Chapter 2
Requiem
Shane was enjoying a normal morning entering the Council room with a fresh cup of coffee. His secretary, however, was not in her seat, nor anywhere near her desk. Shane was perplexed by the sudden lack of conformity that had resurfaced in the past two months. Could the tranquility and peace be over with already?
His secretary could be seen all but dashing toward, then past him. This also perplexed him. It wasn't like Shane expected his coworker to be at his every whim and plea, but at least she could give a "good-morning" to him.
Trunks was first to receive the word. Shane's messenger found him in his office, meditating. "Sorry to disturb you sir," she hastily apologized, "But I think you should see this. Please follow me." And she left again, glancing behind her to make sure the silent man was following her. Trunks simply nodded, stood, and adjusted his pace behind her.
The War Room was in utter chaos. Every official and analyst was scrambling for a desk in order to sit and think about the thousands of sheets of written code each one clutched. The monitors showed constant layers of ever-changing symbols in red, blue, and even neon pink shades.
Shane joined Trunks as he entered; Shane had been there longer before Trunks even if he got the message later than everyone else. "They've been getting nothing but this," he motioned to the monitors, "since 3 AM this morning."
"Sir!" an ensign spoke up, "We've traced the origin!"
Trunks had been studying the monitors and colors even when Shane had filled him in. "Venoson." He murmured.
"What?" Shane whirled toward him.
"Sir! The origin the Venoson Faction in North Korea!"
Shane jolted his head back and forth from the ensign to Trunks for awhile. "How did you know?"
"Only Venoson or the Bounty Hunters would use these encoded symbols and the Bounty Hunters haven't contacted us for six years." Trunks told flatly.
"Well, I can see how that would be a very strong fact." Shane nodded.
"Uh, sir?" another ensign with headgear and a mike wrapped around it to his lips, "they've broken the first sentence, they'll read it off now."
The bustling and confusion ceased for an instant to listen and/or read. The monitors became a blank, flickering blue, and the type drew across it as the ensign echoed over the mike, "Looks can be deceiving."
"What the hell?" Shane exclaimed.
Sesix was rather enjoying his night flight, making sure to stay above the clouds. His main worries were dwelling on Savi, his old master, who had so easily killed him then revived him. "Perhaps to prove something..." Savi's words echoed in his mind.
He was losing altitude fast without realizing it. Sesix accepted it and stopped enjoying the night sky, taking a perch atop a giant gargoyle head. These humans walk the streets without any hopes or dreams of absolute power. Can none of them sense its presence? Sesix let the thoughts drift around him as he floated somewhat peacefully back to the clouds.
Sesix found himself floating before the moon, staring into its glowing blue bathing light. Then... Something shook. It wasn't a building, or a person, or the planet. It was itself reality itself shivered rapidly for a few seconds. Sesix found himself spontaneously vibrating with the rest of the planet, but not terribly.
Tren's cup of tea clattered with its shaking against its holder. He darted his head around, tensing fast. "A tear." He murmured, "A tear in space. A jumper." He searched the windows with his eyes, but found nothing.
Sesix stopped staring at the moon, and turned slowly in the air to sound like an odd hybrid of a screeching car, and the ripping of construction paper, topped with a soothing tone. The tone was the sound your ear would put to a flooding light, something solid and clear.
The fabric of the dark blue night sky was slowly cut open, a glowing white jagged slash in the blue. When the cut was finished, it widened. Further and further it expanded, and all it revealed was silvery metallic edge. When it could consume the length of twenty football fields it halted. The silver edge moved, and Sesix quickly realized it was the beginning of a hull and the small amount of leeway around it gave way to the vacuum of space at last.
Sesix forced his flight to his back to keep himself from being sucked into the black abyss and watched with stunned perplexity the sight that was ascending upon him. The shape was, put simply, a starship, now only half submerged from the crack, and it was hastening its pace.
In a matter of a few more seconds, the ship was fully visible, and crack was repairing itself. Now it was gone, and only this silver and black bullet filled the sky, and blocked the moonlight. Without warning, bright searchlights appeared and floated alongside the ship, blinding Sesix and any innocents caught in the fray below. Blinding the innocents from what happened next.
Sesix's atmosphere was enclosed in burning laser fire. His survival instincts kicked in. The reasoning behind the sudden assault was nowhere to be found, but he found his courage, summoning an orbison case to surround him from harm. Then he found his rage, and his hands became giant spheres of destructive energy. And they were thrown asunder into the ship's shields.
