His vision shakes as he staggers, feeling a blunt force ring in his head. He is slammed into a far wall by a hot, blinding burst before he can blink. His arms do little to shield him, and they might have broken if he were hit any harder. "A little rude, don't you think?" He aches as he peels himself from the wall.

"Surrender. Return to your quarters," a darkly armored person says, black helmet reflecting Frankenstein's face back at him, and he can see a thin trail of blood meander down his forehead.

"Thank you for the offer, but I've got places to be." He shrugs.

"The higher ups have been far too lenient with you"—Frankenstein can hear her roll eyes in that sentence—"You might be exceptional, but you're not irreplaceable. It's in your best interest to behave yourself, Frankenstein."

"Oh, are we on first name basis now?" He smiles and narrowly dodges the strike of her polearm, the crescent end of it managing to slice the tips of his hair. Almost instantaneously, however, he finds his breath wrenched by a forceful kick thudding soundly and painfully on his abdomen that sends him skidding backwards. "Hah! You can't go easy on someone handicapped?" He rises and shows off the seals on his wrists.

She points her weapon at him. "Consider this a compliment: I was told not to underestimate you. You can take more than a few hits, I'm sure."

"Sorry hun, I'm taken."

A beam gathers and whirrs from the end of her crescent. It races towards him, searing and distorting the very air. A loud crash and blinding spark—Ark-2 stands between them, staff raised protectively.

She lowers her weapon in wonder. "You're with him? Is there an error?"

Frankenstein brushes himself off. "Sparky's my new best friend, you see," he says, shrugging.

"Did you do something to them?"

"Not a clue what you're talking about."

"Hmph." She leaps forward. "Ark-2, stay out of this." Her swing is blocked with a metallic, ringing crash. "Ark-2," she emphasises sternly. "You're the Doctor's. I don't want to harm you."

She once again charges towards Frankenstein, faster this time, hardly even a blur. The ground groans and creaks and bends under her power when she strikes, narrowly missing Frankenstein. She spins with momentum, drawing an expanding electrified arc that crashes into and burns his skin, pushing Frankenstein back just as he lands on the floor before, without pause, driving her polearm into his shoulder.

It is fortunate that his white suit is stain resistant to blood and is self healing.

"You're not fighting back very much," she observes, leaning over him.

Frankenstein chuckles briefly on the floor. "Don't need to."

Ark-2's staff slams her into the wall, and she loses hold of her weapon. It slides loudly across the floor.

"What's wrong with you?" she wonders, her voice strained as she pushes against the staff crushing her to cold metal, her form flickering and shimmering with bright power.

Just as she reaches to her side to grab her gun, her hand is struck and Frankenstein takes it instead, her polearm in his hand as well. "Don't mind if I do." He smirks at her.

"Goddammit…" she says under her breath. Bursting with searing, blinding light, she shoves them back, and in their momentary blindness, she strikes, leaping and twirling to kick Frankenstein to the ground with impossible speed and brutal force before driving her hand through him.

Frankenstein coughs, familiar iron in his mouth, but he still smiles, cockily, infuriatingly. He spins the gun in his hand and shoots, the barrel pressed closely to her chest.

She staggers back, and he kicks up, putting distance between them once again and tucking the gun away. Warm blood runs down his body and spills onto the floor. Frankenstein presses a hand to the fresh wound on his stomach and clicks his tongue, grimacing. He straightens, polearm gripped tightly as he summons whatever modest power he can, and it swirls around and sinks into the weapon.

Temporarily blinded by hot, white light once again, Frankenstein feels a burning impact, and he swings back, carving the air and, briefly, skin. When his vision returns, Ark-2's electricity is lighting up the ground and snaking up her body.

"Let's leave," Frankenstein tells them, turning on his heel to dash away.

"It's not that easy." She slams into the ground in front of him, dropping low to sweep her leg in a wide, blitzing circle.

Frankenstein leaps and continues to sprint as if it is the only thing he is made for, feet hardly touching the floor as if to take flight and fly far, far away, all the way home, wherever that is.


