Chapter 3 – Family
Phog awoke to the scent of Primordian perfume on the shoulder where his head lay. Strange, he thought. This was not his usual wakeup sight; his usually wild bedhead had not strayed from its usual style and spilled over in front of his eyes, as if he had actually gone a night without tireless rest. The brown cloth beneath him moved slightly, jogging him to a more awake state, where he immediately recognised the mediator's garment.
It all came back at once: how he had cried to sleep in the arms of the new outfitter at the hangar, too emotionally delirious to recognise the social unacceptability of it all. How he had been saved from his now permanently deceased brother without even saying goodbye. The second of his two recollections brought him to tears once again, but logic took hold this time and reminded him of whose shoulder he currently was upon.
Hope stirred and her violet eyes opened like blooming flowers, seemingly filling his vision as he looked up, inadvertently meeting her intoxicating gaze. All inhibitions of the night of the attack had vanished; his emotional state was now one of stripped-back innocence, and he could only cling to her now, unable to force words out of his half-open lips. She smiled, gently raising him up off of her and into a sitting position where he sat in bewildered paralysation.
"How do you feel? Alexa's coming round later with some food for you, and I heard her cooking skills are second only to Lin's!" Hope said enthusiastically, trying to lighten the now awkward-becoming mood. Phog only sighed, resting his head in his hands and allowing his fringe to flop before his eyes again. Hope steeled herself, preparing to say what must be said as she turned him to face her and pushed the hair back once more.
"He was your brother, wasn't he?"
Phog's sleep-clouded eyes shot open, his hands groping at the sheets to hold himself steady. How could she know? This was one of his only secrets, and he took so much care to keep it locked away! His mouth opened fully to speak, and yet, still no sound would come out.
"It was obvious how you looked at him like he was some kind of superman. Alexa, the outfitter from before, also knew. Frye asked her as a trusted soldier of his to look after you if harm would ever befall you. Look at me, Phog. He didn't hate you, and you didn't hate him, but you already know that. So please, believe it for me, okay?"
"Thank… you…" he spoke in a shattered croak, splintered from his fasting over the past few days. Her eyes grew brighter somehow, her lips forming a perfect smile that bore no blemishes in his eyes. She leant forward as if to bestow her lips to him, then caught herself and stood up abruptly.
"Don't speak until you've got some food and water down you," she began, "I'm not about to let you die after all this. So drink." She thrust a glass of water at him, to which he responded graciously, gulping down the liquid with a vigour that had previously left his hollow bones. He was then presented with a cracker, which he gulped down as if he were a grex.
"As I said, Alexa's going to stop by later to stock up your seemingly empty fridge, and then you should be back on track. You… want to talk about what happened?"
"I'm sorry," he began quietly, "It's not fair of me to dump this all on you. I'm the one who ended my brother's life, not you."
"Don't speak like that!" Hope snapped uncharacteristically. "He died to protect you, yes, but it was so you could live and become a great man, like we shall remember him to have been! We've all lost family at some point in all of this, from the thugs on the street to Secretary Nagi. Now we are going to get you patched up and back onto the battlefield as soon as possible. And I am going to join you."
"What? You hate to fight, and I only do so because I'm told to. I don't see how this is a good idea at all!"
"The fact of the matter is, we lost good fighters in that battle, and New LA can survive without us here, but it needs us out there to protect the walls. I'm not asking you to storm a prone base, but we need to make ourselves useful, and the interceptors need help right now. This won't be a permanent switch, but a few other mediators and I are switching to more combat-orientated divisions and leaving the mediation to citizen volunteers. You are going to as well, doctor's orders. I'm not having you moping around here all depressed while I'm out fighting monsters in the middle of nowhere," Hope said sternly. It hurt her to see him in such a pitiful state, but her mind told her that tough love would be the best thing for him right now.
"But… but…" he whined like a child not wanting to go to bed.
"No buts. Get yourself ready to go while I fetch my weapons. And don't give me that look; this is really happening, and I won't pretend I'm not scared, but you need to man up. If not for me, then for him."
Unable to help herself, she planted a small kiss on his forehead before moving briskly from the room, leaving him in a confused but overall better state. He smiled for the second time that day, and it felt good. Perhaps he should try doing so more often.
Alexa and Hope met Phog at the city's east gate, where he and the skell enthusiast properly introduced themselves to one another. He noticed Alexa's unusual combination of weapons immediately; a silver javelin and large assault rifle, both weapons designed for reach and range. Hope bore a wicked-looking knife and crimson psycho launchers, contrasting with her dainty appearance strikingly. She actually looked quite menacing with the deadly devices by her side, but her usual smile still instilled warmth in his heart when he looked her way.
