“Aleph.” He hears his voice become stronger, he should be dead but he isn’t, he is on a shoulder, soft and smaller than he is, familiar he can recognize the voice comes close.
Strong he hears fumbling.
“Aleph..we need you.”
He isn’t dead but is near to it, he should’ve sacrificed himself but his eyes twist up, he can’t move. His palm touches a large steel door, the feeling of warm hot metal fades and steam rushes across his face, vision tunneled, he can just barely smell the scent of blood, and gunpowder on Saiyah’s hair, the decomposition of a corpse still linger.
Still time.
She had braced his hand against the door and there was a screen next to it that pulsed, the three of them moved, Saiyah kept Aleph braced to her shoulder.
He’d gotten him through three doors already, they can hear whines, marching, strict patrols.
The machines know they got out.
Asaph isn’t speaking but she knows he wants to be screaming in her ear hurry.
They rush through the door, Anna is first to clear inside, tightly clutching the severed arm of the first robot they still had strength left enough to dispatch.
Saiyah sighed
Good news we are inside, we are obscured with cover, they aren’t patrolling inside the building, they expect us to be outside by now.
Bad news is they expect us to be outside and we are stuck in here, getting through the doors.
“It seems to work everytime we get him half-awake, do whatever you can.” Anna seemed to glance around holding the severed arm, her legs wobbled, they were all dying.
Asaph was feeling real terror fists barely braced to his chest.
Saiyah was on the next door, she spoke to Aleph and got the next sliding steel door open.
They could’ve kicked it open like a rotting gate but they were at half their capacity, they even felt a bit weaker than what maybe a human being feels.
“Alright, this should be the door to outside, how fast are we feeling.” They were in a room designed after a blank receptions office, fake mugs, fake chairs.
“Fast enough to still even wanting to attempt this.” Asaph speaks cruel and deliberate his lack of voice in tone traitorous to the idea of having faith in what they are doing.
Saiyah thinks to herself.
They haven’t cut the trial or training, this is either the portion of training Shocktroopers start dropping or we have a shot!
Saiyah is grasping Aleph’s hand, “Aleph.” She would be jumping for joy her mere voice is enough to give him strength but it wouldn’t be the time is what she does understand.
The steel door to the outside opens, it’s light outside, an awful team for sneaking around.
Saiyah grabs Aleph firmly and rears around, he’s tossed into Asaph’s arms as she considers.
“It’d be a waste for you both to come with me.”
From where they are standing they can see the collapsed catwalk ahead of them, the armory had a direct catwalk to their location.
Should’ve never cut it down, not like I could do it now but.. Saiyah is full of regrets, they could’ve just taken stairs, she knows the other side of the armory because these are the only two fortified and patrolled buildings together, a few of the machines patrol past the doorway.
Saiyah ducks and looks to Asaph still holding Aleph confused.
“I’m going to sneak around, determine the entrance, if any of these machines can enter there is something that identifies friendly IFF, pass me the severed arm.” Saiyah speaks informatively in her demand.
Anna doesn’t question and passes it, “You’re weakened, you sure you can slip through like- usual?”
Saiyah mouths out “Course.” Before she ducks ahead, it’s already hard to look at her, but Saiyah uses the strength and speed allotted in her now decaying body, the blood wounds leave an obvious trail.
Until it doesn’t.
Saiyah doesn’t forget what she went through to train this, cowering in grime. The kind of brutality and fear that allowed her to master.
Hiding from monsters. She thinks intently as she is passed up the machines, angles anyone else could be caught from she slinks by like a ghost.
Slower than ever, yet she feels as if it’s fading.
A machine seems to notice sporadically resuming trails of blood, tails after her and even aggressively hums as if spotting her.
Saiyah has the mechanical arm gripped and is already at the door, she keeps to a wall as the machine tails after her.
She uses every ounce of this talent and ability, she feels herself flow between and like that the machine is off, she was lucky she wasn’t showing up on motion sensors.
She nears the arm to the doorway. – She quickly curses herself seeing that it doesn’t work.
“We still need Aleph!” She whispers yells aloud, back toward them.
She draws the attention of a few machines headed her way as the two peek from the doorway staring at her who seemed to have taken a peel off and lengthy way just to go left side entrance of the other building.
Anna and Asaph waltz out and begin creeping around.
