"Next!" a voice called out.

The Slicer weaved his way across multiple unremarkable platforms, a line of variously sized creatures waiting in front of him. Skyscrapers littered the landscape, each having no purpose for the Psi protocol except one thing, holding the bloated masses who had become comfortable in their small and unimportant lives. Attacking them was useless, something he knew well from experience.

One of his abilities informed him that something humorous was about to happen. A thick, heavy-muscled arthropod was charging one of the skyscrapers, seemingly on a whim as the Slicer hadn't seen it before. The creature's feet picked up speed, a blur of motion only those with unique abilities could see, as it targeted a singular red tower shooting high into the sky.

Moron.

The Slicer committed to the view as the first time a Destroyer attempted it, it was always a comical moment. He noticed several other Destroyers doing the same, while many of the Terrors were immune to the action occurring so near to them, having seen it too many times in the past.

The blue-chitined creature wound back a claw as it approached the edge of the skyscraper, then threw it forward with violent intent, a blaze of fire igniting around its arm as the atmosphere was partially ignited by the fricticious speed. As every Terror and most Destroyers knew would happen, its arm hit the bubble, and unlike the bubbles the Slicer had worked against in the 4AA rendition, this one held the creature completely still rather than rebounding with force.

The newbie Destroyer screeched, the sound not unlike air passing quickly through a tunnel before it realized it was truly stuck. It stood there, waiting for something else to happen.

Only, nothing did.

Many of those in line looked around, not understanding the lack of policing, and the Slicer even spied some of the Terrors doing the same now. He found apprehension and confusion on some of their faces. Something was wrong. Something was different.

The Sentinels were gone.

The Slicer had learned this from his mentor only moments before receiving the call that he would be leaving soon. The Psi Protocol had decided that it was time the Slicer was field-tested for promotion to a higher tier. His current rank, at the low low value of 1,005, wasn't accurate to the majesty of his strength and cunning. Thus far all of his assignments had been minor. Destroy a city on an asteroid in this location. Wipe out a moon and make it uninhabitable. Burn the fields. To the Universal Terror, it was too simple and simply boring.

Of course, he'd lost quite a few levels of rank with the Youmal incident. He didn't like to think about the failure unless he had to.

Looking at the blue-chitined creature still stuck in the wall, he realized what was going to happen. Not a damn thing. It would be stuck there until it wised up and tore off its own claw, or it would die of something else, something expectedly unexpected. Likely a Terror or another Destroyer deciding it was a delicious-looking snack. In their defense, it was quite a delicious-looking snack, with supple plating and a good amount of meat beneath it. The slicer shook his head. There was only one reason this was happening.

Something had changed.

The Slicer had asked his mentor, who had lived for far longer than himself, why the Sentinels had left. The toothy creature had informed his junior that the Sentinel's disappearance was an event that had never occurred before in the long history of the Protocols. Since the time the multiverse was first created, Sentinels have stood watch over the different planets within the Center. Each was a powerhouse that few could match up against, and when they worked together, even Terrors wouldn't last long against them. It would take something far greater to defeat their coordination and experienced strength. Yet, now they could no longer be found. It was....new.

They weren't all gone. That is to say, the Psi council was still protected, but for the standard areas that always held the silent guardians before....nothing.

A voice called out from up-ahead, "Wait your turn, wait your turn. If you don't, you won't have a chance at destruction and mayhem," A man looking vaguely like the Slicer's Creator said near the front, "I said hold your turn!" He yelled out, as a whip made of red and black particles appeared in his hand. He cracked it down against an insectoid creature, leaving a deep laceration on its previously pristine exoskeleton. The pitiful Destroyer fell to the ground, several of its dozen or so mandibles twitching.

"See what you made me do!" The man said, stretching in his power suit, a sense of inherent superiority consciously built into his every movement, "You want to kill, I get it. It's who you are. But there has to be order here! Order I say," He finished as he raised the whip in the air again, preparing to strike the Destroyer just before it could regain its feet.

"Hold!" A man called out, quickly walking forward with long strides. Unlike the man holding the whip, this one had lines of black streaks on his armor from shoulder to shoulder. He pulled the whip-carrying man aside and whispered something. The Slicer's ability-enhanced hearing picked up the tail end of the conversation, "I understand, I'll be careful." The man gave another conciliatory gesture before heading back to the front of the line at his superior's nod.

