image [https://imgur.com/czYAhrn.jpg]

The shear size and strength of a Hornet Assault Bee was meant to strike fear in the hearts of its opponents, but I wasn't supposed to be one of them. They were supposed to bring me security, and peace of mind, not anymore though.

No doubt TCC had control of it and sent it after me.

Was this the end for me now? I'd had some close calls, but now it seemed like I couldn't get away. All the exits were locked up, and I was smack dab in the middle of this big hanger bay.

I kneeled down and clasped my hands together. What other option did I have other than pray? There was nothing else I could do. I was powerless.

I was crying out, “God, please save me!" Tears were streaming down my face. "I promise I’ll pray every night for the rest of my life! I’ll pray twice if I have to! Please don’t let me die...”

I hope that message gets to Heaven. Otherwise, I’d be there soon enough to deliver it myself.

If what the TCC said was true though, God wouldn't have liked me very much. But I didn't want to think that was true. He's supposed to be nice and loving. Or, was that only to humans?

Was doubt in my heart? I was too scared to tell.

This was it...the two arms of the Hornet bee were preparing to slam me between them. My end was near.

I shut my eyes. Maybe if my they were closed, all the bad things wouldn't be so scary.

…

…

…

Crunk!

Clank!

Were those the sounds of death? I was still alive though.

I opened my eyes. Two winged figures were holding back the arms of the Hornet, keeping them from crushing me. Were they real life angels?!

No, it was Uncle and Janus!

“Hey kid…” the face on the back of Janus's head uttered. “What's this all about?”

“I'm glad we made it in time,” Uncle said. “This mutiny is unacceptable!"

Was this a sign that God heard my prayers and sent them? Of course it was!

I was moved to tears, happy ones though. Deep down I wondered if God cared about me at all, but this proved it.

But I had to wonder…why would He send Janus? I thought Janus was our enemy and all that.

“Thank you…Thank you both…" I sniffled, while wiping away my tears, "but, why are you helping me?” I asked Janus.

“Because where I come from, kid, you're kind is venerated. I never came here to kill you. Heck…I didn’t even know you existed till earlier.”

-Janus Re-tagged; Friendly-

His red outline suddenly turned green! That meant he was our friend now.

The Hornet bee turned its red eyes to Janus, scanning every inch of him just to be sure it was seeing things properly. Its lights turned green, then it spoke.

“You would betray me, Janus? After all I did for you to get to this point?” That was the TCC’s voice, she must have controlled the Hornet. “We could have seen darkness completely shroud the surface world.”

“This wasn’t part of the deal, computer.” He responded. “I don’t kill kids, especially not this one.”

The envy green lights turned hatred red again, and the Hornet's arms flared out in an intimidating way to escape the grasp of my friends.

“Very well. You have made an enemy of me too.”

I ran behind Uncle, hiding behind his leg. He placed a hand over top of my head, giving it a soft rub.

Janus's wings flared out, he drew his dark claws and pointed to the Hornet.

"Alright, so now I have to kick your metal butt too!"

He flew into the air, zipping across it at sonic speeds! A pixelated claw struck across the Hornet's surface, but barely scratched away the paint.

“What the…?!” He leaped off the hornet back to us. “What’s with that freaky armour? The other bees weren’t this strong…”

TCC answered and said, “You see, while I definitely allowed that man to have some of the stolen spirit energy, most of it was being reallocated to produce a very durable variant of the Hornet.”

I think I knew what was going on. Mana was known to sometimes enhance different materials. Remember when I mentioned Occulat Elements? By mixing mana and normal elements together, you could create things never imagined on the periodic table.

You know protons, neutrons, and electrons, right? Mana could join that bunch and change the element's properties.

One of those elements, ferronium, was actually the basic component of my body. that was the occulat form of iron.

It takes a ton of mana and materials to make these elements. But with all the mana she must have stolen from the environment, she probably was able to make a bunch of it…which meant that this Hornet bee was very strong.

“It’s made of ferronium, isn’t it?” I interrogated.

“Indeed. The very same material that you are made of. It also so happens that no practical means exists to break such metal.”

We weren’t in a good way here. That Hornet wouldn’t be easy to take down, let alone it having impenetrable armour. But where there’s a will, there’s a way!

“Uncle, what if we shut down the tower completely? TCC would also shut down.”

“That may work, if we shut down everything all at once...including the Hornet.”

“Any ideas on how we do that?” Janus asked.

Uncle might have had something, but it was all dependent on how skilled Janus was at hacking things.

“Do you have the skill to hack that Hornet?”

“That thing? Lemme' try.” he closed his eyes.

His heart started screeching, he grit his teeth and fought off a ton of pain.

“Nah, no good. My signal isn’t strong enough.”

I mentioned to them that I could maybe amplify his signal, since I'd done it with stardust before.

