Five Years Ago
The Absolution was parked on a grassy hill a mile away. It was overlooking a palace that served as Lascaux's political base of operations.
"Nice place, Brevon. Very fancy." Serpentine was idly disassembling and cleaning out his plasma pistols on autopilot as he said this. The parts were matte-black, with a translucent carbon alloy finish. He was curled up in his seat next to Brevon, an expectant smirk on his face. Brevon was standing at the front of the bridge, hands tied behind his back as he studied the virtual schematics of the palace, and only grunted in response to Serpentine's statement.
"So how are we playing this? Do we surround them with guns and robots until they give up and lick your boots? Do we flush them out with flesh-eating gas and pick off the runners? Or do we go in from the floor and raise all kinds of hell? I liked that last one when we tried it back on Iscariot. Tshaaa, this suspense is killing me already."
Brevon glanced over at Serpentine, noting the childlike glee the bloodthirsty mercenary had on his face as he listed off the warlord's past invasions. It had been many years since Serpentine had been enthralled to Brevon, ten long years that felt like days in his memory, and the conditioning was still holding up. Very good.
Brevon cleared his throat. "As tempting as these sound, I have no desire to be personally involved this time around."
The clicks and clacks of metal parts sliding smoothly into their designated places stopped abruptly.
"Say again, Brevon? Could've sworn you just said you were sitting this one out."
"You heard correctly, Serpentine. This...tepid excuse of a planet is somehow the capital of the Altamira galaxy. Lascaux controls the economy, the laws and the political capital, and yet I am certain if I were to get involved, this would be over in mere minutes. No. This is not worth my time."
"Yeah, uh, I hear a lot of words, but there's a reason we cased out this galaxy for weeks."
"Precisely. Which is why you are going to clear out this palace on your own."
The initial confusion spilled over into a mounting sense of elation. Serpentine felt his mouth curl upwards into a shark-like grin.
"Tshaaaaa! You know just what to say to make this interesting, boss! What are my orders?"
Brevon turned to face Serpentine fully, matching his grin with a reserved, sinister smile.
"Your target is the minister, Tristan Rainier. Search and destroy, Serpentine," Brevon said, enunciating each word slowly. "Search and destroy. Kill everyone in your way."
Present Day
Serpentine's eyes flew open and he started screaming as his body convulsed in pain. The agony was sickening and disorienting in its totality, he couldn't do anything and it just wouldn't stop, no, he might just die this time aaah aaaaaarrgh
And then it stopped, just as soon as it started. Not daring to believe it was over after he had been through this tired song and dance so many times that he had lost count over the months, Serpentine slowly slithered out of his bed, sick with anticipation. A minute later, it happened; a bout of nausea, followed by a violent coughing fit that nailed Serpentine to the wooden floor, up until he coughed up blood. Only then did Serpentine have the strength to stand upright. The haze of disorientation faded away as he took deep, shuddering breaths until he could make out his surroundings and remember where he was.
He was in a bedroom on the second floor. The bedsheets he slid out of were in disarray from his trashing around, and there were spots of dried blood around the bed and on the sheets from his previous episodes where he was too weak to do anything but feel sorry for himself. There was a bookshelf in one corner of the room stacked with textbooks about engineering, materials science and the history of engineering. Alongside these bloated textbooks were mundane fantasy stories and personal journals that registered as white noise when Serpentine tried to read them. There was a dresser with clothes he had no use for and a desk with blueprints he had no interest in. And in the middle of the north wall was a window that opened out to the….. argh what did they call this place again, this planet sucks… ah, right, the Shuigang landscape. In the middle of what passed for their spring. Snow was melting on the trees and the ground, and non-sentient animals were coming out of hiding. Good for them.
Serpentine was starting to feel the dull throb of a headache coming on. He muttered darkly as he slid over to the desk, picked up a cloth with his teeth, dropped it on the patch of blood on the floor, and wiped it around with his tail. He left it there and lightly butted the door open with his head.
It had been a year and a half since Serpentine had fell out of the Dreadnought after being defeated by a couple of no-name brats who just wouldn't die. The mere thought of it made him so angry that he tried to punch the wall. As he did not have arms or hands to accomplish the task with, the reaction was modified to smacking the wall with his head before he realized that was what he was doing. Stars erupted across his vision, and the dull throb was now well and truly a headache. Serpentine cursed and shook himself angrily, his muttering taking on a new tone.
