Author's Note: Sorry I don't have anything to say today, I'm already behind. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 17: The Monster Planet
Repairs on the UFO were progressing rapidly, the so-called 'minions' were making use of the wreckage that had been blown off of the ship together with what they were taking from various cities they plundered to get the raw materials. Entire buildings had been ripped out whole sale, the concrete and mortar shaken off exposing metal like steel below which was then being melted down and reprocessed with other metals. The UFO also continued it's primary mission: the collection of organic life, fortunately for it the excessive radiation from world wide nuclear bombing and chemicals from various suspect places left it with no shortage of specimens to snatch. Yet it wasn't just the giants the UFO collected either, the Zurkon drones had been released in mass equipped with some kind of dimensional vacuum cleaner that they used to suck up cats, small dogs, very large rats and insects, anything about a foot long. Still the hole stuck around long enough for Daniela to move the cloaked lab into place inside and figure out where her idiot brother was being kept in all of this.
"Computer, bring up the list of monster DNA located inside of the Nemetrix." Dani decided to take advantage of the situation. The UFO gave no shortage of creatures that she could potentially use to make use of the Nemetrix but it required a more user friendly interface. Her problem was that the potential transformations seemed to number in the hundreds. "Break the specimens down by biomes: Land, Sea, and Air." The singular massive list disappeared, replaced by three smaller lists. "Sub divide according to abilities: close quarters, long range, support and other." The three lists disappeared again, each in turn replaced by four smaller lists for a total of twelve. "List off specimens from smallest to largest." The Lists disappeared and reappeared again, only instead of being replaced with more lists the name of each monster had been given a size index to show how they matched up. "The smallest specimen is easily the size of a Mastiff." A breed of dog of great size, which together with the lab equipment Dani had and Manny's already huge bulk would make actually keeping it in the lab rather difficult. "That will make things difficult." Dani suddenly realized the very real need to grab one of the so-called critters that the UFO had snatched up in order to actually use this thing. "Divide the list in tens." Dani stated as she picked up the device she had been working on and had Fix-It reorganize it's contents into something quite a bit more manageable. "Well I guess I'm going to be prepared as I can be." Dani stated as she attached the device to the belt on her hip.
Fortunately these stupid machines didn't seem to have the capacity to identify ghosts, or if they did they didn't have the ability to detect her presence. Now when she started tampering with their systems on the other hand...
"Okay which one of you can I convince to help me?" Dani asked as she looked at the various animals gathered before her.
Any trace of the animals that humanity had spent so long and hard trying to domesticate was long gone, squashed under a tide of mutagenic chemicals, radiation and good old fashion survival of the fittest. The descendants of non-domesticated animals weren't much better, giant rats, cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes, hornets and other nasties that she had no interest in.
"Okay so that's a bust." Dani muttered as she rubbed her temples and debated her next course of action in dealing with these things. If she didn't have the raw resources that the Nemetrix will provide her then she could expect the fight of her life, which also emphasized the need to find her brother in all of this madness as well. "Ugh. It's a good thing I had the idiot micro chipped." Saying that Dani pulled out her personal computer and brought up the screen that would theoretically bring her to her brother and followed the radar like information to it's conclusion. "Well." The conclusion in question had Dani finding the tracking chip lodged in a section of floor in the rebuilt section of the ship. "Oh lovely. It fell out when they were blasting Manny." Dani stated smacking herself in her face. "Plan B then." Dani produced several clones of herself and spread them through out the ship, intangibility and invisibility has worked well for her thus far and her in built ghost sense would tell them when Manny was close to one of them. It also gave Dani the chance to run some impromptu sabotage on the ship and do some proper recon.
"Why did they even bother to snatch up the critters?" Dani asked scratching her chin. "I at first thought that the little ones would be fed to the big ones, but looking at this that isn't going to be the case." Dani noted having found what could best be summarized as a ice cavern hallway.