Just as quickly as it had appeared, the whip disappeared. He yelled out as if nothing had happened, "Step through the portal now!" to the insectoid creature. It stood on shaky legs and entered, the scar on its body already beginning to heal. After it disappeared he yelled out, Next!"

A twenty-foot-tall ooze creature slothed forward slowly, stopping just in front of the man. He looked at his screens before saying, "You're off to rendition 2EJ. Total destruction of the planet Septirius. No survivors are required. Please enter the portal," He said with a wave, a blue portal appearing beside him on an overly large platform. The ooze creature slithered in, and without any pomp, the Terror and portal disappeared.

"Next!"

Two more destroyers came after, The Slicer having seen them multiple times in the past. His mentor had told him about them, using their lives as a reminder to the Slicer of the consequences of failure. Like Youmal.

Neither had passed the qualifications needed for the Omega Protocol and were forever reduced to the small auspices of the lower-ranked Psi. The Portal Master told them both that they would be sent to destroy cities, rather than planets or even a moonlet. A delicious grass-covered moonlet. He shook the thought away as he was at the front of the line.

"Next!"

The Slicer undulated forward.

"Ah, up for your promotion I see." The man said, looking in the air at his screens, "Trying to break past the 1k mark little one?" He asked the glorious destroyer himself.

"Yes," the Slicer hissed at him, not enjoying the name-calling.

"At least you're doing better. The first time you came through here, you tried to attack everyone and anything you could see. It's nice to see you gain some self-control."

"Self-control is a limitation placed upon you by others." The Slicer rasped at him, "I want freedom."

"I see." He said. The Slicer had been trained in recognizing shifts in humanoid facial expressions by his mentor, so he knew when the Portal Master shifted from neutrality to against him. "Perhaps you're not ready for-"

"I'm ready!" The Slicer hissed, his barbed tail having a fit behind him before he could gain control of it.

"Well," He said, considering the heavily plated six-foot-long worm in front of him, "the world you're going to can't get much worse." He nodded his head, "You're heading to Capilama 3, a mining world. You're to leave the mines alone and only kill the workers. It's a rare deal the Capilama Creator made with the Charlie council in exchange for future-."

"I don't care!"

He sighed, "I figured as much." Waving a hand to the platform next to him, a portal appeared, "Please step through when you're ready. It'll deposit you DIRECTLY in front of the mine. We've also expended the extra temporal resources to allow you to stay in accelerated time throughout the mine. You shouldn't notice a difference when you finish" He said, drawing out the word, "translocating."

The Slicer undulated forward without a care in the world, only half listening. He stopped a foot away from where he knew the portal would grab him and looked back. The blue-chitined Terror was now a blubbering mess. Sad wheezing sounds came from its chest as it slumped against the bubble inch by inch. The moron had tried to use its other hand to free the first one, with the obvious result of having both arms now being stuck.

Looking around, he found no Sentinels coming to the rescue, and a small fight was breaking out near the rear of the line without the standard immediate action. Things were changing. He looked at the Portal Master, then back out to the wider world housing the Psi Protocol.

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

Almost, he slithered off of the portal's platform to cause the death and destruction so near and dear to his heart. Almost.

But, his mentor had been training him to control instincts like this. He needed more evolutions to continue his way forward, to truly grow as a Terror and evolve into something more. Something purer. An Omen.

The Slicer entered the portal to Capilama 3 and the difficult trial ahead of him.

Each time he entered, he was standing in one place one moment, then another the next, simple.

Translocation was supposed to be fast. His vision of the Psi Protocol's home planet disappeared fast enough, but his body was fading into Capilama 3 one slow inch at a time. It was unusual, but he didn't panic. It gave him a rare moment to reflect on the turns his life had taken since first accepting his mentor's offer.

When Twenty convinced him to join the Psi Protocol, the translocation had been nearly instantaneous. One moment they were floating in space, and the next he was in a large facility. In a moment, he'd become aware of what kind of place in, although barred windows will do that to a person. After an initial expenditure of built-up rage, Twenty, or Ra'jin as he gave his name, stood right outside of his cage, hands in his pockets.

