/- Well, this is my first fanfic on this site. I've always liked Ecco, and
a story idea came to me recently, and I just HAD to put it down on paper,
you know? Anyway, these events take place right after Tides of Time. Keep
in mind that I've never played DoTF, and probably never will. :)
Happy Reading! -- Icebreaker -/
"Should I destroy it?"
Ecco looked at the Atlantean time machine in front of him, contemplating the outcomes of his various choices. He had just dodged through the City of Forever itself, sneaking past the grotesque spawn of the Vortex queen. Now, when he was so close to completing his mission, he hesitated.
"I know the Asterite gave me this task," Ecco thought to himself. "I am the stone that split the stream... but is there another way to mend the Tides of Time?"
The statues surrounding the mysterious machine seemed to glare at Ecco, daring him to make his move. They spoke of past glory and grandeur, their sleek, marble forms standing guard over the most advanced piece of technology the Atlanteans had. Ecco looked at the statues and contemplated the ruined civilization that produced such art.
"I cannot do this," Ecco thought. "I cannot throw away this marvelous machine, this last vestige of a proud people." The eyes of the statues seemed to grow brighter, and Ecco, as if in a trance, moved towards the machine, turning towards one of the metal plates. "May the Tides of Time throw me where I am needed most," he thought to himself, before unleashing a powerful, beautiful song into the plate nearest him. The echoes bounced back and forth between the plates, slowly at first, but gaining speed rapidly as Ecco started to spin, a maelstrom of energy beginning to form around him.
"I am sorry, Asterite," were his last thoughts before being engulfed in the whirlpool that was rapidly collapsing in on him, throwing him into the abyss where time and space have no meaning...
- - - - - - - - - -
The room was dark.
The only light that existed came from a small console in the corner of the room that looked like some kind of parasitic organism, a nightmarish mix of precise technology and asymmetrical biology. It glowed softly, but its luminescence was not enough to pierce through the heavy blanket of black that hung in the room.
This did not bother the two entities conversing in the room, however. Perhaps they did not need light to sense their surroundings, or perhaps they had another reason to keep themselves shrouded in utter darkness. We can only guess...
"We have heard rumors," said one to the other. They communicated by projecting their thoughts directly into each other's minds, if you wanted to call their rather underdeveloped nerve centers "minds."
"Yes, we have. Concerning PF-109, I believe," said the other.
"Yes. We can't help but wonder how She will handle it. Hopefully better than last time, if the stories are true."
There was a silence before the other replied, with a slight wavering in its voice. "We do not doubt Her wisdom. Surely those stories are just for podlings, and it is bad to speak against Her anyway."
"Yes. But the rumors are still there. We wonder when validation will occur --"
His response was cut off by an enormously powerful mind signal, that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.
"NOW HEAR THIS," said the message, and it seemed to echo within them after the words were completed. "ALL DRONES REPORT TO THEIR ASSIGNED STATIONS, AS FOLLOWS:" and here followed a compressed stream of images and signals, words, numbers and such, that if put into print it would easily be over a thousand pages. "WE WILL COMMENCE THE OPERATION AFTER THE COMPLETION OF FIVE, REPEAT FIVE CYCLES."
The echoes died down in the two creature's minds as the message subsided. There was a brief pause before one spoke up:
"Will that do for validation?"
- - - - - - - - - -
Donovan was having a rather pleasant day.
He cast the fishing line out of the boat and sat back, cracking open a cold drink and letting the Florida sun warm his bones. It was good to be fishing, and he was glad that fate had decided to provide such excellent weather for his day off. He looked up and checked that the sails weren't flapping in the wind, then looked back in the direction he had come. "Not a dot of land in sight" he said, and smiled to himself. "Just me, myself, and some fish to keep me company." He let out a contented sigh, taking in the solitude of it all.
Donovan was a rather youngish-looking man, perhaps in his mid-twenties. He had a rather pronounced jawline, and there was a touch of stubble on his chin and neck. His hair was a dark brown, and his eyes were a deep green. Presently, he felt a tug on his line, taking the pole in hand and beginning to reel in whatever had caught the end.
"Ooooh, now that's a keeper," he thought to himself, as he drug a large salmon above the edge of the boat. He put it in a bucket of water next to his feet, where the salmon could enjoy the company of several other fish prisoners, caught by Donovan.