Course the UFO hadn't done something as foolish as to tear a chunk of ice out of somewhere, shape it into a hallway, and integrate it into the middle of itself, that was far too impractical: these were cryo-chambers, for 200 ft plus monsters. Dani could see Godzilla and the Bewilderbeast, long since shoved into their own chambers and frozen solid mid protest. The possibility that Manny was in here, reduced to a ice sculpture like these two, was quite high, but she wouldn't be able to use her ghost sense to find him since it was already cold enough that she could see her breath.
"Great, now I need to check every square meter of this place just to find one idiot." It was much worst than Dani realized, the possibility dawning on her that Manny could be at the back of a chamber that if the size of the Bewilderbeast was any indication had to be at least eighty feet back, fifty feet wide, and two hundred tall for a total of over eighty thousand cubic feet per chamber, and she still didn't know how many chambers there were in total, perhaps the real question she should have been asking herself is why there weren't any new arrivals being added.
"Oh dear." While her counterpart searched cryo chambers another Dani had located the navigation central computer that presumably kept this entire thing on course.
To where though was the question. Having completed repairs and gathered a bountiful harvest of monsters and rodents it was now carrying it's bounty through the stars at several times the speed of light. According to this navigation computer they were already half way through the galaxy and there was no sign of slowing down any time soon. True there were plenty of planets with creatures that met with this Ephemeris contraption's criteria but Earth's harvest had been bountiful, and many of these planets species had already been collected. Though that again brought up the question of where they were going, how long this thing had been active to accomplish it's goals, who built it and what they hoped to accomplish by doing so.
"On the bright side, if this thing is intent on returning back to earth to continue it's harvest then we can just hitch hike a ride back to Earth." Content with that Dani's next priority was sabotage, delaying the return to Earth wouldn't hurt, and it would make it easier to free Manny when she decided to act. "Now than. The only weapons really effective against him were those stasis beams, so where are they at?"
The Zurkon Droids were kept in drop pods on the underside of the ship, deployed specifically to swarm and incapacitate any enemy that Ephemeris couldn't subdue with it's arms. However they had not been made by Ephemeris but rather were the creations of a third party, Gadgetron they called themselves.
"Interesting, so you guys defend whoever 'hatches' you regardless of loyalties." Fix-It was put to work once more, the capsules containing undeployed Zurkon's was soon put through hefty modifications. "It seems that the majority of the enemy consists of cybernetics so let's arm them with that."
Rail Gun's were weapons that made use of a magnetic field to accelerate a projectile to little over three kilometers per second, the projectiles were designed to shatter inside of the body of the enemy destroying circuit boards and armor and the magnetic field they carried with them would wreak havoc on the enemies internal systems frying circuitry and destroying power cells. The Vac-u's, originally designed for scooping the critters in mass, had been made into ammo cases for a massive number of projectiles. Aside from that Dani had Fix-It's galvan genius and access to Mechamorph technology to augment the systems of of the droids to their utmost limit.
"Mr. Zurkon is ready to kill for you." The omnicidal droid that Dani had been working on fluttered happily to her side, she would have to see how many of them she could salvage from this place.
"If any of the other Zurkon's become active without my say so, destroy them immediately. If any one who isn't me comes in here shoot them at once." Dani instructed and omnicidal droid gave a gleeful nod in response.
When Ephemeris did arrive at it's destination, it's masters would be greeted by a surprise the likes of which they could not have anticipated, nor have any desire to do: nightmares after all were extremely unpleasant.
True to Dani's deductions Ephemeris had landed on a alien planet, according to Dani's information this Magnus was three in half times Earth's gravity, if she and Manny weren't already so ridiculously tough then they wouldn't be able to survive on this massive hunk of rock let alone fight. Ephemeris gave a description of it's catch to it's masters and they responded appropriately directing the machine to deposit it's harvest into something that resembled their natural habitats before docking to recharge.
"Great, I'm going to have neck cramps for weeks." Manny stated as he rubbed the back of his neck, his cellmate had been released and he with it, course the robots never realized he had the ability to phase through their non-stasis restraints, why none of them made use of them was beyond him. So he just got out hoping to stretch his legs and deal with the neck pains they had given him and what does he learn? This wasn't even the planet he was on anymore. Not that he had anything against this scenario, one place to rampage was as good as the next, but knowing where he and his sister are is better then not. So Manny turned to his cell mate for ideas. "What you wanna do?"