"They do this with every Destroyer and Terror," He said with no contrition in his voice, "Can you blame them?" he nodded to the cages around them. Their inhabitants all seemed mad with rage, like the Slicer had been only moments before. Even though they always had the same results when attacking the protocol bubbles, they never stopped to consider what this action showed to their captors. A disturbing lack of control.

He only had to wait for two days before they released him to his mentor, informing him of some general rules that all Destroyers and the ranks above them were forced to live by.

1. Attacking the cities and citizens of the Psi Protocol would not be tolerated.

2. Violations, or not following the directions you are given, will result in a demotion of rank.

3. Following the directions you are given to an upstanding degree will result in a promotion of rank.

4. Any entity within the Psi Protocol that falls under the rank of five thousand will immediately be placed back within the rendition and location of their original recruitment.

5. Any entity that moves up in rank will receive unique benefits befitting their station.

The benefits, of course, were not unique. Sure, they told all of the Destroyers that, but it just wasn't true.

When he first arrived, the unique benefit given to anyone between the ranks of four and six thousand was the reward of...a mentor. Every new Terror and Destroyer was ranked between the five and six-thousand mark, with a two-month opportunity to move past the cutoff for displacement. Some did, many didn't.

The Slicer was lucky enough to have a very high-ranking mentor, who had survived similar experiences to himself. Thus, for the first time in the Slicer's life, he had what a normal person would call a friend. The impulse to attack and destroy was there, it was always there, but that clawing and grasping creature in the back of his mind seemed to be quieter anytime Ra'Jin was around. Of course, the memory of the sheer size and power of the creature had nothing to do with it.

After his release, his mentor immediately started his training, explaining that his rank could move up if his pupil did well in the Psi Protocol. For every thousand ranks the Slicer moved, his mentor would move one, and if he reached the top one hundred he would gain a bonus rank at each point thereafter. Thus, his success was his mentor's success, and Ra'Jin did not enjoy failure. The first bit of training had to do with self-control and the delay of gratification.

Ra'jin had placed a dummy in a small arena. The dummy looked just like the Slicer's former Creator. His stupid face, stupid useless hair, and horribly ugly clothing. He'd torn him to pieces. And again. And again. Over fifty dummies had come and gone in that small arena. On the fifty-first, he'd had enough control to stop himself for just a singular moment. Although the action seemed infinitesimal to him, his Mentor had clapped and applauded.

"Took me over a month to learn that kind of control. You're doing fine." He reassured him. On the 121st he was able to stand there and yell obscenities about those who procreated this massive waste. On the two-hundredth, he was able to merely glare.

The second bit had to do with expanding his vocabulary, as Ra'Jin said the Universal Translator left much to be desired.

The Slicer slowly learned to read within a specially designed Temporal chamber. It's effect was to double the acceleration of time over the standard that everyone else used, thereby allowing him to absorb the knowledge and wisdom of those who have come before without further delaying his impending deployments. It was not a pleasant time for the Slicer, as naturally he was not a calm and silent person. The torn up pages of many books littered the chamber when the Slicer had finally exited. Ra'jin had taken one look inside before snorting and continuing his training.

The Slicer was trained in evolutionary pathways, learning how to push the system to grant the specific evolutions he would need once he unlocked his current limit. He also learned about how to deal with humanoid and non-humanoid sapients, non-sapients, and was given a smattering of foundational science and technology breakdowns.

His first deployment was easy. Destroy a village. As if that would have been any trouble for the Slicer before the Psi Protocol had picked him up. His initial success was enough to finally reached the three-thousands in rank and obtain the next reward. His "unique" gift had been a training yard of his own, which was quite the blessing as the common-training areas were all incredibly loud and chaotic. Evolutionary abilities and the rare use of magic littered the training yard, forcing him to work in upgrading the dodging skill he had once picked up when traveling through a moving asteroid field.

He also slept there, not having an evolution that disallowed its need. It consistently vexed him due to the lost amount of time, where instead of sleeping, he could be training or volunteering for early deployments so he could move up in rank.

His second and third deployments were easy going, but he found that moving up the ranks became more difficult the higher he was. By the sixth mission, he was destroying planets again, his rank increases coming in sporadic numerical gains. Sometimes he'd even move down in rank as another Terror or Destroyer passed him on their own missions.