As the amateur fisherman completed this task, he happened to glance up at the sky. There, hanging in the air, was a flash of light, almost as bright as the sun itself. Donovan passed this off as a lightning strike, you could sometimes get lightning without a storm out here in the ocean, but it was rare. His brain realized after a second though, that the flash was still there. His scientific mind went through many different possibilities: ball lightning? Aurora Borealis? Highly reflective, low-flying aircraft? He went through each possibility and discarded all of them, because two things were apparent. One, the burning light seemed to surround an object coming out of the atmosphere, and two, it was growing bigger and bigger in the sky as it fell...
He thought back to the shuttle schedule at Cape Canaveral. There weren't any launches for the past week, so that ruled out a booster stage or a reentry pod... perhaps a piece of space debris reentering? But if so, that had to be a HUGE chunk of trash...
He briefly considered moving the boat before ruling out that possibility. At this distance, he couldn't tell exactly WHERE it was going to fall, it could land where he was moving to, as opposed to where he was now. Sailing wasn't really all that fast anyway, so all he could do was hope it didn't crash through his tiny sailboat...
After a few more seconds, it became evident that the object was going to land about 200 yards to the south of him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh man, I'm gonna be fine, I'm gonna be oka -- wait a second." His eyes got wider and his mouth formed the shape of a large O. "That shockwave is gonna be a HUGE bitch..."
No more thinking was necessary as he scrambled into the cabin of the boat, bracing himself with a hand on either wall, anticipating impact...
He heard the object shriek down to earth, and he imagined that with the fire of reentry heat surrounding it, he'd be heavily reminded of a phoenix. Shortly after, he heard the blast of the thing hitting the surface like a thousand-ton bomb, and he knew the waves would come soon after...
They came indeed, hitting the little boat like a ton of bricks. He could feel the wave come under the boat as it rose quickly into the air, leaving his stomach on the floor... and then the sickening fall from that dizzying height, ripping his stomach from the floor and plastering it on the ceiling.
This continued with more waves, each slightly less potent than the last, but still quite intimidating. As the seas settled down into a relative calm, the first thing Donovan did was to head outside and retch over the side of the boat. He kept at this for a while until he had nothing left to vomit, and then looked up at the object that had hit the ocean's surface...
And froze.
It was, he assumed, a spacecraft of some kind, but it wasn't made out of metal. It was like... an organism. There were several appendages that served functions Donovan could only guess at, and while some facets resembled Earth technology, such as hatches, tail fins, and the like, the rest of the spacecraft was utterly alien to him, although it was small. Perhaps only 400 meters in length.
What he DIDN'T see, however, was the hatch opening on the bottom of the spacecraft. Three creatures crawled out, with elongated heads, vicious claws, and a vaguely reptilian body, complete with long tail...
Donovan didn't see this, however, and the scientific part of his mind was temporarily stunned at the appearance of this object. His imagination, on the other hand, was running wild. "Aliens! Big, green men from Mars! Or maybe Russians!"
As he sat there studying the ship, the three hunters swam around the perimeter of their floating spacecraft. One noticed the sailboat towards the north, their vision was excellent in these clear waters, just as it had been in the days of old. The creature slid towards the boat, and the others, communicating silently, followed suit.
The first popped its head above the water about twenty feet from the boat, and Donovan came out of his trance-like state as the adrenalin started to pump into his system again. He thought his trouble was over with the LANDING of the craft, he didn't think he'd have to deal with whatever was inside of it.
As the first creature surveyed the boat from a distance, another came up on the other side and scratched its way up the hull with its claws. Donovan looked and nearly needed a change of shorts as he noticed those long, sharp instruments of death. The creature opened his mouth, revealing twin rows of razor-sharp teeth, and Donovan, for once in his life, was out of ideas.
- - - - - - - - - -
Nothingness.
That was really the only way to describe traveling through the Tides of Time. Ecco looked around and saw nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing. The only sense was that of movement, very fast through this dark and enormous area. The dolphin was used to this by now, so he decided not to worry himself with the travel sequence. He was worried, however, about where he was going.
Not even when he accompanied Trellia to the future, millions of years after his own time, had the travel taken this long. Ecco wasn't sure, but he had reason to suspect that the longer you were kept in the Abyss, the farther from your own time you were traveling. Judging by the length of this trip, he was traveling farther into the future than he ever had before...
And now, gradually, light began to filter in through the edges of his eyes. He was spinning so fast he didn't even feel it, but as he slowed down, it became increasingly evident to his stomach that he was moving faster than any dolphin was intended to, and he fought to keep his food down.
