Legacies
A Sequel to Crossing of the Paths

By MMM/AJ

A/N: Well, not much I can say, except writer's block sucks major arse. The main reason this chunk has been in the making for so long is due to two factors: School is kicking my ass, and writer's block is shooting me while I'm down. This chunk is only average sized as well, I couldn't concoct anything longer than the usual 10 pages to make up for being gone so long. Ah well, I hope everyone enjoys this next chunk, because we'll be seeing more of Ares' daughter this chunk! Ooh, excitement!

Part II - Resurrection

Chapter 1 - T11

Though Tanis's body laid dormant in the stasis pod, his mind did not. As he slept for years at the bottom of the lake his mind returned once more to the same void that he had known many years before. Empty, blinding darkness where he could not even see his own hand less than an inch from his face. He had been here only once before, when the computer that sustained his neural link powered down during his growth in the tube. His father had designed the computer to keep him inside a world of learning and positivity, but somehow the system had failed and he had been plunged into the inky murk of nothingness. That particular void had not let him go until the girl Ashley had found him and set him free. Now that he was trapped inside a stasis tube and to his knowledge in the hands of Ares, he had no idea when he would be freed.

Minutes felt like hours and days felt like years to Tanis as he paced about the inner confines of his own mind. It was all he could do to keep from going insane. He replayed his own memories to himself. Each time he saw Ares' victory, he could practically hear that mocking laughter echo endlessly through the void. It was painful each time he watched it, but without it the blinding darkness and deafening silence would eat away at his soul. Strange he thought, some humans greatly desired this kind of peace and tranquility. He now thought them fools who could not tell heaven from hell. And above all his other emotions, Tanis wished that he was with Ashley.

Ashley had turned from his first acquaintance into his best friend in this world, and he thought that this imprisonment would not even be half as bad if he could just talk to her. At several occasions he tried to reach out to her, to punch a hole through the veil with his mind and make contact with hers. But instead of forcing him back into recession, the darkness used its own infinity against Tanis. Tanis' thoughts echoed farther and farther into eternity, swallowed up by nothingness as if his attempts were nothing. Still he remained interred in his lonely sarcophagus for what felt to him to be eternity.

Perhaps he was dead? He wondered if this was the fate of all souls, to wander perpetually in a ravenous nothingness. He contemplated this more than he was comfortable with, but ended up rejecting the theory in the end. He was sure that if he was dead, there would be some form of judgment of his valor and actions before any punishment like this was dealt out. That and unless she was still alive, he expected to have met Ashley here as well. It became irrelevant as more years passed by, he came to crave death even if it meant the end of his consciousness. Anything to stop the eternal cold loneliness that now held him in its icy grip.

Tanis didn't know it, but almost forty years passed as he laid ageless in the capsule at the bottom of the lake. His body, and those of Ashley and her family did not age a day in their stasis. The events of the outside world passed them by, forgotten by all but one as they slept. Their stasis chambers had enough power to run for another 160 years, but something was to happen one day to cut that short.

As Tanis laid brooding in his chamber, events were unfolding just a few miles south. Ares had built a lab at the foot of the mountains and was performing genetic research there. On the first day of Tanis' 40th year in the chamber, a vigilante group of human ships attacked this lab.

Few in numbers and using outdated weapons, the human ships were flies when compared to Ares' mighty fleet. But these humans had hidden away for many years in the mountains, developing their flotilla under Ares' nose without him knowing. When they attacked the lab, they caught Ares by complete surprise. He was able to flee the lab without being harmed, leaving the facility for the humans to bombard to rubble. Once his fleet gathered however, the humans did not stand a chance. They scattered and Ares' ships hunted them down one by one and destroyed them.