After the 10th mission, it came to a point where he was only getting a fifty-rank increase for each. They were also growing more difficult, the system consistently adding new parameters that tested his knowledge and understanding of what was required of him. Multiple times it asked him to set up a planet to fail at speed, rather than have him destroy it outright as was his prerogative. Ra'jin explained when he asked about it.

"It's about the Temporal Resources," He said while chewing some kind of dry meat with his large white teeth, "They have to spend quite a few each time you're deployed. If they didn't, the Psi Protocol would move on in accelerated time, and you'd still be on your first deployment." He swallowed the meat and took another out of a sealed bag. The Slicer noticed he didn't offer him any, "They're asking each Terror, who show promise, to set up the planet for failure quickly, so that they can cut off the time acceleration the moment you leave. It's simply economical."

"Economical?" The Slicer asked.

"Efficient and careful when using resources."

"Ah."

"So, it makes a certain sense."

The Slicer nodded while still not quite understanding.

The two-thousand mark in ranks finally gave something "Unique." An evolution that once given, couldn't be taken away, and handily bypassed the system's cap on his current amount of allowed evolutions.

The ability to shapeshift.

It was enormously painful, as the ability conferred the ability to shapeshift, without the full knowledge of how it worked. With most abilities, there's an inherent understanding of them. To activate his dodging ability, he instinctively knew what it was, and pushed on something in his mind. The feeling was reminiscent to the first time he ever pulled a lever. Abilities were simple. A pull and a catch, then he was dodging. It worked the same way with all of them. Meteoric Fall, Acid Splash, each a lever in his mind waiting for him to tug on it. But Shapeshifting was different because it was assigned, rather than earned.

The Slicer had been forced back into the Temporal Chamber for some time, retching and spitting blood and fluids as he experimented on his own body. Ra'Jin said the goal was to appear humanoid, that way he could blend in with populaces for the more complicated deployments. But it was so very painful. He didn't step out of the chamber until a month had passed within. The creature that stepped out didn't actually step at all, but slithered as was usual.

"What are you doing? Didn't you work on your shapeshifting?" Ra'Jin asked, waiting for him outside.

The Slicer spat, "I am what I am. I can change into any shape I need to for the mission, but only for the mission."

And that was that.

His mind pulled out of his recollections for a moment, as his body had almost fully translocated to Capillama 3. One last thought dug into his brain.

Youmal.

When the Slicer was honest with himself, he didn't find any blame on his side. His first promotion mission required that he only kill any blue-skinned creatures found on the planet, not any and all. Right before they'd sent him, he had tried to warn the Portal Master, but a small push from a distracted Destroyer behind him, and it was already too late.

The first issue was, that they didn't place him in the right spot upon arriving. He'd translocated in quickly, finding himself surrounded by creatures from every direction. Bumping and jostling into him every which way while not paying any attention to his great majesty. It was annoying, and if he was honest with himself, slightly frightening.

The second issue was, the Slicer assumed that they had skin, only, he was colorblind. That's what he was trying to warn the Portal Master about. The mission was doomed for failure the moment he'd been sent.

Instinctively understanding this, he did what came naturally to him. He leaped into the sky and activated meteoric fall, blowing the planet to pieces after only three attempts on the same location.

The subsequent translocation and dressing down didn't sit right with him. It was their fault, not his. They just didn't know him. This mission should be much simpler.

The translocation was almost done, ending on the tips of his barbed mouth, when it stalled and stopped. That had never happened before. He began to grow worried. Always before had it been fast, and never before had it ever stopped. Without warning, the translocation turned off entirely, and the ends of his mouth disappeared.

"What!" He hissed, looking around. The planet was abandoned. Everywhere he looked, nothing was there at all. It was a barren and desolate world with nothing on the surface.

To his right, a blue light began to go off. Inch by inch, a creature was translocating in beside him. It had large wings and a small head, with a body one would associate with a lion. Only, it was translocating as slowly as he had been. He waited for several moments for it to finish, embracing his training to remain cool and collected like Ra'jin taught him. When the creature finally finished coming in, it looked around and found his eyes immediately.

"What's happen-," The Slicer tried to ask, but the creature attacked him immediately. He snipped the bastards head off quickly then stared at the body on the ground, blood pooling around it.

A blue light began to go off in the near distance.

"What the fuck!"