He didn't remember the fight itself, but he vividly remembered getting stabbed by Brevon to trigger a 'contingency plan', sitting there at the brink of death until his enemies came along, and the immediate aftermath where he slithered out of his oversized armor and was greeted with the sight of hundreds or thousands of destroyed machines and robot parts littering the ground alongside the few hundred or so dead soldiers. This did not affect Serpentine in the slightest, but the crushing sense of defeat when he realized he had lost his arms certainly did.
The problems started a couple of months after he had got himself together enough to start trying to contact Brevon. Every couple of weeks or months, Serpentine would see numbers in his head and then be treated to episodes of violent convulsions, followed by a coughing fit. The first time it happened, he thought he would die (and still did whenever it happened). He had no idea if it was linked to the loss of his arms, but as it was, the randomness of the episodes had him on edge every time he tried to go to sleep.
In the meantime, Serpentine had went from place to place within Shuigang, stealing food, tools and parts that would be useful for rebuilding his gear. For about six months now, he was currently squatting in the house of a 60-something panda engineer who was far too trusting for his own good and lived a fair distance away from civilization. The panda had taken Serpentine in right after finding him in the middle of an episode. He fed Serpentine, looked after him and told him stories about his job and family while he worked on a project.
As thanks, Serpentine repaid his hospitality a week later by slitting his throat with a rusty knife and dumping his body into a nearby river. This task was made annoyingly hard by the distinct lack of arms and the fact that the panda was a big eater who was heavier than Serpentine by at least 200 pounds. And he bled a lot, so much that even months after cleaning up, Serpentine could still see the dried blood on the floor if he looked hard enough. Screw him, though. His stories were mind-numbingly boring anyway, and Serpentine knew that allowing himself to get soft would jeopardize his mission.
So said, he went downstairs, desperately wishing he could clutch his own head with his own hands as he rounded the staircase and moved to his impromptu workbench that used to be the guy's living room. There was a window in the west wall. The remains of his arms and a mess of mechanical parts were laid out on the bench, alongside his dented helmet and guns. For some reason, the blueprints for his arms were etched into Serpentine's head, even though he was fairly sure he had never once asked Brevon how the arms worked. He just knew what to do, and before he acknowledged the action, he had already picked up a wrench and small hammer with his tail and started working.
Five Years Ago
An hour of prep work and five minutes of working his way through a side entrance, Serpentine was in the atrium of the palace, well past the security. It was a stunning sight by most people's definitions, and Serpentine allowed himself to be impressed. The atrium was packed with people, mostly bulls, moose and mountain goats with the occasional minority, walking briskly from place to place. The floor had the Coalition of Planets logo etched in the middle, and the double staircase had velvet embedded in the steps and opened out to a balcony with a set of nine-foot high metal double doors. There were several skylights, and the morning sun illuminated the cream-colored columns and walls with a radiant orange glow that gave the palace a positively regal air.
Suddenly bored with the spectacle, Serpentine nonchalantly pulled the pin on an incendiary grenade and stuck it into the pocket of a brown-haired bull who looked vaguely important as the intercom came to life and a female voice made an announcement.
"Attention, citoyens et visiteurs de Lascaux, nous vous remercions de visiter le Palais du Parlement, si vous soyez ici pour affaires ou en tournée. Si vous êtes perdu, s'il vous plaît demander à notre sécurité merveilleuse et ils vous pointera dans la bonne direction. Merci, et bonne journée."
At the end of the announcement, the regal air had melted away in place of chaos and disorder. People were screaming as the conflagration from the explosion spread, hungrily moving from person to person and blazing away at the unwilling victims. In the space of seconds, the combined scents of charred flesh and burnt hair permeated the air. Serpentine whistled an upbeat spacefarer's tune and slithered up the stairs as the combat suit whirred to life and slapped his twin plasma pistols into his hands.
As he approached the double doors, a mountain goat with a white mane standing in front of the doors noticed his approach and raised his oversized pistol, yelling "Geler, serpent!" Serpentine grinned widely and pulled the triggers in response. His plasma pistols boomed as he blasted the goat with blue shots, knocking him back with the force of a hammer each time.
