The early days of the Family have to be some of the most chaotic days I have ever lived through. The rotating door of samurai initializing and then dying before they get a chance to make a name for themselves, the desperate struggles to reclaim small parts of our world, the utter despair at the seemingly unstoppable tides of enemies. Yet, I wouldn’t give those days for anything; for those first few years, we were really that.
A family.
* Gabrielle ‘Starfall’ Briant, in a interview for an unreleased documentary, 2056
***
You know, I never liked guns.
They’re such a simple concept, a tool of death anyone could use, the great equalizing force of humanity. Even now, I really dislike the way the modern versions look and feel, boxy little contraptions with no personality to them. Sure, the old handcrafted wooden ones are something that I will admit have a bit of beauty to them, but not in a way that gives me the desire to own them.
That was something my boys never really let me live down. The rallies, the protests, the riots and brawls, the big bombastic shows we’d put on for the nation. All of that, and I didn’t even own the thing that I was fighting so hard for the right to have. They would ask, “Why are you here, Desmond Montero? Why risk so much in your old age, Dez, just for other people?”
I’d always answer in the same way.
“Freedom.”
I swear to all that is holy, that was then and still is now the truth as to why I fight. I could have made a tall tale about how my family had a history of fighting for our country, that I had the blood of true patriots and needed to live up to it. It just wasn’t the case; My grandfather fled Italy before the second world war to avoid persecution and my father helped organize the Vietnam war protests when he was in college. I may not agree with the decisions they made, but I think that is what the U.S was always about, what it will always be remembered for, even as it lies shattered.
We were the symbol of true liberty, the place where anyone could live as they wanted- As long as it didn’t disrupt other people’s lives. That was a necessary evil. Sure, many of my friends were deathly cynical about the government, the way they watched us, kept us in check, but I wasn’t really concerned. Those bits of control we gave up to the corporations and the feds were for the greater good, a thinly veiled layer of protection against the things us civilians didn’t need to think about.
That’s why it was so utterly confusing, so terrifying when the first reports about Ohio came in.
“Isn’t this the kind of thing the feds try to cover up? Aliens are invading? What do we do, how do we survive something like this?”
Suddenly, all those people fighting against our right to bear arms vanished, and an eerie calm set over the country. It was strange, how life just went on as everything we knew was flipped upside down. Without much to do for those few months, since there wasn’t much talk in my circles of going out to rile people up, I spent a lot more time at home-
Time with Olivia.
From afar, we probably seemed like a bit of an odd couple, despite the fact that we are the same age. In stark comparison to me, whose hair had gone grey by the age of fifty five, Olivia had aged magnificently, barely looking over forty. The few wrinkles she had just served to compliment her beauty, no grey marred her brunette locks, her skin still shining the same as it always had. She was petite, a foot smaller than my 6’2 frame and probably less than half my weight. The most breathtaking woman I had ever met, no, have still ever and likely will ever meet.
We spent those days in idle bliss, woefully unprepared for the days to come. It had been years since Richard moved out to focus on his construction business, and Ellie was still going for her PHD, so it was just us in our little suburban home. The several hours in the evening we’d spend on the couch in each other's arms watching sitcoms from our childhoods is the most serene moment I can possibly picture.
“Dez, you should go.”
When she spoke those words to me that fateful Wednesday in Twenty Three, I was sitting at our kitchen island, looking at the little social media group that I had become entrenched in during the last few years. I had been looking at a post calling for a meetup at Padre Island, it wasn’t going to be anything special, at least, I thought it wasn’t. Admittedly, I was pent up after spending so long idle, but I was hesitating leaving Olivia behind, with the threat of a sudden alien attack perhaps on the horizon.
Still, she insisted, so after a bit of much needed maintenance on my bike, I saddled up and rode off. The road to Corpus Christi was beautiful, if my memory isn’t lying to me, but I only remember bits and pieces. I arrived at the bar we were meeting at after a few hours, then drank the majority of the night away in cheer. Those final moments of drunken cheer were something truly special.
Then the sky broke as the Aliens arrived.
We were all disoriented as we stepped outside, completely taken aback by the crack in the sky, the huge segmented tentacles slowly moving around in the sky above us. We probably stood there for a few minutes, standing there watching in awe as our reality became something out of a sci-fi film. When a huge clatter came from nearby, we all turned to see several model Threes rushing towards us. It’s funny, out of a bar full of packing drunk bikers wanting to be heroes, and the one who rushed into action to save them is the old man who only had a knife.
Not a single shot was fired until I finished the job, until I was chosen to transcend my humanity, chosen to become a Vanguard.
