Cosmic Squadron Stellarman Phase 37: Distraction
Disclaimer: I do not own or make any claim of ownership upon the Super Sentai series, which belongs to Toei. Stellarman and its various characters are mine, and if you're interested in using any elements from it, just ask me.
Author's Note: Also, please come on by to Spectrum of Madness to check out all the series artwork. Recently added behind the scenes tidbits too.
Daniel slumped back into his bed and let out an irritated sight, but Bohdi stomped to the side to loom over him again. "Damn it, listen! This is your planet, are you going to save it? Or are you going to be another Vayon?"
"Don't you dare-"
"Don't I dare what?" Bohdi didn't let up. "He set himself up as the one who knew best for the world. He was the big visionary, he was the one with the vision of sweeping change. We were different because we were asking nicely for help, and letting people serve for their own reasons. To have their own future when this is over.
"Everything I've seen about Proxordo inclines me to think Vayon has only a few people he really trusts enough to do some of their own thinking. Everyone else, all the monsters, all the Risen, they're not fighting for their own future, they're fighting for Vayon's. I'll bet you anything you like they simply jumped up behind him because he promised something better and showed the power to make it happen. Probably, none of them even know what exactly Vayon has in mind for his little utopia."
"And what do you think that has to do with me?" Daniel asked, sighing resignedly.
"You're forgetting this is supposed to be a team, that's what," Bohdi growled more than said. "That's why Caitlin's worse than ever, and why you landed in here. We don't fight like a unit anymore. We're as far away from each other as we can be in battle. It's got to stop."
"I'll think on it."
"Think hard," Bohdi warned. "I didn't leave one burnt out hellhole of a planet to come to another." They could still hear him stomping away after the door closed.
Daniel shut his eyes and took a few practiced deep breaths before he felt the energy to face the world again. Once he had, Valentine said, cautiously, "Is Bohdi right?"
"See if we can get in touch with Erica," he replied.
"Quarry spotted," a Risen spoke into a radio microphone. The dark, bat-like shape was already vanishing into the distance, but he was hurriedly dialing in the trajectory and hitting a button to relay it.
"That all you have to report?" another voice barked out of the speaker of the apparatus.
"Yes it is. The target didn't attack the pillar or camp at all. I can't believe he wouldn't have seen it, but he just flew right past," the Risen answered tiredly.
The voice on the other end grunted. "Understood. Go about your business."
"Bloody Amp-Risen," the Risen sighed as soon as he'd shut off the apparatus.
He sauntered out of the shack containing their communications gears and stared again at the bodies of the armed insurgents he and two others had put down a few days before. They were supposed to have been rounded up for disposal that same day, but nobody had bothered. None of them could be bothered. If not for orders to track the members of Stellarman coming directly from Rogyre Vayon himself, it's likely no-one would have bothered to post a lookout either.
The bright spot of their duty recently had been when the insurgents had made their first push, storming the camp's gates with an old truck which, it turned out, had been laden with explosives. Enough to kill even an Amp-Risen, it turned out. Just like that, their commanding officer was gone.
Nobody had stepped up to take her place. No orders had come down on who was to take command. No replacement had arrived.
He looked over at Katrina, who didn't look back at him. She just stared out over the ocean beating against the edge of the camp. It was the only solace they had anymore. Soon, the remaining insurgents were likely to regroup and attack the camp again. The only casualty they'd ever scored was the Amp-Risen, but still they tried.
The Amp-Risen. That was all he knew to call her. He couldn't even remember her name, or if she'd even bothered to tell it to them.
He hefted his torch, and just to see if he still could, willed a little power into the tip. It flared for a second, then went out again. He sighed. They'd fight when their enemies came. They'd probably win.
But they'd only fight because they had nowhere to go.
Nowhere to go until whatever unknown criteria had been met that would satisfy Rogyre Vayon. Finally motivate him to use all the power they were channeling through this pillar and so many others.
Would it ever come?
What if it never did?
What if tomorrow, it wasn't a few half-crazed, unshaven mountain men with the luck to find a few working weapons?
He heard a yell of frustration as he threw his helmet at the ground, and only a few seconds later realized it was his own.
Hadn't he answered this call to fight for a better world? Accepted the fact that he'd be a man of metal until the end of his days, whenever that would be with the surrender of his form of flesh?
Slowly he walked over to where his helmet landed, slowly knelt down to pick it up, and slowly put it back on again.
Then, he went to wait.
For anything.
Aki blinked her heavy eyes and set down the book she had to admit she wasn't reading anyway. She looked out the window as Crux skimmed over a layer of clouds. It was a majestic sight. Not the kind of thing she ever quite expected she'd see. Her family never went anywhere, never caught a plane. Could never afford to, not with seven kids to feed.
She slumped back onto the bed in her tiny cabin, the cheap mattress on it squeaking. She didn't care. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Not since coming back to the wreckage of the city where she'd used to live.
For a minute she thought of Yuri, the youngest among them she shared a room with. Who looked up to Aki for having the nerve to stand up to their parents' edicts and stay out after curfew, even if she had no idea what Aki was really doing. Where was Yuri? What had happened to her?
