Chapter 22
As Magnus catches up with the events that happened to the people in the Spearhead of Hope and everyone is looking for clues to the Grand Paradise System, evil is steadily growing in power as Salem is now out among the stars with her five ships. Her small fleet later lands on a planet with two moons 130 light-years from where Salem started. Six pods have been launched from the Planet Cracker that have Mister Gutsy bots as they 'landed' into a city. To be more precise, it is more of a ruin with much of the buildings demolished, overgrown, or decaying. Evidence of a major conflict have taken place a long time ago with remnants of skeletons lying in the streets with much of their armor or belongings that have decayed or rusted, at least for the human remains. Yet there are remains of some strange crystals with corpses of unknown reptilian humanoids. There are a few tattered banners in the city that are sun bleached blue with symbols of a gear.
All six Mister Gutsy bots continue to explore the area and found some evidence of scorched marks caused by some orbital laser cannon, fossilized large creatures with some having armor and some having a mix of armor and weaponry. They continue to head further into the city until they come across a crater that has a spire of stone coming out of it as it is being built by strange, superhuman reptile humanoids. Some spotted the robots and open fire with guns that have chainsaws on them. The six open fire with their plasma guns and lasers. The six robots fall back while still firing until one of them got gun down by a pack of these monsters. Another goes down by a surprise attack and a chainsaw to the torso. However, the blade cut through the fusion cell and cause it to explode with a mushroom cloud that followed. That humanoid gets killed in an atomic explosion with its flesh and skeleton blown to ashes.
The last three continue their retreat while doing some suppressive fire.
On board the Planet Craker-class, Salem sits on her throne as she watches the fight on the holoscreens. Two of them are red because two of the Mister Gutsy bots that got destroyed. She watches as the Mister Gutsys get an understanding of the creatures' combat capabilities and weaponry. One of them then got ambushed by a creature with spider-like legs and an armored face with four eyes and an extremely large mouth that crushes the Mister Gutsy. Another then gets blown up by a creature that makes a ticking noise and is, well was, kamikaze. Then the last of the Mister Gutsys got destroyed by a grenade.
"Hmm..." Salem has taken an interest in the creatures. "What exactly are these creatures?"
"Nothin' really." Muk-nuk says. Then he turns his attention to Felix, "Do you?"
"They look like the Locust Horde." Felix says after watching what happened.
Salem turns to look at Felix, "Explain."
"Those creatures are from a video game called, Gears of War. A franchise of apocalyptic proportions on the world of Sera." Felix explained more about the Gears of War franchise such as the creation and invasion of the Locust Horde, the Coalition of Ordered Governments, how they fall and rise again, and much more.
Now, Salem is even more interested as she grins, "I think I found some new recruits."
"Huh?!" Felix is surprised, "Are you serious?! After all that, you cannot just recruit some hive-minded monsters to your will!"
Salem says to one of the brown minions, "Bring me the tar pot."
"On it!" the minion salutes and runs off.
"Wait? Tar pot?"
"Have you forgotten that I have centuries worth of experiences? I have a plan to draw out the queen and have all of the Locust Horde under my control." She looks at him, "You and Zero's team are going down there."
"You want us to go down there, while your creatures create a distraction, and we go in and take the Locust queen? What are ya gonna do with her?"
Salem grins again, "Take her power."
The minion comes back in, "Your tar pot, my lady."
Salem bites her hand right through the skin. Her hand bleeds as she pours her blood into the tar pot. The pot slowly starts to bubble as it is infused with Grimm essence."
"Now send it in the pod." she orders.
The brown minion heads over to one of the nearest escape pods as he tosses it in and launches it.
On the surface of Sera, members of the Locust Horde look up and see the pod as they patrol the ruined city. The pod crashed right into a tar truck that was left to rot that caused the pod to be torn apart and the tar pot spread to the regular tar. Strange coincidence. The Locust patrol went to investigate as they get their guns ready after the attack from Mister Gutsy bots.
They head on over and found the destroyed pod.
'What's happening?' Queen Myrrha asks via telepathy, 'Is it more of those robots?' Queen Myrrha tries to see what her soldiers see.
They investigate the pod and found that most of the inside is covered in tar. Completely unaware of the Beringel appearing in the puddle of tar behind them. When the look behind them, the beast strikes and tore off their heads.
All members of the Locust Horde head on over in an attempt to fight off against a new threat on their world. The Beringel sprouted wings and flew off with a small handful of the tar as a few Beowolves fight against the Horde.
'Now my servant.' Salem speaks via telepathy to her Beringel, 'Find the next location that will allow us to spawn more Grimm.'
The Beringel obediently flies over to another location and sees a gas station. It rips out the pumps but there is no form of liquid. So, it flies over to the next location over at an old hospital. It breaks in as it smashes everything that gets in its way while shielding the small liquid from any debris or making sure none of it spills. It broke into an old cold storage unit and found blood that hasn't dried. Locust blood that was experimented on during the war against them. The Beringel takes every bag and vial and smash them onto the ground and pour the Grimm liquid into it. The liquid absorbs and spread from the blood as the Beringel finds more along with human blood that it just dumps onto the Grimm liquid. The creatures that spawn from the mixture are Imps, Geists, Apathy and Teryxes. Yet they do appear more muscular than their original counterparts. Fifteen Grimm spawn from this mixture and some go around to gather more Locust blood, but it will be of a different species. A Corpser version of the Grimm started to form along with Brumaks and Bloodmounts that burst out of the hospital.
