Chapter 9: The first strike part I…

It was a long, long drop. As we fell, my eyes began to tear as the air streaking past us ever faster started to sting, just enough to be annoying, but not enough to actually hurt. Once we broke the atmosphere, the stinging passed and I smirked at how simple it had seemed, despite how many years of research and technology had been put into the rings we used. When we could barely see the ground through the lowest layer of cloud cover where we were to land, I took in the landscape. Though it was an abandoned, or close to, planet, the lush plant life culminated in a vast forest to the east… to the south I saw a medium sized lake, and a desert with a massive sandstorm sweeping up… To the north, a ridiculously high mountain, about four miles high, loomed over the town, the base of which was the landing point for us… To the west was a humongous, completely abandoned castle. From where we were, we could see the town easily. It was nestled in the crater of a meteor impact that had happened 40 years ago, obliterating the abandoned Kakariko town and dropping the global temperature 2 degrees, almost causing a mass extinction that would have killed off all of the life on the planet short of microbes. Plats looked down and squinted, his face froze in a look of horror for a moment, and he turned and shouted, "Oh shit! They've got a Ramoni tank!'

"What!?" I terrifiedly replied, tearing my eyes from the town as quickly as I could. A tank is nothing to laugh at, after all. It would probably roll right over us unharmed. After a few seconds of not seeing anything, I looked up to see Plats trying to suppress a giggle.

He kept giggling and pointed at me, saying, "You fell for that!"

I owned it, smiling and saying, "I sure did."

After a long, long freefall all the way to, and probably for a long time at, terminal velocity, we finally hit the breaking point for feather fall, and Plats said the final command word.

It felt as if someone had suddenly smacked me in the chest with a lead pipe, or maybe an elevator cable. The momentum from the fall suddenly broke, and I lurched forward for a moment, hitting a gigantic cushion in midair, only it wasn't soft. I could have sworn that my stomach dropped to my knees. I found myself falling at a much slower pace, however the ground was still rushing up at me. I tucked my shoulder and rolled as I hit the ground. I landed off balance, and instead, the momentum from the fall sent me horizontally spinning into a tree off to the right, stomach first. The city was surrounded by forest, and only dim sunlight lit the small clearing where we dropped. The trees were currently vibrant shades of yellow and red, and there was a songbird in the distance chirping for a mate. I groaned, my stomach aching, and me almost unscathed from a complete drop from orbit.

I turned and saw Plats float to rest at about two feet off the ground, as well as Ark and Glaze landing far more gracefully than I did, causing me to wince, not so much from shame, but from embarrassment. I picked myself up cautiously off the ground, adjusting my jacket and cap, and said, "Well? What's our cover story?"

Glaze breathed in deeply and happily, saying, "I'd be a little kid, but I guess that's not going to work with you two…"

"I'll just be invisible the whole time." Plats bluntly said, "There's no problem with that really."

"I've got it." Ark said, snapping his fingers, before smiling and looking at the human gloves he had on and saying, "God I've missed being able to do that…"

I smiled sympathetically, but said in a serious tone, "What did you figure out?"

"I'll be her uncle, escorting her to her mother's house on the far side of town-" He began, but I cut him off, saying, "No. Too risky. We don't know anyone in town. We're just gonna have to sneak in I suppose."

I flattened myself against the stone wall to the town, pulled out one of my bullets and signaled everyone to get flat across the wall to the right of the gate, behind me. It was a fortified city, with walls too high to climb easily. I threw the bullet with skill, landing it and making it go off with a bang in the bushes off to the left of the entrance. The guards at the entrance, who were wearing full dark steel platemail, and had inertial mage armor spells cast and ready, as well as carrying automatic rifles and claymores, exchanged glances before walking off into the bushes with an audible rustling and clanking. We pealed off, darting quickly in through the gate while they were distracted, and caught our first sight of the town from the inside. Stone brick buildings surrounded a large bronze fountain with a statue of a singing bard spouting the obviously contaminated water. The buildings were arranged in four poorly lit semicircles, with streets between the semi circles and pitch black alleyways between the buildings, which were all in a state of disrepair. A sun bleached sign, hanging crookedly on the front of a stone, two floor building with a balcony, labeling the Upp and Inn, was slightly to the left and in front of us, and there were several people dressed in assorted warm weather attire moving hastily about their business. The AA Battery loomed over the town menacingly. It was green, with visible coils for channeling the electromagnetic energy required to launch the plasma shots. It was resting on a tripod base, each base pillar the size of a building. The townsfolk seemed tortured by its presence, as if it choked the life out of the city. That and the guards, posted at almost every nonbusiness building entrance, made this town a miserable shell of what it should have been. I looked to Ark and said, "My fucking god… This is worse than I expected…"

Ark frowned, a look of hatred on his face, and adjusted his shirt, replying, "I've seen worse. This town will recover. More than can be said for Udion."

Glaze looked up at him and said, "Honestly Ark? You bring up the town we demolished…"

Plats replied, "Well, I'm glad those days are over, come, let's rent the room."

Ark, Glaze, Plats and I walked over to the Upp and Inn, and, after renting the rooms, I sat at a slightly damp table in the back, despite the bar being completely empty, awaiting the contact, while the rest of them settled in for the night. At about three AM the next morning (Exaggerating, only 1 AM… [We walked in at 8 PM]) a teenager in a chromatic green helmet with a spike on the front going straight up, wrapped almost entirely in a brown cloak, walked in. He walked right up to the table and sat down, sticking his feet up on the table, which were encased in green leg armor up to the knees, and had the stickout feet of a reploid. His cloak fell away at that point, revealing the other aspects of his armor, which was basically reploid in nature, with a few modifications, such as the gun cannon was enhanced with a Gemini crystal, allowing for a piercing magical shot to be fired, as well as the spiked right arm part, and a harmony crystal was inlaid in the chest, allowing for deflection of most blunt force damage. "I assume you are my contact." The reploid said nonchalantly, "I'm Travile, Reploid spy for your side. Been on the job around here for about 10 of my 15 years of life, and I am disillusioned with this job. So, in exchange for the information you seek, you're going to do me a favor, and buy me a fucking drink."

