I Own Nothing.
This note added in direct response to the seventh comment posted in regards to the first chapter: This was planned as an unholy curb-stomp from the start, but there is a reason for that, it will be explained at the end of the third chapter. I thought I had made it fairly clear in the first few paragraphs, with mentions of it throughout the first chapter, that Alex really doesn't have anything to lose, he has no one he cares for and is so far from anyone he knew well enough to even call an acquaintance, that it means nothing for him to even think about them. The odds are not against Alex, not because he is overpowered, though that is a part of it, it is because no one has realized just what it would take to constitute a real threat to him, the Zerg were at a disadvantage from the start, since they have so few direct attacks that would inflict the right kind of damage to even annoy Alex.
Outside of game mechanics Alex would not really be harmed by simple blunt force attacks. He is a mass of viral goo, what good does it do you to punch a virus? Slashing attacks and stabbing attacks would only be marginally more effective then punching him, nothing the Zerg have can do enough damage to his cells to really hurt him in any way worth mentioning. The Terran have the means to hurt Alex, what they do not have is the knowledge that would prompt them to use the appropriate caliber of weapons to fight him, they could hurt him with lasers and other high heat weapons, there is a reason Alex wants to avoid being nuked, and a few shots from a Yamato cannon would have pretty much ended things early on, but they didn't know, and still don't, that he is vulnerable to weapons that would have a direct effect on his cellular structure.
In game Alex had to be vulnerable to more then just the sort of things that would logically hurt him, otherwise you would be near unstoppable through most of the story, but without the needs of a game working against him, Alex is far more dangerous. The best way of damaging Alex without glassing the general area is to separate portions of biomass from him, you would have to do this in small amounts so as to avoid the cells severed from the main mass just developing a mind of their own and creating a race of beings with the same power and potential as Alex, without his end of game decision to not just kill everything he comes in contact with, I know what the second game trailers and the developers say, but the new story doesn't seem to fit with the end of the first game.
In this chapter Alex will be hurt more then once, while he will not come close to losing the fights he is in, he will still lose noticeable amounts of biomass, and even, in the narrative, complain about it. Alex seems pretty much unstoppable, but will himself note that there are a lot of things he does not want to get hit with, a nuke is actually the least of his worries. The extent to which Alex can be harmed will not really be confirmed, but the method of hurting him will be made quite clear.
Because I'm only half awake while typing this, I feel a retort of little actual meaning is needed for the last few words. 'No Pain, No Gain' doesn't really apply to someone who can choose to just not have nerves at any given time.
This is supposed to be a setup for possible stories that do not feature Alex as the main character, I will explain, whether people like the explanation or not is up to them, but please reserve judgement till the very end. A quick warning, if you think I have given Alex too much of an upgrade already, you may want to just stop reading this now.
1. Alex only ate a Ghost near the end of the first chapter, so he really wasn't sure how to go about cloaking himself fully, he is already able to hide himself from any other form of detection besides sight. Since the Ghosts cloaking is technologically assisted, Alex still won't be able to do it for a little while, once he has a disagreement with a few Dark Templar he'll learn how it's done. While he can't cloak yet, Alex can, convince people to just not see him, he isn't invisible, but it comes pretty close.
2. Alex is going to be combining his new powers and knowledge in this chapter, so yeah he will be mixing everything he has gained, and will gain.
3. Alex has only obtained Zerg psionic power, besides that one Ghost, and Zerg don't really use their power actively so what he has now he came up with on his own, when he starts dealing with the Protoss he will expand his psionic powers considerably.
4. I didn't bother mentioning changes to his legs because they really wouldn't be noticeable, and his upper arms look almost the same no matter which weapon form he is using. However, in this chapter Alex will gain a few new weapons that do change his upper arms, maybe his legs to if I can come up with something.
5. I feel I should warn you that Alex will be expanding on the Biomass Puppet power in this chapter, he will not be using it much though since the improvements will make it impractical for the recon he is focusing on at the moment.
6. I haven't mentioned anything from Prototype 2 because I don't want to mess with the canon too much, I don't have a problem with Prototype or Starcraft canon, and unless I hate the second Prototype after playing it, I don't want to mess with things too much, so basically this story assumes that Prototype 2 doesn't happen. On a related note, Alex will not be running into any of the important people from the Starcraft universe, I like the canon just fine as is and see no reason to change anything if I don't have to. This is also why I have no issue with butchering canon of other series, if I don't like it I have no problem changing it. (Side note: This story takes place before Starcraft 2 really picks up, so nothing important has happened, that's why nothing from the game will be mentioned.)
7. If you thought the last chapter was on the curb-stomp-ish side, you may, or may not, like this chapter. Alex has gained all of the Zerg upgrades, the ones that would be useful to him anyway, this means that he has pretty much tripled his running speed, it will increase further over time, his attacks have gained the same bonuses that fully upgraded Zerg units benefit from, his base durability has been boosted to match the combined armor of one of every fully upgraded Zerg unit, buildings included, and he can now regenerate fully from any damage without having to consume anything. I should explain that last one, let's put it this way, the cells of everything on Earth, plants, animals, and even viruses, have one thing in common, they all have a limited number of times they can replicate, it is this limit that causes aging in humans and other Earth lifeforms, even a virus can not infinitely reproduce without infecting other cells and using them to create a new generation of viral cells.
The cellular deterioration that most beings are subject to that causes them to age does not affect Alex in the same way, because he is a virus he can just absorb new cells into himself, as long as he does not take damage that requires his cells to replicate too much in order to repair, he is, in essence, immortal. Now that Alex has incorporated Zerg genetics into himself, there is no longer a limit to how many times his cells can replicate, this is because Zerg do not age, their cells do not have a set limit on how many times they can replicate. A zergling could be cut in half, then fully regenerate the lost section of its' body and continue fighting, as long as it survives long enough to do so, any Zerg unit could do this an infinite number of times simply because they have no problems with cellular death the way other life forms do.
With the enhanced regeneration of the Zerg added to his own, and the addition of limitless cell generation, Alex is now less a virus, and more like a Zerg god. So at this point, Alex is more durable then ever before, and even if you manage to hurt him, he can just regenerate in a matter of seconds from anything short of an artillery barrage. Infantry weapons, even grenades and rockets, can't do any significant damage just because he heals to fast for it too matter, and even a direct hit from every shot fired by a pair of Thor's would only slow him down for a little while, and the odds of even one shot hitting him are pretty slim now. Alex is far faster then he used to be, he is much more durable, and because he can generate the necessary biomass on his own, he can launch one devastator after another with no concern about running out of biomass. He still doesn't want to try taking a nuke to the face though.
8. I may have forgotten to mention it in the first chapter, the Hardened Armor is not only four times as durable, and heavy, as the original armor form, it is a little more then three times the size as well, this is important for a couple of reasons, those reasons will be explained, sort of, in this chapter.
9. Anything Alex creates that completely separates from his body has no traces of the Blacklight virus in it, he removes the virus in order to avoid any chance of another outbreak, that and he doesn't trust that another being like him would remain rational enough to not just go omnicidal. Things this applies to includes projectiles and biomass puppets, as well as a few new things that will be introduced in this chapter.
10. This was only intended to be two or three chapters, I have decided to go for three because one of the things I want to accomplish cannot be done in just two. The third chapter picks up right after the end of this one.
11. While writing this I couldn't help but listen to certain songs at specific parts. The two main songs were during the parts where Alex was improving himself, and the major battle sequences. Harder Better Faster Stronger for the upgrading parts, and Indestructible for the battle sequences.
12. I am trying to do things in scale, but that is somewhat difficult since I have no reference for the actual size of some things, buildings and ships mostly, so if I get something wrong please forgive the error. On a related note, I think Carriers would have a lot more then eight Interceptors, seriously, the things are huge while the Interceptors are smaller then a normal fighter craft. If there is a Carrier in this chapter it will have at least one-hundred Interceptors.
