“We understand you’re going to be on the Council for this meeting John. We aren’t all affable folks like War and myself but we are all focused on only one thing: preparing for the Void. You haven’t seen what they do to a world when they get going,” said Life.

“What is a Void invasion like?” John didn’t point out they were aware, courtesy of Jintak and Grell, of the aftermath of a largely successful defence.

“Dragon, Your lair… it’s a biome, correct?” Life asked.

“Kind of. It’s a bioconstruct, one creature. It’s got a circulatory system, lungs, a heart, all on a scale to make the city sized organism function. I got my powers as an insult from the system. Our first wave was a Brood Mother, a low tier void beast, that killed my mother in the end. My power mimics that thing’s abilities.”

“And you passed that power to Shelly?” Life asked with a glint in his eyes.

“Shelly is my friend,” snarled the Dragon. “I don’t like your implication!”

“No threat implied! We’re aware she’s a valuable asset to the planet. Her abilities, like yours, involve assimilation of foreign genetic traits, chimeric reconstruction and the creation of gestalt entities. Your Naga’s are obviously a mixture of useful terrestrial and alien traits.” Life raised his hands as the dragon's head pulled back. “Not that that is a problem kid!”

“You look younger than me,” rumbled the Dragon.

“I was seventy years old when the Advent came. I’m a bit like you in some ways,” Life replied with a smile. “Older than I look. The ability to absorb biological templates, it’s far beyond DNA but that is a fair way to think about it, and then create more effective, hybrid organisms and structures is the mainstay of the Void.” Life sighed loudly as he finished.

“You’re looking good for your age. Structures?” asked Flash.

“Yes, Life’s power lets him tweak things like that for people who are willing. I believe you’ve all experienced something similar courtesy of the Dragon. Off-world we saw continent spanning spawning pits, able to produce millions, tens of millions, of their perfected slave creatures every week. Breaking those things wasn’t fun, ” rumbled War.

“How?” asked Vic. “How could you take out something like that?”

“Some of us didn’t survive the process,” said Life sadly. “What I’m trying to say is that while we might have to be a bit harsh with the Council we are only acting in the best interests of the species.”

“You’re asking us to trust you?” asked Sam with narrowed eyes.

“Ha! No. That doesn’t matter yet. We’ll earn your trust I’m sure but for now if we can be allies we can deal with the wasps and New York and any other major breeders- ah, you call them tribulations?- then we can focus on cycling people off-world to get some meaningful levels in advance of the first wave,” said War.

“What if the Void was already here?” asked Evie.

“Impossible!” laughed Life. “They don’t do subtle. Think waves of aliens storming across the landscape. They aren’t sneaky.”

“Show them, Bob,” said John with a cold smile.

The B-1945 rose and passed the pair a Bpad which began streaming Ryn’s team's encounter and the clean-up afterwards.

“This can’t be real! Do you have samples from the creatures?” asked Life as War just stared open mouthed at the screen.

“We thought we were ahead of it,” muttered the fat man. “We need to move more quickly!” War said to Life.

“John, can you get some samples from the primary lab complex? Floor eighteen,” said Bob. John nodded, vanished and reappeared with a metal box. He put it down on the ground and opened the lid. Rows of vials containing pitch black biological samples were laid out carefully inside, nestled in padding.

Life moved over and crouched down, throwing his odd robes out behind him as he sat down cross legged to begin lifting and examining the vials. After a minute he looked up and met War’s eyes.

“This is Void stuff. Fuck!” Life threw down the vials and rose to pace back and forth. War began to curse in a way that even had Reg nodding with grudging respect.

“Are there any more of these egg things?” asked War in a dark voice. In light of the man's capabilities John took the tonal shift very seriously.

“Not in the UK. Zeeg has scoured the mainland. The islands? Who knows. As to the rest of the world we’ve got no idea,” John replied carefully.

Life and War both lost focus for a moment, their eyes getting a thousand yard stare that John associated with accessing the system or teamchat.

“We need to move now,” rumbled War.

“It won’t make any difference if we wait for the meeting but it does force us to move up our plan.” Life turned to the rest and nodded slightly. “I’m sorry. We understand the council, or elements of it, is very protective of their ‘power’. It’s like making toddlers the lifeguards at the local swimming pool for god’s sake! Some offence.”

“Some taken,” said Evie, sarcasm thick in her voice.

Life blushed slightly before continuing. “We don’t have all your tech. No implants to record our every action or videos of what we’ve seen and done. Please believe me-”

“We only saw worlds already fallen,” barked War as he rose to his feet and kicked his chair so hard it flew off into the far distance. “We should have realised there would be advanced elements! They’re a fucking army, efficient and organised. The black ships would never be the first wave!”

