him to the side next to one of the columns with my forelegs.

I suddenly felt a buzzing inside my head. I swung around and saw a blonde in a blue-colored costume reaching over toward the gem. I struck her hand with a webline before she could even touch the stone, dragging her onto the ground. Well, looks like it’s time to collect that gem and get out of here. Honestly, this place is giving me the creeps since the torches gives such a luminous and eerie atmosphere. However, when I reached into the palm of the Amazon statue to retrieve the stone, I was surprised to find out that for some strange reason my hand kept hitting an invisible object just before I could touch the stone.

“Are you so desperate that in order to save your world you need to allow ours to fall?” Oh geez, looks like I won my bet. This woman sounded exactly like I do (when I’m not wearing my mask, of course).

“Won’t the same be true if it were the other way around, that you got the gem and I was SOL?” My alternate version of me looked away from me, probably because what I said is the truth. If one of us got the gem, the other one would be screwed.

“Don’t try to turn this on us. We know you’re the villain, Black Widow.” Well, that confirms it. They both think I’m that women from whom I got my powers (assuming she’s not referring to a Marvel comics Russian assassin).

“My God! Stop with all this Black Widow and villain crap! Because I happen to possess some similar physical traits doesn’t automatically make me that person!” I pulled off my mask, revealing that we had the same face.

“Oh…” That was all she could mutter. She was probably just struck by this uncanny feeling when you come face to face with someone who could be your twin. You have your doubts that the other person could be a shape-shifter or something. That’s the only way you could rationalize it, other than thinking she’s a figment of your imagination, but I think all of us know that can’t be the case. We just knocked each other around (well, I knocked around that Spider-Man lookalike, but same difference).

I felt another buzz in my head. I scanned around the room, but I didn’t see anything. I should have looked up because something fell on top of the both of us. Whatever it was, it seemed like a net and if you tried to struggle, the netting would just cling to you even more. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw something descending from the ceiling. It was a giant spider, probably the size of Shelob from the Lord of the Rings movies.

“I swear, if I get out of here, I am so complaining to Athena about not mentioning this giant spider!” Somehow, we both said the same words at the same time. Now that was uncanny.

---

“Alternate me.” I pealed my eyes open after I heard my own voice whispering to me and also after I felt something bump into me. When I looked around, I felt disoriented when I saw everything was upside: the ceiling was below me and the floor above. What the heck was going on? Well, I could have answered that question by looking down (up?) since I would have seen that I (and the other me) were tied up with spider webs and were being hung from the ceiling.

“Can you break out of those?” I tried to rip my way out of this web prison, but unfortunately somehow these webs would not budge at all. I turned to my “twin” and shook my head.

For a few moments, we just hung there in an awkward silence, unsure what we were supposed to do. We were pretty much stuck here.

“So…” I began, “What’s you’re powers, assuming their drastically different from my own.” My “twin” gave me this looked that almost seemed like she was thinking “is this really appropriate for this situation”, but she eventually gave in.

“Um, healing factor, force fields, and something in between intangibility and invisibility.”

“What, if you can turn intangible, can’t you get out of this?” Now she gave me a “don’t you think I would have tried that if that was the case” face. Is that how my face looks like when I hear someone say something that is obvious (at least to myself)? God, I still can’t really get over this “double” thing.

“Okay…” Wow, I never realized how difficult it is to try to keep a conversation going with myself. “So I’ll assume the guy dressed up like Spider-Man is Will, right?”

“I have no idea where the heck he is. For the several years I have known him, he’s never this late. He’s usually quite punct…” My alternate self gave out a scream when something jumped onto her. However, when she saw it was actually human and was wearing red and blue, she quickly calmed down. “Speak of the Devil.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here.” He waved one of the torches that had been placed throughout the temple complex. When he looked over toward me, he almost leapt out of his skin. “Holy cow, she has your face!”

“Will, she is me. Or at least one from a different universe.”

“Oh crap. Does that mean I punched “you” in the face?” He then turned to me. “Sorry about that. Thought you were someone else.”

“Isn’t that the story of today?” I rolled my eyes, which is quite a bad habit because I usually have my mask on, which hides it from everyone else. Will then started to bring the torch up to the webbing that encased my alternate self when something came to my mind. “Wait, aren’t you just going to burn us up by doing that?”

“Force Fields.” My other self said. After we were both freed from the spider’s webbing, we now have to deal with that freaking giant spider. I thought we would make a plan or something, but at that very moment, Will began to shout at the spider.

“Here, Shelob! Follow the torch!” He then shot off a webline and began swinging around the temple complex. The giant spider swiftly went in pursuit.

“I worry about him sometimes.” My other self admitted to me.

“I can tell.”

While that monster was chasing Will around, we had one last thing to do: decision what we’re going to do about that gem. What would happen to the one of us who did not get the gem? Would we be condemning her and her world?

“Maybe we should try touching it at the same time?” I pondered at what my other me had said. Would this really work? Well, it’s better than doing nothing (or just allowing one of us to take the gem).

“One”

“Two”

“Three”. Once we touched the stone, there was a bright blue flash. I wasn’t quite sure whether that was a good sign or a bad one. When I could see again after being temporarily blinded by the flash, I thought it probably was a bad sign because from my alternate self a shining blue light radiated from her eyes.

“Are my eyes shining?” She asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Because so are yours.” Oh, I hope that meant it worked.

“Um, ladies. I can’t doing this all day.” Well, we haven’t quite forgotten about him. It just might have seemed like it since he’s the one in the most danger.

“So…what are we supposed to do?” Out of nowhere, my alternate self held up a bow. “Where the heck did you get that?”