13. (Wow, that's a lot of authors notes.) Alex will be fighting a few High Templar in this chapter. Because the in-game versions are not all that impressive on their own, I will be doing to them what I am doing with Alex, taking their abilities to their logical extremes.
Evolution Personified
"So, I guess this means you've decided not to run away screaming?" Alex asked, he was having a hard time not bursting into uncontrollable laughter at the sight of an antique shotgun aimed at his face.
"You think you can just come in here and start smashing up the place? Half my customers are never gonna come back here thanks to you!" The owner of the bar was not very happy.
Alex hadn't started the fight, if you could even call it that, he had been minding his own business thinking of ways to use his new knowledge too improve his new powers, as it turned out the patrons of this particular bar did not like his jacket. One man had made what he likely thought was a clever insult, Alex had simply responded with a comment about the dating habits of the mans sister and followed it up with a question about his mother, apparently those were both sensitive topics seeing as the man thought it was a good idea to pull a knife.
Alex had of course only done what he felt was needed to diffuse the situation and get the point across to all witnesses that he was not someone they wanted to fight, that being said, the bar was barely standing. One wall was almost gone, there were multiple holes in the roof, Alex was wondering if the men that had made those holes had landed yet, half the tables were splintered, and the man that had started the altercation in the first place was currently imbedded in the counter.
The virus smirked at how little damage he had actually done, it was amusing that the owner was so upset about this because the place hadn't really been much better before the fight. The smirk was the last straw for the owner, he pulled the trigger. Given the close range of the weapon, it was not surprising, at least to those who were not aware that the thing that had been shot was not human, that Alex's head exploded, or at least the small amount of biomass he hadn't moved out of the way did.
Quickly shifting biomass back into a recognizable head, Alex glared at the bar owner. "You do realize this means I'm going to have to set you on fire now, right?"
Alex walked out of the small town whistling a rather annoying tune, while the bar he had been in burned to the ground, no one still in the area was very pleasant, so Alex felt no guilt as the fire jumped from one poorly constructed building to the next.
Now miles from any form of human habitation, Alex had just finished building a device that would jam outgoing and incoming signals at up to one-thousand feet, he didn't want any ghosts that may happen into the area to start droping nukes on his head. The crater he had chosen as his testing grounds would make sure no one could get a line of sight target on him without being within the radius of the jamming device.
"Okay now, Sentry turret, similar to Spine and Spore Crawlers, they even had a concept for a mobile version. Let's see here." Alex shifted almost three humans worth of biomass into his right hand and then slammed it into the ground.
Moments after Alex had pulled his normal again arm out of the ground and stepped back, the ground erupted, cracking and splitting as a large creature pulled itself out of the dirt. The creature stood about nine feet in height, it had four armored legs, and a rather vicious looking face, on either side of its' main body were what appeared to be organic imitations of a Sentry turrets' gun, on its' back was a pair of "limbs" that bore a great deal of resemblance to Alex's Acidic Grenade launcher.
Alex walked around the creature, he hadn't decided what to call it yet, inspecting the legs, making sure the barb launchers weren't misaligned, he checked to make sure the grenade launchers wouldn't misfire since he was already checking the armor on the creatures back.
The whole thing was perfect, now to test it. Alex set up a few dozen targets about one-hundred feet from the creature. When he gave the order, it instantly spun towards the targets and opened fire with the barb launchers. The creature could only produce the spines at half the speed Alex did, and it only had half the effective range, but since it fired them in bursts in a straight line from the appendages on its' sides this was not really a problem. Once the creature had put twenty spines in each target it stopped firing and waited for new orders.
"Accuracy looks good, range is right to, no acid so no continuous damage, but that was the plan. Okay, looks like the primary weapon test is a success, let's check the secondary." Alex gave the order.
The limbs on the creatures back raised up over the its' head and angled to compensate for the arc of the shots, it only took a second for it to take aim and launch a pair of grenades at the first target. The explosion from the projectiles demolished the stone target, and the acid that splashed around the point of impact immediately began to melt the targets closest to the first, after waiting the five seconds it took to produce another pair of grenades, the creature fired again. This process was repeated until all of the targets were little more then holes in the ground.
"Again everything checks out. Perfect aim, no trouble compensating for projectile arc or wind speed. Have to find a way to test on moving targets later." Alex really wished he'd been able to do this back in Manhattan, it would have made things a lot easier on him, and a lot harder for Blackwatch.
Shifting some codes around, Alex set aside the template for the original creature and made a second form for it. Again shifting the necessary biomass into his right hand, Alex created another creature beside the first. This creature was the same as the first in all but the weapons it had been given, instead of the barb launchers, it had three linked organic rocket launchers on each side of its' body, and where the first had the acid grenades this one had two sets of four modified rocket launchers, instead of firing their projectiles in a straight line these would each fire four seeker missiles based off the glaive wurm and scourge unit Alex had found in the Zerg genetic structure, these missiles were intended for use against air units, while the rocket launchers were quite obviously meant for ground targets.
A quick test of the rockets showed no flaws with the system, but since he had no air units to test the seekers against, he decided to reserve judgement on the unit until he knew it worked perfectly. Now he just needed to see how they held up under fire. Getting into a good position to observe the test, Alex gave the order, and watched both creatures begin firing on each other. The first had less trouble hitting a moving target, both had begun to move about, sprinting out of the line of fire, actually jumping to dodge incoming attacks, they were doing fairly well at avoiding being damaged at all. The second creature had taken quite a few hits from the firsts spines, but it was well armored, so the anti-personnel projectiles did little damage, it had some difficulty avoiding the acid grenades, but was relatively unharmed at this point, but it had not managed to hit the first even once, it had come close, but it couldn't produce rockets fast enough to force the other into a corner.
In the end the first creature won, it had managed to wear the second down with spines and then tagged it with two pairs of grenades while it was to tired and injured to evade. The second may have lost, but the amount of punishment it took before going down was impressive, and though it had not managed to hit the first, the secondary damage the explosions from its' rockets had done was more then enough to slow the first down, it was not in the best of shape now, even though it had avoided any direct hits. Barring any unforeseen problems with the seeker missiles, Alex deemed both units a success and got to work on something else.
"Two light armor units, so I should see about an infantry unit to I guess." Alex had little trouble finding the right codes for what he wanted, and it was getting much easier putting things together for the desired result.
Alex held his hands apart as though he were holding a basketball, small tendrils began extending from his hands and meeting in the center of the open space. Where the tendrils met, they began to form a small sphere, the object quickly expanded, it took only ten seconds for the egg-like cocoon to reach the size of a basketball, thus filling the space Alex had provided for it. Setting the egg down, Alex stepped back and began accelerating the new creatures growth, in about the same amount of time it took a zergling to hatch, the egg had grown large enough for a full grown human to occupy before it split open. The humanoid being was a little larger then the average human, it was genderless, and instead of skin and hair like a human, it had an armored shell and scales like a Zerg. The creature had large red eyes, there were no whites visible, only slit pupils and faintly glowing red irises.
Like the first two units this one had only a rudimentary brain, it was enough for it to act on its' own to an extent, and it could follow orders, but it would not develop a personality. The armored shell and scales would offer the same amount of protection, maybe a little more, as a marines power armor. On the backs of both forearms were downgraded barb launchers, unlike Alex, this creature could only fire four spines at a time from either arm, and it could not produce the spines fast enough for them to be an effective assault weapon, they were meant to serve as an emergency weapon or surprise attack. On the outer sides of the creatures forearms it had retractable foot long blades, these could be extended and used in direct hand to hand combat.