One particular ship in the rogue band of human vigilantes was much faster than all the rest. It flew due north in flight from three pursuing squadrons of interceptor fighters, keeping good distance from them at all times. As it approached a particularly high range of mountains, they caught up with it and shot its engines out. Clearing the mountain range, the pilot of the ship saw the lake below and decided it was the best place for an emergency landing. He guided his fatally wounded vessel down towards the waters below. As he neared the lake's surface the fightercraft descended upon him and fired once more. The ship was rent into quarters by the ensuing fireball, and the pieces fell ignobly into the dark murky waters below. The portion of the ship that contained its main engine sank to the bottom quickly, coming to rest not far from where Tanis and friends laid dormant in their pods. The engines then gave way to one last explosion as they hit the bottom, sending a shockwave through the waters that jolted the attached power mechanisms free from Tanis and Ashley's pods.

Being independently operated by online monitoring computers, the pods sensed that they were going to lose main power and initialized revival procedures. There would only be enough back up power to bring their occupants back to a waking state before total shutdown.

The shockwave did not strike the pods of the rest of Ashley's family at the correct angle, and so they remained operating normally and they remained peacefully asleep. Back in Tanis' mind however, he was suddenly jolted and became aware that something was happening.

In his pod, Tanis could feel the shockwave crash through him. It was like getting punched in the stomach by a professional body builder. He then sensed something change, the void shifted perceptibly around him. He heard the first sound in what felt like an eternity, a clicking and then a beeping. A few minutes later, the void dissolved entirely. As he opened his eyes he saw there was still darkness around him, but not an endless, seamless and shapeless darkness like he had come from. His eyes, attuned to the dark now, saw the seams of the pod around him. He suddenly felt his stiff muscles scream to life in cramps, and pain rocketed up from the stump where his right hand used to be, and knew he was indeed returning to life as he had known it.

Regaining total control of himself, Tanis felt the air inside the pod to be extremely stale. As his breathing returned he realized that he was about to suffocate, there would only be enough air for a few minutes. He began to push on the door of the pod in front of him with his left shoulder, avoiding use of his half healed right stump. There was some sort of tremendous pressure on the other side of the pod door, like a great mass of water was pushing on it. He got quick confirmation of this when it opened a crack and water hissed through. He let it snap shut almost immediately.

"What now?" He thought to himself. "Free for the first time in god knows how long and already I'm trapped in a new way."

Tanis felt he didn't have long to lament his current situation, the issue of air was now pressing in on him much harder. Soon it would become unbreathable and he would asphyxiate. He knew that at this point that he could form a psychic bubble around what little air was left, but unless the water was relatively shallow this air would run out anyway. He cursed the fact that his father had not taught him how to psychically recycle oxygen like he had done when traveling through space.

Tanis decided to try anyway, he had once told Ashley that it was better to die in an attempt to survive than to just sit and let death come. He formed a psychic bubble around himself and shoved the door open with his mind. Pushing through he saw the surface not too far above and pushed his power as far as it would go to speed up toward the fresh air. Friction against the water was stiff, and he held his breath against the foul air as he rose toward the glimmering surface.

Just as his lungs were screaming for air, Tanis burst through that glass-like sheen and into the open air. He gasped air, almost drinking it like a thirsty man just coming from the desert. Little stars danced in his vision and then faded as he breathed normally once more. He knew now that he no longer liked the idea of swimming for recreation.

Looking up at the sky briefly, Tanis saw an amazing sight. There among the white puffy clouds stood an amazing black streak in the sky. It was enormous; from his view it appeared to be miles wide and stretched from horizon to horizon. Just looking at it made waves of cold shivers travel up and down his spine. He couldn't help but wonder how long he had been sleeping, and what had happened to the world.

His thoughts were interrupted however, when he heard a faint, helpless voice cry out in his mind. He easily recognized it as Ashley, and it was coming from down at the bottom of the lake near where he had been.

Tanis formed a bubble around a large pocket of fresh air and dove back under the water. He sailed down into the depths until he found his old pod, lying open and already collecting detritus. Nearby was another pod, this one still closed. He could sense Ashley inside and knew she was suffocating like he had been.

Tanis quickly took the pod into his air bubble and wrenched it open. Ashley was there, still in her worn jeans with rats in her tangled black hair. She laid still for a moment and then suddenly gasped for breath. Tanis sighed in relief and pulled her from the pod. He let it fall out of the bubble and to the lakebed once more. He flew up through the water once more with Ashley in his arms.