Aki even thought of the last time she saw her parents, their faces as stern and disapproving as ever. Where were they? Had they gotten out of Cape Lombard? How suddenly had Proxordo attacked, when it became apparent Stellarman was gone, and probably not coming back? Had they left to look for her? Had they instead seen her disappearance as a blessing?
She repeated to herself, it didn't matter anymore. Even if they were still alive, what were the chances she'd ever find them, or they her? Eight months of pure chaos was a long time to get lost…
"GrarrraARRharrrgh!" came a scream from outside. Out of pure instinct she jumped off her bunk and ran down the hall. Another scream came, and this time she could tell it was coming from the infirmary. She looked in and saw Daniel thrashing around in his bed and Valentine tried to restrain him.
"Daniel, what happened?" she yelled, but he didn't answer. It was another few minutes before he settled down again. It was another few minutes more before he stopped panting and could articulate an answer.
"I…I was trying one of those suspension things. To heal faster," he explained. "To get back out there sooner. But…," he gasped. "It felt like something was cutting into my skin when I tried."
Valentine coughed and they both looked up at her. "Because the Starlight Suspension goes off of your body's natural 'diagram' of itself. Your conscious mind knows about all the additions I made, but the part of your brain that oversees the healing process doesn't. You were cutting yourself to pieces."
"Great," Daniel sighed irritably. "One hell of a trade-off." He looked up, and immediately froze. There, standing by the foot of the bed Bohdi had dented with his bare hands, was the smiling visage of Rogyre Vayon. A disembodied head, floating in midair with a curtain of white hair hanging behind it.
"Hello again, StellarRed," Vayon said cordially. His head bobbed with the motion of an ordinary walk as it crossed around the side of the bed, passing Aki who continued to stare down at Daniel. As the head moved, Vayon's armor-clad body formed beneath it.
"How did you get in here?" Daniel asked, low and slow. As far as he remembered from Valentine's long and rather tedious explanation of Crux's defenses, anyone who tried to enter it without being recognized as a friendly party, or possessing Starlight, was fried. Vayon probably had power enough to survive whatever did that, but it seemed unlikely even he had power enough to simply will himself to appear within Crux.
"What makes you think I was ever far away?" Vayon countered. "Does it frighten you to see me here in the very heart of your power like this, StellarRed? Perhaps maybe it finally gives you pause to think about how you're a member of a dying breed, trying desperately to prove to himself and the followers he can gather that their doom isn't on the horizon." He said it as said everything else. As a statement of fact.
Daniel jumped up and raised it ring, then thought to point it at Vayon as he changed to show the deluded savior just how strong his defiance was. But as he looked up…
Vayon was no longer standing by his beside. Aki was still there, and giving him an alarmed look.
"Daniel…what's wrong?" she asked cautiously.
He didn't answer. Instead he cast his eyes around the room. He stared at the windows, then at the door, looking for a sign of Vayon's smirking face. After a long, silent minute he replied, "Val, go scan the base. Do it now. Check for anything that shouldn't be there. Anything at all. I don't care how minor it seems. Do you hear me?"
Valentine nodded, but that was it. She scurried out of the room and the door slid shut behind her.
"What's wrong, Daniel?" Aki asked again.
"Either I'm going crazy, or Vayon's one step ahead of us…"
"What do you mean?"
"I swear to god I just saw Vayon. In hear. Making fun of me," Daniel replied gravely.
"I…see," Aki replied, looking uncertainly at him as he cast his eyes around the room, looking for his enemy again. Suddenly, Crux listed hard to one side and tossed both of them against the window. "What was that?" Aki exclaimed.
"Look!" Daniel pointed. A sheet of ice was forming over the window, and within seconds it had closed over the glass completely. At the same time, Valentine's voice came over the speakers.
"Crux is losing altitude fast. Brace for impact," she said, unnecessarily.
"How can she be so calm?" Aki asked. She grabbed the mattress off the bed and threw it under a desk built into the wall, and Daniel jumped under that desk with her. "Didn't she put in an upgrade to have a personality or something?"
Daniel gaped at her in reply. "Is that seriously what you're thinking about when we're about to crash?"
"It's how I stayed sane with six little siblings and parents who didn't like anything I did. Maybe you should try it sometime!"
He grunted, and braced himself between her and the wall. A minute later the entire base shook, and the bulkheads creaked, but held. There was a sound like breaking glass, but the window was intact. He didn't have to guess at the source.
"You okay?" Aki asked.
"Yeah," Daniel grunted and stood up, then started making his way to the door. "But I bet I know what we'll see when we get outside. Val, if you can hear me, get the Z-Machines fired up and try to open the hangar!"
"The doors are open," Valentine answered, though there was a crackle to the speaker. "But the hangar's pointing straight up, you'll have to get outside some other way."
"Fine, do the emergency doors still work?"
"I think so, but systems are going down all over the base. I'll have to kgggrrrrgghghhff get started reallrrrlkkknnnn-"
"Great," Daniel half-growled.
