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Stella Vir: First Flight
Price of Freedom

Price of Freedom

They begin to feel the floor trembling and hear creaks in the walls as the ship begins its first ascent since being assembled. Around the cramped room are many nervous faces, some never having faced combat before, others fearing today might be their last or worse their loved ones last. There is a despondent atmosphere circulating the room, before Razzo can give it much thought, handles drop down from the ceiling and everyone almost as if it’s intuitively raises their energy bracelet upwards so that the handle will adjust to their height similarly to an old subway train. Razzo throws his hand up and grabs onto the handle, meanwhile Dre struggles to grab the one above it with its one arm. Dre ends up jumping up and grabbing it, with the handle slowly descending until the Automatons feet touch the floor. The vehicle continues to move forward at a sluggish pace to the edge of the hangar as the doors fully open. It rests for a moment at the edge of the hangar and a voice is heard over the connected speaker system booming throughout the collection of ships.

The voice begins: “Ahoy this is your captain speaking, some of you might know me as Jefe, others might not. I honestly do not care if you know me and do not care who you are, but today we will be departing on our first flight of this collection of junk. The weather for today is partly cloudy with a high level of radiation, as for the mission the third channel on your helmets will let you know exactly what’s going on”.

Just as Jefe finishes talking before the speaker system can even go offline the monstrosity of a ship lunges forward as it sharply descends down the hill. As the vehicle descends its magnetic field is flipped sending it upward into the air beginning with its nose and ending with its rear. Then the thrusters are turned on for assisting with balance as well as changing directions.

“IT FLIES WOOOOOO LET’S GO GET THESE ASSHOLES!!” - yells Jefe not realizing the speakers aren’t turned off.

Razzo asks quietly: “I wonder who the assholes are the people we’re saving or the Minerau?”

“Don’t be an idiot of course he means the people we’re saving the Minerau don’t have assholes” - says Dre with a confident tone.

Dre says to him: “Wouldn’t that have been the easiest way to tell everyone what the mission is?”

“Does it really matter for us? Like we’re just going to go wherever everyone else goes so we’ll be fine”

The ship moves slowly throughout the air as it takes it half an hour to travel to the colosseum. The time goes by slowly and gruelingly for everyone in the ship as they wait impatiently for the time to pass counting down the minutes and seconds until they reach their unknown fate . There’s not a lot of chatter, some are talking to close friends that got the same assignment as them, some are trying to crack some jokes but being shushed in the process, and some are praying to just get through the day.

Even with the slow passage of time before they know it Jefe’s voice is heard on the ship's speakers: “Okay you wankers who’s ready for the time of their life?!? Leave your nervousness with the ship and get hyped because folks we’re about to begin our descent! Now is not the time for cowardice, now is your time to leave a stamp in the tomes of history!! NOW WHO’S WITH ME?!?”

A loud roar of cheers is heard throughout the massive machine, people begin stomping their feet and getting antsy rocking the vehicle slightly. The atmosphere quickly shifts throughout the rooms with the nervousness being whisked away through the cracks and crevices only to be replaced with astounding confidence and pride.

After the roaring subsides Jefe yells one last line into the microphone: “FOR HUMANITY, FOR THE FUTURE!!”

A resounding yell echoes throughout the vehicle as everyone screams: “TOGETHER!!!”

The doors all around the edges of the room open up leading to large suction like tubes that people stand in which are meant to spit you out of the machine for the quickest exit. As this occurs everyone rushes out chanting and stomping various battle cries on their way out. In the midst of the commotion Razzo loses track of Izabela and grabs Dre only to get squished in the crowd trying to get out. Then next thing they know Dre gets shoved into the tube and sent off, Razzo takes one last look at his friend who is a few spots behind him before the vacuum of the tunnel sucks his body into the tunnel system. The tunnel twists and turns and loops around like a rollercoaster not knowing where you’ll end up. One could get very sick from all the commotion if they were nervous but adrenaline was pouring throughout all of them along with adrenaline gas being sprayed throughout small creases in the tunnels turning confident warriors into downright barbaric savages that won’t stop till the enemy is vanquished. With the helmets they were wearing helping them keep their heads in a coherent state for the most part and helping keep each person focused on what they needed to do. By the time Razzo started to feel a bit more like himself after consuming so much gas he was on his way being shot out the side of the ship. He falls through the sky and belly flops onto the ground, the impact of the fall with the star in his stomach causes a shudder in the ground and makes a small crater around him. Razzo takes a moment to remain on the ground gasping for air after getting winded by such an impact. It’s a short lived experience as someone grabs him.

Razzo looks up and a random person who landed next to him on one bent knee and arms crossed.

“Get up, soldier, now's not the time to rest”. - says the random warrior.

Razzo rolls over onto his back and sits up before dusting himself off: “I was just taking a moment”.