The watchtowers surrounding the city had noticed the light show and notified the nearest militia: Direct's.
Maron was first to receive word, and donned her battle uniform, custom made.
Both volleys ceased fire. The ship's headlights dissipated from view. Sesix stood with small, gold energy streams rising off his armor. The two combatants stared each other down, if starships could do such a thing. They didn't have much time to contemplate each other, thanks to another couple pairs of spotlights raining down on their positions.
Odd thing is, the spotlight for the starship shown through it, only intensifying what the moon had already done, and when it cascaded back down upon Sesix, the ship was gone.
"Stay where you are and we will not engage!" Maron's amplified voice filled the night sky. "Show hostility and we will follow suit!" She was on a small hovercycle, armed with two Force cannons on its flanks, and backed by three battle cruisers.
Ignoring them, Sesix's streams of rising energy came back and swirled around him before he zipped away from them. Only Maron's cycle could keep speed enough to keep the lord in her sights. She dodged to right from an incoming surge of power. She didn't dodge quite fast enough as it nailed the cycle's fuel reserves. "Fine, have it your way." She leapt off the cycle, and let it drift to its doom.
Maron, on the other hand, assumed flight, her own violet trails of energy swirling around her. However, once again, the lord seemed far too fast. Knowing that powering up to fully pursue would attract too much attention, she let the thermals carry her gently to a rooftop, and waited patiently for the battle cruisers.
Sesix found sanctuary in a long, abandoned alley and workshop on the outskirts, the Old City. His peace, however, wasn't long.
"Sesix!" Tren appeared from above and landed at knee, then stood.
"Ah, it's you. Tell me, veteran, was it you who composed that lovely little starship jumper. I must say it was quite...unpleasant." Sesix said with an odd tone.
"I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about." Tren said flatly.
"Mmm." He growled, his eyes immediately closed and reopened to glow and fire two streams of power. The module on Tren's left forearm glowed and formed a grid energy shield, which he leveled in front of him to block.
"You can't hurt me Sesix." He said from behind the shield, the lord's eyes smoked, closed, and reopened to be normal again as Tren continued, "You came here with the refugees, we know that much. You have a home and protection if you abide by our code and join to voluntary services to the factions."
Sesix said nothing to the offer, only stared at nothing.
"I'm giving you a chance here, Sesix, one you should not refuse."
Finally, he responded, taking a sincere tone. "You know I respect you Tren, and your actions toward me. Thus, I shall give you my answer." There was a long pause, then... Sesix dashed forward, kicked through the shield, and flipped back to his position. Tren flew through the brick wall behind him. "Hell no!" and he sped into the sky, laughing.
An armored hand found its grasp on the crumbling wall and Tren vaulted himself up. Looking to the black figure disappearing, he murmured, "Oh, what am I going to with him?"
Tom leaned back on his cot, his ice pack nearly all melted. A few band-aid wrappers and sore medicine capsules had found their home on the carpeting. The boy who had joined in on the fight, Alec, was seated in Indian-style, having strapped his own ice pack actually onto his head. "So how much trouble do you think we'll get into?"
Tom grunted, then chuckled, staring at the ceiling fan. "You'll get off with only your bruises, I'll probably get called down any second now." He sighed.
An odd silence filled the room, as if their sores were the only subject of conversation and that had already been done three times over again. Alec broke the silence, "So...Thanks for letting me stay in the civilian quarters."
Tom looked at him now. He was a medium built boy, somewhere in his early twenties. His light black hair betrayed the crimson-gold of his eyes, and, as intense as they were in battle, they softened any expression now. Alec was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with black arms and gray torso, along with a sleeveless vest unzipped over it, still revealing a black dragon on the front of the shirt. "Don't mention it..." Tom didn't take his eyes away, "You look a little familiar. What's your name?"
"I told you my name. Alec."
"Last name." Tom demanded.
"Oh, Johnson."
Pretty generic name for an outlander. Oh well, what the hell. Tom went back to the ceiling. Alec had gotten up and entered the hallways.
Leon had finally made sense of the lower levels of Wing's residence areas. They were nearly as or more confusing than his older slum-like streets, but at least they were nicer. He was walking the halls back to his own room, only a few actual civilians also rendered homeless by the Assassins passing him in the other direction. His eyes, for a reason he did not understand, locked with another's, who was passing more slowly than the others.
Alec and Leon's eyes latched onto each other and held, even as they continued walking. Their heads had to compensate for the link by turning themselves. Only when the strain grew too much upon their necks did they break away. Those gold-tinted eyes...