Imps started to fuse with the Bloodmounts that look similar to the Nuckelavee yet more monstrous. The Grimm-style Brumaks started to rip out the steel beams with some concrete that they can use as weapons.
'Excellent.' Salem says, 'Now cause as much mayhem and chaos you can to the surface. The team I sent will be sufficient enough to bring Queen Myrrha to me.'
And so, as more Grimm start to take shape, the Grimmified Locust cause chaos and destruction on any Locust Horde encampments as they rampage.
Over at a Locust castle of what remained of Azura and where the anti-Imulsion weapon was housed, a team was sent over to capture Queen Myrrha as a few Grimm attack the coasts of the island. The team lands at the front doors as the rest of the Locust are fighting the Grimm. The team is comprised of Felix, Zero, Diesel and South Dakota. Members of the royal guard come out to deal with the Grimm, but got ambushed by South's rocket pod barrage. More troops come out as Diesel goes berserk as he uses his invulnerability to tear up the Locust while bashing them with his hammer. Zero does some short range teleportation and fires his rifle. Felix uses his shield to block the bullets and grenades before taking a few pot shots to the Locust drones. The main halls are being destroyed by Diesel's rampage and bodies being flung all over that destroyed more of the architecture.
"Gotta admit!" Felix says with his shield up, "This is actually exciting!"
Zero stabs a Locust on the head after teleporting, "Stay focus!"
Felix then dual-wields snipers and shoots all the Locust that were on the balcony. "I am a badass." he says to himself after feeling proud.
One Locust is still alive as it tries to throw a grenade with its only arm. However, South fires a battle rifle round onto the grenade that cause it to explode. Killing the Locust.
"You missed one!" South says to Felix.
"Whatever." Felix says as he reloads, "Shooting those guys by dual-wielding snipers is awesome."
"My brother can do a better job."
But as they make their way in, a huge blast is shot out from below as everyone dodges out of the way with the sound of buzzing coming out. A large bug in golden armor bursts out and appear over the castle with Queen Myrrha. The team lead by Zero headed back out to avoid much of the falling debris as they head back to the front gate. They aim their weapons at Myrrha and her Tempest.
"Humans?" Myrrha is shocked as she rides her war beetle, "Here? And alive? This can't be possible!"
Felix says, "I'm guessing that we're not supposed to be on this planet."
"All humans are supposed to be dead! Every last one of you! Even my human daughter is gone! And did you find those kind of armor at the destroyed ships!?"
Before any answering, Salem appears behind Myrrah and turns into a black mass that look like webs and snatches Myrrha. Myrrha tries to escape from Salem's grasp, but slowly, the black mass is taking shape. As the black mass absorbs Myrrha and take shape, the Locust are suffering from major headaches as they drop their weapons and scream out in pain.
"This is getting freaky." Felix says as he look at the directions of the screams.
"I have to agree with you on that." South says.
"Quiet!" Zero orders as he watches the black mass, "I want to see this."
The black mass transforms into Salem in Myrrha's armor and has a less bestial jaw yet still have fangs protruding from her mouth. She looks at her new body and armor to process the new sensation she is feeling. She got all of Myrrha's strengths, memories and her powers. Much of the Locust Horde in the area see Salem and bow to their new queen.
"Wow." South is impressed, "I can't believe we managed to get more soldiers just like that."
"Like in Riddick;" Felix quotes, "you keep what you killed. Classic, but still effective."
Salem likes the new look and how she feels. She has become a hivemind to both Grimm and Locust alike. The new queen closes her eyes and look through Myrrha's memories. From those memories; she has learned that the imulsion destroyer weapon killed off the entire human populace after she did some testing of her own behind Dr. Fenix's back that brought the end of humanity. This also include the crystallization of members of her Horde that were infected. She also has memories of ten ships that crashed a long time ago in the deserts of Vasgar. Two of them just so happen to be Planet Cracker-class ships and one UNSC Infinity-class supercarrier. She opens her eyes and smiles for the new ships.
She looks up and says to Gnarl with her helmet, "Gnarl, send in some engineers to the desert to the north at Vasgar. We have new ships to rebuild and add to our fleet."
"New ships?"
"More of those Planet Crackers and an extremely large supercarrier that has a multitude of weapons we can use."
"Oooo!" Gnarl likes the idea, "I'll send them immediately. Soon, we'll have a mighty armada to claim all the stars!" He does an evil, menacing laugh.
Over at the deserts of Vasgar, much of the Locust are already hard at work with repairing many of the ships alongside many of the robots, minions and Super Mutants. They all work together as some of the more larger Hollow beasts bring up more materials that are later processed into armor, circuits and anything else needed to get the ships off the ground, support the crew, have enough resources to survive in space, etc. The new ships will serve Salem very well in what is about to come.
In the Spearhead of Hope, the human Salem woke-up from her sleep and feels a massive chill in the air with shivers down her spine. She is getting an uneasy feeling that something is wrong. Salem looks around the room and only see her daughters sleeping in the large bed that they are sharing with Jade (the youngest daughter in green) snuggles her toy dog as she happily dreams away.
Ozma wakes up next to her in a sleepy state, "Is something wrong, dear?"
"I-...It's nothing. Just a bad dream." she says to Ozma, "Go back to sleep."
Ozma goes back to sleep while Salem lies down on her side, facing away from her husband. She still has the uneasy feeling that something terrible is about to happen. Something dark and familiar that she hasn't felt in a long time. But now, she goes back to sleep and get to be with her family.