“Easy, Mick,” Life said to his friend. “We should have realised but… we were busy. Even Jim, paranoid bastard that he is, wouldn’t have thought of anything like this.” Life turned back to the Carnival and the Dragon.

“I’m sorry. We thought we had more time but this means we need to push forward in a… less than diplomatic way. We’ll need your help. The tech and the portals will let us deal with the remaining breeder beasts quickly and then allow us to organise a proper defence of the planet.”

“So, what’s your real name, ‘Life’? You want us to trust you? Despite you being able to fuck with your system info…” snapped Evie. War growled. “Easy there Mick, trust is earned right? We’ve had a bad time with some asshole who can mess with Identify readouts recently,”

“War, back off!” snapped Life and War rumbled like a volcano but stalked off to pace back and forth away from the impromptu briefing. “We lost friends to the Void. Old friends from way before the system. I’m Jack, or I was anyway.” He thrust out his right hand to Evie who carefully shook it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I don’t know who’s been messing with you, we only got back a few weeks ago and we had to recover from the last mission. The Voidliner can heal a lot of things but as soon as we came off campaign we got hit with another Crash. It was worse than the first one.”

“The council is ready for us. I’m going to need your word you won’t do anything hasty up there,” the B-1945 flicked its orange eyes towards War who was still pacing back and forth and muttering to himself. Bob was carefully logging everything he was saying. It was mostly about someone called Carrie and getting revenge. “We’ll be in orbit, you won’t be flying home if you smash up Unity.”

“Can you provide vacuum suits?” asked Life.

“I can, but I won’t. You can take all our biologicals out with a thought. If we are going to take you to the heart of the Accords, in a station I have absolute control over, it would be a big step towards earning that trust if you didn’t insist on that kind of protection.” Life eyed the drone for a moment and smiled slightly sadly.

“If you gave us a suit it wouldn’t work if you didn’t want it to anyway? I can respect you being upfront about the conditions. War!” Life walked away from them and spoke quietly with his friend. When they both returned, War looked slightly ashamed.

“I apologise for losing my temper. How are you tracking the eggs?” he asked in a voice like gravel.

“My dog is out looking for them,” said John.

“Your fucking dog?!” War barked. “I assume that makes more sense than it should?” He looked at Life.

“The dog got Essence early on. She’s as strong as the rest of the Carnival,” Life replied.

“So you’ve had time to do some research since you got back then?” asked Flash.

“Some of us didn’t suffer as badly from the Crash as the rest. Death and Magic have been doing research and planning for the other ‘tribulations’,” said Life with a rueful smile. “I’m happy for us to be portalled to the Council, without suits.”

Teamchat:

Traveller: Trust them?

Flash: Life can probably detect that we’re communicating. Pete thinks he can detect the chemical changes in our brains. He won’t know what we’re saying, unless we react emotionally, that kind of change will be obvious.

Baby Zeus: We’ve all got space suits. They don’t. Dad, reckon you can portal them if needed? Like to the sun?

Traveller: Probably. I think we need them though. We can finally deal with the Wasps!

Sunstrike: Maybe.

Reg: What’s the boy been saying?

NumberOneDorisDayFan: They haven’t been lying. He can’t get at their deeper thoughts but he can see their emotions and surface thoughts and they don’t seem to have any nefarious plans for the Council beyond pissing them off a bit.

Traveller: They’re watching us. They know we’re talking. Bob, prep Unity for their arrival.

“Ok. Trust has to be earned from both sides. I guarantee your safety on Unity. I can’t just blip you back to safety if anything goes wrong but I’ll get you home alive,” John said solemnly.

“An exit portal will be fine. I’ll grab Life and get us home. Shit. Home. It’s good to be back but it’s so far from what I remember. Let’s go,” said War sadly.

A portal appeared and the Carnival led the way into the Council chamber. The Councillors were all seated and waiting, faces frigid and unmoving as the Carnival filed in, followed by the two Monarchs. John marched over to his seat and sat down while the rest of the Carnival spread out to either side of the portal.

“Thank you for meeting us on such short notice,” Life began. War had crossed his arms, resting them on his bulbous stomach and was glowering at the council members, bar John and the twins.

“No need to thank us. We trust you are willing to sign the Accords and follow the law?” said Mindscar with zero preamble.

“Ah. We’re happy to work with you but we are not willing to have our hands tied,” Life said, shaking his head gently.

“So you want to be outlaws?” asked Belisarius.

“You aren’t even present, whoever you are. I can sense the void within your battle suit where life should be. Are you like Mr. Gullybrick? A dead man living in his drones?” snapped Life. The affable and friendly man was gone, his voice and face was iron hard.