"Looks like we're still alive eh?" Ashley said after they had reached the surface.

"Apparently so, but I don't know about the rest of the citizens of this world." Tanis said as they swam towards shore.

"What of my mom, dad and brother?" Ashley asked.

Tanis reached out with his mind and felt them at the bottom of the lake, still sleeping with adequate recycling air. Apparently their pods had not been damaged by whatever had damaged his and Ashley's.

"They're alright, they're at the bottom with plenty of air, still sleeping." Tanis said.

The two of them pulled themselves up onto the shore of the lake and Ashley took a look around her.

"This place looks familiar." She said.

Tanis then looked around as well, he saw a familiar little island in the center of the lake, and mountains surrounding them on all sides.

"Yes, I know this place," Tanis said, "It's Purity Canyon."

Chapter II – A11

Ashley had been fortunate enough to sleep completely through her imprisonment in her pod. For her, it felt like only minutes had passed since the Acolytes had forced her into the pod. The shockwave from the nearby explosion jolted her to partial consciousness, and as the pod powered down she slowly opened her eyes. The first thing that passed through her mind was the fright of meeting Darkest face to face, since Ares had said he would awaken him once he had completed the Triforce; and she had fallen asleep before the pod had fallen to the lake. Now she was sitting on the water's surface alongside Tanis, gazing transfixed at the monstrosity in the sky. Wreckage from the human craft bobbled in the water alongside them.

"What do you think it is?" Ashley asked, pointing up at the thick black stripe that curved through the heavens.

"I cannot say," Tanis replied, "But I can sense it is thick with energy. It radiates dimensional energy, almost like a beacon."

Tanis pulled his right arm out of the water, his hand was still missing from where Ares had cut it off to steal the Triforce. It had just barely scabbed over inside the tube before complete stasis had frozen his body functions entirely.

Ashley turned and saw Tanis glowing orange and concentrating on his injury. The scabs popped off and new bones appeared, followed by muscles, tendons, and then skin. He was again panting with pain and fatigue once his new hand had formed.

Suddenly Tanis jerked his head South, frowning worriedly. "They're coming, Ares' servants. They are looking for survivors from this crash, we need to hide quickly!"

The two of them swam to shore as fast as they possibly could, Tanis had reasoned that they did not want to use his powers and be detected. As they scrambled up onto the pristine sands of Purity Lake, a low droning intoned from somewhere in the South, and they desperately scrambled into the trees for cover. Feeling that they were well concealed inside the top of a particularly lush tree, Ashley barely poked her head above the foliage to watch.

Two of Ares' gunships appeared over the Southern rim of the crater and descended sluggishly down toward the lake's surface. They slowed to a stop above the floating wreckage and green scanner beams combed the water. The beams swept idly at first and then concentrated on just one area, as if they had found something. The gunships then moved toward the shore and landed right near where Ashley and Tanis had climbed out of the water.

Ashley's mind panicked, she convinced herself that they had been found out and the jig was up. Doors on the sides of the two gunships opened up and Acolytes stepped out. They weren't wearing the traditional red robes, but rather had cybernetic implants scattered across their bodies. There were seven of them in all, and they quickly turned toward the shore and began walking toward the water. Ashley found herself sighing in relief for a moment, and humorously pondering if their implants would short out if they got wet. Then she realized with horror that they must have detected her family's life-signs.

"They're after my family!" Ashley whispered to Tanis, who frantically gestured to her to be silent.

The Acolytes formed red bubbles around themselves and submerged, walking straight down as if they were tremendously massive. When the ripples disappeared from the surface, Tanis suddenly jumped down from the treetops.

"Now's our chance!" He said quietly with his physical mouth. "Let's hijack one of their ships!"

Ashley climbed down out of the tree and followed Tanis back down to the beach. They stumbled up to the red painted gunship, noticing that its traditional howitzer cannons had been replaced with some odd looking laser based weapons that Ashley couldn't identify. It made her wonder how long she had been entombed and how far technology had advanced. They hastily walked inside.