He turns back to the soldier to see a spear had been thrown through his chest and he begins to crystallize similarly to what was happening to Desai. The warrior yells in agony and howls as he generates a ball of energy and throws it in the direction of the Minerau before the crystallization finishes hardening his fingers with shards of rocks and he collapses to the ground shattering in a dozen pieces. Razzo looks at the human remains that shattered like ice on the ground only to be red blocks without even a smidgen of blood gushing from them. He looks around beyond that to see that he had fallen in the middle of battle with energy being tossed from both sides. From the rows in the stadiums Minerau soldiers are piling into the main pit in the middle of the colosseum right where the ship is spitting people out. It’s as if the arena is seeing its first gladiator duel in millennia but without all the cheering from the stands and more so painful screams of creatures perishing on both sides.

Razzo yells to the people around him: “We need to make a circle so that people can drop in safely and slowly expand!!”

The people around don’t notice him yelling on the field and waving his arms around as there’s a loud roar coming from the Minerau as well as the humans dropping into battle. Razzo starts grabbing people and having them form a line back to back with someone else. Soon others land in, look around and see the circle forming so instinctively they flock to it hoping for some sense of security. Some get hit with spears and various projectiles before they can make it in but slowly and steadily the circle expands creating layers of warriors, some creating massive energy shields, others having close range weapons they fabricated out of their energy, and others creating various projectiles that they can hurl towards the Minerau. Then once the circle expands to half the size of the arena, one by one people start dropping into the circle. After 10 minutes the circle had quadrupled in size and although some would get knocked out or injured or killed the circle became big enough that most of the people were landing within it and joining the circle. The Minerau kept piling into the arena and moving towards the middle of the colosseum. They kept trying to stop the circle from growing as well as trying to overwhelm the people with their mineral spears. The spears could send shards of spikes into the ground when the tip of the spear would get slammed into the ground. The people in the circle would be forced to counter this by either maneuvering out of the way or throwing energy balls to destroy the crystal shards or using their weapons to destroy them as they sprung up in the ground before them. Razzo looks around from the inside to see where Dre is, and he sees Dre with a small group surrounded by Minerau across the colosseum. Razzo thinks to himself how the best method to get over there would be, he goes up to two people in the circle and asks them: “hey can you guys give me a boost and get me over there” pointing at where Dre and the small group are.

“What if we blow your legs off?” - one of the people asks.

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Razzo reassures them: “Don’t worry I don’t have real legs anyway! Now we can’t waste time. Can you do it or not?”

The two warriors look at each other and nod their heads: “You’re going to need you to jump a little bit so we can add to your momentum”.

Razzo nods his head and does as he’s told by jumping up and as he jumps the two people load up their energy fists hitting him with them at the same time sending him flying through the air towards Dre.

As he’s sent hurling through the air he hears the two warriors telling each other: “I didn’t realize we let handicapped go…”

Razzo fails to hear the rest of the sentence as he’s sent flying through the air and out of earshot. During his brief flight he wonders to himself who of the two warriors are referring to as handicapped and why are they here. As his mind is preoccupied he doesn’t notice where he’s landing and crashes into Dre knocking the robot over.

Dre yells at Razzo who’s sitting on top of him: “You really couldn’t figure out a different way to come here?”

“Why hello there friend, how's your day going?” - says Razzo looking over his shoulder still sitting on Dre’s back.

“Would you kindly… GET YOUR ASS UP?!?” - yells Dre underneath him.

Razzo gets up and helps Dre up: “Did ya miss me? Where’s Izabela?”

Dre points to one of the people in the group trying to defend themselves with a small group from overwhelming Minerau surrounding them. Razzo grabs Dre and they scurry across the battlefield ducking and dodging various weapons coming their way. As they get closer to the circle Razzo draws energy into his fist and spreads it through his arm as he uses it as a small shield to protect his head as he runs through two Minerau shattering half of them each before reaching the edge of the circle with Dre a step behind him. The circle quickly opens up and closes as the two of them enter it. Razzo takes a moment to look around the circle and his eyes land on Izabela, who even in the heat of battle handles herself with a level of grace. Razzo glances down and notices that there’s blood running from one of her legs. He rushes over to her and pulls her back into the group, he takes a closer look at the wound and sees an ice shard in her thigh.

Razzo yells in a panicked tone: “She needs a medic, guys she needs a medic!”

Izabela touches his arm as she’s lies down and says: “It’s okay don’t forget the mission”

He turns back towards the oncoming hoard trying to get to them and rushes out in front of the group. Razzo draws energy from his bracelet creating a meteor hammer out of it, similar to what he saw TD make and starts spinning it above his head. As the weapon picks up speed and continues to get longer, Razzo spins it higher and higher to keep the same diameter of the spinning circle. After the meteor hammer gets about four meters above Razzo’s head he takes a step forward and lets out a yell as he drops the meteor hammer. The meteor hammer whooshes through the air and slices anything it comes in contact with in half. It slices through the Minerau horde, but also hurts many of the humans there as well, those that were lucky got sent flying back and those that weren’t got split in half at the torso. After completing two circles around him Razzo sharply pulls in his off hand and the meteor hammer slices through the air quickly and flies into his hand as he catches it without breaking a sweat. There are now no more Minerau in their path as well as half the people around were now either on their butts or were severed in half.

