Author's Notes:
Pilot new story.
This story is not affiliated in any way to previously written stories XCOM: Conquest and XCOM: Reconquest. This is a reboot with the only similarity in several recycled character names and certain traits. Both above mentioned stories will be taken down in due time.
Upon the burning heep of rubble, the creature crawled with all the strength it had left in its body to get out. This creature was sentient, it could think, it could walk upright, it could feel, and feel too much thanks to its innate gift. No matter how much it's masters deemed its own race a failure in their eyes.
When it landed, it could feel the terror channeling from the fleeing sentients of this single moon planet. They looked upon them as harbingers of death, its own brethren looked at these "Humans" with equal disdain.
Whatever puny resistance the humans gathered, be it single or in groups, its brethren could read their cerebra activity, telling them what the humans' next move was. All they saw were clumsy thoughts amix the pollution of fear amplified by sending negative brainwaves back at them.
The creature could as the humans termed it, "read them like a book.".
It was like any other day of harvesting specimens for the elders.
Or so they thought.
The overseer relayed to each and everyone of them the existence of the strongest resistance power on this planet. They called themselves "XCOM".
It had been out to harvest more isolated humans along with its brethren and the disguised serpent allies. When the familiar brain pattern matching the overseer's encryptions turned up. XCOM had come to fight them.
And fight them they did. But it turned out to be a little better than the local armed resistance. They moved faster, fought harder. But in the end, they were just as equally flawed in the eyes of the sectoids. And yet, the elders said they possessed more potential than them.
It was unfair!
It only served to enrage it further, and its rage passed to its brethren. Increasing their rage together in a collective hatred for humanity. They desecrated the corpse of these XCOM humans against the orders to abduct alive, the elders only needed some, not all.
A psychic wail echoed out into the beyond as one of their brethren fell. But how? All the XCOM had perished. Another psychic wail occurred, relatively close to it followed by another and another and another. Its brethren were falling just as quickly as the humans.
What was happening?
The serpents received their plee to aid them but out from the dark a projectile penetrated the skull of the first serpent. The serpents returned fire in the general direction as well as the tiniest of movements they could sense better than it could. Serpents made up what they lacked in physical traits, and they covered the serpents by knowing what the enemy would do next, and more importantly where they were. What the serpents couldn't sniff out, they could sense.
When it first concentrated to find the source of their demise, it sensed a very distorted presence like and yet… unlike the humans. The assailant's mind wasn't for once thinking the same thing as its brethren. It wasn't shivering in fear at what was this unknown enemy; them. It was feeling, happy, joyful, liberated from its chains. But that wasn't all it felt from this unknown assailant of its kind.
It felt-... it read the terrible things it wanted to do to it and its fellow "sectoids".
And for the first time, its thoughts became scrambled with the terrible things the assailant wanted to do that it felt fear for its own life. And in doing so, it had unintentionally relayed that fear onto its brethren who shivered with equal measure.
(Squeal) Another psychic wail occurred and the last two of its own kind had finally perished. It was all alone now against this enemy unknown.
It did what its long-suppressed instinct told it to do. Run.
And so it ran, it ran as fast as its two legs could carry it. But carry it far it did not. Instead it stumbled upon some junk and accidentally discharged its weapon at some sort of explosive chemical tank. The tank blew and knocked it out temporarily. When it came too, the dread returned to its senses as it spotted a shadow on the far end of this "street". It crawled its way back in this weird fashion because its leg had twisted in the wrong angle and purple blood trailed from where it displaced from.
(Tap) (tap) (tap) (tap) The rhythm of the assailant's heels unnerved it the closer he got.
In the darkness of the night, it could see the glow from the burning rubble luminate two purple orbs that were eyes at it.
The assailant, stood before it. Not showing, not giving any intentions of killing it nor doing those terrible things he thought about.
Name, a means of identifying one another. That was how one human distinguished each other from another. Whereas itself and its brethren always knew who was who.
Did this assailant have a name? Though it dared not peek again in his mind, the human was just begging him to do so.
-Horus.-
The name of this….. human was Horus. Standing 5'9, white hair trauma induced, purple irises, donned in the combat skin of the XCOM resistance.