As he watched his new soldier go through the obstacle course he had set up, Alex couldn't help but smirk, it was going to be fun having his own army. The infantry unit was fast, top running speed of thirty miles per hour, Alex had gotten really good at calculating an objects speed, it could jump a little more then twenty-five feet straight up, about the same distance forward from a standstill, and twice that with a running start, a quick test showed that its' reflexes matched its' speed. The creature was about five times as strong as a peak condition human, it easily lifted a boulder that Alex knew no single human could move.
Besides the external armor, Alex had designed the creature with a durable, tightly packed, but flexible bone structure. Its' muscle mass and density was of course also greater then that of a human, this provided even more protection, and the vital organs that were being protected were also far more durable then their human counterparts. Like Zerg units, and Alex himself, this creature could function in virtually any environment, neither extreme of temperature would slow it down or harm it, and what little air it did need could be gained anywhere, even in space, thanks to the extremely efficient respiratory system Alex had created for it. Like the Zerg, this creature was not subject to cellular deterioration, and therefore did not age, it could be killed, but most people would find that to be a very difficult task without decent weapons and some help from other well armed individuals.
"Okay then, let's see how you handle severe injuries." Alex shifted to a new weapon he had developed using Zerg genetics and Terran technological information. The new shape his arm took resembled a piston combined with a lance and a drill. The drill was only as big around as his normal arm.
Alex punched the creature in the stomach, as he had pulled back his "fist", the bio-metallic drill had pulled back as well, and the moment his "fist" hit the target, the spear was launched forward with enough force to punch straight through three feet of neosteel. The creature was blown off its' feet, landing twenty feet from where Alex was examining one of his newest weapons. Once he was satisfied that the weapon worked as intended, Alex walked over to the, miraculously, living creature. While it was alive, it was definitely not in good condition, had Alex been trying to kill the creature, it would be little more then a smear on the ground, as it was it had a hole in its' torso the size of a soccer ball.
(I really don't want to interrupt the story, but I can't think of a better way of explaining the new weapon, and I don't want to risk someone getting the wrong idea. It's basically a scaled down version of the Pile Bunker from Lost Planet 2. It functions the same way and when Alex uses it he uses it in a similar fashion to how it works when it is equipped to the GAH-42BS VS.)
Alex told his creature to save itself if it could, the thing responded by struggling to its' feet and stumbling over to the body of the second creature Alex had created, using its' blades it cut a decent sized chunk out of the fallen being, and ate it. Using the new material as a catalyst, the creature accelerated its' naturally fast healing to more then four times its' base speed, in less then a minute what should have been a fatal wound was completely healed.
"Good, wouldn't be very useful if you died that easily. Both of you go wait at the side of the crater, I have a couple more tests to perform." As the creatures cleared the potential blast zone, Alex set up some more targets.
Shifting to Hardened Armor, Alex shifted some genetic codes around with the intent of imitating a Thor's' 250 mm Strike Cannons, scaled down of course. When he was finished, Alex had four organic cannons on his back. Bracing himself for the recoil, Alex calculated the distance to the first target and the arc of the organic shells, as well as angling the cannons so as to focus fire on a more concentrated area. When he was ready, all of the necessary calculations taking less then twenty seconds, Alex fired. The result was complete annihilation of the target, and everything within ten feet of it in all directions.
"I would call that a major success. What else can we play with." Alex had already shifted back to normal and was morphing a new weapon before the dust had even settled.
The new weapon was a modified grenade launcher, instead of acidic grenades this one fired small spheres that, moments after landing, "jumped" into the air and fired a volley of spines in a three-hundred sixty degree radius around the sphere, after the spines were fired the sphere quickly dissolved. The most note worthy change for this weapon was that there were two of them, one on each arm, the intent was to launch multiple spheres into enemy positions, launching the spike grenades in pairs, or one right after the other, would be more effective then just throwing them one at a time.
After testing the spike grenades, Alex decided to goof off a little bit. Taking apart the mechanics of the Hellions' Infernal Flamethrower, Alex shifted his insides a bit to accommodate the new ability. Taking aim at a target about forty feet from his position, Alex inhaled, created the necessary chemicals, combined the chemicals in the right amounts, and exhaled. A concentrated stream of fire flew from his mouth to the target, after only twenty seconds of focused fire, the stone dummy was reduced to a pool of molten rock.
A full blown smile was plastered to the LWMDs' face as he looked at the damage his 'joke weapon' could cause. Quickly shifting only his hands to the form he had come up with before he decided that he wanted to breath fire, Alex dashed forward while rising into the air, as soon as he was close enough he opened fire on the target. The new weapon was based off of the Reapers' P-38 Scythe pistols, they had less range then the barb launchers, but when used at close range they quickly ripped the stone target to pieces, there was a lot more punch to the smaller and denser projectiles. Alex did have to "reload" the weapons after every thirty shots, but it only took four seconds.
There were two more forms Alex wanted to test before he started looking for Protoss to study. Truthfully, it was only one weapon made from the combination of two others, the Siege Tanks 90 mm twin cannons and the 120 mm shock cannon. It took more then a minute to work out a shape that would allow the weapon to function in the same manner as the weapons it was based off of. Alex examined the huge pair of cannons that had replaced his right arm, just like the Strike Cannons he had to be in hardened armor and standing still to use this weapon.
Alex took a couple of shots at the targets with the primary fire mode, each one was reduced to dust by the duel organic shells striking simultaneously, once that was tested it was time to see how the shock cannon mode worked. Alex morphed a set of braces on each leg, anchoring him to the ground, and then switched the twin cannons over to shock cannon mode. It would take some practice before he could properly compensate for the recoil of the siege weapon, but his aim was almost perfect, each psionically accelerated shell hit its' mark, two were off center, but that could be worked around. The shock cannon took ten seconds to "reload", while the twin cannons only took five.
Shifting back to normal and growing wings, Alex ordered his, as yet unnamed, creatures to follow him. He didn't wait to see if they were following, he could sense them anyway, Alex launched into the air and flew toward a military outpost that should have what he needed.
"Base is Under Attack. Base is Under Attack. Base is..." The automated alarm continued to pointlessly state the obvious, as the marines struggled to keep the humanoid in their sights long enough to fire at it, they were not doing well. The Marauders that had been stationed there had gone down fast when the second creature had arrived, it hadn't seemed to care if it hit them or not when it started lobbing acid grenades about the base, they just had the bad luck of being to slow to get away from the spray of acid from the explosions, if the blasts themselves didn't do the job.
The second creature was hard to hit, surprising considering its' size, but the humanoid was impossible, just when you thought you had it the damned thing would jump out of sight, or practically disappear, it moved to fast for the marines to keep up. Five of the marines were dead, but only two had been killed by the creature, the other three were taken out by friendly fire, the thing seemed to be trying to make them shoot each other.
While the Terran troops were doing their best to track the two aliens, Alex was busy dismantling a missile turret. It took about five minutes, with the help of five biomass puppets, to get the parts he needed, which was most of the structure, ready for transport. The troops defending the base didn't notice anything strange ten minutes later, when the injured creatures turned and fled, they were just glad that the things were gone, and hoped there weren't more of them. They had only managed to injure the humanoid creature by putting their backs to a wall and all firing on the same spot when one shouted that he saw it, this had however gotten most of them seriously hurt when the larger creature began firing on them directly instead of taking shots at the base at random.
Back in the crater again, Alex was putting the, now heavily modified, missile turret back together. He was pretty sure he could get into orbit on his own with no trouble this time, but he wanted to try something new. The structure was now more of a silo then a turret, he had built a capsule as well and was making the final adjustments when he sensed a team of Ghosts approaching from the north-west. "Not the nicest people around, and I could use some more power to make sure this works."
Alex burrowed into the ground and tunneled towards the advancing Ghosts while shifting into a form he had based on the Nydus worm. While nowhere near as large as a true Nydus worm, Alex's Burrow Beast form was a much more direct threat then the creature it was based off of.