Dre comes up to Razzo to get his attention: “Come on we gotta get everyone to the main circle”

Razzo turns around and sees in horror what his weapon did and how many people he hurt. During the period where there were no Minerau around the people within the group helped those that survived up and they together limped over to the circle that opened up.

Izabela, while lying on the ground looks up at him: “You did what you had to do, there probably wouldn’t have been another way to get out of that situation alive”.

Two medics rush over within the circle and isolate her spreading shard wound.

One of the medics says: “We have to get her back to camp or she might lose this leg or worse”.

Izabela silences the medic: “WE ARE NOT ABANDONING THE MISSION!”

Razzo takes a knee next to her and asks: “So what do we do now?”

“We need to create a ramp into the ground and get the people that are below the surface out of the catacombs”.

She looks over at Dre and says: “Can you calculate where they are below the ground?”

Dre slowly nods its head. The Automaton sticks its hand out and scans the ground around it.

Dre says: “They’re just to the left of the circle”

Razzo exclaims: “Who’s left my left or your left!?”

Dre rolls its eyes: “Sheesh I wonder who’s perspective I would be talking from mine or yours”.

Izabela yells out in pain and musters up the voice to say: “Stop bickering like kids and grab some people to make a ramp to get them”.

Razzo goes and grabs the nearest couple of people in the circle and asks them: “How do you create a ramp out of nothing?”

Three of them look at him confused then Dre says: “I need you three to make a hole that people can walk up”.

One of the three people gives Dre a thumbs up and begins pulling energy out of their wrist and cutting a line down in the ground. Then the other two people nod their heads and once the first person finishes their line the other two begin to cut two lines perpendicular to the first line that was made and at various depths of the ground until the lines come out of the ground.

Two of them grab one line and a girl asks Razzo to help her with the line.

Razzo asks: “What do I do?”

The girl yells into his ear: “PULL!!”

Together the four of them pull the lines and the ground shifts and slowly they all pull the ground out creating a hill of dirt and sand while also creating a pathway into the catacombs. After which the three people sit down from exhaustion and lean on the pile of dirt they dug up. Razzo descends into the catacombs with Dre and sees as the people there are mining minerals and in a state of despair and malnourishment.

“Quick everyone up the ramp, we're getting you all out of here!” - exclaims Razzo

Before he can even finish, people begin to rush to the exit. Not having seen the sun in a couple months they squint as they get out of the catacombs. Izabela calls over the ship with her signal and as the ship gets lower it drops down magnetic cables and just by grabbing on they reverse your magnetic field shooting you up into the ship quickly and safely. As people get out and fill up the ship it leaves full and evacuates the area. Izabela sends a signal to the next ship to come. Before Razzo gets out of the catacomb he notices in the distance behind the people are Minerau trying to rush towards them as their sparkly mineral armor shines from a distance.

Razzo turns to Dre: “Get everyone out of here and call me when they’re all out”.

Dre nods its head and begins helping out all the various people out of the catacombs. Razzo focuses his energy on the horde rushing towards the prisoners at the end of the tunnel. From the smaller tunnels there’s a few Minerau but some have been pickaxed to pieces by the freed people. Others have had tunnels collapsed on them and flocks of people are gathering at the entrance trying to get out of the nightmare they were stuck in as fast as possible. Razzo rushes against the flow and finally separates himself from the last of the people trying to get to the exit. An idea comes to mind so Razzo quickly gets to work pulling energy from his wrists. He coils the chaotic energy strands around his hands first and then quickly around his body. Razzo then smears the coils creating a layer of energy around himself to the best of his ability. Once reassured that there’s enough energy to protect himself he lunges forward and sprints towards the Minerau running at him. As they run at each other in full force the collision of the impact causes the ground to shudder and send him flying back down the tunnel in the direction he came from but likewise sends the Minerau back that didn’t get obliterated on impact. As the ground continues to rumble the ceiling of the tunnel begins to crack and slowly cave in on this portion of the colosseum floor. Razzo quickly gets up and rushes to the exit trying to avoid the ceiling from caving in on him. Just as he sees Dre on the slope of the exit he sticks out his arms jumping forward but doesn’t make it as the ceiling nearly falls on him with two warriors going in at the last second to hold it up for him. Razzo quickly crawls out of the spot as the ceiling finally collapses and the two warriors fall next to him and begin panting from using so much energy.

Razzo climbs out of the catacombs and sees Izabela still lying in the circle with the two medics around her.

He goes up to her and says: “Come on, give me your hand we gotta get you out of here before your wound gets any worse”.

She replies with a shaky voice: “Not until the mission is complete…”

A fifth ship comes around and loads up the escapees as the ship fills up the sky quickly gets a lot darker as if an eclipse had occurred or night had suddenly swallowed all light coming from the sun. They looked up trying to find the sun but even then it was hidden behind the clouds or so it seemed…