Saiyah is losing it seeing how slow they are, slower than here right now.
Peeks indicate they need to hurry up, the machine she has angle of hasn’t rounded the corner of the building they are exiting but will catch a glimpse of them.
If it’s just a glimpse they can probably throw them off.
Asaph is desperately trying to get Aleph back up enough to pulse the door.
The machine….
Doesn’t notice, and they’re at the door,
The machine purely by the Grace of God it missed the few pixels it wouldn’ve seen of them skirting across it’s visual receptors by the time they had dashed across.
The machine beeped in suspicion albeit, a trail of blood as it sent a wide alert to all training bots on the network.
Thank God. Saiyah speaks as she holds Aleph’s hand and pressed it onto the door., her eyes land back onto the group, Asaph leaning Aleph over so she can use his hand in such a way.
They’re dying but they have one advantage still.
With all this training they outmatch these machines, even when sick even for vampiric standards and nearly dying.
They’re seventy time seventy times above the combat capability of machines.
They know this and are acting upon it, they get inside and frantically scan for the armory expecting to look through a maze of rooms.
With silence they coordinate and find it immediately after entering
Despite expectations it didn’t take long the instructors and builders weren’t as cruel to throw more rat racing in what the intro to the actual training is.
Still with all they’ve been through a thought forms among all.
If this training Is this difficult, can we even comprehend the Mechra.
The room to the armory is white, grey steel floor with pedastools and dark coal black weapons sitting in racks.
They listen and check, there are no machines inside, but they hear what must be an investigating machine come from outside, they quickly bounce around the room which, the hallway giving full view of it in its lead to it.
it went into that same dark-green dimly lit hallway they were entering from.
It spotted no one–
Saiyah was taking deep breaths as they ducked into the main stache of the armory by then.
As the three waltz in they’re horrified to witness a lack of standard firearms.
On the walls are unique alien weapons, they’d already done light firearms testing with unusual energy weapons, such technology wasn’t uncommon but this was entirely different, these were rifles that hummed with brutal energy.
The three looked it over.
“Special occasion?” Asaph speaks out of enough character to have Saiyah glancing him over.
His condition is bad enough to have him commenting more than he needs to and he is quick to look over the weapons giving a violet glow even amidst the light that is within the room.
Four rifles, one for each of them– Aleph won’t be needing his due to his condition.
Anna took advantage she wasn’t taking time to figure out the weapon she grabbed.
-
Hands were placed on what was the ‘D17 Pulser’, vile energy hummed with
Vampiric-cursed-energy aptly named because of how it destroys electronics, a rare weaponized energy, earning its name for the screams an artificial intelligence makes when powered by it.
And it pulsed deeply in the energy rifle, arcs and cracks it had an ambient noise that only grew louder as it was wielded, on-board.
The other two were arming themselves as well, Saiyah pressing the rifle to her chest, glancing at Aleph, seeing him weakly look up.
She bites her tongue as she feels her eyes water. “I look good?” She says to him,
Turning Anna and Asaph’s heads as the are both unaware she was speaking to Aleph, about to answer they don’t–
“You look hot posing like that with a rifle….” Is all he mouths delirious and dying, passing out again.
Asaph thumbs over the trigger of the rifle as he rolls his eyes and huffs nodding to Anna as he steps back toward the exit.
Anna gives a short laugh before nodding “Let’s move.” Her voice then quickly to sharp and quick without the wit.
Saiyah sees the two moves first, and for the first time something warm bubbles up in her chest, her and this weapon needs no magazine, but she feels refreshed with new ammunition at Aleph’s words.
Anna doesn’t need to mouth off about the machine, they click together in desperation.
“We ambush the machines before they -way exit into a murder hole.” Asaph speeds off to Anna, Saiyah mostly silent.
Anna speaks “It’s not coming back alone, it likely can calculate a high-threat level even in our current condition.” Anna speaks matter-of-factly. Asaph gives quick acknowledgement.
Aleph’s head barely bounds up enough whilst he is on Asaph’s shoulder. “Don’t bother with destroying the machines, strike the heads it’s where the transmitter is.” Aleph weakly informs.
They stack up on the walls near the exit.
“Why would we just strike the transmitters rather than the core?.” Anna speaks in confusion.
