The bullhead spun, flame trailing out of its ruined engine, it spiraled out of control, the pilot unable to influence his dying mount. Brutus still had Verde in his arm, the g-forces exerting pressure on his bulky frame. The craft struck nose-first on the side of a mountain, flattening the cockpit, along with its inhabitant, into paste. Flames exploded into the passenger's cabin, eating at everything inside like a ravenous animal.
Brutus heard the craft hit above him, the wind rushing in his ears did nothing to dampen the sound. He hit feet first on the slope of the mountain, his aura took much of the blow, though it still rattled his bones. Brutus rolled shoulder first down the slope, his weight bowling over small trees and steam-rolling shrubs. Sticks whipped at him, and rocks dug into his skin.
Brutus ignored them, his mind focused on keeping himself from planting his face into the dirt, or crushing Verde beneath him.
He crashed into a tree, his body slamming into it. He grunted as it knocked the breath out of him, the 'Light.' Armor he was wearing serving only to batter him with its own weight.
Agony bubbled up from between his shoulders, hot trails of pain searing along his spine. Brutus tried to stand, ignoring the pain in his back.
Verde had rolled out of his arms on impact, she groaned in pain and appeared to be unconscious, but otherwise looked unhurt.
A small victory, while Landing on his back was unplanned, and while the pilot's death was...unfortunate, he would now be able to use his new experiments with no witnesses, so the pilot's pitiful death served a useful purpose.
For a split second, Brutus felt an unfamiliar pang in his chest, no, in his core. It twisted and knotted and burned, filling his being with its cold bite. His mind briefly wondered if the pilot had a family, or a wife, and how they would wait, and wait, well into the night for the pilot to come home, feeling the hours drag into days, the reluctance to accept the truth and its denial.
He thought of how they would cry, and wail, and beg for their loved one to come back.
He could see it, some poor woman, on her knees, begging for her husband to return, to not leave her.
He crushed those images under a wave of disgust. There was no use in begging, or crying, or trying to bargain with some strange entity, such pitiful actions did nothing to help.
They didn't help him with his mother.
Brutus threw the thought out of his head with a vigorous throw. Summer was gone, there was no bringing her back, and it was useless to try.
Still, the sudden feeling of loss pervaded his insides, squirming out of his emotional grip in mocking flurrys of movement.
He could do nothing for it, he decided, he had come to terms with reality long ago.
If there were gods that influenced this world, they were long dead.
Brutus concentrated on the space before him, willing it to break and bend to his will. Reality screamed as it split, a slice in reality forming, bleeding unearthly light into the world.
"Adon, Noda, come forward." Brutus called, his voice booming with power.
For a time, nothing happened, the hole in reality undulating sickly, as if reality was feasting greedily upon its edges. Then, a stone fist gripped the edge, a deep bass groan following soon after. The fist gave way to an arm, a shoulder, before finally, the beast pulled itself from its un-real cage.
Adon, twin brother to Noda, and first among his own kind, stood before his creator, his father, his God. His iron bones twitched in time with his stone flesh. His hands clenched and unclenched agitatedly, the fullness of this world being alien to the great womb he was just born from. His flanged crest, filled with sensor clusters and armor plating fidgeted and ran mass amounts of new data to his brain. The leering skull that rested beneath his crest gazed with hostile intent into his surroundings.
Behind him, his sister, Noda, exited the ethereal womb with a springing hiss of hydraulics.
While Noda and Adon shared the same size, their similarities ended there. Where Adon's claws sparked and raked across eachother in vindictive apprehension of the new world around him, Noda's finely crafted body gyrated on her hip, the razor sharp blades that covered her body gliding through the razor wire attached to her head. She hissed superheated steam from her own skull-like face, the feeling of air and the rush of new data overwhelming her slightly. Her mandibles, edged with a slew of chemicals designed to liquify internal organs thrashed and clicked in rapid succession, poison dripping from her saw-toothed maw.
Brutus had designed these two with very specific purposes, they were to be his Hunter-killers, machines designed with the express purpose of tracking, isolating, and dispatching a target.
Overall, their design had been spot on.
"Adon, Noda, there are others in this forest, not far from here." Brutus swept one arm towards the forest.
"Make sure, there are no survivors other than this girl." He pointed to an unconscious Verde. "And myself."
The killer twins nodded, arms crossing over their chests in a cruel salute.
"So has my creator spoken." They intoned in their static-ridden voices. "So let my God's will be done."
(@)
Yang paced the room, body covered in sweat, and tears. She had hears the news, that her brother's bull-head had suffered engine failure and crashed. The school had tried raising the pilot, but received only static in return. They tried to scramble more flights to send a rescue team, but every other bull-head had cut wires, punctured fuel tanks, destroyed cockpits and a myriad of other issues.