“Pfft! I’m nothing like that freak! Remote control is far more effective!” Belisarius sneered.

“Oi! First of all it’s Gillybrook. I’ve got more biological bodies than anyone bar Sam!” said a voice from the centre of the table. “If you’d both wind it down a bit perhaps we’d all be better off?” Bob said.

“Why should we accept your refusal to join?” asked Param, steepling his hands in front of his chest as he leant back in his chair.

“We will solve the issues you have struggled with, until the Carnival-” War waved a hand at John’s team, “-chose to act. And why did they choose to act?”

“They alleged the Void was already on Earth but we have no evidence beyond mind scans of children and low level wasters. Some odd biological samples were presented. Nothing conclusive or trustworthy,” Mindscar said quietly.

“You’re the Minder?” asked Life. Mindscar hissed in a breath and snarled in reply.

“That term is not applicable. Minders are outlaws, hunted and collared on sight. I’m not proscribed,” she breathed angrily.

“You think others' powers can be banned before they’ve done anything wrong? This collar thing is interesting. Almost as much as the new drones that can suck the Essence out of people,” rumbled War.

“WHAT?” yelled Mindscar.

“That’s an interesting technology, Bob. Sometimes you just have to leave a line of development alone, though. Because when it comes to light that you’ve completely destroyed the balance of power people react badly!” said Belisarius as his suit rose to its feet. War straightened up and his hands fell to his side, fists opening and closing.

Belisarius’ suit scanned its head left and right as other council members surged to their feet and began demanding everyone calm down. It slowly sank back into the chair and became completely still, not trying to simulate the presence of a living being inside.

“Bob, what the hell have you cooked up?” demanded Mindscar.

“I’ll send you the outline after this but it’s not easy to use. I have to basically beat someone to the point they can’t resist before it can be deployed,” grumbled Bob from the speaker.

“We didn’t intend to cause strife. The technology you’ve all created while we were away is amazing,” War said quietly. His voice still cut across the chatter in the room, all the council members turned to him.

“Without learning more of your experience off-world, we cannot take your words at face value,” said Felicity.

“Face value,” echoed Felix.

“All you’ve done is create a new version of the old. Power contained. That won’t work. We need to unleash humanity to get strong enough to survive what’s coming,” said Life.

“Tell us about what’s coming?” sneered Mindscar. “Why should we do away with everything we’ve built, everything that’s held humanity together for over a decade.”

“It’s not enough,” War said softly. “We’ve seen worlds with Void beasts over level one hundred. They probably aren’t thrown out in the first waves but they are unstoppable. Imagine Raoul with the Dragons powers. They always seek perfection. There isn’t a bad form, only an imperfect one.”

“The Void will tear this world apart if we don’t change. We need to use the tech, the biological weapons people like Pete and I can produce. The portals are one of our greatest advantages. Having high level mages is paramount from what we’ve seen,” said Life.

“And how do we increase the level of our casters?” asked Mindscar as she schooled her face to neutrality.

“Take out the remaining breeder monsters. The tribulations.” Life clarified at her confused expression. “Dealing with the Wasps and New York, as well as the few other real threats is vital.”

“Then we need to militarise our species,” War took up the narrative. “The Void are skilled at fighting in space but they can be whittled down before they land. Once they land we burn out each landing site with everything we have to throw at it. The longer we take the further the fuckers’ll spread.”

“You’ve witnessed an invasion?” asked Owain from his space at the table.

“Three. We were allocated as system support on three worlds,” said Life.

“And what happened?” asked John.

“They all fell. Worse were the worlds that had already fallen. We killed a planet to stop them. I made a plague and Liberty and War took it apart once the Void was weakened.”

“You have a disease to weaken the Void?” asked Claire. “What’s the risk of interspecies spread?”

“Zero. The Void isn’t really alive. It’s more like animated death.”

“So you’ve already got weapons we can use?” asked Mindscar with an arched eyebrow.

“We have options. The Void adapted against my plague towards the end.”

“Please correct me if I’m mischaracterizing your position: we have to work to your objectives, you have nothing to offer against the Void except your levels and we have to do this because you tell us to?” asked Mindscar.

“It sounds bad when you say it like that. We want to end the major monster threats. We will create stability between the factions, something you have failed to do, and prepare humanity for what is coming,” said War. John watched Evie’s eyes flick to the fat man and a grin spread across her face.

“We want to work with you but frankly most of you aren’t necessary for our plans to work, I’m sorry to say. If we have the support of a few key people our job will go a lot more smoothly and there will be a lot less damage caused by this transformative approach. We want to take the gloves off and help get our species ready. If we don’t we’ll die or fall into a state of perpetual war with the Voidlings.”