The portal once again manifested itself, and Ecco crashed through it, lines of color and darkness spreading in every direction. His mind blanked out for a split-second, before his world began to cool down, the colors dampening into the everyday variety, and he realized that he was falling towards an ocean.
He splashed down, and was instantly in his element as his mind fully cleared. He looked to the left and right, trying to get his bearings. First, he saw an alien spacecraft, which looked like a slightly advanced Vortex creation from his own time. Looking around some more, he noticed the boat and the three creatures harassing its occupant.
"Medusas," the dolphin snarled, as he closed in on the one nearest him, the one that was surveying the boat from afar. He fired off several bursts of echo in rapid succession, leaving the Medusa confused for a fraction of a second. That was all Ecco needed, as he brought his nose crashing through the hapless creature's body, emerging out the other end as the ruined form of what had been a proud, Vortex warrior sank into the deep...
Ecco surveyed the boat again. There were two more Medusas that were closing in on a strangely familiar creature, supporting itself on two appendages...
"No matter," the dolphin thought to himself. "I'll kill the Vortex first, and then worry about the hostility of this other creature..."
Meanwhile, Donovan thought he was, as they say, done for. These two creatures were advancing slowly, menacingly towards him. Even if he could fight them off in hand-to-hand, there had been another burst of light just now, which he supposed had brought reinforcements for these aliens.
He was watching his life flash before his eyes as a DOLPHIN, of all things, crashed up on the deck of his boat. There were two screeches that nearly made his ears bleed, and which also appeared to throw the aliens overboard. The dolphin chased after them, down under the murky depths, as Donovan watched. It was silent for a few seconds, then some bubbles began to emerge, and finally, one of the alien's arms floated to the surface, still holding those nightmarish claws.
He looked over the other end of his boat and saw the dolphin, with its nose poking out of the water, studying him intently.
"Hah, ahahaha," Donovan laughed to himself. "A spacecraft, aliens, rescued by a dolphin... I should quit working so hard," he mumbled to himself, before falling backwards into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.
"What was that, creature?" Ecco squeaked at Donovan, who was down for the count. "Bah. Can you understand me? No? Stupid creatures..."
Ecco regarded Donovan with contempt, before realizing what had been tickling the back of his mind since this affair began...
This creature, the one the Vortex had been after... looked exactly like the creatures depicted by the statues in Atlantis...
Happy Reading! -- Icebreaker -/
"Should I destroy it?"
Ecco looked at the Atlantean time machine in front of him, contemplating the outcomes of his various choices. He had just dodged through the City of Forever itself, sneaking past the grotesque spawn of the Vortex queen. Now, when he was so close to completing his mission, he hesitated.
"I know the Asterite gave me this task," Ecco thought to himself. "I am the stone that split the stream... but is there another way to mend the Tides of Time?"
The statues surrounding the mysterious machine seemed to glare at Ecco, daring him to make his move. They spoke of past glory and grandeur, their sleek, marble forms standing guard over the most advanced piece of technology the Atlanteans had. Ecco looked at the statues and contemplated the ruined civilization that produced such art.
"I cannot do this," Ecco thought. "I cannot throw away this marvelous machine, this last vestige of a proud people." The eyes of the statues seemed to grow brighter, and Ecco, as if in a trance, moved towards the machine, turning towards one of the metal plates. "May the Tides of Time throw me where I am needed most," he thought to himself, before unleashing a powerful, beautiful song into the plate nearest him. The echoes bounced back and forth between the plates, slowly at first, but gaining speed rapidly as Ecco started to spin, a maelstrom of energy beginning to form around him.
"I am sorry, Asterite," were his last thoughts before being engulfed in the whirlpool that was rapidly collapsing in on him, throwing him into the abyss where time and space have no meaning...
- - - - - - - - - -
The room was dark.
The only light that existed came from a small console in the corner of the room that looked like some kind of parasitic organism, a nightmarish mix of precise technology and asymmetrical biology. It glowed softly, but its luminescence was not enough to pierce through the heavy blanket of black that hung in the room.
This did not bother the two entities conversing in the room, however. Perhaps they did not need light to sense their surroundings, or perhaps they had another reason to keep themselves shrouded in utter darkness. We can only guess...
"We have heard rumors," said one to the other. They communicated by projecting their thoughts directly into each other's minds, if you wanted to call their rather underdeveloped nerve centers "minds."
"Yes, we have. Concerning PF-109, I believe," said the other.