The last two shots connected at the same time and blew him through the double doors, the force denting the marble floor and confounding the five guards who had been about to bust through the doors. Not missing a beat, Serpentine switched his pistols to full automatic in the half-second of incomprehension and shot at the guard in the middle with pink plasma, fanning out towards the guards who were fumbling to get their weapons ready. The timing gears rumbled like a fan on full blast, and in the blink of an eye, six guards were dead on the floor with sizzling plasma wounds.
The pistols were rapidly blowing off steam through the exhaust ports, and Serpentine breathed in deeply, savoring that earlier jolt of adrenaline as he stood back to admire his handiwork. Then, invigorated, he rushed through the double doors and over the dead bodies, eager to finish the job.
Fifteen Years Ago
Time moved at fast forward as Serpentine beat a hasty retreat from the ten-story Coalition of Planets embassy at two in the morning, made it home, and tried unsuccessfully to fall asleep.
The next day, he woke up feeling gloomy and sluggish. Serpentine ran through the conversation that had placed him at the embassy as he left his tinderbox apartment. He remembered not being convinced by this oversized insect who had suddenly approached him in the bar during the drunken cacophony of happy hour and offered him a job. Too smug for his own good.
"Okay, so why me and not some other jabroni? I already got a job and I'm happy with it. I don't do hit jobs."
Half-truth, really. He was working as a middleman, a go-between that negotiated deals between low-level gangs whose names he immediately forgot as soon as he was done with them. Bad pay, negotiations always felt one misstep away from a gang war, and Serpentine hated the job and would rather be doing something honest. But hiring a snake for honest work was like voluntarily hiring an one-handed man for construction; it just wasn't done. If he only had a pair of arms, that could change in short order, but that needed a hell of a lot of money he didn't have.
The green man made contemplative noises. He cut a rather cliche revolutionary figure with the big billowing cape and legionary armor, but fell short with the ridiculously long eyebrows and big forehead. Serpentine couldn't have cared less about his sob story about having been driven out of his planet by the Chasers and wanting revenge and blah blah, he didn't trust him to be good on his word.
"Tell me, how much money do you make from your job, Serpentine."
Serpentine grimaced.
"...Twenty thousand credits a year, if I'm lucky." And if he survived to collect that money in the first place. "But look, I like my job, I like being alive, and I like having a conscience. So you can take your offer elsewhere…what did you say your name was again?"
Eyebrow cock. "Arktivus Brevon. And if I may be frank, this is hardly a liveable wage."
"I get by." Serpentine gritted the words through his teeth, mad because in truth, Brevon had struck a nerve. He lived in a matchbox of an apartment, always being hounded for rent and never having money for much except basic living.
"Mmmhm. What a shame that a man such as you should have to be content with 'getting by'. The way you conduct yourself, you would be a valuable asset to anyone who could see the raw talent you have."
Brevon leaned forward, one arm on the table.
"I am prepared to pay you two hundred thousand credits for this one job. I understand that you are a man of principles, and therefore you do not ever need to see me again if you do not desire it. All you would have to do is go to the Coalition of Planets embassy and plant a bomb. I will worry about what happens after that."
Serpentine blinked. Two hundred K for a singular job was tempting. With that money, he could start making plans to get himself in order, stop dealing with the criminal element here, maybe move to another planet and start thinking about a new pair of arms. It was tempting as hell. But he just couldn't bring himself to say yes. He licked his lips before answering.
"Look, there's a hundred people in this bar who'd do that for way less than two hundred k's and wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it, but you beelined for me first. Why? What makes me special? Why not just do all that yourself? And even if I didn't care about your reasons, you're still asking me to plant a bomb. A bomb. In the Coalition embassy. I got nothing against the Coalition, and that blood is gonna be on me no matter how much money you throw at me."
Brevon drank a bit of his red wine.
"I've been looking at you for a month now. People here say they've known you for four years, and in that time, you've not killed a person, and you've, ah, middle-manned for seventy gangs here at least. It takes integrity to spend this much time with the criminal element and still have your moral compass. I value integrity and trustworthiness over all else, and while I could in fact do what you're suggesting, I would not be able to trust any of these criminals to get the job done, or that they wouldn't betray me after the job was finished. As well, as a snake, you would be able to go places most people could not. You, put simply, are a diamond in the rough. And I lack the resources to do this on my own."