"Hey! I said you can't come down here! What, are you deaf?" the guard was doing his best to stop the Young Man dubbed "Shades" from passing into the underground of the Direct Investigation Facility. Shades lifted his right sleeve and revealed his arm only to the guard, who hesitated, then stepped back with open eyes.
He descended the long flights of stairs into the abysmal basement of the Direct building, causing sudden alarm to any passing scientists on their routine runs. He found the Morg without much trouble.
The guard at the sealed door stopped him, causing the young man to once again lift his sleeve and reveal a red "V" carved into the flesh and healed over as a scar, then tattooed over still. This caused quite a commotion.
"What the- A-a Venoson!? Here?" At the mention of the word "Venoson", multiple guards both stood at attention and also readied their firearms. A graduated agent of the Venoson faction hadn't shone up anywhere except in the desert for the last fifteen years.
"Calm your adrenaline." Shades murmured, "And let me pass." Reluctantly, the guard stood aside and Shades walked. He moved as if he knew the way, with now near to forty armed officers trailing him. He found his way to the morgue.
Nudging past the disgruntled scientists that became even more confused by the pursuing MPs, Shades scanned along the rows of numbered specimens not-quite-past investigation. He stopped at one labeled 9615: Torik Stronkhold.
Shane had joined the fray piled into the room now. He watched as the young man rolled out the body.
"Hey! What the hell do ya' think you're doing?" Shane stepped to stop the young man but was caught by Trunks' arm gripping his shoulder. His comrade shook his head ever so slightly. Shane stopped and watched.
Shades traced his fingers over the bluish face, then circled and twitched around the cheekbone. They gripped, lifted, then tore. A gasped groan filled the room as Shades removed a considerable chunk of raw flesh from the face. The hole shone not bone or muscle, but more skin, except red and moldy; old corpse skin.
"Oh my God." One guard covered his mouth as not to throw up.
"Just as I figured. A man dead for two months and all he did was turn a translucent blue...didn't even begin to deteriorate."
"Hold on! What the heck are you saying?"
Shades sighed, then said his statement slowly, "This man's name is unknown to me, but I do know that he is not Torik Stronkhold." And before anyone could ask a solid "how?" he removed his shades and scarf, letting them drop to the floor. "Because I am Torik Stronkhold."
Requiem
Shane was enjoying a normal morning entering the Council room with a fresh cup of coffee. His secretary, however, was not in her seat, nor anywhere near her desk. Shane was perplexed by the sudden lack of conformity that had resurfaced in the past two months. Could the tranquility and peace be over with already?
His secretary could be seen all but dashing toward, then past him. This also perplexed him. It wasn't like Shane expected his coworker to be at his every whim and plea, but at least she could give a "good-morning" to him.
Trunks was first to receive the word. Shane's messenger found him in his office, meditating. "Sorry to disturb you sir," she hastily apologized, "But I think you should see this. Please follow me." And she left again, glancing behind her to make sure the silent man was following her. Trunks simply nodded, stood, and adjusted his pace behind her.
The War Room was in utter chaos. Every official and analyst was scrambling for a desk in order to sit and think about the thousands of sheets of written code each one clutched. The monitors showed constant layers of ever-changing symbols in red, blue, and even neon pink shades.
Shane joined Trunks as he entered; Shane had been there longer before Trunks even if he got the message later than everyone else. "They've been getting nothing but this," he motioned to the monitors, "since 3 AM this morning."
"Sir!" an ensign spoke up, "We've traced the origin!"
Trunks had been studying the monitors and colors even when Shane had filled him in. "Venoson." He murmured.
"What?" Shane whirled toward him.
"Sir! The origin the Venoson Faction in North Korea!"
Shane jolted his head back and forth from the ensign to Trunks for awhile. "How did you know?"
"Only Venoson or the Bounty Hunters would use these encoded symbols and the Bounty Hunters haven't contacted us for six years." Trunks told flatly.
"Well, I can see how that would be a very strong fact." Shane nodded.
"Uh, sir?" another ensign with headgear and a mike wrapped around it to his lips, "they've broken the first sentence, they'll read it off now."
The bustling and confusion ceased for an instant to listen and/or read. The monitors became a blank, flickering blue, and the type drew across it as the ensign echoed over the mike, "Looks can be deceiving."
"What the hell?" Shane exclaimed.
Sesix was rather enjoying his night flight, making sure to stay above the clouds. His main worries were dwelling on Savi, his old master, who had so easily killed him then revived him. "Perhaps to prove something..." Savi's words echoed in his mind.