Phog used standard dual guns and dual swords to fight, though their inferior designs had nothing on the near-legendary Elma's. Her team had been beating xenos left and right lately, but they could only be in one place at once, which is why interceptor demand still ran rampant. He couldn't help but wonder if humanity would even be around should they have fallen in the battle of NLA.
"Okay, so now we're all here, allow me to brief you on the mission," Hope cut into Phog's daydreams. "There's a rampant white progen attacking the base camp on Sylvalum's southern shores. I hesitate to say beach, because that could man anywhere in the region."
"A progen?!" Phog exclaimed unusually loudly. "You mean those sleep-inducing death unicorns?!"
"We can do this. They wouldn't have assigned us the mission if they didn't believe that," Alexa said confidently. She was worried too, but didn't want to induce a panic attack in her temperamental friend.
With a tense nod from Phog after a moment's hesitation, they set out in silence to the helicopter that sat parked next to the city, fuelled up and ready to go. A lepyx sniffed at the tail of it, but Hope calmly shooed it away, to which it snorted and retreated slowly. The blades whirred, and within an hour, they could see the crystalline fjords of Sylvalum beneath them. Sand and some unfortunate unafulges were blown back as the helicopter's feet touched down.
Alexa got out first, signalling a clear coast so that the other two could exit. They began sprinting towards the nearby basecamp, which to their dismay was in ruins. The door of the main tent opened as they drew near, and a terrified yet unharmed male BLADE tentatively walked out.
"You… you came to rescue us?" he asked in a near-silent tone.
"Yes," Alexa said with a smile, happy to see survivors. Then she noticed something. Inside the tent, five more BLADEs could be seen, all unharmed, which would have meant that no one was dead or even hurt. They all looked shell-shocked, however, and the camp was in ruins.
Hope noticed too, and asked sceptically "What happened here?"
The BLADE hesitated, something that did not go unmissed by any of the three rescuers. "You see," he began, "the thing did attack, but it completely ignored us, even when we hit it with everything we had. It had only destruction in mind, and once it had obviously not found whatever it was searching for, it galloped away into those mountains." He gestured towards some fjords not too far away, where some oc-servs floated menacingly over the crystal. Phog gulped at the sight.
"We'll find it and get to the bottom of this, I promise," Hope said. "I'd rather not have to hurt the creature myself, so perhaps we'd be able to help it some way." Alexa gave her an odd look but said nothing out loud, choosing only to mumble "pacifists…" under her breath.
"Shall we go then; I want to leave as soon as possible. I'm already cold!" Phog said with a slight shiver. His companions nodded, and they set off towards the rocks, leaving the still scared BLADEs to tidy up the remnants of their camp.
Halfway up the mountain, having dodged an unusual number of biomechanical monstrosities on the way, the newly initiated interceptors heard a cry resembling a horse in distress, if that horse were the size of a skell. Phog gave a nod to his companions, to which they all set off in a sprint, heading through an archway into a mountain plateau that housed a distressing scene. Three young progen stood in captivity of a couple of puges, whilst in front of them, an oc-serv was fighting a white progen that didn't seem to be winning the fight.
"What do we do? Can we even interfere in such a situation?" Alexa asked.
"Of course we can intervene!" Hope said forcefully, holding back a shout for fear of them being alerted to their presence. "Those monsters have kidnapped those foals! That's why the progen was on a rampage! She was only searching for her kids!"
"Well I don't mean to be a downer, but I think they just chose for us…" Phog said nervously as the two puges advanced on the group. The young progen, cornered where they were, did not move, watching in horror as their mother bravely fought in vain for their lives.
Gunshots rang out over the Sylvalium mountaintops as the brawl began. Hope and Phog drew back, firing on the mechanical monstrosities with their respective weapons, whilst Alexa expertly dodged their bullet fire and, drawing her javelin, drew in close to fight them head on. Seeing an opening, Phog steeled himself and sprang out form behind the boulder and slashing at the incoming puge with his dual blades.
One of the robot's arms flew off onto the sand, then the other one followed as Hope appeared from nowhere, slashing with deadly precision. Unarmed, the thing was left utterly defenceless as they stabbed its core simultaneously, sending it reeling and deactivating it for good.