From there, the rest of the morning was a blur, and by the time we were all safe, I was clad in a suit of silver armor, an utterly baffling halberd in my hand. I bought myself a new bike, one that could fly, and arrived home to crash in my own bed after what might have been the most chaotic bender possible.
Then things really picked up, as I now had a new lease on life. The first thing I did after waking up was buy both Olivia and I anti-aging nanites, and the second was to call my son to tell him to get the hell to Corpus Christi. I flew back to meet him, gave him new tools for his workers to do their jobs, then got to work weeding what was left.
This became our life for the next few years, with me rushing to incursions to earn some points, then sticking around afterwards to clean up so that Richard’s boys could rebuild. Our reputation grew as quickly as our coffers, and after a bit of socializing with some of the upper crust, I even managed to secure my son a lucrative business partnership AND a wife. A year after that, I gained a moniker that lives with me to today.
Steel Hound.
Then in Twenty Eight, I got an offer: To join a small group of samurai in an attempt to assist the Navy in wiping out the antithesis from the gulf. The earliest form of the Family, Starfall included. I never really spent much time running around with other Samurai, I’ve never really worked well with others in combat situations, but I suppose my reputation was good enough for them to trust me. Olivia beside me, we all met up upon a an oil rig one of the few Samurai I was sort of friends with had converted into a mobile base of operations, then began to plan.
We’d form a battle line, with each of us focusing on clearing out the tougher models while the navy took care of stragglers. There’d also be a support fleet on the rear, made up mostly of civilian volunteers to ensure that the likely multi-day battle would go smoothly. I thought it was an okay plan, all things considered, not perfect in how it relied so heavily on the samurai to do most of the work, but good enough that I somewhat reluctantly allowed Olivia to volunteer as a supporter.
That was my first, and biggest mistake.
The day came, and Olivia said farewell to me with a kiss on the cheek as I slipped beneath the waves and immediately got to work. It was a true slog, fighting through the endless hordes of plants while explosions went off around me, but I had never earned points like this before, I doubt anyone there had. After a day of pushing, we were ahead of schedule, and the density of our foes was dropping. I was growing careless, mindlessly swinging my blade at anything that got close.
I didn’t really have time to react before the first Model-Twenty One I had ever seen sent me flying. I was only a bit hurt, but it was enough to cause something in my mind to slide out of place. My vision turned red and my mind went hazy as rage filled me, before I rushed at the new foe as if nothing else existed around me. Without the element of surprise, the Twenty-One relied upon its speed and stealth to keep me at bay, and unfortunately, it worked. In my rage, I couldn’t touch it, and with the benefit of hindsight, I know that the Seventeen it was working with took full advantage of that.
From what I learned later, hordes I should have been killing suddenly intensified, and the Navy was overrun as my part of the line nearly immediately collapsed. The plants then had two options on what to do next, so they took the path of least resistance- The support fleet.
It was a massacre, resulting in dozens of civilians and two newer samurai dying before things were gotten under control.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
As for me, I was slowly calming down a bit, gaining the bits of advantage in my fight that I could manage with moments of clarity. I eventually trapped the Twenty-One, but as I raised my blade to end it, a bullet slammed into my quarry, ending it before I had the chance. My rage abruptly reignited, I jerked around, just to find a sight that instantly sobered me.
Floating there, holding up a large blocky pistol with a pitch black cybernetic arm she hadn’t had when I left, was Olivia.
She was filthy, her skin and clothes covered in blood, likely from human and Antithesis both. A distinct shock of grey now ran down the left side of her hair, the deep wrinkles on her face making her look nothing but exhausted. The thing that made my heart break, however, was the blatant conflict on her face as she stared at me, her relief at seeing me marred by horror and despair.
Then, another Antithesis came over the ridge, and Olivia emotionlessly fired a shot, ending it in an instant. She gestured up, indicating that we needed to get moving, get back to work. I took a deep breath, then rushed out to continue our work. It was the first, and last, time we fought together.
After that, a lot of things happened at once. The offense was in the end a success, but in the public's eyes, it was an utter failure. The family confronted me, and we ended up getting into a huge fight, which resulted in me going on TV to publicly denounce them and the navy for failing to establish a concrete battle plan, not responding in time to the issue, as well as putting the civilians so close to the crossfire. I promised then and there that I would protect the people of the Gulf while staying on watch at New Houston, no matter what occurred or who I had to fight.
Even if it was Olivia.
