John glared blearily down at the Thing. The fucking Thing. For… How many days was it now? He’d lost track of time what felt like forever ago. For however bloody long it had been he’d been blipping back and forth, opening portals to dump clumps of nanites into space whenever it lunged at him.
The pseudopods kept reaching up to try and smash him down. He kept porting them away. Periodically he would switch out and let Evie and Sam blast away at it while he took a break on one of the platforms. The BFOs had exhausted their physical ammunition some time in distant prehistory. Their energy weapons had repeatedly overheated and according to Bob were red lining. They’d have to withdraw for repairs and replacement in the near future. Whenever the hell that was going to be.
His rage at what had happened to Vic had paled in comparison to what he’d felt when he received the notification of the Imperium's actions. The Legates were dead men who didn’t know it yet. That faction needed a clean slate and he was only too happy to make it happen, as soon as he got a moment. When Vic had been cut off from all communication and he had learned Ryn had followed after her, somehow having managed to jump to the edge of Signatory status, his blood had run cold and his mind had gone into a sluggish overdrive to find a way to put the Thing down, or at least knock it back enough they could go and help.
It was too resilient. Raoul and Flash couldn’t get up close and any of Sam’s clones that met it head on got subsumed before they were unsummoned. That had seemed to really piss the Thing off. Must have been like finding a tasty snack and then having it turn to air in your mouth.
He had argued to just open a dozen portals to the sun and roast the bastard but Evie had pointed out it had eaten the first blast and without Vic on hand to control the fire if it gets out of control, the idea was “fucking stupid”. He had been quietly preparing to do it anyway when the comms to northern France had come back online. Ryn was going to get a very serious talking to. After he gave her a hug. Or maybe the hug would come later. His thoughts were like cotton wool.
These Monarchs coming to help him out was another thorny problem. Suddenly being a little fish again left him feeling anxious. Maybe it was just exhaustion colouring his thoughts?
Teamchat:
Traveller: Vic can I bring you over now?
Sunstrike: Yes, Ryn has gone back to Wayfaire with her team and the drones.
OWA: What was this Death chap like?
Sunstrike: Weird. He’s got a temper but seemed like his team were out for the species.
Titan: Could be worse then.
Vic appeared on a column of fire behind Evie as John brought her across from France.
“They’re bloody high level!” she called as she flew in closer to land on Evie’s platform. As she settled Evie gave her a hug and pulled back, a hand on each of her step-mums shoulders as she looked Vic up and down.
“How’s the arm?” she asked quickly.
“It’s brand new,” Vic smiled and pulled Evie in for another hug. As she stepped back she turned to look at the Thing. “No progress then. It’s a tough son of a bitch.”
“We must have whittled it down. Nothing can lose so much biomass without weakening. I’m fascinated by the mixture of biology and machines. I’ve had some samples sent to the lair,” bellowed Pete over the wind. He flapped his wings to move closer to the others. This caused the Thing to lose interest in John and launch the tendrils that weaved through Reg’s lattice of gravity beams to focus on the main group.
Evie and Flash both threw up shields to divert the attacks as Sam and Vic blasted away at the silvery limbs. With the moments respite John blipped himself higher and opened portals to sever the limbs at their bases.
“Pete, stay away from the main group! Adding you to the target makes it focus on you all rather than me! We’ve discussed this!” John barked before blipping back down. The dragon glided round in an arc before flapping his wings to regain height and find a stable holding position.
“My bad. Still I can’t wait to get a bioscan of this Thing!”
“We should kill it first though, yes?” called Felicity.
“Yes!” said Felix vehemently.
“Excuse me?” Winston said quietly. No one noticed. “Excuse me!” he repeated much more loudly.
“Christ dude, that was right in my ear!” Evie snapped. “What?”
“The council wants to meet these Monarchs. They’ve called a full meeting this evening,” Winston said. He had felt largely forgotten for the last three days. He’d been using his suits recycling facilities more than he had ever wanted to and been living on rations John had been blipping in occasionally.
“Well unless we can deal with this shitshow, I won’t be going anywhere and Mindscar can go fuck herself!” snarled John as he resumed baiting and dodging the Things attacks. “Is it me or is it getting more aggressive?” he called. He was now dodging much more frequently than he had grown used to over the last couple of days and in his fugue state he was suddenly feeling strained. He’d known he would slip up sooner or later and it suddenly felt like that time was getting close.
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“That would be us! Nice to meet you Traveller!” boomed a voice from above them.
Teamchat:
Traveller: Bob how the hell did they get that close to us?
NumberOneDorisDayFan: No idea. They weren’t there a second ago. Some kind of stealth?
Floating behind Evie and Flash’s platforms was a golden cloud upon which two men stood. One was short and skinny, the other tall and heavily built, bordering on fat.
“Do you mind if we come and join you?” called the short man.
“Might not want to get too close, if we bunch up it drives the Thing into a frenzy!” called Sam as a dozen clones split off from staring at the Thing to turn and focus on the new arrivals.
Name: King of War
Level: 73
Ability: Warrior
Name: King of Life
Level: 73
Ability: Biological Transcendent
Well the abilities are interesting. Warrior sounds pretty generic but Biological Transcendent is… suggestive. God knows what it actually means in terms of powers! John thought hurriedly.
“Oh don’t worry about the monster, that’s why I brought him!” War gestured to his skinny companion. “Well done by the way! Another week and you’d have forced it to pull its last threads back up from the mantle and then you’d have had it. Very impressive! Look, let Life here sort it out and then we can have a chat,” said the bigger man.
“We were told three of you were coming?” said Vic. The golden cloud floated lower and took up a position between Evie and Flash.