Asaph shortly realizes the genius of the idea before he dismisses it alongside Anna.
Saiyah sees a spark in Asaph’s eyes the kind she learned to recognize and motioned Anna “Trust us.” She informs Anna.
Anna is reluctant to listen, having so much time fighting alone and trust in her own reasoning she surrenders to the idea.
How the hell would he know that’s the precise place the transmitter is,? these training bots are new.
They hear several machines enter.
They tense up, Asaph has Aleph on his shoulder, this would’ve often been nothing, but he can feel the weight of it as his body is consumed by vicious nanites directed to kill vampires.
The machines stomp toward them, rifles pointed forwards and far from the chest of the machine’s, even going as far as to one-hand them due to the tightness of this corridor for them.
Aleph, Asaph and Anna keep rifles in low ready, they throw up their hands toward each other out of sight. Three.
They were accurate in the number of machines coming for them, just like their aim will be when they burst out.
The three machines are stomping forwards,
The Vampires weakened glide out, Anna from the right and Asaph holding Aleph with Saiyah from the left, they smoothly stride from both sides in a blitz.
Anna wants to sweat but can’t so she steels herself ‘Don’t miss, don’t miss.’ Is pounding through her head.
Asaph could also feel it, heightened intensity with mortality hanging ahead of him.
Asaph thumbs over the trigger of the rifle in painful anticipation he won’t be fast enough.
‘Be quick please.’ He begs himself.
Asaph feels as if he focuses, as if in the dimly lit hall not graced with the light of the armory, he can almost see the bolts.
He sees them spark out as he fired the energy beam, it arced out dancing from the barrel and turning the metal, it forced a hot amber that became burning red in the steel of the machine,
Its heat was comparable to that of the sun as it melted away the top armor plated layer.
The machines began to twitch rapidly.
whirr the sound came out violently as if mechanisms grinded themselves dull, cursed energy destroying the fabric of the machine’s code and artificial mind.
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Low end but effective He quickly thinks as his aim swaps he sees, about to fire but holding.
He already sees two more columns of light coming late and illuminating the entire room in bright purple energy that burns so hot the beam oversaturates until it’s nearly white
Anna had fired striking the head and Saiyah fired striking the rifle of the same bot, the second to the left.
Following Aleph’s first strike, they similarly struck the heads together of the second machine.
Saiyah had little worry but concern when she saw the the Pulser did the machine, quite confused.
Anna couldn’t hide the breath of relief she gave that she was much slower but not unable to keep the ambush relatively successful.
“We were out of sync.” Asaph chastised that the other two fired a bit late.
“I’m getting slower by the minute.” Saiyah defends and takes a few steps forwards looking over the three machines on the floor.
The three machines writhing around seemed to call for help but Aleph’s suggestion to strike the heads worked perfectly as they were still detected as living amongst the local machine squads roaming.
But can’t call for help.
“I shouldn’t have doubted you but how did you–?” She seeks to question Aleph, but he is far more distant now, Anna is forgetful of the situation, and quickly and desperately follows Asaph.
Asaph had broken into a sprint with Saiyah, and they are both out the door, they see an artificial sunset, and glance around this place they had been before.
‘The only cover is the buildings’ They all are quick to think, they all are filled with fear of this, with a lack of cover they needed to heavily compensate.
Anna is listening in, quicker than Asaph and even Saiyah she can immediately speak what they already can sense themselves “Twenty machines close, ten more around.” She estimates from a hazy sense, it’s usually feels more reliable
Saiyah is breathing hard when their collective realization is stated aloud, but then it cools, she looks to Aleph.
She thinks to herself ‘You haven’t died this is for you.’ And her breathing slows, out of view she goes silent.
They go silent, the others aren’t answering, they simply take her words and focus in. They can already hear the machines after all
Marching one-by-one clustered groupings, angry gears shift, vile mechanics.
They aren’t even in the main part of training. Comes to Aleph’s mind, he is weak, but he feels as if he Is coming to.
And he is. Aleph’s ability to pulse machines seems to cause tangible affect…
Asaph is wondering if Aleph even now could help them, they have a chance with all their combined strengths.
Asaph remembers how well Anna can blend in, how she can disappear out of sight, seemingly out of nowhere. The thought becomes strong as she is suddenly silent.