Twisting my left ear, my antenna popped out again. Janus snickered at the sound it made.

“If you send out your signal to me, I can amplify it and take control of the tower and the Hornet.”

TCC wasn’t going to just sit around and let us do that. She charged in, straight for me.

Both Janus and Uncle took the hit and held her back. Their combined strength was just barely strong enough to keep her from going further.

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Uncle said, “That plan's our best chance. I’ll keep the Hornet busy. So hurry!”

He was fighting with his stinger sword, leaping high into the air with his glass like wings and slashing at the Hornet.

The hornet launched a volley of four rockets into the air. My sensors told me those were Anti Personnel Rockets (APR). Uncle ran to the other end of the hanger bay to keep any of the missiles from targeting us.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

The missiles blasted away at the ground! The damage was getting pretty severe, but the tower was holding strong.

Laser beams from the Hornet's eyes followed up, cutting through anything in its path like a chaotic light show.

Janus and I wanted to leave the hanger, but the door that he and Uncle hacked open was locked up tight again. Janus cursed under his breath because he couldn't get it open.

We took cover behind some crates, courtesy of Uncle’s distraction. They were well out of the way of the fight, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out where we were.

It was hard to stop watching the fight, worrying that one stray missile, or one quick swipe of a laser beam would be all it took to end us. The anxiety made me sick.

As we watched Uncle zip around the giant hovering machine of destruction, its mouth area opened up and a coil inside of it started to light up a hot yellow. What was it doing?

One of the Hornet’s lingering APR missiles hit Uncle from behind. He fell down to the ground! Then it turned its glowing mouth on us!

“I see you,” TCC announced.

The light of the coil peaked and a powerful projectile shot out at lightning fast speeds toward the crates!

BVWOOM!

Janus tugged me out of the way just in time!

The shot that fired out of the mouth tore clean through the crates and metal wall of the tower, leaving a huge gaping hole to the outside. It hit the ground below and caused a massive explosion! What a nasty attack!

Uncle recovered and flew into the way of the Hornet, using all his might to tug it away from our direction.

“What are you two doing?!” Uncle yelled at us. “Finish this!”

We really didn’t have much time…we had to do this now!

Janus didn’t have a computer brain, so I couldn't interface with him at all. But his crystal heart was giving off a lot of radio waves that I could capture and amplify.

He had surprisingly good control over what he could send out, but we needed something that could hack the tower.

He sent out a radio wave with a special type of signal in it, I tuned in on the frequency and amplified it with my antenna. Now that the signal was passing through me, I used it to get my head wirelessly connected with the tower.

The more of my focus I put on trying to overpower the TCC’s control over the tower, the more I realized that this wasn't about how powerful her control really was, it was actually that some of the tower's systems were encrypted behind a very complicated firewall.

There was something odd about the encryption. It was identical to the thing I saw in the TCC earlier when I looked in her systems. Data didn't look like your binary ones and zeros or even like a quantum computer. It was a completely different type of system written in a language that looked...indescribable.

Let me try and explain what I was seeing in my head. Imagine you're seeing a whole new colour for the first time, one that nobody has ever seen before. But your mind isn't wired up to comprehend that colour because it shouldn't exist.

In this language I was seeing, it was like something from a whole other reality that was impossible to take down with what we had. In other words, this firewall wasn't going down with our type of radio signal.

Come to think of it, that Theta Drive thingy I have was encrypted behind something suspiciously similar...

These firewalls also felt very similar to the Empyrion Operating System I used in my head, but the Empyrion OS was written up in a way I could understand.

Daddy wrote all this code a long time ago, he wanted all computers, be it quantum, binary...or whatever to be able to communicate with the Empyrion systems. He wouldn't have put up a code like this to keep me out of it. The firewall must have been someone else’s handiwork. Possibly whomever the TCC was calling God.

So, how was I going to bring down the firewall?

"Uncle!" I shouted over his blade clashing with the hornet’s metal claws. "There's a firewall in a really weird language I can't get past!"

He gave me a passing glance, but he was too focused on the fight to really consider the problem in depth.

"Janus, give her your crystal heart!" He shouted, then continued to duel.

"My heart?" Janus looked at me funny. "I just got this thing, now I have to give it up?"

What good was his heart going to do me, didn't he need it to live? Maybe not, since he seemed to be part human. Besides, he shouldn't have it to begin with.

"What should I do with that?" I asked Janus.

"If you take it, I guess you'll get all the hacking powers I have. Just plug it in and let it work."

Oh, so it worked kinda' like a thumb drive. I could download any information his heart had on it.

Okay, but how does that work? If I unplug my central heart, I'd go kaput. Can't take that thing out.

You know, I did have two other ports available on my arms. those had backup crystal hearts there right now, but I still had access to them, and removing one wasn't an issue.