Alexa meanwhile was gaining ground on her puge, using both her gun and javelin to parry the blade strikes. She stabbed it in the leg, causing it to fall before her, where it was impaled upon the long, wicked weapon. With both puges downed, the BLADEs turned their attention to the oc-serv, which still battle the progen. To their horror, it suddenly unleashed a red beam of light which hit the horse's side, sending it reeling in terror. Its childrens' cries spurred it on, however, and it stabbed with brutal force through the robot's lower guns, disabling the oncoming onslaught. This left the horse temporarily off-guard, however, and the oc-serv moved to strike it head on with another laser.
Without thinking, Phog let out a battle cry and surged forward, seeing red as he slashed both of the machine's arms off. Hope re-activated her psycho-launchers and Alexa targeted with her gun, but they were in vain, for Phog was already tearing the thing in half, sending sparks flying in all directions. He drew back as the progen rushed forward, striking the biomechanical creature dead with a now lightning-imbued horn attack and ending the fight.
Phog stared at his hands, now out of the blood rage. He didn't even notice the giant unicorn rush past him to greet its young, and only snapped out of his daze when embrace by Hope.
"Thank you for saving them. If not for you, another family would have been ruptured by the aliens. How… how did you do that?" Hope asked softly.
"I… don't know," Phog said, unsure of his words. "I guess… I just know what it's like to lose family, and end up lonely. I don't know what came over me, but I guess I knew what needed to be one, and my body just executed it for me."
"It was friggin' awesome, that's what it was!" Alexa exclaimed suddenly.
"Yes. Yes it was," Hope said gently, kissing her crush briefly on the forehead, so lightly that she didn't think he'd notice. Phog smiled to himself, knowing he had found his new family, for better or worse.
Alexa stiffened and notified the others when the progen family approached them once more, scrutinising the humans through cyan eyes. They froze, not knowing whether or not they would be friendly. To their surprise, the mother lent down and rather than impaling Hope, she brushed her nose gently against her hand. The ex-mediator responded nervously, but then couldn't stop herself from hugging the creature's horn, a childhood dream of unicorns having come true.
A terrible noise then echoed around the plateau, and they all turned to see a dozen more oc-servs flying over the crystal. The mother neighed a command to her children, who rushed out from behind her and lowered themselves down before the terrified humans. A gentler sound from the progen snapped Hope out of her daze, and she realised immediately what the xenoforms were proposing.
"I think they want us to get on," Hope said quickly, glancing to the advancing robots.
"Well they're hardly skells, but I don't think I can really be picky. You in, Phog?" Alexa asked.
Phog nodded and gently mounted the silvery beauty of a creature. The others got on as well, but then the firing started, and the young ones began rocking in distress. Just before they were annihilated, the mother did the unexpected. Letting out an almighty noise, she emitted a silver glow from her wings, allowing them to unfold outwards until they had extended to near double the length of the legs. This calmed the foals, who did the same, and the BLADEs could only hold on for dear life as the progens carried them at brilliant speeds away from the slow oc-servs and into the aurora-illuminated sky.
"Since when could they do that?!" Alexa shouted into the wind.
Instead of answering, Hope turned to the mother, who flapped its wings whilst galloping on thin air with its legs beside her foal, which was around the size of an earth horse. "You're no normal white progen, are you?" she said.
The Pegasus-like creature neighed indignantly, and they all laughed into the sky as the light of New LA came into view below. The interceptors were still rather shocked at how intelligent the progens had turned out to be, so much so that Hope wondered if classifying these ones as a separate species would be in order.
Unfortunately, they were enjoying the night air so much that they didn't notice their incoming landing, so when the residential district's streets came into view, it was too late to stop. Four deadly beasts from Sylvalum crashed down onto the road, narrowly missing a car that swerved into a nearby garden.
"Help us all," has all Hope could say, staring in horror at the approaching troops. The BLADE army faltered when they saw the riders, who quickly dismounted and explained the situation. The progens stood patiently to the side as Hope liased with Nagi, all the while instilling terror in a number of nearby soldiers. The secretary general eventually seemed to give in, and Hope walked back over to Phog and Alexa by the progens.
"We'd be happy to have you in New LA, seeing as you seem able to understand me," said Hope to the mother progen. She nodded then snorted, which Hope chose to interpret as a positive thing. As the new interceptor team led their new indigenous friends over to the hangar, Commander Vandham approached Nagi with a grin on his face.
"Never thought I'd see the day, eh? When we were getting along with this godforsaken planet's wildlife. Who knows what other unusually intelligent creatures are out there?" Vandham waffled excitedly.
Nagi offered no reply, sighing as he thought of the intense paperwork that would inevitably follow this unusual event.
Wow, that ended up long! Hope any and all readers enjoyed, and see you next time! As always, reviews in whatever shape or form are appreciated! (-;