"Grr." Godzilla for his part looked like he wanted nothing to do with Manny and it showed in the lizard's blatant annoyance. For good reason too considering Manny's unprovoked attack on the modern day dragon's person, thus Godzilla took the opportunity of being dropped next to the ocean to leave the the halfa child be. "So be it." Manny saw a city and flew over looking for someone who knew where he was. "Hello! Anyway there!?"
Good news was, yes there were people there. Bad news was they were not talking anytime soon, after all even Manny's prowess with torture wasn't applicable to dead bodies. Various different races if their body types were any indication, though it could just be that they were broken beyond recognition, the fact that they had been skinned alive were a contributing factor to Manny's confusion.
"Well someone knows how to have a good time." Manny stated smirking knowingly and all thoughts of looking for Dani had been pushed to the back of his mind.
The ones responsible for the skinning also took notice of Manny, a fresh crop of prey had been released near here so naturally the young bloods had taken the liberty of stocking up when they saw this burly young man. It was rare that Ephemeris brought sapients to Magnus, usually that was something that they had to do themselves. The Drone was difficult for them to manage, but letting it run on automatic also provided a good result as it brought so much prey to the planet. Even if they had hunted one species to extinction the drone would usually just go back and get more. So for now it was best to watch and wait.
"Yeah know if you don't come out I'm gonna have to go looking for you!" Manny shouted as he looked around.
Manny went through two transformations, first turning into his ghost form and followed by growing two heads and four arms before he set to work. From palms beams of ecto green blew off chunks of the nearby buildings, from his mouth's a bright green light leaked out and were fired out in artillery strikes knocking down buildings around him. That got their attention.
"Ah yes. Good old Manny." The explosions continued to go off in the ruined city, the green light showing who was clearly responsible for the attacks. "Subtle as a garbage truck on nitro." If Daniela wasn't busy pulling herself back together she would be going after him already, but not being at full power didn't mean that Dani could do nothing. And so towards that end produced another clone. "You go find Manny and see what mess he's created now." The First Dani stated.
"And you go find the rest of us and pull ourselves together." Both Dani's nodded their heads in agreement.
"Take some of the Zurkon drones with you, the enemy might not be cybernetic but I bet rail guns sting all the same." The First Dani stated aware of how weak they were with so many of them running around.
"No argument here but hurry up and pull ourselves together, the fewer of us there are the stronger we get." The Second Dani stated before she flew off.
Invisibility and flight served Dani well, as she watched the aliens who were stalking her brother dodge his ecto blasts, they in turn returned fire with shoulder mounted plasma blasters and energy disks.
"Yautja?" Dani and Manny were actually told bed time stories of the Yautja, more commonly known as Predators, by her Mother.
They're a race of aliens who travel the galaxy hunting worthy prey, something that they apparently considered her to be: she had the Yautja weapons to prove it. Each one of them were built like NFL linebackers, huge and muscular, and dressed like tribal warriors with bare chests and wearing the skins of animals/what she hoped was animals. Neither of this did anything to disguise the advance weaponry they carried, on the contrary the contrast made the plasma casters, stealth cloaks, floating death disks, wrist computers, combat sticks and surgically implanted retractable claws even more pronounce.
"Hmm." Dani looked up to Ephemeris and back down to the deceptively advanced alien thugs. "It's within the realm of possibility."
Is what Dani's mouth was saying but part of her still doubted the Yautja's capacity for technology. One possibility is that they stole everything they have from other species but that at least would imply some impressive engineering prowess to reverse engineer and maintain such tech. She also had to consider that they weren't responsible for Ephemeris either, she can't think of a reason why they would build in a function to snatch up critters.
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rmarcano321: Eh. I love a good story with some well written characters. So obviously I will have nothing to do with the reboot or it's sequels.