The inside of the gunship was incredibly cramped for a vessel of its size, it had a small cockpit and a troop cabin. There was a door at the back of the troop cabin that neither of them felt like investigating, they both went straight into the cockpit and sat down in the pilot and co-pilot chairs. Ashley felt quite awkward in the chair, it was built for someone with Mewtwo or Tanis' body structure and the hole for a tail in the back felt quite uncomfortable.

"Good, they left it on." Tanis observed. There was a slight pause before he spoke again, "Your station controls the weapons, mine controls navigation. Get ready, no doubt they will have sensed us and are on their way back up."

Ashley gripped the control sticks in her hand, yet again feeling out of place. The sticks had slots for only three knobby fingers, her human hands barely fit them. She had to twist her thumb to the side to reach the firing triggers. The ship suddenly jerked and rose as Tanis moved the controls. Ashley watched the main screen's forward view, and decided that it would be best to eliminate the second ship so it couldn't be used against them. When she moved the control sticks in her hand, an aiming reticule appeared on the screen and she aimed it at the other gunship, pressing the trigger. Four bright red laser beams pierced the ship in front of them, and flames belched forth from its innards. Ashley held the triggers and the lasers fired continuously, she used them to carve the other gunship up into tiny segments until it completely exploded in a gratifying orb of flames.

"Here they come!" Tanis shouted and jerked the controls left.

The main screen rotated around to the shoreline where the seven Acolytes were stepping out of the water. Ashley didn't need to be told, she fired on them straightaway. The four lasers cut right through the first Acolyte outright, slicing his head off. The others quickly pooled their psychic powers together to form a bright glowing shield. The lasers hit the shield and dispersed, spraying burning energy in all directions.

"Damn it!" Ashley growled, moving the beams across the shield and not accomplishing anything.

Ashley looked down at the glowing mini holo-panels around her, trying to find a quick solution, any solution. There were several more glowing red holographic buttons, and she tapped them with her fingers to see what would happen. The lasers suddenly flickered off, and a deep humming thrummed from several points on the gunship's hull. Outside the Blood Acolytes were gathering their energy into an especially large orb of psychic energy and preparing to launch it at the gunship. Ashley's targeting reticule flashed green and red, and she aimed it at them and clicked the firing triggers. Instead of lasers bursting forth, four large blinding blobs of plasma speared forward, cut straight through the psychic shield, and vaporized five more of the Acolytes instantaneously. It passed the survivors by and hit the sand a little farther beyond, exploding and melting the sand into glass.

"Sweet!" Ashley shouted, and tried to press the firing triggers again. Nothing happened.

"I think they need to recharge." Tanis observed, pointing to a slowly rising indicator on the side of the main screen.

The humming sound began to rise again around the ship as the plasma turrets warmed, but the last remaining Acolyte had gathered all the energy he needed. A six foot diameter ball of psychic energy had formed above him and he tossed it up at the gunship as hard as he could.

"Hang on, I'm going to see if these things can still accelerate as well as they used to!" Tanis exclaimed, and pulled hard on the controls.

The main screen whirled dizzyingly up to face the sky and Tanis jammed on the accelerator. They were shoved violently into their seats as the gunship streaked into the air near the speed of sound. The engines of the craft hummed loudly and a warning message splayed across the bottom of the main screen, indicating severe strain on the ship's power grid. Apparently it could not fly at max speed and charge its plasma turrets at the same time without danger of burning out its power core. Tanis decelerated them rapidly and made a wide turn. The psychic orb whizzed past them, missing by several feet, and the targeting reticule suddenly began flashing red and green again.

"Let's strafe that thing into oblivion!" Tanis said, and slammed on the accelerator again.

They dove back at Purity Canyon again at sickening speeds, the Earth screamed up at them. Ashley pointed the reticule at the Acolyte as soon as he was close enough to distinguish and fired. The sizzling plasma bolts leapt forward and found their marks, turning the Acolyte into a cloud of exploding sand and vapor. Tanis lowered the craft down to the beach, and they watched to make sure that there weren't any hidden survivors. Suddenly the panel in front of him beeped slightly.