“It appeared after that blue flash. You’re holding one too.” Well, that’s kind of awkward. Asking someone where they got something when you’re holding the same item.

“Have any past experience with archery?” I asked.

“Not really.” Nevertheless, she took an arrow, placed it on the bow, as though she has done this hundreds of times, aimed at the giant arachnid, and let the arrow fly. Behind the arrow followed a trail of blue light. The arrow remained true, striking the giant spider. However, instead of just wounding the spider, the arrow caused the blue light to dissipate throughout the spider’s body, until the monster just dissolved into light.

“Took you long enough.” Will landed in front of the two of us. However, something about us made him glance at the Amazon statue and then back at us again. “I see you two adopted that statue’s attire.” I could hear a chuckle in his voice and there was no doubt in my mind that there was at least a small smirk on his face.

We both looked back toward the statue, wondering what he was talking about. What was he talking about “adopting her attire”?

Damn it.

After examining the statue and realizing to what he was referring, I immediately crossed my arms over my chest. Fortunately, it didn’t really matter because at that moment everything went pitch black. Then, as soon as all the lights went out, I could discern the rain forest around me and Athena standing before me again.

“So, I see you succeeded, mortal.”

“Two things. Why the heck did you not warn me about that giant spider? And what the heck is with these clothes?”

by @Alice
Trigger Warning: School Shooting

---

It was a quiet, normal day for Jordan Johnson; much like it always was. He wasn't popular. He wasn't a nerd. He didn't really fit in anywhere at school, but that didn't seem to matter. Everyone got along, no matter what circle of friends they belonged to. Or so that was what it looked like on the outside. To people like Jordan, who didn't look deeper.

If they had paid attention, they would have noticed what Lacee, Charles and Minnie were going through. It started in elementary school when Lacee and her friends were first picked on. They were ten-years old or so. Different from all the others. Lacee was bald; she just came off her chemotherapy, with good news that she was going to make it. Charles was fat and loved to eat all he could get his hands on. Minnie was shy, an easy target for others.

They grouped together that first year the bullying started. Three ten year olds, scared, upset and angry.

Jordan did not know them. He didn't know the horrible things some of the other students did to them. He didn't know how hurt and consumed on the inside they were. He didn't know how deeply they feared and hated everyone. Everyone was to blame in their eyes. Nobody saw it, nobody stopped it and nobody cared. Jordan did not know he could have had the power to change things, if only he had opened his eyes and saw what was going on. He could have stood up for the trio. He could have been their friend.

He would have cared... but he was like all the others, who did not see it until it was too late.

Years passed until one fateful day when everyone was in the school cafeteria.

---

"Pass the salt, moron," Marlene grumbled, letting out a big sigh. Jordan glared at his sister, before giving her the salt.

"What crawled up your butt?" Janet asked.

"If you must know, my stupid boyfriend broke up with me," Marlene sniffed, rolling her eyes. Oh yeah, she was oh so sad. Everyone groaned. It was always the same with her.

"You should..." Jordan didn't get to finish what he was saying as a loud pop, like the backfire of a truck, vibrated around the large room.

The group quickly stood up and looked around.

"What the hell..."

"Did you hear that..."

"Where did it come from..."

"Stephanie's bleeding...!"

"WHAT?"

"WHAT'S GOING ON!?"

"Shut up, this is a hoax. Stand up, Stephanie!"

Jordan wobbled on his feet, almost in a daze. What just happened? Marlene was clinging to his side, crying. The oldest Johnson tried to shake her off. Like everyone else, he was thinking this was a hoax. A really horrible hoax. Why wasn't Stephanie standing up?

"Its not a joke, you idiot!" Somebody yelled. "She's not breathing!"

Pop! Pop! Pop! Three more loud shots made everyone scream and scramble for cover, though some were still confused and not comprehending the situation.

"Ah, hell no!" Someone screamed.

Jordan clung to his sister, their roles reversed. This wasn't a joke.

"Marlene, don't worry. We'll find Danny and get out of here. We'll be safe, okay?" He whispered into her hair. "Okay?"

Tears dripped onto Jordan's shirt; Jordan sighed, wanting to cry too, like his sister. He was just as scared, but he had to play the big brother now. They might have been twins, but he was born first. Fifteen year old boys were not supposed to cry.

"Okay, Marlene? Don't cry...."

A soft sob met his hears. He knew it was his friend Janet, who was always with them. "Jordan... she..."

Janet pushed herself up from where she had fallen down and shakily walked over to the siblings. She was bleeding.
"Jordan... gone..." Janet sobbed. "NO!" She screamed when Jordan tried to look down, horrified. "Don't look! NO! NO!"

Janet and Marlene were best friends. Better than best some said.

"Marlene," Jordan cried, refusing to listen to her. He looked down and saw that what he thought were tears were actually blood. There was blood all over Marlene. "No, Marlene. Remember, I have to protect you! I said I was going to! Don't you dare die! That's mean! That's not right!"

"Marlene, Marlene..." Janet's voice was weaker, Jordan only now realizing she had been hurt as well. How, why?

"Janet... Marlene... both..." Jordan whispered, eyes wide and disbelieving. "What ... why?"

Pop! Another shot ripped through the air.

Jordan's eyes went wide, the last thing his eyes saw was Janet, getting hit in the forehead. He passed out, still clinging to the lifeless form of his little sister.

---

"I've got a live one!"

Jordan barely registered as he was lifted from the ground and carried away to safety and a world that would never be the same.

If only someone had the power to stop this from happening.

FIN

I give one vote to Artificial Light and one vote to A Small House, on a Small Island, In the Middle of the Ocean. ... What do you mean, I can't do that? ... Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.

1-50 = Artificial Light
51-100 = Small Island