The five man team took cover behind some rocks, it looked like Marauders had been using the area for target practice. "Everyone linked?" The team leader wanted to double check that the telepathic communication line was still working right, didn't need to lose track of someone while trying to deal with something that could steal a whole missile turret without being seen. He was answered with four telepathic voices, "Yes sir."
"Okay, anyone see the target?"
"No, just the other two, no sign of a third contact sir." All five Ghosts were looking around the crater, they didn't see how this thing had stolen the whole building without being seen, even if it was cloaked someone should have noticed. They didn't see anything else in the crater besides the other two creatures reported to have attacked the base, the humanoid was holding a stolen C-14 rifle.
If giant worms were capable of doing so, Alex would have been laughing, not being noticed was easy when everyone was distracted, and even easier when you could just tell people to not see you. Now he was trying to decide which Ghost to eat first, and how to do it. He could jump out of the ground and come down on top of one of them, he could do the opposite and come up under one with his mouth open, if he really wanted to scare them he could drag one of them down with a tendril. "Choices, choices."
He decided to combine two of the options. A Impaler Tendril slipped up out of the ground and wrapped around one Ghosts leg, before any of them noticed it, Alex hurled the Ghost into the air, thankfully he dropped his gun, complicated machines were still impossible for Alex to fully deconstruct and absorb, the same went for things with too much inorganic matter. As the confused Ghost fell, while his team could only watch in confused shock, Alex shot out of the ground like a missle, meeting the now terrified man twenty feet off the ground, Alex opened his mouth of razor-like teeth, consumption tendrils were already prepared to begin taking the victim apart.
The remaining Ghosts just stared at the patch of slightly loose soil where the creature they had just seen had disappeared. All of them had one collective thought.
"What. The. Hell?"
Alex didn't give them more time to think of anything else, one of the Ghosts was pulled screaming along the ground ten feet before vanishing into the dirt, another was lifted into the air as Alex surfaced beneath her, while she was shocked, she managed to control herself and get a shot at him, the projectile barely dented the hard shell this form was protected by, before the Ghost could fire again Alex flipped her onto the ground and opened his mouth, both disappeared under the earth moments later.
The last two began firing into the ground, if Alex were still in that area some of those shots may have hit him, but he had burrowed deeper and moved around behind them. "I wouldn't turn around if I were you." This was only sent to one of the two, the team leader was left alone shooting into the dirt, the man who heard the telepathic message turned around, not the smartest thing he could have done.
Alex burrowed back into the dirt before the last Ghost could even register the strangled shout from his team mate, or realize what the large thing that had just shot past him was.
"I did warn him, but no, he just had to turn around. You didn't do a very good job instilling discipline into your team you know." Alex shifted back to normal and burrowed back to the surface, right behind the last Ghost.
"This cannot be happening! We were still cloaked, there is no way it could have seen us. How did it know we were here? No one said anything about it burrowing! Or being telepathic! Damnit!" These were the Ghosts last thoughts before Alex split him in two and consumed him.
"Turns out eating detectors is a good idea, 'You are what you eat.'" Alex sprinted back to his launch pad. "Okay looks like everything's ready." He quickly consumed the creatures, couldn't just leave them to their own devices. After making sure the launch sequence couldn't be interrupted, Alex climbed into the capsule and began charging it with psionic power as the countdown started.
As the capsule was blasted into the sky at three times the correct escape velocity, Alex shouted and sent a telepathic message to every living thing in his considerable range.
"To Infinity, and Beyond!"
"To Infinity, and Beyond!"
Once in orbit, Alex opened a warp rift directly in front of the capsule. Unlike his first rift, Alex actually aimed this one.
"You Will Discover a War You're Unable to Win!" Dana had once told him she thought this song was a good fit for him, at the time Alex hadn't known what she meant, but thinking about what had happened on Earth, and what he had done since coming to the Koprulu Sector, Alex had to admit it was somewhat fitting. He continued singing as he walked through the jungle, ignoring the eleven Dark Templar that were following him.
One hour and four songs later, Alex jumped straight up, to anyone without thermal vision, or who wasn't a detector, it looked like he had just decided to impersonate an ICBM at random. The young Dark Templar who had just tried to kill the human intruder was extremely confused, mainly by the fact that he had missed, but also because humans are not capable of flying under their own power.
"That was kind of rude you know. Just attacking someone out of the blue like that. Was my singing really that bad?" Alex floated down, landing on a large boulder. "Although, that's not the worst part of this, that has got to be the fact that you've been following me for more then an hour. Humans call that stalking, and it is usually considered a serious crime."
All eleven Dark Templar de-cloaked, though the three youngest only did so at the command of their elders. "What are you? You are clearly not human, from you we feel the power of the Void, but also the presence of the Zerg. Tell me, how is it that you knew we were following you?" The most experienced warrior of the group chose to act as speaker for his brothers. Alex had decreased the level to which he was hidden by his psionic power, he wanted to be found after all.
"Still a little rude, but I've seen worse, and been guilty of it myself. What am I? Good question, but at this point I can't really tell you, since I've changed so much I'm not really sure myself anymore. I knew you were there because an Overseer would have seen you, and even failing that, the jumpy guy there makes an awful lot of noise, hearing that all I would have had to do was look for body heat." Alex couldn't be sure since Protoss had little in the way of facial features, but he was betting that most of them looked confused.
"You cannot tell us what you are, or won't tell us?"
"About a week ago I would have told you, but I don't think the answer I would have given then is true now. Like I said, I've changed a lot."
"Why do we sense the Zerg with you, even if only faintly?"
"That has a very simple, if odd, answer. I ate a few Zerg."
"What!" This was from all of those present, though the intensity of their shock varied from one to another.
"I take the old saying 'You are what you eat' a bit more literally then most. Like the Zerg I can absorb other lifeforms into myself, the difference being that I'm one being, not a whole species." Alex was enjoying this, he couldn't stop smiling.
"So the Zerg are a part of you, but they do not control you? How?"
"I had a lot of practice dealing with invasive minds in the past, took a while to make sure my personality couldn't be overridden by another, but with the force of a few hundred human minds, a couple of Zerg weren't a problem, after I figured out how to shield my mind completely, it was no trouble adding the rest of the Zerg strains to my collection."
The moron that had ignored orders once already decided that what Alex had said was reason enough to consider him an enemy, the other two young warriors seemed to feel the same. The three of them cloaked themselves again and rushed forward, ignoring the shouts of the older warriors.
Alex let the first strike hit him, and regretted it. Though he didn't allow any sign of it to show, that had really hurt, it was no where near enough to be considered a threat, but it meant that unlike humans, Protoss didn't need to bring out high caliber weapons to hurt him. Alex launched himself backwards, avoiding the other two attackers and healing the cut in his shoulder, it healed much slower then he would have liked, apparently warp blades caused enough cell damage to slow the regeneration of the effected area. He would have to assume other Protoss weapons would have a similar effect on his regeneration.
Alex created a psionic shield around his right arm as it morphed into blade form, this gave him an idea he would have to test later. His energy encased blade easily stopped the young Protoss' warp blades. Alex made sure to watch them carefully, the more he could learn about them without having to consume one, the better. Alex quickly realized that if he was going to seriously fight a Dark Templar, he needed a smaller blade, while the original had power and was fairly quick, it was just to big and clumsy to fight evenly with a smaller blade. Alex could have killed these three younger warriors easily, but he could tell that the older warriors would be far more skilled, and while he did have the means to simply overpower them, he didn't want to rely on such a simple-minded tactic.
Alex had led the three younger warriors further from the rest while they fought, he had intended to drag the fight out as long as he could before the older warriors could stop their foolish younger brothers. Now the older Templar had caught up, and had begun to subdue the younger warriors.
"Are you mad? You can not rush into battle blindly."