"Yes. We can't help but wonder how She will handle it. Hopefully better than last time, if the stories are true."
There was a silence before the other replied, with a slight wavering in its voice. "We do not doubt Her wisdom. Surely those stories are just for podlings, and it is bad to speak against Her anyway."
"Yes. But the rumors are still there. We wonder when validation will occur --"
His response was cut off by an enormously powerful mind signal, that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.
"NOW HEAR THIS," said the message, and it seemed to echo within them after the words were completed. "ALL DRONES REPORT TO THEIR ASSIGNED STATIONS, AS FOLLOWS:" and here followed a compressed stream of images and signals, words, numbers and such, that if put into print it would easily be over a thousand pages. "WE WILL COMMENCE THE OPERATION AFTER THE COMPLETION OF FIVE, REPEAT FIVE CYCLES."
The echoes died down in the two creature's minds as the message subsided. There was a brief pause before one spoke up:
"Will that do for validation?"
- - - - - - - - - -
Donovan was having a rather pleasant day.
He cast the fishing line out of the boat and sat back, cracking open a cold drink and letting the Florida sun warm his bones. It was good to be fishing, and he was glad that fate had decided to provide such excellent weather for his day off. He looked up and checked that the sails weren't flapping in the wind, then looked back in the direction he had come. "Not a dot of land in sight" he said, and smiled to himself. "Just me, myself, and some fish to keep me company." He let out a contented sigh, taking in the solitude of it all.
Donovan was a rather youngish-looking man, perhaps in his mid-twenties. He had a rather pronounced jawline, and there was a touch of stubble on his chin and neck. His hair was a dark brown, and his eyes were a deep green. Presently, he felt a tug on his line, taking the pole in hand and beginning to reel in whatever had caught the end.
"Ooooh, now that's a keeper," he thought to himself, as he drug a large salmon above the edge of the boat. He put it in a bucket of water next to his feet, where the salmon could enjoy the company of several other fish prisoners, caught by Donovan.
As the amateur fisherman completed this task, he happened to glance up at the sky. There, hanging in the air, was a flash of light, almost as bright as the sun itself. Donovan passed this off as a lightning strike, you could sometimes get lightning without a storm out here in the ocean, but it was rare. His brain realized after a second though, that the flash was still there. His scientific mind went through many different possibilities: ball lightning? Aurora Borealis? Highly reflective, low-flying aircraft? He went through each possibility and discarded all of them, because two things were apparent. One, the burning light seemed to surround an object coming out of the atmosphere, and two, it was growing bigger and bigger in the sky as it fell...
He thought back to the shuttle schedule at Cape Canaveral. There weren't any launches for the past week, so that ruled out a booster stage or a reentry pod... perhaps a piece of space debris reentering? But if so, that had to be a HUGE chunk of trash...
He briefly considered moving the boat before ruling out that possibility. At this distance, he couldn't tell exactly WHERE it was going to fall, it could land where he was moving to, as opposed to where he was now. Sailing wasn't really all that fast anyway, so all he could do was hope it didn't crash through his tiny sailboat...
After a few more seconds, it became evident that the object was going to land about 200 yards to the south of him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh man, I'm gonna be fine, I'm gonna be oka -- wait a second." His eyes got wider and his mouth formed the shape of a large O. "That shockwave is gonna be a HUGE bitch..."
No more thinking was necessary as he scrambled into the cabin of the boat, bracing himself with a hand on either wall, anticipating impact...
He heard the object shriek down to earth, and he imagined that with the fire of reentry heat surrounding it, he'd be heavily reminded of a phoenix. Shortly after, he heard the blast of the thing hitting the surface like a thousand-ton bomb, and he knew the waves would come soon after...
They came indeed, hitting the little boat like a ton of bricks. He could feel the wave come under the boat as it rose quickly into the air, leaving his stomach on the floor... and then the sickening fall from that dizzying height, ripping his stomach from the floor and plastering it on the ceiling.
This continued with more waves, each slightly less potent than the last, but still quite intimidating. As the seas settled down into a relative calm, the first thing Donovan did was to head outside and retch over the side of the boat. He kept at this for a while until he had nothing left to vomit, and then looked up at the object that had hit the ocean's surface...
And froze.
It was, he assumed, a spacecraft of some kind, but it wasn't made out of metal. It was like... an organism. There were several appendages that served functions Donovan could only guess at, and while some facets resembled Earth technology, such as hatches, tail fins, and the like, the rest of the spacecraft was utterly alien to him, although it was small. Perhaps only 400 meters in length.