Asaph grips the rifle uneasily, shifting his eyes as he hears them coming, his eyes shoot around, and he catches a glance of Anna doing the same.
His eyes shoot to Anna, then to his own hands, then to a third presence that seems to be lacking in mere moments.
Saiyah is gone…
Anna notices too, she wants to say something but can’t, she has hope and a gut-feeling things aren’t going to be okay.
Asaph readies his rifle.
Theres two main buildings, an auxiliary building but the sounds of clustered squads surround them, there isn’t any one place they can mount and take cover from.
Asaph takes cold breath; he feels it in his dead lungs and he draws forth everything... Much like Aleph did he wants to find that sort of inner-desperation human’s does…and win.
Asaph slams the butt of the Pulser to his chest, Anna is saying something, but he feels his lungs move, he isn’t there to hear her.
“Contact!” Is all Anna had been saying, and she pushes her knee to the concrete, she knows whatever is inside them is nearly at the point of killing them, the impact of her knee to the ground has her eyes shut in pain.
Her finger taps the trigger helplessly, and a beam of light strikes out.
Purely by chance the column of fire and energy travels at light-speed and leaves a trail of fire across the asphalt, barreling into the machine it strikes,
digits twitching across the trigger. Anticipating a need to fire again, carrying the fear that comes from knowing the outcome of failure.
Asaph wants to scold her for a misfire but it’s lucky. ‘I am taking everything.’ Asaph is happy she can hit anything. He has no luck as he spots a machine rounding one of the buildings.
It’s tall, he can feel the size of it now, Asaph is well over six feet but in vulnerability the size of the machine is too worrying, he thunders fingers on the trigger desperate.
The machine crumbles to the ground, he holds the trigger striking the second – then third.
The weapon almost overheats, and he relents
A gust of steam blowing out the barrel like an angry storm from the Lord.
His grip on the weapon almost slipping even without recoil, he leans back as he feels the heat his sensitivity heightened.
His fingers feel like they almost burn merely from being around the heat of the beam of this gun– No his entire skeleton feels like it’s on fire.
In the latter stages of death from what he has been injected with, this is what they feel.
Anna and Asaph Sa–Saiyah still is gone…..
Anna is catching on to the utility of pulling the trigger and tugs it downwards with the last of her strength as a few more machines pop out.
The column of heat is roaring, a violent hum as she pushes it past the point of overheating until the flesh of her hands scald, past the point of lacking regeneration.
The two of them can’t stay there, they stand up and move pressing toward the group they are assailing.
Firing sporadically, occasionally singular shots or beams. Anxious and afraid their fear becomes ammunition to fight for a better position.
A machine is spotted about to fire and struck; this happens several more times
“That’s more than twenty…even my senses and intuition are dead.” Anna is proven wrong and becomes frantic wondering just how many they spotted the first time they came here.
The combat continues, a machine gets close It fires! Asaph is struck, Anna is unsure if he is struck her vision tunneled!
Asaph screams in her face “Focus!” Turning to another machine, firing a beam that melts through it.
Rounds whiz by, sparking impacts on the building behind them.
They last outside of cover purely by target acquisition and pre-firing the machines faster than they can be computed as targets capable of being fired upon.
We need to get to cover! Is a look amidst the firefight they give each other.
The sound of gunfire is rocking the world around them.
the Vampiric Cursed Energy powering a weapon that has them surviving, the slowness of a projectile weapon would’ve already had Asaph, Anna and possibly Saiyah corpses by now!
Asaph is struggling to hold onto Aleph.
Forgive me now, not in Hell! Asaph conditions determine they might escape.
“Asaph! Second catwalk! Two-o-Clock!” Asaph is thinking he heard his voice, his aim snaps to a second catwalk and strikes a beam at a machine flanking from above.
“Asaph!” He thinks he hears his voice again “Rear!”. Asaph can see a target ahead but he trusts ‘his senses’
Asaph feels a familiarity to the voice and spins, he sees only machines he struck before, he feels a jolt as he hears rounds strike through something. ‘That was Aleph’s voice!’
“You moron!” He screams realizing what Aleph had done, Aleph had taken several more hits, Aleph was coming-to.
Maybe there was reason they were still fighting! Why no Instructor was coming!
“Forget about me! Survive!” Aleph is fierce, fiercer than Asaph has ever remembered
Both of their attentions are turned after Asaph dispatched-two more targets.