"Were you three not listening? This being has defeated enemies far more dangerous then the three of you."
"In truth, I believe he is holding back. You could crush us with little trouble, couldn't you?"
"Honestly? Yes, but I would rather not just blast my way through everything with shear force. A well placed blade can get things done just as easily as a nuke, and with a lot less fallout." Alex morphed his arm back to normal while devoting a little bit of focus to making a blade better suited to fighting, his original was really only meant for cutting tanks in half, it didn't do well in a contest of skill.
"If he is Zerg, then he is our enemy!" One of the younger Templar still felt like arguing.
"Kids these days." Alex sighed in the most condescending manner he could. "Look, if I was your enemy, do you really think your organs would still be inside your bodies? I let myself be found, because I figured I could learn more about psionic abilities the old fashioned way, but if you're offering to make things easier, I could just consume you and be done with it, though I don't think you know as much as I would like to learn."
All of the Protoss present were more then a little unnerved by the casual manner in which Alex had suggested he eat one of them.
"I do not think that will be nesseccary. You wish to learn of the power you have but do not understand?" Again the most experienced warrior was speaking for the group.
"Correct. I can think of a number of uses for it, but it would be easier to work with if I knew more about it. The Zerg use their power instinctively, so I didn't learn much from them." Alex could see where this was going, they were going to ask him for help in exchange for teaching him their ways, it reminded him of those video games some of 'Them' had been fans of.
"Do you know why we are here?"
"I'm guessing it has something to do with that outpost in the middle of the jungle."
"Exactly. Our people have only recently began to come together again, but many High Templar do not agree with this alliance, and they have followers who feel the same. My brothers and I, as well as a number of other troops, were sent here to investigate when we learned that several of the High Templar had gathered on this planet, they brought their followers with them. We have found that they intend to bring yet another civil war to our species."
"And you want to ask me to help you deal with them?" Alex smirked.
"Correct. If you are as powerful as I believe, then dealing with the problem should be simple, we will not need to resort to a full scale battle to subdue the rebel Templar and their followers." The lead Dark Templar extended his hand. "Will you aid us?"
"Alex Mercer, pleasure to be working with you." Alex introduced himself and shook the offered hand.
"Now that is a well defensed base, why aren't humans ever that thorough?" Alex was standing on a cliff almost a mile from the base, he could see it clearly enough, it was obviously meant to hold up against a siege.
At the moment Alex was alone, the Protoss he had agreed to help were going to be breaking into the base from the opposite direction, after he took down the defenses. They wanted as few deaths on both sides as possible, so Alex was going to go in first, since he was undetectable he could incapacitate a large percentage of the enemy troops without revealing that an attack was imminent.
"Commencing Operation." Alex grinned as he disappeared into the ground.
Alex surfaced quietly behind one of the three Assimilators within the base. He had developed a chemical that would leave a Protoss unconscious, without alerting those in contact with them that something was wrong. Creating a gas grenade in the palm of his hand, Alex waited for the new patrol to pass the blind spot, no one would see the ten zealots go down. He had memorized the patrol patterns and decided to begin right after the shifts changed, this way he could take them down without anyone realizing that someone was late for their shift, or the new guys showing up just in time to see the first guards go down.
The gas would keep them out for hours, but that didn't mean he could take his time, he had to deal with at least twenty-five percent of the troops before the party started. Taking down a fourth of the troops was Alex's own goal, he had a habit of racking up a body count wherever he went, he was determined to limit unnecessary casualties as much as possible.
Seven of twelve zealot patrols down, soon they're absence would be noticed. Alex marked every Immortal in the base and prepared to overload their systems, once that was done there was no way the remaining Protoss wouldn't figure out that something was wrong.
Alex released a pulse of psionic energy into the connection between the remaining conscious Protoss, and into the systems of the Immortals, the latter were all knocked out since their mechanical systems were shut down by the pulse, the former were temporarily crippled by the mother of all headaches that Alex's attack had caused them.
While the organic units were busy twitching on the ground, the combat drones began searching for the source of the attack, a Sentry came close, but it turns out plasma shields don't stop attacks that come from inside the bubble. Alex had chosen not to expend energy trying to bring down the Colossi with the pulse, he wanted to deal with them directly.
Alex decided to test the idea he had come up with when shielding his blade from the Dark Templar's warp blades. Shifting his arm and spinning to his right, Alex sent a focused burst of psionic energy along the blade, the result was a wave of power flying from the weapon towards the Colossus that had just spotted him. The attack struck the robots shield and vanished, but Alex could tell that it had been effective, a few more would bring the shield down, and then it would just be a matter of taking out the machine itself.
Alex flew to the top of the Cybernetics core and shifted both arms to claws, he began slashing through the air rapidly, each swing sending four psionic blades flying at the Colossus. While the attack had less punch coming from the claws, it was still very effective, even got the robot to risk shooting at him despite the fact that it would mean hitting one of their own buildings. Alex flew into the air, the beams from the Colossus' Thermal Lances passing just below him.
"Avoid at all costs, warp blades are bad, those are probably a lot worse." Alex shifted to his acid grenade launcher and opened fire on the Colossus, his last attack had disabled its' shield. The grenades themselves did little damage to the giant machine, but that's what the acid was for. It didn't take long to bring the first Colossus down, but now the other four had taken notice and were firing on him, since he was flying they had little chance of hitting him, but the squadron of Phoenix's on the other hand had better luck.
Dodging the Ion cannon shots from one or two of the fighters wasn't that hard, the problem was that there were twenty of them all shooting at him at once. After nearly losing a wing, Alex decided to bring the fight back to ground level, he still had to take out the Photon Cannons before the strike team could move into the base and give him a hand. Spreading his energy above the base, Alex focused on the ground, and pushed, all airborne units in the area were forced to the ground, rough landing but they were all alive. A bonus of the tactic was that the remaining Colossi were knocked to the ground too, Alex dealt with them after making sure the Phoenix's wouldn't be a threat anymore.
Before the pilots could recover and try to take off again, Alex ripped the weapons off the vehicles, and tore out the propulsion systems, he almost missed the last two, but in the end all the fighters were grounded. Two hours ago there had been a Carrier above the base, Alex was glad he had waited for it to leave, having to deal with Interceptors would have been really annoying, as things stood there were no more combat capable air units in the area at the moment.
Once the Phoenix pilots had been disabled, Alex shifted to Hardened Armor and Strike Cannons, the remaining ground forces, more then two-hundred zealots, were heading for his position at that moment, so he felt it would be best to just take out the Pylons now and get his back-up into the battle before he had to ruin his record of not killing anyone during this operation.
"Another one bites the dust." Alex was having trouble maintaining his shield under the attacks of the zealots, and accurately targeting the Pylons at the same time, but that hadn't stopped five of the large crystal formations from being demolished. The last Pylon was, unfortunately, placed in a location that would require Alex to expose himself to fire from the seven Photon cannons that it was powering. "Okay, fine, let's just take speed this up a little."
Alex morphed back to normal and burrowed into the ground. Getting some distance from the zealots, and the Photon cannons, Alex surfaced and shot into the air, he couldn't convince the cannons that he wasn't there, so he would just have to take out the Pylon in the quickest manner possible, one that would leave him much less open to fire from the energy weapons he was beginning to hate.
Creating another shield and shifting back to Hardened Armor, this time with Hammer fists, Alex dove back toward the ground. His aim was perfect, the Pylons shield shattered when he hit it, and the crystal broke easily under the impact of roughly sixty tons striking it at nearly four-thousand miles per hour.
It took Alex a few seconds to dig himself out of the ground, he had hit a little to hard apparently, when he was on the surface again he was happy to see his Protoss allies storming into the base and quickly capturing most of the stunned zealots before they could recover from the shock of Alex's imitation of a meteorite. Of course nothing's ever easy, so Alex was not surprised when one of the zealots on his side was blasted off his feet by an attack from one of the High Templar who had decided to make an appearance.
