Incursion Thirty One: The Storm Seed, Part Two
"The man you speak of is no more," the creature spoke, "I am a … neo-Bryant if you will. The storm reborn."
"What should we call you then?" she replied.
It thought for a moment, it's compound eyes focusing and defocusing through layer upon layer of reality and unreality.
"If I am to be your saviour, I have no need for a thing as trivial as name," it said. "Destroyer. The reborn. Eternal lord. The End of all things. The inevitable storm of destruction. The one who fell from space. It matters not."
No-one stepped forward and offered an alternative. "Storm seed."
The chitinous beast turned to No-one and a human eye burst from the flesh of its palms. "That is surprisingly accurate. It is acceptable!"
Silence fell as the Storm Seed, Neo-Bryant, looked around the ritual cavern with its one human eye. It studied them in turn, first No-one, with very little interest, then the Lady Oblivion in much detail.
Can it remember? Does it know me? she thought.
"I am intrigued to know how either of you got this far…" Some unmentionable part of its body clicked in agreement, as though gaining it's own sentience. "No matter. I shall grow to a giant size and destroy this city of theirs. This will be my first act," it turned to No-one and added, "not my last resort."
No-one wanted to mention his ultimatum, but he knew it would be no use.
With no more to say it smashed straight through the wall in one movement and sprang into the air. Wings unfurled from its back and it spiraled upwards, coming to a stop hovering a few metres above the cradle-like structure at the very top of the Black Spike.
Below, humans swarmed like ants. It wondered exactly what was so special about them. They looked so soft and breakable. A woman surged through a break in the barricades. The Storm Seed recognised her instantly as a magi of sound and fire. It marvelled at the abilities the rune within provided it in this new body.
Though it had slept from many a millennia divided across hundreds of thousands of meteors and had missed much of the Black Water's subjugation of worlds, it felt like it had known this planet. And in some horrid way it knew would miss it when it became a barren husk, much like all others before it.
If it could, it would have smiled. Such human emotions were exactly what would make this destruction that much more fun.
The magi yelled something either incomprehensible or flat out unimportant and the swarming increased.
"It is time then."
o0o
Back at StratCom HQ, the alarms blared.
The order came but a split second later. Cross Rangers to the hangar. Challenger and Guardian are being scrambled. This is not a drill.
o0o
The Storm Seed stretched out it's arm, joints popping and clicking, exoskeletal plates clacking together. Two machines, evidently human creations, approached from land and air.
"This is what they send after me." It remembered a planet, quite some time ago now, it supposed, whose inhabitants had used a similar technique. They had fallen too, of course.
A strong female voice projected from the flying creation. "Stand down."
It snorted, and reached for the power flowing within it. A purple energy crackled around it. It began syphoning Black Water from the Spike to add to it's own mass until it had grown far taller than than tower ever had been.
The two beings to which the creature supposed it owed its rebirth stood bemused at the centre of the plaza between the fountains. Before the army below could open fire they wisely flowed down into the ground, making good their escape.
The Storm Seed raised an arm and pushed its palm out toward the machine. The runes across it's shoulder shone. A gale force wind buffeted the machine causing it to drop a few hundred feet from pressure loss. It's engines fired before it grazed the tops of the skyscrapers.
The second machine rumbled to a stop just outside the now pointless circle of the barricade wall. It raised it's dual cannons and took aim at the creature, releasing a barrage of exploding projectiles from within that bounced harmlessly off its carapace and careened into nearby buildings.
Truly, this is pathetic. I'd hoped the fabled magi had more in them than that.
It swung with it's arm and batted the flying machine clean across the city and half a mile out toward the wall separating civilisation from the tainted wilds of the south. He picked up the land machine, the tank it supposed, and took to the air flying after the other before it caught itself and launched a counterattack.
o0o
Warning sirens sounded throughout the Challenger as it spun wildly through the air toward the quarantine wall.
"What the hell is that thing?" said Blue Cross. "I knew No-one wouldn't heed the cease fire."
They struggled with the instruments in order to bring their Cross Machine under control once more.
"What's more, it use an magi technique. Air clan," said White Cross. "And I don't think No-one had much of a say in this."
The radar pinged showing a large object headed their way, carrying a small signal that the display said was the Guardian. Red Cross wrestled the machine around to a full stop to face the creature.
o0o
The Storm Seed could have dashed the two machines on the ground, or used them both to destroy the wall and let its mutated brethren out to play, but instead it dropped the Guardian on its tracks and stopped, holding a position just above the Challenger.
"It would be best for you to surrender," it said.
The same voice as before came back from the flying machine. "Never."
"Very well." The Storm Seed spun like a top and gathered a hurricane of shadow energy around it. By now the magi must have realised it was using their own techniques, their own power even, against them... what little good it would do.
It would give them a chance, to see what power it possessed first hand.
o0o
Red Cross hit the intercom control activating the comms system the Challenger shared with its sister machine. "Let's bring them together."