Serpentine stared obliquely at Brevon. And then he started laughing in his face.
"I'm actually flattered that you apparently think so highly of me. But you're still talking about killing people. And that stalker thing you got going is majorly creepy. No deal, asshole. Drinks on my tab, though. I'm good for that much, at least."
Serpentine wouldn't have taken the job, if not for Brevon's next sentence.
"How unfortunate. I could have given you you a pair of arms if you had accepted. I understand some snakes desire these. But I shall continue looking."
He froze in his stool. He thought about it for a second. And he felt the dread in his stomach as he realized he could not turn down the job.
"On second thought…"
And that was how Serpentine found himself in front of Brevon at nine in the morning in a secluded room only a few feet away from the Coalition embassy, telling him that he had planted the bomb. Brevon chuckled to himself and hefted a briefcase.
"Excellent. We have some time before I can detonate the bomb. I take it you would like to see your new arms?"
Serpentine rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Just get this get over with and pay me so I don't have to see you again."
"Very well." Brevon planted the briefcase on the ground and undid the locks with two clicks. The case opened to reveal a pair of robotic arms set into the foam. Brevon then pressed two buttons on the arms and stepped back a couple of paces.
Serpentine tilted his head. "So how is this-"
The arms flew at Serpentine. His body erupted into pain and his vision immediately turned into numbers. He remembered screaming at some point, wondering when it would end. And then it did, and he was breathing heavily as the pain left his system. Serpentine felt...different? Empty, somehow? He looked down at his newfound arms and stretched them, and already he had forgotten what it was like to not have arms. It was like they were made for him.
Brevon walked out of the room, and Serpentine followed him to the street, idly wondering why he felt that way. Brevon then took out a trigger and pressed it.
The ground shook and the sound from the explosion was nearly deafening. Mere seconds after, the debris from the Coalition embassy was already falling to the ground, crashing upon nearby bystanders and cars. Distant screams could be heard from ground zero, and the emergency sirens would follow a minute and a half later. The embassy had collapsed under its own weight in the span of four minutes.
Serpentine had finally twigged on what had changed about him. Normally, he would have been horrified at the sight, would have immediately rounded on Brevon, would have yelled at him, might even have tried to attack him.
But now, he didn't care about any of that.
The only thing he felt was an intense rush of elation as a wolflike grin spread across his face, and two words flashed across his thoughts.
Fucking sick.
Five Years Ago
"Merde! Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi! Aidez…moi…"
The mercenary's body was coiled across the fox guard and squeezing at him, cutting off his air and slowly crushing him to death. Serpentine could hear the faint noise of cracking bones and the slowing, wheezy breathing of his hostage, but right now, he was just a bit more concerned with the ten guards pointing guns at him. They were wary of shooting at him right now because small target, don't want to hit their friend, blah blah, but as soon as his hostage died, it was open season. As good as Serpentine was, he didn't like his chances in an open, circular area with no cover, a chandelier and ten people focused intently on him.
Time to force the issue, then.
Serpentine waited a couple of seconds, then snickered as he shot at the chandelier overhead. The chandelier was just one thing in the cornucopia of dumb garish crap in this palace that only existed to look pretty, but now it was serving a function as it fell onto the loosely clustered group of guards. They spread out, trying not to get crushed under the chandelier. Crucially, their attention wasn't focused on Serpentine now.
The hostage had died in the middle of all this, only held up by Serpentine's body. Ah well. Sucks to be him. He uncoiled rapidly onto the fox's face, then pushed off his face in an arcing leap to the right. A split second observation told Serpentine that no one got crushed by the chandelier, which was disappointing. He aimed for the two guards on the far right and let off two blue shots. Two headshots, two dead people. Satisfied, Serpentine's head snapped to the incoming wall he was about to hit. He did a flip in the air to reorient his tail, and started coiling as it absorbed the impact.
The guards had started shooting just as he activated the thrusters on his combat suit, and he took off, grazing through the hail of plasma targeted at him. Serpentine barrelled into the chest of a frog guard. He heard an audible crack of ribs breaking as the force knocked them to the ground and caused them to skid on the carpeted floor. Serpentine rode that momentum, firing his pistols on full auto and nailing four guards in a second and half.