"You dare attack us? What makes you think you can stop us? We will not allow those corrupted by the Void to destroy our way of life!" Not the best angry religious guy speech Alex had ever heard, but it was obvious the Templar hadn't seen what had happened, they just knew they were attacked and there were Dark Templar involved. From what the Templar said, more specifically the way he said it, Alex could already guess that they wouldn't be taking him, or the other Templar, alive.
"Hey, back off a bit, let me handle them." Alex sent the message to his allies only. "Alright, hold on, I need to talk to you."
The Templar was shocked to notice the human, he hadn't even seen him while he was practically right in front of him. "Anyone who allies themselves with these monsters has signed their own death warrant human. We have nothing to say to you."
"Is that a trait of your species, being rude to strangers who haven't done anything to deserve it?" Alex may have been smirking, but he did not like what he knew was coming, in a battle of psionic power he may have the advantage in raw energy and force, but the Templar actually knew what they were doing, he was just making things up as he went along.
"Insolent human, regret your foolish choice of allies in oblivion!" Four of the Templar who had exited the Nexus shouted in unison, as they hurled their combined power at him.
To his credit, Alex managed to not show just how much the bolt of psionic power had actually hurt him, almost five humans worth of biomass lost from one attack, and they had only expended a small amount of energy since they thought they were just taking out an ordinary human.
"Don't tell me that's the best you've got." Alex shifted to Armor and brought up a psionic shield while the Templar were trying to understand what had just happened.
Alex didn't give the shocked Protoss time to recover, if they realized how tough he actually was before he could wear them down a little they would be a major threat. Alex sent a Psionic Wave devastator at the still stunned Templar, but they recovered in time to avoid the attack. All seven of them retaliated with bolts of psionic lightning, which Alex easily avoided, and countered by telekinetically launching debris from a fallen Colossus at them.
"You may wield our powers, but you know nothing of the art, you cannot win."
"Sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one." Alex sprinted around the burst of psionic force the Templar had launched at him, shifted his right arm, and pulled back the armor piercing weapon. The Templar that had launched the attack had not recovered from the effort and was to shocked to move even if that were not the case. The weapon connected with the plasma shield, the shield flared dangerously even before the true attack struck, the drill-like spear burst through the shield and punched a hole in the Templar's chest.
Alex pushed a good deal more power into his shield as he consumed the unfortunate Protoss, he was going to need a moment in order to decrease the remaining Templar's advantage of knowledge a bit. As the more complex armor and machines that the Templar had had fell to the ground, Alex began organizing the memories and fully assimilating the ones he could use without any trouble from lack of training or experience.
"Alright, now let's see how you do when I'm not oblivious to the potential this power has." Alex flickered, ten duplicates appeared around the original. The doppelgangers were only a tenth as durable as the real Alex, and they couldn't shift or consume, but they could take a few hits and could hurt the enemy if they got the chance.
Alex, and his clones, all fired bolts of red psionic lightning at the, once again, shocked Templar, they were able to avoid the majority of the attacks, but their shields had been noticeably depleted by the shots that made contact.
The clones did fairly well, and the goal of wearing the Templar down was accomplished. The psionic clones could only survive three or four direct hits from the Templar attacks, but that was enough to put the Templar on the defensive.
More debris was thrown, bolts of lightning lanced through the air, the clones were all destroyed, but that didn't mean the Templar could rest, Alex was getting better with the more refined use of psionic power. Two glowing red orbs flared to life in the LWMDs' hands, Alex hurled the projectiles at the now thoroughly frightened Templar, on contact with any solid surface the orbs exploded with about the same force as a D-8 charge, this was a fairly simplistic psionic attack, just an over charged bolt of force really.
"Wow, I thought this was going to be harder then fighting the Zerg, from what your friend believed I was expecting a real challenge here, but you guys are almost as pathetic as zerglings. The zealots put up a better fight then this." Alex continued to taunt the Templar while throwing one explosive psionic charge after another.
The six remaining High Templar spread out and returned fire, they were not going to run away, they were certain they could kill the abomination. Alex knew that a psionic storm would hurt, a lot, but he also knew that they wouldn't risk it at such close range and definitely not in their own base, so he just focused on avoiding or blocking their attacks. One of the Templar slipped up, just what Alex had been waiting for, he got to close to Alex, and to far from his comrades. Alex spread his energy out in the area around him forming a red cloud, this would not only prevent them from seeing where he was, it would also disperse some of the power in any psionic attack launched into it.
Alex burrowed into the ground while switching to thermal vision, the Templar that had gotten to close was obviously too worried about where Alex was to even think about trying to get out of the cloud, he had already tried to force it away, but the cloud just absorbed the energy and got bigger. Alex slid up out of the dirt silently, just behind the soon to be consumed Templar.
"You know, if you had just backed up a few feet you would have lived a little longer." As he thought this, Alex slammed his hand through the Templar's back.
The psionic cloud cleared just in time for the five Templar to watch another of their own dissolve into the creature they were fighting. Alex added the new memories to the archive and turned toward the outraged Protoss who still thought that they could win without any trouble, Alex changed their minds when he demolished half the Gateway with one of his over charged force bolts.
The five Templar exchanged quick glances, they came to a decision, three of the five hurled another combined attack at Alex, he strengthened his shield and took the attack head on, while this was happening the other two Templar began merging. Alex was concerned and happy at the same time , concerned because he had no reliable method of dealing with beings made of energy, happy because this would give him a chance to come up with a way to deal with it in the future.
Alex continued to let his shield take blow after blow from the Templar, he was busy watching the merging while focusing on how it felt on the psionic level. Soon enough it was over, an Archon now loomed behind the three Templar. Alex had to exert a conscious effort to not morph a zergling like smile onto his face, he needed to see it one more time to be sure, but he was almost certain he knew how to not only beat an Archon, but consume it as well.
The Archons' first act was to blast Alex off his feet, the force of the psionic bolt was far beyond what any one Templar, or three working together, could manage, but his shield held. Alex braced himself for the next attack, his shield again held and this time he was not sent flying through the air. "Now I just need them to think this is the only way they can beat me."
The Archon and the Templar continued to attack, Alex dropped some power from his shield and let a bit of the Archons attacks through, just enough that they would think he couldn't stop it. Alex punched the ground, the attack missed, just as planned. Alex attacked the Protoss again and again, but made sure the attacks either lacked power, or missed, from the perspective of his enemies it seemed he was having trouble focusing, it didn't take long for them to begin thinking exactly what he wanted them to think. Alex made sure they would do what he needed them to when his shield "broke" when a shot from the Archon hit it, the shot passed through the fading barrier and struck Alex in the chest, throwing him through the air.
Alex pulled himself to his feet, making sure it looked like he was having a hard time standing, and suppressed his healing, though he didn't need to do much, the energy from the attack had damaged his cells enough that they were taking twice as long to heal as they should have. Alex brought up a much weaker shield, and shifted to Hardened Armor, he then created a biomass shield on each arm and put them between him and the Archon.
The Templar were predictable, they thought and did exactly what he wanted, he hoped they weren't the best examples of the species, that would be depressing. Two of the remaining Templar began merging, the Archon and the only High Templar left continued firing at him, thinking that they were keeping him from running away or attacking. While the Protoss pounded away at his defenses, Alex focused all of his senses on the soon to be Archon, it felt slightly different from the first time, but that was obviously because it was a different set of Templar this time, other then the change in participants the entire thing was the same, Alex knew how to deal with them now.
As the second Archon joined the first, towering over the Templar, Alex dropped his shields, psionic and biomass, and burrowed into the dirt. Their enemy having fled, the Protoss finally realized that the Dark Templar and the other Protoss had retreated, taking the captured renegades with them. Alex surfaced about fifty feet from the near panicking Protoss and shifted back to normal, a huge grin plastered over his face.