The Guardian engaged a pair of heavy stabilizers. It's caterpillar tracks locked, and the entire back of machine rose up, pivoting on joints just behind the cockpit. As it split down the middle, two booms with docking mechanisms at one end swiveled up from the back, turning the machine into a pair of legs.
The Challenger swooped down to dock vertically with the Guardian. Once in place, two shoulder joints extended from the main body. The robot bent at the waist and inserted first one arm, then the other into sockets on the two cannons. As it rose up one last time the front cockpit of the Challenger flipped down becoming a chest piece and revealed the robot's head; a sleek thing with single silver fin.
"CrossRobo online," said Red Cross, immediately training both cannons on the shadowy vortex the beast had become.
"No doubt about it," said Yellow Cross, her and the green ranger joining the others in the cockpit. "It's using magi abilities." She glanced at White Cross knowing her teammate had probably made the same conclusion she had. For brevity, she said it anyway. "It's using darkness and air… just like Bryant."
The rangers turned to look out of the viewing screen.
"You got to be kidding me..." breathed Green Cross.
CrossRobo spread its wings and took to the sky.
"Shoot it down. Shoot it down now!" roared White Cross.
Red Cross didn't question her. He entered the commands for the attack they usually reserved as a finisher. If ever a situation demanded the full force of their arsenal, this was the one.
Energy flowed from deep with in it, and into its arm cannons. Two balls of multicoloured energy formed in front of them.
Still the beast spun. The hurricane had almost made landfall.
"Fire!" they called in unison.
Red Cross slammed his hand down on the launch button and the two beams of supercharged energy surged out toward the enemy, broke through the whirling wind and shadow and struck the insectoid creature at the centre.
Though that should have at least made a scratch, it rose up even higher to the very top of the funnel it had created. The hurricane showed no signs of dissipating.
"Holy hell," exclaimed Blue Cross.
"The first person to say we're in trouble gets my boot in their face," said White Cross.
o0o
Lady Oblivion and No-one approached the titanic battle on foot. They each held in their hands something they hoped would turn the tide. The only problem being the matter of how they'd get close enough to the Storm Seed to use them.
o0o
"So what are we actually going to do, Allison?" Blue Cross said.
"How should I know?!" White Cross screamed at her younger brother. "It took our strongest attack like we were just prodding at a stone wall with a feather."
"Guys, please." The yellow ranger sifted through CrossRobo's databases for anything that might have helped them. "There's always a way. No war is completely unwinnable."
Red Cross turned to her. "You sure? Cause I can definitely think of a few-"
"It's called hope, genius!" she snapped. "Something everyone needs in order to face-"
"Stop it!" Green Cross bellowed. Outside the Storm Seed still held the shadow vortex in place with its power. Why? The rangers couldn't say, but it wouldn't last forever, it couldn't. ""Is placing blame more important that doing something? Because the way I see it we do have options. We exist only to protect those who can't protect themselves. So all we have to do is lead it away from the city, screw the implications!"
The rangers fell silent.
Yellow Cross nudged the red ranger. "That's what I was trying to tell you, Red."
o0o
The Storm Seed looked down from on high at the still CrossRobo. At first it thought giving them as chance would be interesting, their pea shooter had certainly been amusing, but now the creature was getting bored. All this power and no one to stand against it. No one to challenge it.
Destroying this planet would be like taking candy from a baby, little effort required, goals met, but absolutely no fun.
It turned it's attention to a third party, those one's who thought they were being sneaky. Even from high in the stratosphere it could see what No-one and Lady Oblivion clutched in their hands/ It could feel the power emanating from those orbs. They sought to pacify him.
It should have been angry at such a betrayal - It should have turned its power on them - but… this world wasn't ready, it wasn't yet ripe for destruction. After so many eons of the same thing, millennia after millennia, the Storm Seed was ready for a hard won battle.
Turning back to the Cross Rangers and their inferior robot man, the beast made up it's mind. It flicked it's hurricane of air and darkness away towards the quarantine wall and dived for the ground.
As the winds tore the wall apart right down to the foundations, and the rangers struggled to keep up with what was happening, No-one and Oblivion slammed the pulsating orbs of Black Water they carried into the Storm Seed's giant feet.
Immediately the insectoid near-god shrank to a human size. It wanted to ask them what they were thinking… it wanted a lot of things in fact but discovered in that moment the true nature of the magic they used.
Black Water poured from its every orifice until a smooth, unbroken cocoon had formed around it. No-one, Oblivion and the cocoon melted into a ball of pitch-coloured ichor and streamed away into the wilderness beyond the wall.
o0o
Red Cross slapped his forehead. "Why is it battles always seem to end before we end them?"
Yet on the inside he thought; Why is it we never have enough power to follow through? Why is it we're never in control of these things?
Rangers report, came Catherine's voice over the radio.
Red Cross snapped out of his reverie and answered. "The, uh, the 'monster' it turned into a cocoon. No-one and co took it south."
Is that all?
"No." He hung his head in the shame of defeat. "The wall is breached and… we don't know how, but we think the monster was… or used to be Bryant."