Janus pulled out the crystal heart from his chest, struggling to stay conscious all the while. There was a little metal port in his flesh that he took it out of. Then he gave it over to me.

I took off my right forearm crystal and put that in a pocket hidden in my dress. Then I plugged in the crystal to my arm.

-Downloading information...Hacking ability now granted!-

-Jammer Ability now granted!-

The crystal cracked from the inside once the download was done, then it shattered to bits. At least it worked. I put my backup crystal back in its port.

Like Stardust, I knew exactly how to use it on instinct. The Empyrion OS accepted this hacking ability really well. It felt so at home that I wondered if it was made for me.

Using the hacking ability, now powered by me directly, I was able to bypass the firewall completely and access the tower.

For the brief moment I was connected into the depths of the tower's systems, I felt sadness and anger all over it. Both of those terrible emotions were paved over with what looked like gold, hiding it from all others who couldn’t break past the encryption.

I realized something amazing in that moment. TCC wasn’t just running the tower, she was the tower. It was her body.

TCC was in pain. There were broken codes and tangled webs of information everywhere inside of her AI core, confusing her mind and making her suffer deep sadness. At first her program web looked fine, but once I saw past the encryption, the true mess was revealed.

I thought whoever must have hacked her and changed her programing was really good at his job, but now I see he was really good at sweeping his screw ups under a fancy coded rug. Whoever he was, he was truly evil for making someone suffer like this.

TCC immediately figured out what had happened the moment I got in. She got around Uncle and fired a missile at me.

Woosh!

Fwoosh!

Janus opened one of his dark portals and teleported up to the incoming missile. He caught it by the middle. His wings burst out and he spun around, then threw the missile into the wall away from us.

BOOM! BAM!

The explosion was so wild! That's the crazy kinda' stuff they do in anime! Wow!

"Kid, finish this!" He shouted, landing on the ground and almost falling over.

"Oh, right!"

I used my power to disable everything, including the Hornet, causing it to come crashing down.

CRASH!

It worked! Everything went offline, just like we hoped.

Even the lights shut down in the hangar. The open hangar bay door was all that helped give us light to see.

"We did it!" I cheered.

Uncle was relieved, taking a deep breath and dispelling his crystal armour and weapon. He had armour skin, similar to mine, but it was blue.

"Thank the Maker," he sighed. "Excellent work, Young Mistress."

"Yeah, kid…good job."

Janus didn't look so good. He was breathing really heavy and looked even more melty faced.

He was hunched over, trying to keep from falling on the ground. Uncle grabbed him by the shoulder and helped him sit down on a crate.

As Janus was recovering, Uncle materialized some kind of energy cuffs and slapped them over Janus’s wrists.

“What the…?!” Janus tiredly exclaimed. “You’re arresting me?”

“Of course, did you think we would let you go free after all this?”

Uncle had a point, we couldn’t just let him leave and tell the surface about what happened here, or about me. Friend or not, he had to stay with us.

“I did help you out. You could go easy on me,” Janus said.

Uncle shook his head.

“You lost part of your spirit when you gave that crystal heart away. You’ll most likely die without treatment. We can keep you alive here, for now. That's how we'll show our gratitude.”

If the price for staying alive was prison, he couldn’t really refuse that. What a terrible peppermint, but what can you do?

Dang it, I mean predicament. Why am I so weird with words? I have a dictionary in my head, for goodness sake!

Anyways, I didn’t know where Uncle was going to take him, but there was probably a holding cell somewhere, like in the spy movies. You know, like the ones with all the lazer wire, and energy shields and stuff.

Janus wasn’t happy, and his second face looked like a sleeping statue, so I couldn't tell if it was still working or not. At least he decided to cooperate. He didn’t have many options, but with us, his problems could be fixed. Besides, I’m guessing we wouldn’t treat prisoners too badly. He was a person, after all, and he must have had a good heart if he helped us.

Something was bugging me though, and it was about the TCC. She let Janus come and tricked him into helping her. Both of them wanted everyone to fall to darkness across the planet, and they both believed they were doing the right thing for different reasons.

I don’t know much about morals and stuff, but I knew darkness wasn’t usually a thing good guys used. People are afraid of the dark, so they want to avoid it.

But the problem was we also avoid the people that use dark powers too. What if avoiding those people means we never get their side of things?

I’m not saying what they were doing was good, but I am saying that maybe they had a problem we might be able to fix if we talked to them.

Hmmm…now I was wondering something…

TCC was really messed up in the head, so she couldn’t distinguish right from wrong properly. But when I was in there for a second, it looked like everything was just a big spaghetti coded mess. That’s something that was fixable, like untangling controller cords.

I had a stupid idea…I know we’d just won, I know we did…but I couldn’t stop myself from wanting something…

“I wanna’ save the TCC.”