"So, you really didn't realize I was a distraction for the first five minutes?" The monstrous grin just got worse when the Protoss turned around, if the Templar had a jaw, it would have dropped.
"Even without soldiers we can still deal with you. Did you think we hadn't noticed you were unwilling to fight an Archon? You couldn't fight one, how do you intend to defeat two at the same time?" The Templar had recovered somewhat, he was still shaken, but his arrogance had returned full force, his condescending vocal pattern was back as well.
Alex just stared at them for a moment, then he burst into a fit of psychotic laughter. As he continued laughing, he began to glow, an angry red aura quickly surrounded him. When he finally stopped laughing, Alex looked back to the Templar, his eyes glowing red.
"You really did fall for it. I won't lie, the Archons are a threat to me, but no more so then the Colossi, they can damage my cell structure, but that's it, there's no way just these two can put out enough power to kill me." Alex nearly burst out laughing again. "By the way, I don't intend to defeat them, I intend to eat them."
Before the comment could really register with either the Templar or the Archons, ten Psionic Tendrils lashed out from the aura that had surrounded Alex, the tendrils covered the distance to their targets in seconds, wrapping around the energy beings, ignoring the shields. Through a combination of his psionic powers, Impaler Tendrils, knowledge of energy frequencies, and the Feedback ability he had gained from the first Templar he ate, Alex ripped the two Archons consciousnesses to pieces, and absorbed the energy that they were made of.
The power wasn't overwhelming, but it was interesting to gain that much energy from just two beings, four technically, but not the point. The last High Templar was clutching his head, still hearing the screams of the four Templar whose merged essence had just be torn apart. Alex, no longer glowing, walked calmly over to the Templar, stopping only five feet from the traumatized being.
"Now, what were you saying about me having no chance of surviving this encounter?" Alex smirked at the feelings of terror he was getting from the Templar. "I was supposed to capture you all alive if possible, but you just had to do things the hard way." Alex battered his way through the Templar's mental defenses. "Enjoy life as a turnip." Alex took all the information he needed from the Templar's mind, and then wiped everything else.
Alex shifted his wings into place and flew into the sky to catch up with the Dark Templar. The only living thing left in the base was a Protoss with no more consciousness then a vegetable.
Two days ago Alex had finished supplying the Protoss with all the information he had gained from the Templar he had consumed, though they were not happy to hear how he had acquired the information. He was now learning what they were willing to teach him, he knew most of it from those he had consumed, but there were plenty of new things to learn, especially from the Dark Templar, he was quickly mastering his psionic power, and had even begun learning to fight with two different types of warp blade.
Alex was overjoyed when the Executor of the base agreed to give him access to all the information regarding Protoss technology and history, this permission was given for two reasons, the first was that they didn't want to risk him deciding to just take the information he wanted, they didn't know if they could stop him if that happened, the second reason was because he seemed to genuinely want to learn, not just about psionic powers or Protoss weapons, he wanted to learn everything he could.
Alex had realized four-hundred thirty-six years ago that, without an enemy to fight, he was a scientist above all else, he hadn't been able to decide if it was because his personality was based, if only loosely, off of Alexander Mercer, or if somehow all of the scientists he had consumed had instilled a natural curiosity into him, in the end he had decided it didn't matter. He was a scientist and that would not change.
Alex had found more reasons to avoid fighting Protoss if he could help it, he was pretty sure that he would not survive if someone decided that the cost was worth it and fired a Motherships Planet Cracker at him. Beyond finding reasons to avoid making the Protoss angry, Alex also found new ways he could improve his abilities by applying Protoss science to them, a particular item of interest being the matter to energy conversion ability of the Warp Prism, and the reverse of the process as well.
Once he was able to perform any feat of psionic power a fully trained High Templar could, and had reached the point where by simple skill he could defeat three experienced Dark Templar in a sparring match at the same time, Alex decided it was time to find a place to apply his new information to his original powers. Thanking the Protoss, and giving a few suggestions on how they could deal with future problems, Alex Blinked away. (When Alex Blinks, he disappears in the same manner as Ai Enma from Hell Girl, the same effect is used for when he arrives.)
Arriving at a fairly secluded valley deep in the jungle, Alex got to work. First he wanted to apply Protoss energy weapons to his arsenal, starting with the Ion cannons of the Phoenix. Working with the semi-mechanical crystal systems of Protoss technology was significantly more difficult then simply imitating the machines of the Terran in a fully organic form, but after nearly an hour he found a method that would allow him to perfectly replicate Protoss technology, and in the process he found a way to consume simple machines, it would take some practice before he could eat a Siege Tank or a Sentry, but he was on the right track.
"Got it right this time." Alex shifted his arms into Ion cannon form. The changes were similar to Musclemass in that his arms got noticeably larger, the difference was that they lacked the gap between his "radius" and "ulna", and had gaps in the "skin" on the tops that showed a crystal formation running the length of his arms all the way to his shoulders, where the crystals ended in perfectly round gems, the entire formation was a deep red color. He still had hands, but they had not increased in size with the rest of his arms, and were now hidden under portions of armor that extended beyond his wrists, on each of these there was an inch wide round crystal that glowed faintly.
Aiming at one of the dozen or so targets he had set up, Alex fired the concentrated energy weapon on his right arm. A red beam of light lanced through the air and struck the target dead center, the bolt of power burned a hole straight through the stone and continued to fly for another four-hundred feet before fading, had Alex put more force into the shot it would have had far greater range. Alex repeated the test with his left arm, with the same effect, and then fired a few test shots from both simultaneously.
"I will not laugh maniacally, I will not laugh maniacally." Alex repeated this a few times before continuing work on the ability that had prompted the near outburst. When he was finished he couldn't decide whether or not it should go into the 'joke' category or not. Staring straight at his intended target, Alex sent the energy through the new crystal formation, and released it at the stone wall, twin beams of red light flew from his crystalline eyes and began melting the stone, Alex turned up the intensity a bit, this resulted in the beams crackling like lightning and causing a decent sized explosion to occur wherever they were focused for more then a second.
Since multiple Protoss units used the Phase Disruptor, and it was an extremely effective weapon, Alex decided to give it a different treatment then he was giving the other weapons. Alex formed an orb of biomass, shifted it into a recognizable form, and installed a large crystal in the center. The end result of the new weapon looked like a giant flying eyeball, Alex gave it a basic order, it began firing on the targets at random. This was basically an organic version of the orb portion of the Photon cannon, when he ordered it to stop it just started floating off to the side waiting for him to give it further instructions.
The Prismatic Beam of the Void Ray was a bit difficult to replicate, but not impossible. Alex's right arm was now made of a combination of crystal formations and bio-metallic substances, the whole setup had a very graceful and artistic feel to it. The weapon functioned by refracting and reflecting three energy beams through a series of prisms arranged throughout the assembly, with the three beams joining in the final prism located where his hand would normally be, the result was a foot wide beam of energy that could be focused on any desired target for a devastating effect over a short period of time, it could likely demolish a Siege Tank in under a minute, and simply cut through lesser organic units with a simple pass over them.
Seeing no reason to add another continuous beam weapon to his arsenal at the moment, Alex instead focused on the Sentry's other systems. Combining the Force Field and Guardian Shield systems, Alex created a far more powerful shield that he could maintain around himself in a small area, or expand it to protect everything within a one-hundred foot, three-hundred sixty degree radius. Things could exit the shield but, other then air, nothing could enter it, to test the durability of the AODS (Absolute Omni-Directional Shield), Alex created one at maximum power and locked it in place around the newly repaired targets, then he created three more Disruptor Drones and flew into the sky with the four automated units following him. Alex began firing his Ion cannons and Thermal Lance beams at the shield, while the Disruptor Drones joined in with their Phase Disruptor shots. In the end Alex even manifested two dinner plate sized crystals on his back and imitated the Phoenix Overload ability, the shield held even against the massive barrage of firepower.