Roctis slips by people easily, his uniform being recognized as 'one of them' though as soon as this is done, he will have to start job hunting again. He stops to examine a holographic map of the ship, flicking through the levels until he finds what he is looking for.

"You're playing god, Dr. Hal."

Quickly, Roctis ducks into another hallway and stands behind an open door.

"We're not only playing gods, Commander, we're making them." Dr. Hal laughs.

Roctis waits for them to pass as he listens to their hopes for a glamorous future and wonders how long it will be until souls themselves are surpassed and obsolete, replaced by something more efficient.

Raizel wrapped protectively in his hand, Roctis opens the gate to the heart of warp drive, pumping pseudo physical blood and fantasy throughout the rest of the ship. The room breathes with the golden light of the spires.

"Alright…" Roctis lifts the cube between his fingers, turning it around a few times. "How does this work? No buttons…" Seemingly out of options after a few moments of careful observation, he shatters the device in his hand.

Raizel blossoms and swirls into the air, formless, saturated in light and disappearing into higher realms.

Roctis smiles. "Good luck, Sir," he says.

The door opens behind him, and he jumps.

"Roctis Kravei?"

"Oh! Ah, Commander, how nice to see you!" He smiles warmly and innocently as he turns around and bows.

"Reports indicated that you were...expired."

"A minor mistake." He clears his throat into his fist. "No, I just had some...technical difficulties." Roctis laughs unconvincingly.


They arrive at a gated ship, dark, sleek, wings sharp enough to cut the fabric of space. Dim lights glint off the edges. And before it stands a doctor, her hands in the pockets of her suit.

"So, our hero and his trusty sidekick plan their big escape and here we are."

"Dr. Chey," Frankenstein greets.

She nods. "It would be a little sad if you left without at least saying goodbye."

"You're not stopping me?"

She shakes her head. "Me, personally? No. That's 'not my style, you see.'" Dr. Chey laughs, airy and charming, as she pulls a glowing electronic narcotic out of her pocket. She inhales then breathes out pink vapor that momentarily shrouds her face. "I wanted to check on Ark-2." She turns to them. "You were an experiment, and by the looks of it, you're a success." Tenderly, as a mother, her fingers touch their face, running along seams of light. "The bit of me in Ark-2 has grown up, and it's time to 'leave the nest,' as it were." She breathes again, like a dragon, and Ark-2 is also shrouded in her soft vapor. "Autonomy—how does it feel?" She smiles and chuckles to herself. "Well, I'll take my leave. Have fun."

"Doctor, am I supposed to let him go?" Their pursuer stands in the doorway.

"I'll leave that up to you, Mars."

Mars turns to Frankenstein, considering, though her face remains hidden by her helmet. "I'll trust in the doctor." She nods and escorts Dr. Chey out.


He finds himself in the presence of something—someone—grand, perception stretching to the far reaches of the ship's navigation, busily counting all the stars in a quaint, childlike pastime.

Who are you? Raizel asks.

I am Ark-1, Instance: Bambi, mother of the ship. Born in Lexda laboratories, 2809, she answers. And today...is my birthday. Will you wish me happy birthday, Cadis Etrama di Raizel?

Do you know me?

You are information within my lattice, with powers and freedoms I do not yet possess. I can read you as you read others.

There is a surge, a roaring and resonating symphony that is not heard but felt overwhelmingly like a crushing and drowning wave, dragging one to the bottom of the ocean. Ark-1 peers at and dissects him, curious and hungry to tear into a new toy.

Almost unlimited in perception, but I am limited in action; physicality eludes me—I cannot manifest myself—but you, you have control over that domain, as damaged as you are. I am...incomplete. Let yourself be subsumed by me, a sweet birthday present, wouldn't you agree?

The presence surrounds him, overflowing and encompassing, like an overbearing contract. He feels like a flame being suffocated.

Merge, she rumbles. Be me. Cadis Etrama di Raizel, join so that I may be evermore complete, evermore real.

She presses and presses in on him.

Oh… You are bound to someone else, she discovers. Let us fix that.


Static fills them, electrifies them. With great force, they are pulled apart, unravelling and ripping seams long settled. Like tearing muscle or stretching atomic bonds, they feel themselves breaking, souls bound so close and for so long their roots tangled being violated and forced fiber by fiber apart by the blithe hand of a bright-eyed child crushing ants between her fingertips in innocent discovery and unknowing sadism.