Anna’s eyes blow open wide as she screams, hot metal and over-pressured heavy-grain gunpowder rounds enter her right-side.
“ANNA!” Asaph and Aleph scream in Unison, Aleph having enough recovery to scream.
Aleph is slowly coming-to…...Whatever his ability may be, it may be beneficial.
She stumbles to nearly fall.
Asaph grabs what feels like his second wind coming on the longer Aleph grips more firmly onto his shoulders hanging from his back
Asaph kicks like a mule in opposition to the direction she was falling, sending her stumbling away from him, farther from the center of all hostile directions!
Anna screams in howling pain at the force Asaph could still exert but it’s as if she feels her death slowed and an electromagnetic pulse a shock! Rip through her body!
The bones in her hip fractured but she could still hobble, she feels the microscopic anti-necrotic beings slow as the pulse ripples through her.
She’s given enough second wind to be alert!
“Flank!” Asaph shouts!
“On it!” Anna screams back amidst gunfire they barely avoid.
Asaph covers her as he strikes a target, switching and hitting another, barrel glowing chaotic energies swirling around the end as if it nears combustion.
Anna splits, she draws as much heat as she can, she pounds her feet to the ground and marches over.
She circles eagerly the building to the holding cells, clinging to the wall, hearing the sounds of Asaph firing.
She can hear a machine, screaming! She hurries. ‘They can’t die!’ She finds new kinship.
Circles and helplessly hit the trigger thrice splitting up the beam rather than focusing.
Three machines had unloaded on Aleph and Asaph, Asaph is nearly to the ground, riddled with holes and all of them drained of blood. ‘It’s not a matter of time God help us!’ She’s completely lost.
Asaph is purely running on spite and whatever God allows to happen, he grips the trigger, firing on machines sporadically as they appear.
Something indeed has been allowed to transpire, Aleph considers it must be a will of God whatever he’s done to the doors is slowly bringing him to revival, he feels weak, but his hands hold onto Asaph still on his shoulder.
This pulse has gone through Asaph, trying its best to hold back nanites within his body, slowing down what has been accelerated by extra rounds that pierced him but it’s a fading support.
Asaph’s aim doesn’t ring through for a few hits and costs him another hit. He barely struggles to not fall with Aleph on his back.
He’s feeling the barrel slack down, Asaph forces it back up level with an enemy.
A feeling in his left arm that should be there is missing A sudden sickening realization of how far the decay has gone strikes him.
He is only able to glance down a moment, his left-arm missing, but a melting mash of meat is melting on the ground an orange glow surrounding it!
Asaph screams! Roaring desperately not out of anger or vigor, not even terror.
but pure frustration at a near inevitable fate
Anna joins him in a roar
“HANG ON ASAPH! ALEPH!” Anna screams
“KEEP FIGHTING!” A voice shouts!
Anna believes it was Asaph but it was feminine and piercing as if from above and all around– That sounds like Saiyah!
“SAIYAH!?” Anna screams in desperate question, worried and furious at how they were abandoned.
They should’ve been completely culled with this situation but she notices sporadically gunfire from a direction lightens occasionally!
Amid rage, their joined shouting they can almost hear– A missing fighter among them as if she has joined them.
Several machines stop firing saving their lives purely to look for what is barely noticed as a third weaker voice from above oddly enough.
The sudden mysterious absence of Saiyah is all too taxing now that things seem slim.
Stomping is heard as machines round from behind, their aim is too good – Left around the armor – Right around the holding facility.
We’re going to die! What is this even teaching us?! Aleph and Asaph think in unison.
Asaph strikes the trigger as he huddles to the left causing a machine to collapse immediately in a crash straight down like an anvil,
he can’t even tuck and roll or sprint out the way, he’s hobbling like an old man just barely avoiding the sightlines of a machine.
Asaph and Anna can hear bullets crack as they narrowly avoid being hit purely by resilient and precision in their firing.
Anna was able to flank several, she provides a key point covered.
“Saiyah could’ve flanked better than me!” Is what she thinks, she’s seen Saiyah in a duel, she can fade out of sight with ease, Aleph may be far less useful now, but Saiyah would be a Godsend if she appeared again.
It has Anna realizing. ‘Is she sneaking around? Why is she late?’