Once he was satisfied with the new defensive power, Alex moved on to imitating the Interceptors, it was fairly easy, he now had ten three foot wide bio-metallic Interceptors of his own flying around above him. They were much faster then the Disruptor Drones, but had much less fire power, but the fact that they were harder to hit and could attack at more then four times the speed of the Drones made up for their lack of outright force.
Since he was not sure it was a good idea to play with it, Alex decided to think about the Mothership systems more later and just move on to other pursuits for the time being.
The combination of technology and genetics that he was capable of was amazing, and more then anything he wanted to know how far he could take it, he had no reason for this beyond wanting to know the full potential of evolution, he, and 'They', had read stories and theories about just how far life could advance under the right circumstances, and now he was in a position to push the normal limits that held life in check, he could find out what the full potential of living beings truly was. For the first time in its' five-hundred years of existence, the being that called itself Alex Mercer had a real goal besides making sure no one created another monster like him.
Alex spent three days playing with the new abilities he had gained, he now had basic templates for several different new forms he had been thinking about trying, mostly based off of Protoss ships since they were more pleasant to look at then the flying boxes humans seemed to prefer, he had ideas for more drone units, though he still didn't have names for the original two, the second load-out of the first not really counting as a different unit. He had improved the Impaler Tendrils as well, the spear points on the ends of the tendrils could now be replaced with a modified version of any of his weapons, the melee ones or the newer ranged weapons, he could also simply place hands on the tendrils which he was sure would allow him to get a lot more done once he could find a lab to work with.
The longer he went without a battle to fight the more alive he began to feel, just being able to think about the science behind the Protoss and their incredible powers or the Zerg and their seemingly supernatural evolutionary potential, made Alex wonder why Alexander had been so concerned with profit or fame, all he could bring himself to care for now was what he could learn.
Alex had been so intent on his study of the base DNA sequence that had led to the creation of the Ultralisk, that he didn't notice the enormous creature drop out of a Warp Rift in high orbit and begin expelling smaller creatures as it got closer to the ground. He didn't even notice the Overlords dropping swarms of zerglings and Hydralisks, or the swarms of Mutalisks and other flying monstrosities heading towards him, what he did finally notice that got his attention was the presence of a Zerg strain he had not encountered and had only found small amounts of information on in the Zerg genetic memory.
Alex abandoned his internal examination of the stored DNA and turned to look at the sea of living beings charging in his general direction. The first on the field were, as always, zerglings, but there were far more of them then he had previously seen at one time, he counted at least six-thousand, and that was without even putting any effort into the act, there were nearly just as many Roaches and only a slightly smaller number of Hydralisks. Infestors and Banelings seemed to be fewer in number and hold closer to the back of the advancing army, while in the air Mutalisks and Broodlords were flying in formations made up of at least twenty of the creatures in question, Alex counted ten groups of each at the forefront of the swarm.
Corruptors, Overlords, and Overseers seemed to be hanging back, they likely didn't want to give him a chance to get close to the creatures that prevented the normal troops from going homicidal on their own kind, while figuring that the Corruptors would be the best defense if he attacked through the air.
Alex only spared a few moments for the lesser Zerg, he knew all he needed to about them, he had already consumed many of each strain not that long ago. What he was really interested in was the massive being hovering more then two-thousand feet off the ground, almost ten miles from his current position. The Leviathan was easily larger then the flying cities known as Protoss Motherships, the scale of the creature he was seeing was something that many humans had once thought impossible, this thing could have landed on Manhattan and hidden almost the entire island from view.
Alex didn't even have to delve into the hive mind to know what they were there for, he had made himself a clear threat to the Swarm, he was now being targeted by a full planetary strike force simply because he had managed to scare the Zerg themselves. Alex decided that trying to fight them all was a bad idea, if he got distracted dealing with Hydralisks or zerglings, Roaches or Banelings would have little trouble getting close and dealing a noticeable amount of damage, from the distribution of the Zerg forces Alex could tell that they hadn't realized that acid was an effective weapon against him, that was good and he wanted to keep things that way.
He absolutely had to consume the Leviathan, not just a little bit of it either, as much as he could, even though he had really not wanted a repeat of the incident from 2231, he was going to consume as much of the creature as possible even if it meant losing his form for a little while. He didn't enjoy the idea of having all the echos getting loud again either, so he made sure the 'voices' were locked up as tight as possible.
Alex jumped off of the small cliff where he had been standing, the Zerg ground units would have had to travel around a good portion of the cliff-side before they could have began climbing up towards him, but he wanted to get to the Leviathan quickly. As he crashed to the ground, Alex released a Psionic Wave devastator in a three-hundred sixty degree arc around himself, the attack blasted every zergling and Hydralisk within forty feet of him into bloody chunks which flew every which way.
Before any Zerg could begin closing in on him again, Alex held his hands about a foot apart while releasing a Psionic Storm, rather then let the destructive power simply strike all across the valley however, Alex captured his own attack and held it inside a psionic shield, he then released another of the devastating attacks, but focused it into the ball of power as well, and began to compress it. Alex had not tested this idea yet, the energy cost was high, though not really a problem, but the amount of damage it would cause if it worked hadn't really been worth it for a random test shot, but now it would be the perfect attack for clearing a path toward the Leviathan.
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And this chapter is done. Still have a few things to say though.
Alex didn't get warped to a different universe in this story, he was already in the Starcraft verse, he got to the future the normal way, he lived his way there. Alex spent most of the last five-hundred years just existing on Earth, this version of Alex took about thirty years to wipe out Blackwatch, those guys are really good at hiding when they don't want to be ripped into little squishy chunks.
Alex was sent to the Koprulu sector by a Warp Rift that just opened and pulled him in before he even noticed it was there, where the Warp Rift came from will be explained at the end of the third chapter.
Can anyone guess what Alex is going to do with those condensed Psionic Storms? The idea is to imitate a certain Terran weapon.
Alex would have trouble being close to people knowing that he would just have to watch the world go by as everyone he knows dies while he stays the same, it's a fairly common issue for immortals. This is why this Alex doesn't really care if he ever gets back to Earth, he didn't have anyone to go back to anyway, he is not heartless though, as his actions have shown, though somewhat vaguely.
Feel free to ask any questions you want regarding this story, if there is anything I hadn't thought of I would like to address it before the story ends. I should also note now that directly contacting me, email or something would be a waste of time, I'm not very social, and even less so over the internet.
This story is meant as a way to get around the "God in a Week" problem that generally occurs when Alex is placed in any world with super powers or magic, if it can be learned Alex can take it, and if it is genetic, Alex can take that as well. Getting Alex involved in a DC or Marvel world is pretty much putting a target on every mutant and meta-human around, as long as he plays it smart, Alex could even take down the bigger heroes and villains.
To avoid any "He couldn't take Superman, because no one can beat Superman" comments, Superman has been beaten many times, some of those times it wasn't even by a major villain, yes he comes back, escapes, gets his memory back, or breaks free of mind-control somehow, but the point is that he can be beat, and everyone knows how, he did tell a reporter the best methods of getting around, or shutting off his powers, the first person Alex eats will know how to stop, or kill Superman. Yes there are people in those worlds who could destroy Alex, but just like the factions in this story, they don't know what it would take to beat him, and by the time they do know, it would take a lot more to really get the job done, and he could take them apart with little effort.
I started writing this because there are few places you can put Alex, where he doesn't just become an unstoppable death machine in less then a month, this is not meant to fix the problem, it is meant to get around it by using the problem to make it acceptable in and of itself. I will explain, or someone else will, at the end of the next chapter.
Hob the Biomass Robot