He was losing altitude fast without realizing it. Sesix accepted it and stopped enjoying the night sky, taking a perch atop a giant gargoyle head. These humans walk the streets without any hopes or dreams of absolute power. Can none of them sense its presence? Sesix let the thoughts drift around him as he floated somewhat peacefully back to the clouds.
Sesix found himself floating before the moon, staring into its glowing blue bathing light. Then... Something shook. It wasn't a building, or a person, or the planet. It was itself reality itself shivered rapidly for a few seconds. Sesix found himself spontaneously vibrating with the rest of the planet, but not terribly.
Tren's cup of tea clattered with its shaking against its holder. He darted his head around, tensing fast. "A tear." He murmured, "A tear in space. A jumper." He searched the windows with his eyes, but found nothing.
Sesix stopped staring at the moon, and turned slowly in the air to sound like an odd hybrid of a screeching car, and the ripping of construction paper, topped with a soothing tone. The tone was the sound your ear would put to a flooding light, something solid and clear.
The fabric of the dark blue night sky was slowly cut open, a glowing white jagged slash in the blue. When the cut was finished, it widened. Further and further it expanded, and all it revealed was silvery metallic edge. When it could consume the length of twenty football fields it halted. The silver edge moved, and Sesix quickly realized it was the beginning of a hull and the small amount of leeway around it gave way to the vacuum of space at last.
Sesix forced his flight to his back to keep himself from being sucked into the black abyss and watched with stunned perplexity the sight that was ascending upon him. The shape was, put simply, a starship, now only half submerged from the crack, and it was hastening its pace.
In a matter of a few more seconds, the ship was fully visible, and crack was repairing itself. Now it was gone, and only this silver and black bullet filled the sky, and blocked the moonlight. Without warning, bright searchlights appeared and floated alongside the ship, blinding Sesix and any innocents caught in the fray below. Blinding the innocents from what happened next.
Sesix's atmosphere was enclosed in burning laser fire. His survival instincts kicked in. The reasoning behind the sudden assault was nowhere to be found, but he found his courage, summoning an orbison case to surround him from harm. Then he found his rage, and his hands became giant spheres of destructive energy. And they were thrown asunder into the ship's shields.
The watchtowers surrounding the city had noticed the light show and notified the nearest militia: Direct's.
Maron was first to receive word, and donned her battle uniform, custom made.
Both volleys ceased fire. The ship's headlights dissipated from view. Sesix stood with small, gold energy streams rising off his armor. The two combatants stared each other down, if starships could do such a thing. They didn't have much time to contemplate each other, thanks to another couple pairs of spotlights raining down on their positions.
Odd thing is, the spotlight for the starship shown through it, only intensifying what the moon had already done, and when it cascaded back down upon Sesix, the ship was gone.
"Stay where you are and we will not engage!" Maron's amplified voice filled the night sky. "Show hostility and we will follow suit!" She was on a small hovercycle, armed with two Force cannons on its flanks, and backed by three battle cruisers.
Ignoring them, Sesix's streams of rising energy came back and swirled around him before he zipped away from them. Only Maron's cycle could keep speed enough to keep the lord in her sights. She dodged to right from an incoming surge of power. She didn't dodge quite fast enough as it nailed the cycle's fuel reserves. "Fine, have it your way." She leapt off the cycle, and let it drift to its doom.
Maron, on the other hand, assumed flight, her own violet trails of energy swirling around her. However, once again, the lord seemed far too fast. Knowing that powering up to fully pursue would attract too much attention, she let the thermals carry her gently to a rooftop, and waited patiently for the battle cruisers.
Sesix found sanctuary in a long, abandoned alley and workshop on the outskirts, the Old City. His peace, however, wasn't long.
"Sesix!" Tren appeared from above and landed at knee, then stood.
"Ah, it's you. Tell me, veteran, was it you who composed that lovely little starship jumper. I must say it was quite...unpleasant." Sesix said with an odd tone.
"I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about." Tren said flatly.
"Mmm." He growled, his eyes immediately closed and reopened to glow and fire two streams of power. The module on Tren's left forearm glowed and formed a grid energy shield, which he leveled in front of him to block.
"You can't hurt me Sesix." He said from behind the shield, the lord's eyes smoked, closed, and reopened to be normal again as Tren continued, "You came here with the refugees, we know that much. You have a home and protection if you abide by our code and join to voluntary services to the factions."
Sesix said nothing to the offer, only stared at nothing.
"I'm giving you a chance here, Sesix, one you should not refuse."