The sabotage was clear, but an investigation was set to launch after the students were found.
Yang continued to pace, close to tearing her hair out with worry, she ignored the pleading voice of her father, who begged her to calm down.
"Calm down? Calm down?!?" She cried at him, tears staining her face and running down her cheeks. "How can you expect me to be calm right now!? My brother might be dead out there!"
"Now, Yang." Tai-Yang began. "We both know Brutus can handle himself, he's one of the best, if not the best student here, he's resourceful, tough, smart, and aggressive." He placed a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "I have every confidence that he'll be alri-"
Tai-yang's scroll beeped angrily at him, the urgent tone pleading with him to answer. Tai-Yang turned on the screen, and his brow furrowed, before he paled.
One of his student's, Geronimo Red, just had his Aura fade from existence.
Tai-Yang swallowed, knowing all too well what that meant.
Something had just killed one of his students.
(@)
Noda hissed angrily, superheated steam boiling the flesh within her mouth. The screaming of the fleshling had long since ceased, her powerful jaws having carved into its skull and into the soft meat beneath. The forest was silent, but the micro-sensors along her body were abuzz with information. She picked apart the data, throwing away junk info and looping feeds, she parced the information apart, looking for a pattern, a new variable, or a repeating one.
Finally she closed on her prize, there, within the code, was a repeating stream of aural data, happening in a quick tempo.
She bounded away from her kill, the corpse flopping to the ground with a wet noise of desecrated meat.
She had found new prey, and her sensors warmed with the pleasure of the hunt.
(@)
Brutus spun on the spot, his movement letting him evade a lumbering swipe of an ursa's claw, the grimm barely had time to react, having overextended its bulk. The knife plunged down into its eye, before being yanked back with a sickly squelch of gore.
Brutus spun again, drawing the pistol from his belt in a flourish of motion. The pistol hummed as he activated a switch, glass rods infused with aethereal energy cycling into position along its barrel.
Brutus squeezed the trigger, and the pistol released a beam of pure hatred into reality. The beam tore through the beowolf with retina-searing intensity. It burned its way across reality, screaming with a vile intensity as it impacted a tree. The beam halted for a moment, before boring through the proud plant and beyond it.
Brutus lost interest in the beam, instead regarding the molten mess his pistol had become. The power was too high for the material to handle, and the heat that was produced had weakened it further.
Brutus threw the weapon into the aether with a careless backwards toss, he would have to lower the gauge on the glass rods, as well as find a stronger material for the weapon itself. He looked back to Verde, her unconscious form still laying where he had left her.
He would have to take care of that, and luckily, he had just the thing for it.
Another portal opened behind him, and at his call walked a third figure.
There was no leering skull this time, only a faceplate to clustered with machines and wires to resemble anything of a visage. Where the hunter-killers arms had been bladed, there now sat medical tools, supplies, and saws. Needles ran tubes to vials of chemicals and medicine, while forceps and cutters snipped in anticipation.
"Yes, my lord?" The thing asked, her voice was undoubtedly feminine, but still held that inhuman tone to it, like it was too happy to do its job.
"Would you be so kind as to provide medical assistance to my friend there? She seems to have fallen ill." Brutus gestured towards Verde.
"At once, my lord." The medical bot gave a small bow before she rushed off to attend the stricken girl.
Before the portal closed, out stepped four more figures, clad in bulky armor and blank faceplates. Heavy, boxy rifles held close to their chests.
Brutus languished the time and effort it took to craft these ones, more time than any one project had taken. Their size was just a head smaller than his own armor, but their strength was practically the same. Their armor was their body, and for every component he had to place in their shell, he placed even more. They were to be his praetorians, guards he could call on to protect his body. Their armor was gilded in fine gold and scarlet, their weapons and blades aetherically charged, and each one given its own aetheric battery from which to draw energy.
He regretted they were not flesh, but there was no way he knew of to synthesize flesh and imbue an android with emotions.
"You four." Brutus said. "Guard this area against grimm, your top priority is to defend that girl and your fellows."
"At once, my creator." Came the reply in unison.
Once the praetorians had clambered off, Brutus warped back into the aether, this time heading off to where he had met that strange woman in the tube.
"This time." He swore. "I'll get what I want, and no one will stop me."
He willed himself in the direction he wanted, and his body glided through the aether like a ghost.
"You owe me answers, woman. And what is not owed, I'll take."
That power still pulled at him, like tantalizing fingers of a lover beckoning him to bed, and he couldn't help but grin when he drew close.
A/N:Guess who got in a wreck and totalled their car!This guy!Sorry this took so long, data ran out and my job is exhausting.