The last time I talked to her, it was upon the highest level of the Rig, and it was there that she told me the truth of what had occurred that day. The hordes had clambered up onto her boat, and she sacrificed her arm to save one of the family’s kids from getting ripped into two, but initialized in the process. When she found me in the blood rage, alive above the twenty-one, it wasn’t because she was looking for me. She thought I had died, so she rushed into action, managing to take control of the situation and salvage the entire operation with a little help from some other samurai. I tried to argue that I was just doing what I was supposed to do, but she simply shook her head.
The love we once shared was no more.
We agreed right then and there that we’d get a divorce. We wouldn’t interfere in each other's affairs, and wouldn't venture into each other's territory. As the sun set over the western sky, I watched as Olivia stepped into Starfall’s shuttle, the official end to our thirty year relationship.
The next decade can be summed up pretty simply: fighting followed by more fighting. Every few weeks, I’d leave the quickly growing New Houston to go out into the open Atlantic, where I would eliminate as many foes as I could before I ran out of supplies. I’d return home, upgrade myself before investing the rest into the rig, then go back out to repeat the process when I couldn’t handle sitting around any longer. New Houston was my escape, but also my prison.
Yet, it was still home.
----------------------------------------
“Desmond! Are you with us?”
I flinch as Starfall’s voice brings me back to reality, finding the entire room staring at me, so I quickly scan the screen only to find absolutely nothing that makes sense to me. Instead of making a fool of myself, I just grunt in affirmation, which leads the woman on the screen to roll her eyes as she clicks to the next slide.
“Look, my point is, there is a chance the other planets in the solar system are infested, so we need to send some scouts to actually get some real info.”
Starfall pauses before she then adds, “It’s in our best interest to work together on this, in our opinion, so we’ll set-”
The door to the meeting room slams open, and I turn a bit amused, curious to find who has the balls to intrude on a meeting like this. I freeze, going utterly pale when I actually see who it is.
Olivia.
She was more than different than before, wearing a rather modern corporate style pants-suit, a rather high tech pistol visible within her holster, but I still instantly knew it was her. In the last decades she had put more than a little muscle on, her small frame now one of a respectable warrior. Her hair is the same as it had been the last time I saw her, but chopped down til it only extends partway past her ears. Half of her head had been replaced by cybernetics, the blank, matte black, metallic alloy mask covering half of her face is uncomfortably similar to the one that Maniac from Europe wears, if not for the angular hole revealing an utterly inhuman eye, it’s black sclera and white pupil locked right onto me, staring into my soul.
She doesn’t even give me a second look.
“Sorry to barge in, Gabbie, but I need you to put Illuminati’s SLT-One onto the screen. Shit’s going down there.”
Starfall sighs an utterly exhausted look upon her face, then gets to work, and after a moment, the view turns to an overhead shot of New Houston. I blink, then scowl.
“You have a spy satellite aimed right at my house?”
Nobody responds to me, watching intently as the camera zooms in, my jaw drops before I can say anything else when I see the state of the rig. Nearly the entire central tower is covered in vines, large flower buds growing upon them, but not yet open as the sun had yet to rise. I shoot to my feet, but stop when Tristan gently grabs my arm, his face completely locked upon the screen.
“Grandfather,” He mutters, his voice choked with utter horror, “Anthony was there.”
My heart freezes, and I have to lean on the wooden table with a hand to stay upright. A distinct terror appears in my heart, that the last interaction I’d ever have with my grandson might be me screaming at him for his mistakes. I hesitantly turn to see how Olivia is taking that info, but find her more annoyed than anything. A deep rage begins to fill me, the urge to lash out at her for not caring rising, but then I remember.
Oh. Right.
She probably doesn’t even know her grandchildren’s names.
Because of me.
Olivia taps her foot on the ground, crossing her arms as she rumbles, “Why the fuck is the water so murky? Something is happening on the seafloor, judging by the absurd tectonic readings happening at the moment.”
Haifisch growls, running his hand through his hair. “They must be releasing spores into the water near the surface, I doubt we’ll be able to actually see anything unless we put a drone that deep.”
A familiar glowing yellow eye within a dark blue pyramid appears on screen, right before an artificial voice mixed between male and female teases, “Good thing it’s a drone and not a satellite, hm Dez?~”
I scowl at Illuminati’s use of that ancient nickname, which apparently doesn’t sit well with Olivia or Starfall either, as they also gain similar looks upon their faces.
“Geez, lighten up you guys,” Illuminati says with a sigh, before continuing, “Well don’t get your panties in a twist, drone is diving… Now!~”
The camera view distorts as it hits the waves, only to reveal a spine chilling scene. Two of the reef’s floors are just utterly destroyed, and a third is collapsed in upon itself in a way that might be impossible to repair. A horde rumbles across the seafloor towards the ruins of the eleventh and twelfth, and though while not the largest I’ve ever seen, I have no fucking clue how they got there in the first place. Illuminati whistles as the drone turns, tracing the length of a gigantic crack in the earth that definitely hadn’t been there when we left.