They scrambled over the bulkheads to the door and vaulted through it, then made their way to the first emergency door they could find. It faced straight down, and opened onto a short drop to blasted asphalt. They jumped down and crawled out from under Crux as fast as they could.
Their fortress had smashed into a building in the middle of a city. Not one of the charred ghost towns Proxordo had left in its wake either, judging by the intact storefronts and panicked people looking up at the sky across from the two of them. Immediately they could see what the people were looking at; looming over a row of buildings was a giant version of the icy monster who'd wounded Daniel. He cupped his hands in Crux's direction and ice crystals started to fill the air.
"Z-Machines, launch!" Aki yelled. From Crux's uppermost pod, a blue goat-robot launched itself out and smashed into Prox Blizzard's head. He staggered back, giving the robot a chance to vault off and land in front of Daniel and Aki.
Wearily, Daniel raised his ring along with Aki. "Cosmic Ascension!" He shut his eyes against the light of his own transformation, and when he opened them again, Taurus was standing in front of him, waiting for him to climb aboard. He did, his vision fuzzing out a little at the edges. "Star Cross," he gasped.
The machines twisted and interlocked as they had before battle with Proxordo's monsters so many times. After a minute Daniel's vision cleared again, and he was sitting in the center of the cockpit with the rest of Stellarman. Prox Blizzard was already filling the air with ice crystals again. One ricocheted with an alarming crack off the windscreen.
Black was the one who urged StellarFate forward, slamming its giant fist into Prox Blizzard's chest with a clang that echoed off the buildings around them. Prox Blizzard spun with the momentum of the blow and came back toward StellarFate to slam an icicle-studded fisted of his own into the robot's head.
It seemed impossible that such a spindly creature could deliver such a staggering blow. Stellarman was shaken around their cockpit by the blow. Prox Blizzard threw another punch at their robot, but Yellow grabbed for his controls and called out, "Fate Shield!" Prox Blizzard's punch rocked against the circular shield that formed, but did no damage. The monster stood back and unleashed a flurry of ice crystals at the shield. They shattered against StellarFate's shield, but suddenly it started to flicker.
"What's going on?" Yellow asked. "Those things aren't doing nearly enough damage to weaken the shield!"
"It's not the shots, it's the cold!" Black answered. "Look!"
Indeed, even though Prox Blizzard's ice barrage was bouncing off the shield, a sheet of frost was crawling across the pod on StellarFate's arm that generated the shield. As it did the shield flickered even more, then finally collapsed. Icy projectiles pelted StellarFate and pierced its armor in innumerable places.
StellarRed jammed his throttle forward, through. The enormous robot took a slow step forward, then another, and another, its pace picking up each time. After a few steps it had gotten close enough to launch another attack. It kept up its advance and shouldered Prox Blizzard into a block of low buildings, knocking the icy monster onto its back. Prox Blizzard raised his head to shoot his icy blast at the robot again, but Stellarman wasn't about to give him the chance.
"Atropos Shear!" Red yelled and twisted a pair of controls to send all available power into the robot's weapon systems. The frost coating the pod on one arm shattered as a blade of transparent energy formed from it. At once StellarFate swept the blade toward Prox Blizzard's neck and sliced through it with almost no resistance at all.
Then Prox Blizzard raked its icicle knuckles against StellarFarte's midsection.
The robot staggered back and fell to one knee. Prox Blizzard's body stood up and started to rain punches down on its opponent. Its blades still formed, StellarFate rammed one into Prox Blizzard's chest. Cracks ran out from where the blade had pierced the body, and then with a glassy roar the entire thing exploded. The pieces, however, then started to swirl in the air and the temperature in StellarFate's cockpit plummeted. Again, the robot was being buffeted by giant ice chunks.
"Put all the power into the shields! We can probably outlast this!" Red ordered.
"You're burning this robot up, Daniel!" Black warned him. "StellarFate's powerful, but it can only stretch so far!"
"You got a better idea? FATE SHIELD!"
Round shields of energy exploded into being from both of StellarFate's wrists, and most of the frozen maelstrom crashed into them without harming the robot. However electricity started to arc from the pods generating the shields from all the power being channeled into them from Daniel's desperate survival plan. StellarBlack seized his controls, and suddenly StellarFate turned, took a few charging steps, raised one giant metal boot-
-and brought it down on Prox Blizzard's severed, laughing head with a crash.
The rushing winds stopped and the monster's remains fell to the ground, shattering as they did. As they did, however, Stellarman heard a wheezing laugh fill the air for several blocks around.
"Nicely done, Stellarman. You won…against the weakest member of Proxordo's task force."
Black looked down at the redlining meters in front of him as they finally went back down, and sighed.
"This should be fun."
"Hey, watch it!" Yellow exclaimed. Black turned around to see what was going on in time to see Red dash out through the cockpit door. "What's with him?"
"That," Aki said gravely. She pointed out the windscreen, and the rest of them saw at once what she was indicating.
Standing on the corner of a nearby building, staring back at them, was a woman in a gold and purple uniform and helmet.
StellarRose.