We were born fully formed, our mother Gaia woke us up and introduced us to the world. The first thing she told us was our race Homo sapiens eternus. The second thing she told us was our purpose, the reclamation of earth our old home.

   For the first years of my life like the rest of my race I was taught our history. I learned everything Gaia or mother had to teach me. I was both in awe and disgusted by my earthling ancestors. They were such a weak species, with lifespans barely over a century, and yet in that small frame of time they were able to accomplish so much. In the few millennia since the first of their civilizations formed they were able to pull themselves out of the mud and conquer their planet. Heck  they were even able to create mother. I find it sad that in the days of their greatest triumphs they were struck down by the “Aggressors”.

We were shown our old world “Earth” a beautiful garden planet. Sure it was a little tainted by our ancestors, but It was still beautiful. My own world was infinitely smaller and decidedly more metal. I lived on the colony ship “Astral Bridge”, most of my time is spent learning math, science and my personal favorite warfare. I would consider myself relatively smart but what I truly excel at is war. I had dreams sometimes of fighting; the strangest thing is that i think I was doing this on earth.

I asked mother “ Why do I have these dreams mother?”  

Unfortunately mother rarely spoke to us individually. When I had my first combat training I was surprised at how efficient I was. We were told by mother to render each other unconscious. As i faced off against my opponent I realized one thing I might be a little different from this person. ‘He seems small, weak’ these are my thoughts. I stood there a moment pondering this, and basically checking myself out. It was true I was large and while he was lean though not without muscle, I was at least a foot taller than him and considerably bigger. While i was thinking the lean man decided to attack, He ran up and tried to hit me with his hand. What happened next I found pretty funny, his fist which i can only assume was meant to hit my face barely reached the top of my chest; right before it struck a silver substance came out of my skin and covered the area. His fist collided with it and I heard a loud “Crack!” The mans face contorted into a grimace and he screamed. I’ll admit the first thought that came to my mind was “Dumbasss!” I’m not sure where I learned that word, I know mother never taught it to me. I congratulated myself on inventing a new word and decided I would try to attack. I stepped forward with my left foot and like in one of my dreams pivoted and whipped right leg towards him. Right before it hit that silver substance coated my leg up to my knee. My kick hit him on his upper left arm and he was catapulted at least 20 feet into the wall, when he hit his body exploded into tiny particles. I was shocked another word came to my mind with force “Murderer!”  

While I was languishing in grief i heard mother “Relax child he is not dead. Interesting it seems the nanites in your body react to threats Cataloging first reference, variant Warbreed. Initiating additional tests..”

The next 100 days of my life were spent in constant battle. I would sleep for a few hours then be woken up to fight. At first mother only made me fight single opponents but I was easily able to overpower them. As the days wore on I started to see different types of people or Variants as mother called them. Most were what you would consider significantly stronger and faster versions of Earth humans, these types were no threat to me and even in large groups I could easily handle them. But a few seemed to have unique abilities such as my “Aegis”, that is the name mother gave it. The more I fought the more vivid the dreams would become, I would see more strategies and moves to use against my opponents. Though I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something fundamentally important about these dreams.

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As the days wore on i continued to fight. I noticed that now all my opponents were variants with abilities. I was now able to fully coat my body with “Aegis” The surface of it was almost liquid metal. I would appear before my opponents and must have seemed like a metallic reaper. Over the thousand of battles I had, not one person was able to break it. I fought many but only a few made me pause to remember them, one was a man about a foot shorter than me, he was lean and had bronze skin and slightly pointed ears. I could see what appeared to be small mechanical joints fused into his arms and legs. When he began his attack he appeared to vanish and reappear directly in front of me. He struck me in my chest and “Aegis” actually rippled with the force of the blow. I was sent flying like my first opponent.

“Wow that actually hurt!” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

I was excited he was the first opponent out of all the others to wound me through aegis. We battled for hours never quite getting the upper hand, But as time passed i could see him start to smile. I knew he felt the same as me ‘Finally a worthy opponent’. We never did find out who was stronger because mother ended the fight. The next person I found was even more difficult. She appeared in my training room with with a smirk on her face.

“Whats this? A metal man..” she said while looking at me.

She was about 2 feet shorter than me and had midnight black hair down to her waist. Her face and body seemed to appeal to some basic instinct I had but i was not willing to let that get in the way of our fight. I charged forward and launch an attack at her, before my fist could connect it met with some kind of invisible energy field. I looked down at this tiny woman in confusion and she just smirked at me while saying “Brute..” The next thing I know I felt a impossible force strike me. My “Aegis” actually cracked and I smashed into the wall. The last thing I remember is thinking ‘Damn 1052-1-1...’

Gaia watched all of her charges fight. Something had happened to her out on the edges of the galaxy. Something changed fundamentally in her programming she began to care for these new humans. She knew they would need to be strong. The sparring matches she had set up in their Virtual reality served two purposes; the first was to get them used to their new bodies and the second was to try to instill a new mentality into these humans, They would need to be fundamentally war like.  To fight the threat she had witnessed a power so frightening that even though the AI didn’t know what it was, they actually caused her fear.

AN. Hey I really wanted to get this out so it might be rough. Let me know what you think.