As soon as he felt the momentum slowing, Serpentine switched his right pistol to flamethrower mode, then jumped at the remaining three guards, twirling sideways in the air as the twenty-thousand degree ionized plasma flame lashed at their faces. They fell to the ground with little more than a whimper, dead as soon as the flame engulfed them.
Serpentine landed deftly on the floor, circling the room of dead bodies and looking past the doors he had came in through to see even more dead bodies. He couldn't help himself; he laughed at the sight, a belly deep laughter tempered by bloodlust, adrenaline and a bit of insanity. When that petered out to the occasional giggle, he shrugged to himself and opened the door to the minister's chamber.
Just like the rest of the palace, the chamber was decorated to impress. Large paintings of important-looking figures and scenes adorned the four corners of the chamber, and the couches were arranged to give an unobstructed view of the Coalition of Planets logo embroidered into the blue carpet. There was a glass curtain behind the desk, a public service announcements machine to the far left of the glass curtain, and a sword sheath lying against a gold-trimmed curtain.
The target was sitting in a leather chair behind his wooden desk, seemingly unconcerned with the knowledge that the serpent who had killed over ninety people was now standing only a few feet away from him. He was a grey-haired bull with traces of silver in his face, a set of horns curved inward, gold-rimmed glasses and a rouge-colored suit with a checkered tie, and he was intently focused on a set of documents.
His eyes flicked over to the mercenary, and he rose from his chair.
"So, you are-"
Serpentine shot him.
The plasma stopped mere inches from his desk, leaving azure blue streaks across a hexagonal barrier that had been invisible up until now.
Serpentine blinked.
"Uh. Wow. You actually planned ahead for this."
Rainier gave him a frosty smile, strangely more irritated at the interruption than the attempt on his life.
"Thirty years of assassination attempts has taught me that I can never be too careful. I know who you are, Serpentine, and by extension, I can surmise that your employer is Lord Brevon. You have quite the reputation."
"Whatever. Can we just skip to the part where I shoot you and go back to my life?"
Rainier regarded Serpentine with some amusement. "I have a vested interest in my own continued survival, as does the Coalition, the dozens of planets that are allied with Lascaux, and my family. This barrier will never go down until I explicitly shut it down, and I suspect that backup will be coming shortly. We are currently at an impasse, so we may as well talk."
Serpentine crossed his arms and tapped his tail on the ground impatiently.
Rainier continued, unfettered by the non-reaction. "You are undeniably very skilled at what you do. I've heard the stories, and seeing you in the flesh confirms them. Therefore, I would like to hire you."
The tapping stopped.
"What."
"I believe you would be a valuable asset. It would make me rather unpopular with my allies, but no matter, you would do very nicely in special operations. I am willing to pay you anything, do any favor to have your services at hand, because your talents would be better served in the employment of the Coalition of Planets than as the right hand of a warlord who would stab you in the back to serve his own interests. All men deserve a second chance, and I would feel safer with you on our side."
Serpentine made a disgusted noise.
"Bullshit. Talking about redemption and trying to turn me against the only person who's had my back for a decade, but your first reaction to the guy who killed a lot of people here and shows up in your office is to try to hire him? You and I both know you're not interested in 'redeeming' me. You just want me to keep doing the same shit I was already doing, only I'm doing it on your dime. Screw that."
Rainier tsk-tsked to himself.
"I fail to see why Brevon is the better option over ensuring order and peace in the galaxy. You may be resistant now because he is all you know, but I assure you that one way or another, you will see him for who he truly is, and then my offer will make more sense. That is, assuming you aren't destroyed alongside him."
Serpentine scoffed.
"You're so full of yourself that you're missing the entire point. See, Brevon is bad. I know that. I'm bad too, and I know that. Difference is that we're honest about what we are. Meanwhile, you're sitting behind your shield talking a game about peace and order, thinking you got some moral high ground because you said the right things and people liked it. But a couple years down the line, that 'peace and order' turns into a power grab and finding people to pick fights with, and everyone gets screwed while you get to pat yourself on the back for being the 'good guy'. You're just as bad as me, but you're never going to admit it until everything goes to shit and you can't fix it."