But she is still ducking her had as rounds land near her head striking the metal of the buildings wall.
Across from Asaph who is still in the middle of it all entirely exposed and filled with more rounds than ever.
Anna only has more enemies to her south and west, she could run east knowing well enough she has enough limited speed to try and escape but refuses. She won’t run alone it this time.
This fight only has them thinking one thing.
Why! As they almost fade into the darkness of the heavy combat, sound barely filling their ears as their bodies continue to decay.
They question the validity of this training, what it will even teach them.
Is this to test their strength, the validity of who they are without their vampirism their quality and strengths without power inherent to their being? Was this designed with injury in mind?
Are the questions that cross their minds as they are consumed by a death-lingering firefight.
-
Eternia can feel her chest tighten at the view of it all
Their desperation, fighting is in view…. Delara is shaking as she sees Aleph, a screen representing the four, elsewhere the combat continues, similar sights.
Zero Candidate deaths….Possibly and hopefully this will not change....
Delara can remember being in their place now, she was in their place although it wasn't as brutal for her number on Thanatos as it is for the 144,000 here on New Persia.
“As when I had done this. Zero Candidates have made it to their checkpoint.... But we've faced no deaths” Delara’s hand is shaking, fighting all urges to break the one-way glass. Dive down to save Aleph, to bring them all, to crush her way through every machine.
Every soldier that would be sent to stop her for interrupting the training as she rescues all 144,000 candidates.
Eternia gripped her seat, staring out at the one-way glass seeing all of the simulation from it every candidate with the view akin to that of an Immortal. Giving a simple nod. “None of you will die.”
Her voice Is soft in a way Delara has heard before it has tension heighten
Delara gives pause “Are you…speaking to them?”
Eternia mouths out “Who else….”
-
Amid carnage, blood, struggling fighters, near total loss of all candidates it this voice is heard, bearing on them no strength, no healing. The Shocktroopers all over are in a desperate fight, machines given weapons and ammunition braced to kill them, but another sentence permeates in their mind.
Clarity is brought to them.
‘S2N’ is reverberating through their minds, a supernatural link exists between her and them, and it strikes their minds as they auto-translate the words of their Ruler.
“Second To None.”
-
The test exists in such a way for what they may face but here is not simply to test co-operation, it’s to completely strip them of everything, all greater strength, forcing them to survive through each other.
And to enforce why the leaders of each time were selected.
Aleph’s humanity is flaw of his modification but it is not unnoticed.
“You, learned from humans?” Eternia is suspect.
Years ago, this has taken place.
“I’ve learned a lot, about sacrifice. About purity amongst them, it has in irony sought me to seek a sacrifice to you though not one out of dishonor.”
The man clads purple armor, towering over her was a shocktrooper of the 1st generation, direct descendant of the founders.
Eternia raises an eyebrow and sights a woman behind the Shocktrooper who has visited her on Thanatos.
The darkened pillars can’t hide the radiant light.
“Just like your fathers..A human amongst my greatest, you seek to share their shame?”
“You know he’ll carry none of the humanity his mother has, no child between the two will.”
Eternia rubs a thumb under her chin. “So…that’s what you offer me.”
“You seek to change me, but I offer instead my son.”
“So easily, your father would seek to rebel, inflict grievous wound on you and seek to rebel and assassinate me, as if he could manage.” Eternia is confident, the first Shocktroopers would never allow another founding shocktrooper to do it.
The father speaks, his name the same as his later son of the future. “He will be a junior, and you will take him and he will be part of your experiment. I want my son to fight, he is fated to be a Shocktrooper–.”
Eternia hears the word fate and runs sour “There is no fate, do you think God has allowed me all this Empire, because it’s fate? It’s merely what has been allowed as always.”
Aleph-Senior answers “He….Allows you very much, doesn’t he? I fear to imagine whatever plan is in store for me as I commend my son to you.”
Eternia has one twinge “Your human wife she has come with you knowing this?”
“I convinced her, using what she has taught me, amongst humans the strong shelter the weak, those we know as pathetic.” Aleph-Senior answers.
“She’ll die before I allow you to turn her into what we are.”
“Good, she has made up her mind. Despite everything she wishes to remain human.” Aleph-Senior speaks before glancing at Eternia.