“Well, that explains where the readings in the North American plate are coming from… Wait… The crack is growing?” Illuminati pauses, before the eye on the screen goes wide. “Holy shit, that stretches to the mantle. Something did that on purpose to climb up. Guys, that’s a biggun, forty plus.”
I gawk at the screen as my mind runs completely blank.
“There is no way this is real.” I slam my other hand into the table, looking down in shock. “This is just a… demented prank to get back at me for the past.”
Olivia, completely unimpressed, glares at me as she matter of factly states, “I wish that were the case, Desmond. Fucking suck it up, your precious city is going up in flames.”
If not for my suit, I’d probably have had a heart attack at that point. I clench my hands against the table, and although I feel it crack underneath the pressure, I get no satisfaction from the action. The burning inferno in my chest cries for me to lash out, but I hold myself back. If there was anything I’ve learned from experience, there’s a time and place for everything.
Not now.
For the first time since I’ve met him, I see Haifisch go pale. “A forty? What the fuck?”
Starfall pinches the bridge of her nose as she mutters, “Or higher… And I said I’d take care of it.”
Olivia snorts, then narrows her inverted eye at something. “Hold up, Illuminati, do you see the explosions happening in the horde?”
“Yup Yup, moving drone!~” Illuminati cheerfully spouts, only for them to gasp when a somewhat strange scene appears on screen, then say, “I didn’t know New Houston had three samurai!”
Immersed in a huge cloud of aquatic models, a rather fit platinum blond woman in a pale white wetsuit swims around while swinging a rather long crowbar around, taking seemingly unnecessary risks that somehow work out anyway as she protects what looks to be a fucking battleship turret just casually floating in the water behind her.
“We didn’t earlier today…,” I frown as I quietly mumble, “Wait, I think I recognize her from somewhere…”
Tristan tilts his head, then gains a look of realization before blurting, “Wait, isn’t she that newbie maid we hired?”
“Ah.”
For a moment, everyone watches in silence as the new samurai fight in unison with three very large wolfdogs, until Illuminati asks, “But… Why is she fighting? Her AI should know that shits about to hit the fan.”
Olivia hums in thought, then mutters, “Either she’s farming points for later use, which seems stupid… Or, maybe she’s serving as a distraction.”
Illuminati chirps, “Interesting! Let’s see if we can’t find out for what!~”
The drone shifts, moving around to take a look at the reef, where on cue, a rather large subaquatic vehicle of some sort appears, attaching itself to the side of the ninth floor.
A slightly amused look on her face, Starfall huffs, “Looks like it’s two new samurai. The heroic idiots are trying to save people before the big boy comes.”
Haifisch taps his sharp fingers on the table, a deep frown appearing all the while. “There’s no way in hell that thing is big enough, there are at least a hundred thousand on the ninth floor tonight, and that’s a generous lowball.”
After a moment of nobody saying anything, Illuminati gasps, then hesitantly explains, “No… it’s actually almost too big. Like, ten times too big...”
As all the anger within me begins to fade, Tristan tilts his head again, obviously not getting what the samurai was saying. “That thing can hold over a hundred thousand people?”
Olivia groans, looking at our grandchild with a look of utter irritation. “It can probably hold a couple hundred, max. Kid, that sub is for all the floors. ”
Tristan pales, looking back at the screen with newfound horror. "T-There are only that many left?"
I’m about to say something to comfort him, when the screen suddenly jerks to track a blurry figure swimming through the darkness around the sub, the thick black stealth cloak they wear not being nearly good enough to fool the higher class drone’s sensors.
“A sea snake mermaid!” Illuminati giggles as they move the drone closer to the samurai. “I’m not sure we have any of those yet!”
Suddenly, the mermaid pauses in her path, turns around to look at the drone, then slithers over and flips her hood. I actually can’t help but gasp when I see who the person is underneath, dressed in feminine clothes- And obviously happier then I had ever seen them before.
“Fuck.”
I go utterly numb, stumbling backwards and slumping into the chair I had pushed away minutes earlier. Tristan breathes a relieved sob, reaching over to touch my hand. Olivia gets a particularly strange look on her face at that.
“Grandfather, is that…?”
About a thousand things run through my mind, especially on how I had treated them in the last few years, yet it’s easy to pick out the important bits. After a moment of consideration, I immediately know what I have to do.
“I…” I clench my teeth, then look up at the rest of the samurai in the room.
“I need your help.”