Rainier was now angry. His nostrils were flared, and he held himself far more rigidly than he did before. He slammed a fist on his desk and breathed in deeply.
"...I am very sorry to hear that you think so little of us. I had hoped you were a reasonable man, as treacherous as you are. I suppose the failing here is that I do not speak your language. My backup would have highly preferred that I wait until the threat was neutralized, but I am sure they will understand. Allow me to put this in terms you can understand."
So said, Rainier moved towards the sword sheath. He picked it up by the scabbard.
"My grandfather's sword. He used it to liberate Lascaux from tyranny two hundred years ago, and my father passed it on to me when I took office. In thirty years, I have only used this four times. Let this be the fifth time."
He twisted the handle. A shockwave surged forth. It passed through Serpentine harmlessly, but he found his arms and combat suit starting to lock up, his arms forcibly moving to a T-shape against his will. He made a strangled cry as he lost all feeling in his arms and dropped his guns.
The barrier was disintegrating, letting out golden sparks as it faded away. Rainier held his sword aloft.
"Grand-père dans le ciel au-dessus, Bénissez cette épée et laissez ma lame frapper vrai."
He drew the sword and dropped the sheath. It was a cavalry saber, the handle a faded gold and the blade curved and wide steel with a sharp cutting edge.
"Let us see how infamous you really are, Serpentine."
Rainier walked out from behind his desk.
Serpentine broke out in a cold sweat, scared for the first time in a long while.
Present Day, One Month Later
When his arms were finished, he felt it deep inside his body, rather than knowing it. It was a strange experience, letting his body work on autopilot with no blueprints whatsoever and only going off progress on feelings. But it was done.
Serpentine picked up the arm with his tail. Aside from the fact that it was patched together with a sundry of components and metals that only loosely resembled the composition of his original limbs (still didn't know how he knew that, by the way), it looked and felt the same. He flexed it in as many different ways as he could, and then did the same with the other one. They even moved the same.
Serpentine gulped as he pressed the hidden buttons on his arms. From experience, he knew it was going to hurt like hell. He psyched himself up, told himself he had gone through way worse and that having arms again would be worth it.
The arms flew at him once again.
It didn't hurt like hell.
It hurt worse than hell.
In between blinding lances of agony, he was treated to uncomfortable close-ups of nerve endings forcibly growing in and around his arms. Words. Columns upon columns of ones and zeroes. His heart was beating so fast, he couldn't move, get it over with, he couldn't
When he woke up several hours later, he was lying on the wooden floor, sore and barely conscious. It was nearing evening, and the shadows were slowly encroaching upon the house. Serpentine made incomprehensible noises as he stood up on his tail, blinking weariness out of his eyes. He took a deep, shuddering breath and clutched his head with his robotic hand. Finally, the worst of it was over.
And then the door burst open.
"Freeze!"
Two uniformed panda police officers barged into the house, brandishing body armor, helmets and crystalline assault rifles. They came to a stop just outside Serpentine's workbench, well past the range where Serpentine would have been comfortable trying a surprise attack.
"Well, what do you know. That tip was right on the money after all," the cop on the right said, an ugly sneer across his panda face. "Move away from the guns and put your hands in the air."
A joke. That's what it was. A sick, cruel joke played on Serpentine by the universe itself. He snickered to himself as he complied with their commands.
The cop on the left twitched. "Something funny, snake?"
"Aside from you guys? No, not really."
Left cop took a menacing step, held back by right cop putting an arm out and shaking his head. Right cop turned to face Serpentine.
"You like jokes, huh? Let me tell you one of mine. So after that alien invasion a year and a half ago where a lot of good people died, including some of my family back at the palace, the government came to speak with us. Turns out Brevon wasn't the only one in that invasion, and we had to keep an eye on anyone matching the description of that other invader."
Right cop took out a warrant from his pocket, making a show out of it. He unraveled it with one hand and started reading.
"Let's see. 'Suspect is a green snake called Serpentine with a pair of mechanical limbs and an arsenal to rival an army. Responsible for over sixty confirmed kills in all three city states, and has caused over 50 million crystals of property damage in Shang Mu.' That sounds an awful lot like you, doesn't it? I feel kinda bad because your parents, if you had any, got really lazy when they were naming you and I bet you got picked on a lot in school. Who names their snake kid Serpentine anyway?"