"We're being queried by the fleet, and I don't know the correct response." Tanis said frantically.

"Uh, just type in that we need to continue searching the area more thoroughly!" Ashley said, the impromptu idea bursting forth.

Tanis tapped the controls, watching the readouts in front of him. "They want to know why combat has occurred, I told them that we ran into a few straggling human craft and eliminated them…" Tanis said, staring at the readout intently. "They're processing their response…They are curious as to why I am not connecting with them mentally, but they are accepting my response for now." Tanis sighed.

"Wow, Ares is getting pretty lax in his security." Ashley remarked.

"Indeed." Tanis agreed.

"Did they reach my parents?" Ashley asked suddenly.

"Not, we attracted their attention before they even got close." Tanis said.

"That's good….So what do we do now? We've got one of Ares' ships, we've passed ourselves off as Acolytes, and have free reign to fly anywhere on the Earth at supersonic speeds."

Tanis rubbed his chin. "We should stick around here for the moment so my searching excuse can hold water. After that, I'm not quite sure. We need to find out how long we were imprisoned exactly, what has happened while we were gone, what state of affairs things are in, etcetera." Tanis said. Ashley nodded.

Tanis suddenly turned his head slightly, as if noticing something. "Wait, I'm sensing something very strange to the south, I can feel a dormant psychic energy. It's extremely small, almost undetectable, possibly someone near death. If humans have been fighting against Ares here, perhaps it is a survivor in need of rescue." Tanis said.

"Sounds like a good first lead to me. If it's a human, we will rescue them and ask them to tell us what has been happening. If it's an acolyte, you can disable it and rob its mind for info." Ashley said.

"Very good, we'll leave in ten minutes." Tanis said.

Chapter III – S1

Radiant artificial sunlight streamed down through the tree branches as Shakara merrily danced about the fictitious playground. She laughed joyfully as the miniature plastic toy space ships danced around her at her mind's command. She floated through the air, dancing and throwing tiny orbs of psychic energy at them, melting them and causing them to fall to the simulated pavement below. Although this game was not as fun as others she had played, her father insisted that she played it instead of inventing friends. She never really bothered wondering about the world around her anymore, she had learned that this life she lived was going to be all about playing, for now.

Ares' familiar form emerged from the bushes and floated across the playground toward Shakara. She sensed him coming as soon as he had entered her imaginary world.

"Hey dad, look what I can do!" She shouted happily to him, and suddenly formed a rather large shadow ball and flung it at a hovering toy ship, which was reduced to plastic slag.

"You've mastered this game, I see. I've come to talk to you now about some very important things, so please listen carefully." Ares replied.

Shakara let go of all the remaining toy ships that her mind held and they clattered to the ground as if their pretend engines had failed. The sky above them suddenly darkened, clouds moved in and obscured the sun. A cool, almost biting breeze suddenly moved through the imaginary playground around them.

"What is it?" Shakara asked, looking fearfully up toward her father.

Shakara had good reason to be afraid of her father, he had gone off at her more than once in the past, especially the time when she created a human friend to play with. Though she loved him for the time he gave her, she always lived in anxiety of his rage. The chilling winds that flew through her imaginary playground reflected that fear as the sun walked across the sky to set.

"You remember, I told you a day would come when you would need to cast aside your amusement for awhile, and learn the ways of the warrior? Today you are fifteen and of age, so now it is time." Ares said solemnly.

The sky immediately darkened to night with Ares' words, and the chilling breeze whipped into a vicious wind that cut them both deeply with the cold. The leaves on the trees around them turned brown within seconds and began to fall, while beautiful flowers wilted and fell to the imaginary Earth.

"Father…I don't want to hurt people." Shakara said weakly, fearing retribution.

A glimmer of rage sparked through Ares' eyes at her words, but he did not erupt with anger. Though when he spoke next, his voice betrayed suppressed fury. "I've told you before why I created you, I wanted a partner to stand by my side at the head of worlds. You must be strong to be worthy! And to be strong requires sacrifices, especially of those below you!"