What he DIDN'T see, however, was the hatch opening on the bottom of the spacecraft. Three creatures crawled out, with elongated heads, vicious claws, and a vaguely reptilian body, complete with long tail...
Donovan didn't see this, however, and the scientific part of his mind was temporarily stunned at the appearance of this object. His imagination, on the other hand, was running wild. "Aliens! Big, green men from Mars! Or maybe Russians!"
As he sat there studying the ship, the three hunters swam around the perimeter of their floating spacecraft. One noticed the sailboat towards the north, their vision was excellent in these clear waters, just as it had been in the days of old. The creature slid towards the boat, and the others, communicating silently, followed suit.
The first popped its head above the water about twenty feet from the boat, and Donovan came out of his trance-like state as the adrenalin started to pump into his system again. He thought his trouble was over with the LANDING of the craft, he didn't think he'd have to deal with whatever was inside of it.
As the first creature surveyed the boat from a distance, another came up on the other side and scratched its way up the hull with its claws. Donovan looked and nearly needed a change of shorts as he noticed those long, sharp instruments of death. The creature opened his mouth, revealing twin rows of razor-sharp teeth, and Donovan, for once in his life, was out of ideas.
- - - - - - - - - -
Nothingness.
That was really the only way to describe traveling through the Tides of Time. Ecco looked around and saw nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing. The only sense was that of movement, very fast through this dark and enormous area. The dolphin was used to this by now, so he decided not to worry himself with the travel sequence. He was worried, however, about where he was going.
Not even when he accompanied Trellia to the future, millions of years after his own time, had the travel taken this long. Ecco wasn't sure, but he had reason to suspect that the longer you were kept in the Abyss, the farther from your own time you were traveling. Judging by the length of this trip, he was traveling farther into the future than he ever had before...
And now, gradually, light began to filter in through the edges of his eyes. He was spinning so fast he didn't even feel it, but as he slowed down, it became increasingly evident to his stomach that he was moving faster than any dolphin was intended to, and he fought to keep his food down.
The portal once again manifested itself, and Ecco crashed through it, lines of color and darkness spreading in every direction. His mind blanked out for a split-second, before his world began to cool down, the colors dampening into the everyday variety, and he realized that he was falling towards an ocean.
He splashed down, and was instantly in his element as his mind fully cleared. He looked to the left and right, trying to get his bearings. First, he saw an alien spacecraft, which looked like a slightly advanced Vortex creation from his own time. Looking around some more, he noticed the boat and the three creatures harassing its occupant.
"Medusas," the dolphin snarled, as he closed in on the one nearest him, the one that was surveying the boat from afar. He fired off several bursts of echo in rapid succession, leaving the Medusa confused for a fraction of a second. That was all Ecco needed, as he brought his nose crashing through the hapless creature's body, emerging out the other end as the ruined form of what had been a proud, Vortex warrior sank into the deep...
Ecco surveyed the boat again. There were two more Medusas that were closing in on a strangely familiar creature, supporting itself on two appendages...
"No matter," the dolphin thought to himself. "I'll kill the Vortex first, and then worry about the hostility of this other creature..."
Meanwhile, Donovan thought he was, as they say, done for. These two creatures were advancing slowly, menacingly towards him. Even if he could fight them off in hand-to-hand, there had been another burst of light just now, which he supposed had brought reinforcements for these aliens.
He was watching his life flash before his eyes as a DOLPHIN, of all things, crashed up on the deck of his boat. There were two screeches that nearly made his ears bleed, and which also appeared to throw the aliens overboard. The dolphin chased after them, down under the murky depths, as Donovan watched. It was silent for a few seconds, then some bubbles began to emerge, and finally, one of the alien's arms floated to the surface, still holding those nightmarish claws.
He looked over the other end of his boat and saw the dolphin, with its nose poking out of the water, studying him intently.
"Hah, ahahaha," Donovan laughed to himself. "A spacecraft, aliens, rescued by a dolphin... I should quit working so hard," he mumbled to himself, before falling backwards into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.
"What was that, creature?" Ecco squeaked at Donovan, who was down for the count. "Bah. Can you understand me? No? Stupid creatures..."
Ecco regarded Donovan with contempt, before realizing what had been tickling the back of his mind since this affair began...
This creature, the one the Vortex had been after... looked exactly like the creatures depicted by the statues in Atlantis...