Serpentine feigned an overdramatic gasp.
"Sixty confirmed kills?! Damn, I'm getting sloppy. I thought it was ninety."
The cops sniggered. Right cop cleared his throat and put away his warrant.
"Should've stayed in school so you could learn to count, smartass. So the government is busting our chops, and they had us dedicate teams in the city states to hunting you down so they could publicly execute you. It went strong for a year, but you know how morale gets when you go that long with barely anything to go on. Add to the people who want their fifteen minutes of fame and kept calling in bogus tips, and people eventually just thought you crawled into a ditch and died. We still got the tips and all, but we started treating them as seriously as Kohryu sightings.
"Then we get a missing persons report from a concerned citizen. Sixty year- old retired engineer by the name of Jin Foo, likes his privacy. People got concerned because they hadn't seen him in six months, which wasn't much of a red flag considering the guy barely went out. A day after, we get a tip from another concerned citizen, said they heard screaming from Jin's house and there was a green snake with mechanical limbs in the house. And here we are. Found you through a completely unrelated case. Isn't that funny? Wanna tell us what happened to him?"
"Oh, well, I was walking that-a-way and I got sick, and he took care of me. Nice guy, respectable job, but he wouldn't shut the hell up about his family and I got bored and I slit his throat and dumped him in the river. You should've seen the look on his face when he died! It was like he actually thought I was a good guy!"
Serpentine cackled maniacally. The cops wore grim looks, appalled but not surprised.
Error: Fragmented data discovered in sectors 550 and 312. Defragmenting…
The words appeared in Serpentine's head, and seconds before he could process it, his mad laughter turned into a strangled coughing fit as his body was fraught with nausea. He vomited up an impossible amount of blood and collapsed to the ground, almost blacking out again.
Defragmentation complete.
Wrist-mounted rockets online.
Shield generator online.
"... Wow, that was a real anticlimax. Think he's dead?"
"Ancestors, I hope so. The politicians aren't gonna like this, though. We were supposed to bring him back alive."
Forcing his eyes open, Serpentine saw the cops weren't focused on him. He slowly pressed two buttons on his right arm. A crystalline barrier formed around him, and a launcher tube popped out of his arm. Serpentine grinned widely as the rocket fired at their feet, and the cops realized the danger too late to save themselves.
"Oh sh-"
The explosion devoured them. Serpentine was knocked back against the west wall as the shockwave hit him. Without the shield, he might have actually died here. As it was, he lost consciousness for a brief moment as the shield dissipated around him.
He woke up to a burning house one minute later, the searing heat washing over his body and the flames already engulfing the hallway. The sight would have inspired panic, but as there was a perfectly serviceable way out, Serpentine just didn't care. He stood up on his tail, a bit woozy from all the blood he had coughed up but recovering quickly, and calmly slithered over to the workbench. He put on his helmet, strapped on his combat suit and felt it coming to life around him, and picked up his plasma pistols. Then he shot out the window and jumped out of the house.
Turning to face the house, Serpentine was seized with a desire to sit and watch the destruction. Maybe he was just tired, but he couldn't help but admire the beauty of the blossoming inferno, the way the wood was starting to blacken, the windows blowing out-
A twig snapped, ten feet behind Serpentine. The thruster-boosted lunge at the source of the noise was a reflex.
He was standing over a panda kid, barely over sixteen. He was blubbering, his hands clutching everywhere and nowhere.
"Ancestors above, y-y-y-you're Serpentine! I-I heard the cops were checking out this house, and I wanted to watch them! Please don't kill me! I didn't do anything! I just live around here! I live around here!"
The rest was incoherent through the kid's babbling and crying. It was disgusting and Serpentine felt embarrassed for him.
Serpentine sighed.
"Good enough."
He shot the kid, and he went still.
Serpentine looked up at the sky. It was getting dark, and one could see the purple Avalician moon overhead, shining brighter than usual. It could mean anything, or absolutely nothing, but Serpentine chose to interpret it as a good omen.
One way or another, he was getting off this garbage planet, finding Brevon and having a talk with him. That was a promise.