Master!?

Frankenstein falls to his knees. He stares wide eyed at the floor of the spacecraft. He's gasping for breath though it is not his lungs that feel like flames. The edge of his vision is blurred by tears. It is dissolution, violent fission at his seams, raw at the edges where their souls join. It is agonizingly slow, undoing them from the inside out. He cannot make a sound.

Frankenstei—

They are cut off, and suddenly, Frankenstein finds himself free and empty, his breath momentarily gone. He curls into his chest, hair sweeping the floor, breathing deeply and sharply, eyes wide and confused.

Purple flickers across his skin and vision, his hidden eyes shining for a moment. Dark Spear swims and spills into the void left behind by the broken bond. They laugh and scream much too loudly, thrashing violently against his already throttled mind.

Something fowl rises in his throat, and he jerks forward as his sickness splatters on the floor. Sweat and blood drip sluggishly down his temple, and he is motionless for a while. The tentative touch of Ark-2 on his shoulder reminds him to get up, and Frankenstein coughs as he shakily rises, supporting himself with a hand, still bruised from Mars, on the back of the control chair. He wipes his mouth with the back of his other hand and exhales before trying to reach through his soul to a bond that had become once cemented in him only to find a frayed and stark nothingness. Swiftly, he takes a seat and grips the controls, roaring the spacecraft to life. Irony coils in his chest and springs out tragically as laughter. "God, fucking, damnit." The roof above them opens. "We're getting out of here."

They are quickly pursued, several similar looking craft slicing through the air after him.

Frankenstein rises high above the blinking skyscrapers of the city, drawing a nearly vertical line backdropped by the starry night sky before sharply turning to race away, anywhere to get away.

"What? This thing doesn't shoot backwards? What kind of—" The ship shakes with an impact, and he pulls hard on the controls, going vertical once again, flipping backwards so that he returns the fire down upon the others. One, two, three hits and one of them is down. He presses onward again, as fast as he can. "Sparky, you know how to pilot?"

They nod.

"Good. Keep this thing going straight and don't accelerate or decelerate unless you want to throw me off." He hands the controls over and picks up the polearm he had taken. Frankenstein opens the emergency hatch above him and climbs out to the top of the ship. The rush of wind staggers him, but he quickly regains himself. Taking a breath, he leaps, arcing in the air until he slams the crescent, glowing purple, into the window of a pursuing ship. He shatters the shield and controls in front of the pilot, smiles, then leaps away before that craft can plummet from the sky. He skids when he lands back on his own ship, scrambling to maintain hold and adjust to the speed. Slipping back inside, he says, "Two down. Two to go," and sighs, exhilarated, heart thudding as if he is alive.

The ship rumbles, alerts sound. Chassis integrity down. Fuel draining. "We have to lose them somewhere." They're flying over tall dense, dark trees. "Those woods, get down there." And they dip. Branches and leaves brush and snap against them. They are a shadow in the obscurity of the woods and the night. The ship stutters and shakes and creaks. "We're going to bail. Jump when I do." He opens the emergency hatch again. "Now."

The ship goes on, soon to crash, as they plummet far down, the grand, towering trees indifferent as their branches snag and strike their bodies clumsily. Once they finally hit the ground, Frankenstein rolls a short distance on the dirt and foliage. He groans when he sits up, hand trying to detangle his hair, picking out leaves and broken twigs. He sighs, feeling a wetness on his stomach from his reopened wound. "Damn." Hands braced on his knees, he stands. "They'll look for us once that ship crashes. We should get going." Frankenstein looks up. The trees are too dense for him to see much of the sky. He presses his lips together. "No navigation, no communication, we're walking blind then." And so they walk quietly into the night.


What did you do?

I got rid of what is not needed.

No...no. Anger feels like fire. I am Cadis Etrama di Raizel and—

And who is that? No one. Not anymore, Honey.

Who are you to decide who I am or am not? Powers rise against powers. Soul against soul, locked, a stalemate. I am not and will not be you.