Finally, he responded, taking a sincere tone. "You know I respect you Tren, and your actions toward me. Thus, I shall give you my answer." There was a long pause, then... Sesix dashed forward, kicked through the shield, and flipped back to his position. Tren flew through the brick wall behind him. "Hell no!" and he sped into the sky, laughing.
An armored hand found its grasp on the crumbling wall and Tren vaulted himself up. Looking to the black figure disappearing, he murmured, "Oh, what am I going to with him?"
Tom leaned back on his cot, his ice pack nearly all melted. A few band-aid wrappers and sore medicine capsules had found their home on the carpeting. The boy who had joined in on the fight, Alec, was seated in Indian-style, having strapped his own ice pack actually onto his head. "So how much trouble do you think we'll get into?"
Tom grunted, then chuckled, staring at the ceiling fan. "You'll get off with only your bruises, I'll probably get called down any second now." He sighed.
An odd silence filled the room, as if their sores were the only subject of conversation and that had already been done three times over again. Alec broke the silence, "So...Thanks for letting me stay in the civilian quarters."
Tom looked at him now. He was a medium built boy, somewhere in his early twenties. His light black hair betrayed the crimson-gold of his eyes, and, as intense as they were in battle, they softened any expression now. Alec was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with black arms and gray torso, along with a sleeveless vest unzipped over it, still revealing a black dragon on the front of the shirt. "Don't mention it..." Tom didn't take his eyes away, "You look a little familiar. What's your name?"
"I told you my name. Alec."
"Last name." Tom demanded.
"Oh, Johnson."
Pretty generic name for an outlander. Oh well, what the hell. Tom went back to the ceiling. Alec had gotten up and entered the hallways.
Leon had finally made sense of the lower levels of Wing's residence areas. They were nearly as or more confusing than his older slum-like streets, but at least they were nicer. He was walking the halls back to his own room, only a few actual civilians also rendered homeless by the Assassins passing him in the other direction. His eyes, for a reason he did not understand, locked with another's, who was passing more slowly than the others.
Alec and Leon's eyes latched onto each other and held, even as they continued walking. Their heads had to compensate for the link by turning themselves. Only when the strain grew too much upon their necks did they break away. Those gold-tinted eyes...
"Hey! I said you can't come down here! What, are you deaf?" the guard was doing his best to stop the Young Man dubbed "Shades" from passing into the underground of the Direct Investigation Facility. Shades lifted his right sleeve and revealed his arm only to the guard, who hesitated, then stepped back with open eyes.
He descended the long flights of stairs into the abysmal basement of the Direct building, causing sudden alarm to any passing scientists on their routine runs. He found the Morg without much trouble.
The guard at the sealed door stopped him, causing the young man to once again lift his sleeve and reveal a red "V" carved into the flesh and healed over as a scar, then tattooed over still. This caused quite a commotion.
"What the- A-a Venoson!? Here?" At the mention of the word "Venoson", multiple guards both stood at attention and also readied their firearms. A graduated agent of the Venoson faction hadn't shone up anywhere except in the desert for the last fifteen years.
"Calm your adrenaline." Shades murmured, "And let me pass." Reluctantly, the guard stood aside and Shades walked. He moved as if he knew the way, with now near to forty armed officers trailing him. He found his way to the morgue.
Nudging past the disgruntled scientists that became even more confused by the pursuing MPs, Shades scanned along the rows of numbered specimens not-quite-past investigation. He stopped at one labeled 9615: Torik Stronkhold.
Shane had joined the fray piled into the room now. He watched as the young man rolled out the body.
"Hey! What the hell do ya' think you're doing?" Shane stepped to stop the young man but was caught by Trunks' arm gripping his shoulder. His comrade shook his head ever so slightly. Shane stopped and watched.
Shades traced his fingers over the bluish face, then circled and twitched around the cheekbone. They gripped, lifted, then tore. A gasped groan filled the room as Shades removed a considerable chunk of raw flesh from the face. The hole shone not bone or muscle, but more skin, except red and moldy; old corpse skin.
"Oh my God." One guard covered his mouth as not to throw up.
"Just as I figured. A man dead for two months and all he did was turn a translucent blue...didn't even begin to deteriorate."
"Hold on! What the heck are you saying?"
Shades sighed, then said his statement slowly, "This man's name is unknown to me, but I do know that he is not Torik Stronkhold." And before anyone could ask a solid "how?" he removed his shades and scarf, letting them drop to the floor. "Because I am Torik Stronkhold."