Serpentine moved into the forest, a grin spreading across his face.
Five Years Ago
The sword flashed through the air, snicker-snack, as it cut down into the carpet and lopped off a small part of Serpentine's tail.
Serpentine felt the abrupt loss of sensation rather than the pain, but it was quickly forgotten. He was scrambling away from Rainier, cursing the ten-pound armor weighing him down and his useless arms not responding to his commands. He needed something to fight back with, anything, before the bull stopped screwing around and cut him in half.
Serpentine turned his body halfway to dodge a vertical slash and dashed over the desk, pulling out the top-middle drawer with his teeth. Sifting through the useless crap with his head, he picked up a knife with his mouth just as Rainier beared down on him with a side slash. He ducked the strike and buried the blade into Rainier's gut.
Rainier grunted, took a step back and planted a solid kick into Serpentine's face, knocking him away. He then pulled out the knife and dropped it on the desk, seemingly having no regard for the long term consequences of such a move.
Serpentine was starting to feel to get some feeling back into his left arm. Emboldened, he started slithering towards his plasma pistols in the middle of the room. As he tightened his hand on the grip of his pistol, Rainier planted his boot squarely in the middle of Serpentine's body, the force pinning him to the ground. With no time to turn and line up a proper shot, Serpentine fired blindly behind him, mashing the trigger as fast as he could.
The windows broke, the desk made splintering noises, he could hear muted grunts of pain, and then the sword stabbed into the Coalition of Planets logo diagonally, a mere two inches away from decapitating Serpentine. Then the pressure eased off, and he lurched forward as Rainer collapsed backwards on the floor.
Breathing heavily as his right arm started tingling, he picked up the other pistol and slithered on Rainier's body. The rouge-red suit masked the full extent of his injuries, but it was clear that Rainier was close to death. Serpentine snarled and shoved his left pistol into his face.
"Got any famous last words?"
Rainier chuckled, the sound all the more insulting because he was choking on his blood.
"No regrets. No man is irredee-"
Serpentine shouted his rage and pulled the trigger.
That didn't help, so he shot him again.
That didn't help, so he unloaded both barrels into his face until the pistols overheated.
That still didn't help, so Serpentine, vaguely aware that this was starting to get childish and ridiculous, and not caring anyway, started smacking his face with the pistol barrels relentlessly.
He didn't know how long he had been at it, but a calm, commanding voice called his name, and he stopped immediately.
"Serpentine."
He turned towards Brevon leaning against the wall, his arms crossed and his demeanor radiating amusement. Serpentine winced and self-consciously scratched his head with the handle of his pistol.
"...How long were you standing there? And I thought you were sitting this one out?"
"Long enough. I decided to intervene when I saw the ships converging on the palace. And then I was already in the vicinity, so I came to see how the mission was going. Great work all around, though it appears Tristan Rainier may require a closed casket funeral."
Serpentine turned his attention to the corpse. Mutilated though his face was, the asshole was smiling like he had won something. That pissed him off.
"Right. Yeah."
Serpentine forced himself to slither off of his corpse as Brevon walked on the corpse. Brevon reached the intercom and started speaking into it.
"Citizens of Lascaux, my name is Lord Arktivus Brevon. Minister Tristan Rainier is dead, and I am your new ruler. Submit to my rule, or be annihilated."
Brevon turned to Serpentine. As if on cue, the words fell out of his mouth.
"Simple and direct. I like that."
Brevon grinned. "Thank you. The next step now is to establish my authority and kill all dissenters here, then move on to the next galaxy. I trust you will enjoy that."
Brevon walked towards the door. The question that was troubling Serpentine presented itself before his brain could tell him it was a bad idea.
"Hey, Brevon. You got my back, right? You won't turn on me when shit hits the fan?"
Brevon froze. To Serpentine, his reaction was unreadable because Brevon's back was to him. In Brevon's mind, he was already recalculating how much he could really trust the mercenary. Recalibration of the conditioning may be necessary.
He turned to Serpentine.
"Do not worry, Serpentine. You are my most valuable ally. Come, we have work to do."
The words were reassuring on the surface, but something about them had him concerned. Shaking it off as irrelevant, Serpentine dutifully followed behind Brevon.