It plied further since it meet no resistance from Horus's subconscious.
Horus's presence in XCOM was not a welcomed feeling. Fear, the humans too feared him. They feared his prowess, they feared his intellect, they feared his mentality. They feared him, and yet…..
They needed him more than ever.
"Because the human to x-ray kill ratio is not exactly on their side. Little buddy." Horus answered its query like it read its mind "like a book". It backed away against the rubble double the speed than when it tried to escape with. It's plasma wristgun had been destroyed in the blast, leaving it helpless to defend against Horus.
*(static)…. Raptor Raptor do you copy? This is Central. Give us your status. Over.*
A primitive radio wave communicator on the Human Horus burst to life.
Horus sighed. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be right with you. Hello, Bbrrrraaadford." Horus dragged it intentionally which was against efficiency.
*Horus? Where's Raptor Act-.*
"Dead."
*Then patch me through to-.*
"Dead too."
*How many of you are left?!*
"Just me. Oh! And Mr "grey with big black eyes" is here too."
*What? You caught one?*
"I wouldn't exactly call it caught, this guy just-…"
*Call an extraction team and prep the containment fields! We've got a live one!* Central got side tracked and dispatched orders within the control room to send out the appropriate party to capture their possible first fresh specimen.
"Hellllloooo? Brad's? It's not nice to leave a person hanging."
*Memphis-One. Secure the specimen and await further instructions.*
"…. Excuse me. Brads?" It could sense an ugly feeling rising deep within Horus's conscience and shivered from where it was.
Horus looked at it and smiled deviously.
*Secure the specimen. That's an order!*
(Click) Horus racked the slide of his handgun and pointed it at the head of it. Causing it to freeze in panic.
*Horus… Whatever you're thinking of doing….. put the gun down.*
"Yunno, Brads. Since you unchained me to get fresh air, and send more "fresh meat" to die. While I meet little "grey and naked" over here, you've been pretty bossy over me. Remind me again, who pulls the strings here."
*Horus…. Please-…. Please leave the specimen-* (Bang)
Bradford had no time to finish as a bullet spun out and blew the brains out of it. The last proper specimen they could have had till the next reported abduction.
*… Goddamn you, Horus.* Central could only curse his name.
"You keep me around to kill X-rays, and that's what I'll do. You want a specimen? You're gonna have to get some boys or girls that'll last a bit longer than these hopeless fools. Yunno what your favourite trooper was doing, Brads? On the first sight of trouble, he ditched the rest. Ditched. He didn't even have the proper courtesy to say I quit and who takes command after him. He ran off like a bitch into an unseen onslaught, followed with the men he was responsible for dying one after another... Some elite troopers, these chosen of yours are." Horus mocked him further.
*Voodoo Three-One…. Pick this sunnovabitch up now.* Central no longer wished to speak on the comms and hailed Big Sky to extract him.
*Aye Aye, sir. Heading to previously established coordinates. Over.*
Though Bradford was not there to see it. A very wide grin appeared on Horus's face, giving evidence to his wayward attitude against authority and mischief he sowed upon the soldiers he should have called comrades. But they exhibited a foolish bravado in thinking they could take on the puny looking sectoids and agile slendermen called thin-men. But that wasn't all they were thinking.
The leader of Raptor conspired to kill Horus for all the lives of his fellow comrades he put in danger for his own enjoyment. And if anything was good enough to provoke him to take action against them, it was knives pointed in his direction.
So he sat this engagement out and watched as the foolish Raptor Actual got himself killed along with his squad. It was almost embarrassing to watch the sectoids and thin-men kick their asses.
But now, they were not a problem any longer. They were history, just like Raptor Squad whom he was attached to.
As were all the other dozens of squads that preceeded them. Dissolved.
Not by his hands, but by their own inability to stand up to their extraterrestial foe on their own.
And even after how Horus disobeyed Central where others would get court martialled, Horus knew the way things worked. Even after he humiliated Central on air and toyed with their invaluable specimen for Vahlen. They would still keep him around.
Because they had no other to turn to.
Only the unpredictable monster of men, "Cheshire" Horus.