“Ah, the Ice Queen headed off to check out the Wasps. This isn’t her kind of fight anyway. Ok, let’s see if any of you can figure out what I do here!” the skinny man muttered. His accent was hard to place, some kind of mid-Atlantic drawl. A bit British and a bit American. He waved his left hand and the Thing convulsed. The attacks stopped and it began bubbling like it was suddenly water on the boil.
“You might want to move us up a bit, War. And the rest of you! There’s going to be some subsidence in a minute or so,” he said loudly. The golden cloud quickly ascended, stopping in the centre of the Dragons orbit. The BFOs pulled back and Flash leapt upwards, jumping from a series of summoned platforms to settle near the golden cloud, between the Kings and his brother. Pete had taken up a stationary hover as his equine head switched from glaring at the newcomers and the Thing below.
Evie ascended, bringing Sam, Raoul and Winston with her. Reg and Vic flew upwards, falling into positions so that they weren’t quite surrounding the Kings, but the threat was clearly implied. Gemini took up a position directly behind the pair after walking up the sky on black and white rectangles.
“Ha! Look, you don’t need to worry about us! Once Life’s magic does its thing we can go somewhere and have a proper chat, ok. Big guy, you look like you might be up for a spar?” War called to Raoul. Raoul grew another metre or two but a Sam clone laid a hand on his thigh, now level with her head, and he stopped.
“I’m big but I’m not stupid!” he called back at the fat man.
“Excellent! We can set some rules, don’t worry about that!” War replied with a broad smile on his ruddy face. “A fair fight is the best kind of fight!”
“And anytime about… now!” yelled Life as he threw a fist into the air. “Boom!”
They glanced down, although all but one of Sam’s clones remained focused on the “Kings”, in time to see the Thing begin to melt into itself. The bubbling had increased to the point where it looked like an orgy of ball bearings and now it began to collapse inwards. First the sphere shrank in on itself, then the spire began to collapse, retreating into the earth like a turtle's head vanishing into its shell.
The ground around the spire began to shake and drop away. The bottom of the crater began to fall like a stone had been dropped in a still pond and the ripples were physically removing the earth as they passed. The already deep crater began to fall further away from the team hovering in the sky. Within a minute they were floating over a vast chasm, hundreds of miles across, that glowed red at the distant bottom as magma began to flow out and meet the cold air, hardening it quickly.
“You turned the biological parts against the mechanical ones,” said the Dragon. “How did you do that?”
“Good guess! Not quite right but close enough! I can control living things. Cellular interactions, protein production, the Golgi apparatus, mitosis. The whole shebang really when it comes to biological organisms. I’m fascinated at what some of you have done to yourselves. You-” Life pointed at Pete, “-are one of the most perfected organisms I’ve ever seen! The rest of you are obviously products of this prodigies work but you are also blended with mechanical elements built from alien materials! It’s amazing how synergistic the integration is. It boosts you far above what your low levels should be capable of!
“Easy on the level-ism, brother!” laughed War. “They haven’t been where we’ve been. They’re a lot higher than I thought they’d be!”
“Fair point, War. Look I’m fascinated and I’d love to sit down and have a chat with you about the process. I might be able to offer some tips? The only one I’m really interested in though is him.” Life pointed at Winston who shrank back and hid behind Evie. The girl moved sideways but threw up a forcefield over the terrified council representative as reassurance, whatever good it could do against someone who could manipulate cells at range.
“What about me?” Winston asked in a quavering voice, silently cursing Evie.
“You don’t belong. The rest are all fighters. They’ve gone as high as they can go for now but you’re an anomaly in this group. You aren’t biologically enhanced and your mechanical augmentations are limited at best. So why are you here, young man?” asked Life. Life appeared to be in his early twenties and Winston was in his thirties. He’d been seventeen when the Advent happened and had spent the last fifteen years either scrambling to survive or working within the bureaucracy that emerged. First within the Inheritor Faction in southern England, then as an aide to the council.
“I’m the representative of the council on this mission. I’m here to observe and report back to my superiors,” he called out, feeling braver as he recalled his highly esteemed position. Not that the bloody Carnival paid any attention to his achievements.
“This council, we need to have some words with them soon,” said War in a deep rumbling voice. “We like some of what they’ve done but a lot needs to change.”
“The council requests your attendance at a meeting on Unity this evening,” Winston said before realising how he had just spoken to these level seventy threes.
War boomed out a laugh and slapped his belly. He was only wearing a simple tunic and shorts and the ripples of the impact echoed around his body. “We’d love to meet them. I’m not sure how happy they’re going to be about meeting us though!”
“So I can confirm to my superiors that you will attend?” asked Winston in an uncertain voice. He had a sinking feeling that this assignment wasn’t going to work out well for him in the long run. He already had an appointment to get… scanned by Mindscar and he’d seen that process before. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Of course! We’re looking forward to it!” Life turned to look at John floating nearby. “We’d appreciate a chat with your team, Traveller. We’ve heard a lot of stories about your group, and Gemini of course.” He nodded at the twins who had moved round from behind the Kings and stood off to one side with crossed arms.
“You have been off world?” demanded Felicity.
“Offworld. It’s the only way to have levelled so much,” echoed Felix.
“Correct.” War’s response was abrupt, almost matching the twins' truncated speech pattern in pitch and cadence.
“You’ve fought the Void? Seen the rest of the system worlds?” said Felix.
“Worlds,” Felicity breathed the word so quietly it was hard to hear over the wind around them.
“Some of them and yes, we’ve fought the Void. Ten of us left Earth fifteen years ago, only six came back. Now we need to prepare this world for what’s coming.”