“But she pleads with you, let him be raised amongst humans, to show what is within them is not weakness.”
Eternia “Let him be influenced “for a time?” She questions.
Aleph-Senior answers with a nod.
And so, it was done.
For a time, Aleph was raised amongst humans, an extended family placed on new Persia.
His father was recalled elsewhere as the fight with the Mechra intensified, seemingly lost. His mother refusing to be turned, died on an unknown world naturally. And Aleph was prepared.
Eternia had modified him to be a counter, a foil to machines that rapidly advance. But he had flaws…
-
Now New Persia 3049
Aleph’s intensified pain was ending, Asaph was had fallen already.
Anna hadn’t been struck by more rounds she merely fell apart unable to hold on.
Anna and Asaph stood filled with rounds, their fingers fainted, their bodies about to collapse entirely, the machines were on advance.
The last two– Yes two remained.
Aleph and Saiyah took reigns, as Asaph began to collapse, as the gunfire shook the ground and nearly brought Anna and Asaph to an end.
Aleph touched the ground, his boots covered in grime, blood and sand, dust and dirt were standing and holding him up.
But Aleph was still surrounded.
The nanites were in stagnated of his system constant pulses weakening them But he himself was still weak, still lacking the full capability of his vampirism he stood.
He remembered the words they spoke, the question held in that room
He saw how Anna and Asaph lasted in this fight as he stares at his enemies.
‘By the God that has allowed us to exist in this world, we are not strong because we are vampires, purely we are as I was told chosen to be.’ Second To None It Reverbates in mind.
The Machines find no respite as they through sheer attrition they’ve all been cleared save for the direction Aleph faces, under the second cat-walk.
Footsteps thunder from it from above.
Aleph’s eyes trail in the moments before a line of guns fire upon him.
Saiyah even amidst dying, lacking any of the pulses Aleph gave has still held out, he can see half of her face is exposed, skeletalized.
The machines are drawn from him, as if even as machines they sense something far more worrying above!
Saiyah is lancing toward them, diving from a spear like above as she fires beam center-amongst all the machines.
She is falling fast, wind blowing through her ears, skin and flesh fading away, her eye sockets empty.
Her weapon is pushed to the point of over-heating whilst their barrels are pushed to the point of melting in the rapid fire they give whilst she approached.
Aleph thinks She’s too good.
Saiyah struck the ground, a sickening crack as both legs impact, she splatters but with a heated rifle, she’s sent it straight into the ground.
There’s a violent fireball and blast wave that goes outwards entirely and slices through the machines around.
It’s enough to blind Aleph.
Aleph is barely standing, and seeks to aim.
He can hear crashes, grunts and whipping shadows in now a cloud of smoke blinding.
-
Saiyah is fighting, the machines have no such weakness to smoke but her talent to disappear that even works on a machine is doubled–no Quintupled here, she isn’t even identified anymore and the machines panic.
They enter a moment of attempted retreat yet hands that shouldn’t be able to pummel strike through metal.
Grinding flesh, blood sprays, it’s all her own wounds as she whips through the machines, decaying bones.
Saiyah’s leg’s are barely there to stand on, and her arms no longer ready to use weapon a lack of regeneration as her forearms be fleshy exposed sharpened bones
They pummel through the hot-radioactive cores of the machines basking her in a warm greenish glow.
Aleph had imagined this would’ve been a moment when he stood against all odds and saved the three.
Saiyah instead burst out of the smoke, a whiplash of force that has caused a hollow circle of the smoke instead to surround her, she is center of it all a roar, bits of machine surround her.
She’s much stronger than realized!
She isn’t deterred, close combat even in her state isn’t worrying her.
She’s fully expecting to die, she saw Aleph stand and jump into action, she’s going to get him out– get all three of them out, and they’ll succeed without her.
The last machine is impaled by both arms so brutally her entire arms are scrapped off, and what little blood remains in her form is nearly gone.
She’s watching it all fade to black again.
But she sees an object of love carrying one– then two, then he comes and carries her.
Saiyah thinks to herself. If they die together, carried by Aleph it’d be well enough for her to accept such a death.
But death never came for them.
Aleph took the weapons, took their bodies.
The Ambient pulse stagnated the decaying nanites.
He trekked sluggishly with stolen strength back into that desert.
Aleph’s mind was fragged.
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