I frowned, annoyed, before leaning back and saying, "You're late, and you were supposed to be playing chess. What do you want?"

Travile smirked, "Get me off this planet. In short, take me with you. I'll join up with your company."

I smirked back and said, "It's done. Always glad to have another ally. Now, about that drink…"

We talked for about an hour, drinking three rounds me with Rocky wrenches (A blend of fire flower and an exotic grass called windweed), and him with spiderblood wine, before he finally spat out the info. "Okay, here's the deal." He spread a map of the town with several circles and lines, clearly indicating time frames and guard paths and stations, on the table and said, "You need to open up the door on the inside of the southern pillar. No guards ever have postings that would make you visible from that position. Inside, head up the stairs and into the body of the gun. Once there, simply rip the blue and green wires out from the control panel on the right. That'll disable it for a while, until someone thinks to bypass the system, or, if you want to go for total shutdown, and alert the town, you could always slice out the support cable in the room to the right of there. Slight risk, however, is that the gun will fall then, and may kill some innocent civilians. One way to minimize the damage would be to only cut one, so that it's pointed straight up, then cut the rest, and drop the gun segment onto the statue in the fountain. I hope you can silence guards, however, because there will be at least four in the gun."

"Thank you." I said, glad for the help, "Now, we both need rest, and I'm sure you'll need to be in good shape for the fight after the gun comes down."

"Agreed." He said, nodding to me and walking upstairs. I went upstairs myself to find that all the beds in the room we rented were taken. Glaze was sleeping in the one off to my left, the blanket covering all but her head and feet, and the bed sagged a little under her weight. Ark was straight ahead of me, in the bed on the far side of the room, completely covered, except for his ears. Plats was nowhere to be seen, so I guessed he was on the roof. I saw the ladder leading up there on my left, behind Glaze's bed, and went up there with him.

I crawled up on the shingles of the roof. Feeling the graininess of the lightly eroded rooftop was firm enough to support my weight, I moved all the way out and sat in a ball, my legs curled up to my chest and my arms huddled around them. I looked up into the sky and saw Hyrule's moon, much closer than most, silhouetting the AA gun and most of the town as the lightly cloudy sky sparkled with the fire of a million blazing stars. A chill suddenly struck the night air momentarily as a light breeze blew from the west, and I shivered. "What brings you out here?" Plats asked, "It's a dark and lonely night. As a ghost like being, I don't mind, but surely-"

"Not at all Plats…" I responded, smirking, "Hey, do you remember the circle incident on Sylvain 3? Before we ended up stuck in the past… before we… I… got us caught up in this?"

Plats floated over to my shoulder and set himself down on it, adjusting to make himself comfortable, before replying, "Yes, I do… I remember the Swifthides, and how the were unable to hold off the tanks at that battle we fought on the southern continent."

I shuddered again, but not from the cold, from the memory of the innocent civilian town that was blown to the ground. Evil… pure evil… the Rockside clan fighting with the tanks… They knew what they were doing. They were murdering people. In cold blood.

"Do you remember how we initially met?" He asked me, staring blankly into space, "Because I sure as hell do."

"I remember…" I said, thinking back, "I remember you were by a wall in an underground cave on Rainar 4… You were skeptical about one of the group we were both in's strategies, and refused to obey orders. So you were thrown out. You acted without malice, or even care, towards the matter, and later saved us all when our terrible plan blew up in our faces."

"I remember you were the most gung-ho guy in the group, and I remember you saved my ass three times while I was saving yours. You kept them off me, while I helped everyone else escape." He replied, looking at me.

"By the time you got to rescuing me, I was already down the hall and out of the building, only seconds before the explosion, and as you motored your way through the walls to get out, I pulled you through the cohesion field keeping you in phase, and we both got out as the whole damn place exploded." I responded, smiling.

"After the skirmish died down, I tracked down your group, and when I found you, I joined up…" He continued, looking back out over the town.

I finished for him with, "And we all ended up going through hell since."

Nothing more was said. Nothing more needed to be said. As I sat on the roof of the town which I knew was going to become a warzone the next day, I reflected on my little circle of friends, who, in true form, follow me through (and expect nothing more than) hell and to the ends of the multiverse. Each of us contending with his or her own demons, be they created by us or others, we forged onward in this multiverse. Having a sense of personal fear or anger made us strong. All of us have done at least one thing we weren't proud of. Hell, half of us used to destroy for evil organizations. In truth, the only bond that tied all of us together seemed to be that of universal friendship. Everyone in the group was friendly with everyone else if not downright clutching to each other for support. Our loyalty ran deep because we were bound by law of existence that stated that those beset with turmoil must band together to hold out against the darkness. I thought back to a children's rhyme I remembered, 'I shall see you in the glade, through which fate shall have its way, and all who come and rest and things, shall see the darkest ring of rings.'. It was, of course, a warning against the black ring syndrome, a disease that claimed millions of lives. I smiled at the way things seemed to work themselves out, before nudging Plats and gesturing to the way back to the room. He nodded, and I led the way back down.

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AC: I had another problem with my laptop. I apologize. And, so it begins. R&R

--Zephyter0--