"I don't want to! I won't do it!" Shakara said, her fear replaced by anger and resentment.

That was all it took to push Ares over the edge. His eyes glowed a deadly red and Shakara's fantasy world shattered into thousands of pieces around them, revealing the void beyond.

"Stop this nonsense! I will not tolerate this behavior in you! You will learn to kill, and you will not have an ounce of enjoyment again until you do!" he bellowed at her.

A new reality replaced Shakara's whimsical playground, a war torn battlefield appeared around them and explosions rocked the crimson sky. Shakara tried to banish it with her mind, but Ares' will was much stronger than hers. Plasma bolts arced through the skies, and a human ship swooped down at them with its lasers glowing bright blue.

"Your training begins now!" Ares shouted, and then disappeared.

Shakara survived her training, passing it with more and more ease as her physical body matured inside her cloning tube. She loathed the simulations her father put her through, and she felt her love for him as a father slowly wither away as six more years of intense physical and mental preparation were completed. At the end of her training, her mind was sharply tuned to the world around her, she could use the blades growing from her body to cut a man down in less than a second. Her psychic powers grew beyond that of even her father, though she could still not puncture the voids keeping her in stasis with them. Finally, as the training came to a close, her father suddenly stopped contacting her completely.

Shakara was appalled at Ares' nerve, he had forced her to live through six years of hellish conditioning so she could be his perfect little toy, and now he had the gall to not even face her anymore. She wondered if he feared her new abilities, she had more than once come close to tapping into her sustaining computer with her mind. On one particularly fateful day, she found herself drifting in her own imaginary world contemplating trying it again.

Shakara no longer spent her time in a playground when she had the time, she floated idly above a field of black roses as they swayed in the breeze. There was an eternal sunset in the distance, casting rays of orange and pink on the imaginary clouds. As the breeze pushed Shakara through the air, she reached out with her mind, looking for any hole in the mental void beyond her dream world. She probed the darkness beyond for almost an hour before catching hold of something. A flickering of numeric code blinked in the distance, and she honed in on it with her mind. She was able to lock onto and pry into the world beyond with it, and found herself looking into the mind of the computers than ran the lab that sustained her. She immediately sifted through files in an attempt to gain control of the system, but a curious little database caught her eye. It was her father's journal.

Curious as to how her father's mind works, she opened an entry and read it, translating the raw data into words through her mind's ability.

Entry 5634

It tears my heart apart to have to do these things to Shakara, she means more to me than I can admit to myself. I come to realize more and more that it is as I have feared, I am becoming emotionally attached to her and am losing sight of the bigger picture. It is necessary that she help me with my conquests and be able to defend herself from threats, but whenever I force her to train against her will it is like a little knife twisting more and more in my heart. She is totally miserable now, but there's nothing I can do about it. I do hope she can forgive me, I'm not sure if I can face her if she doesn't.

Shakara finished reading the entry with a new love for her father growing in her heart. She had never known this softer side of him very well, he had only showed it to her in her early childhood. It was easy to forget how much he had done for her during the six years of mental hell he had forced her through. These feelings mixed together inside her to form a wretched half love and half hatred, and she didn't notice as her imaginary world around her suddenly divided itself into two regions. One side of the hill still wept with black roses and a saddened sky, while the other side brightened and the flowers bloomed in a newly refreshed color.

A great jolt suddenly leapt into Shakara's mind through the psychic connection she had established between herself and the computer. She knew right away that it wasn't her father either, because she could now sense his coming even before he entered her world. It was something much more dangerous, she could suddenly no longer sense the computer anywhere, and her imaginary world dissolved into darkness around her. She suddenly had an overwhelming feeling of suffocation, and blacked out before she could try to break free.

A/N: Heh, well? Pretty cool, if I must say so myself. The earlier years of Shakara's life are critical to all the rest of her characterization, so I had to fine tune this to be just right. That's one of the reasons this chunk took so long, I probably re-wrote the Shakara chapter ten times before I was satisfied it would work. Next chunk we'll pick up the rest of the story where it was left off! Review, enjoy, and see you then! Hopefully it won't be another four months in the making.