Chapter 9: The Emperor & Empress
After the briefing and orders have been given to the Estcallian survivors for their new planet, Lena stays inside the planetary sized ship. She reminisces in her room of what the empress told her. "Were going to test your strength if you are worthy of being our regent." Vexis words rings out to her, she quietly remembers everything she learned to prepare herself for the test.
Meanwhile, Naiki casually walk inside the assault dockyard; seeing all of his new warships while Vexis already make landfall at the planet for preparing the area on the upcoming duel. The cybran populace continues to work even some notices the emperor strolling at the dock and nods in respect. He stops by one of the ship that fancies him. "Imperial Cybran Ship Crimson Tide, nice name…" He says out of thought while admiring the size of the warship that is larger than the rest of the lead ship. "Emperor" A young lad speaks up to him in salute. He is in full uniform with a black beret with a cybran insignia at it. Seeing the ranking of the uniform, he speaks to him while returning the salute. "Yes, Rear Admiral?"
"Is there something wrong with the fleet your highness?" He questions in concern of the unnoticed mistake that he has done. Naiki looks back at the ship. "Nothing, it is a beautiful ship. Even more deadly than the others since it is equipped with the eight-arc emitter and the red decal at the bow really marks its uniqueness that the others. What's your opinion on me assigning your new fleet to the eastern front; Rear Admiral Vaslov?" Naiki asked away. The rear admiral stokes his beard downward with his hand. "Emperor, wherever you assign my fleet is nothing to worry about. We will do our best to follow and we hope the upcoming regent is worthy of being at your side. Although, we are getting a little bit rusty just by sitting idle in the Leviathan." Naiki nods in return. "So, you already know the candidate?"
Vaslov answers shortly. "Yes, a certain sakhalin fox. I presume she will fight ferociously like the two regents." Naiki laughed. "Oh, I am sure she will…" A short pause, Naiki received a signal from his wife saying it is ready. Vaslov suddenly know it is something important and remains stand by. "Vaslov, prep your fleet for departure at planet Iresta." He ordered, the rear admiral nods and signals the whole fleet using his bracelet. He sends a quick message directed to the room Lena occupies. She is mentally preparing herself while being surprised by the message as it appears on the mirror and quickly reads it. "I guess this is it." She says to herself while looking at the mirror and put the rest of her Estcallian equipment on.
One short hour has passed as all of the spectators sees the battleground that Vexis set up before their arrival. She sits on the gigantic spider bot while playing with her powers, popping out the dark matter bolts she makes for fun and flicking it around. The shadow of the leviathan is seen from the planet as it closes in on the area. Lena teleported onto the battleground first while her people designated far at the other side of the battleground; watching with the projector showing her direct location. Lena sees the gigantic spider bot, making her face turn pale while grabbing her laser sword. She bravely steps forward.
Vexis smiles devilishly at her. "No, you're not going to fight the Megalith IV. It will fry you in an instant. For now, let it serve as a forward projector for the spectators. The whole cybran people are watching this test." A single heavy lightning strikes behind Lena. The impact was enough to break the ground near it, Naiki appears from it with a single chained sword at his hand while the other one sparks in electricity from the small void that he created at his palm. Vexis laughed out loud. "Hahaha, that's was a show of force darling. Now for the fun part…" She drops down from the 20-story tall spider bot to the ground while covering in a dark matter mist; consuming the nearby nature. Lena is shaken by it as Naiki discharge the excess energy at his back with his hand.
Vexis gives a vicious speech to the spectators all around the empire that is watching the test. "Today we will see the candidate of the regent of the east in her test. Is she being worthy enough to be one? The prize is; her people as her subjects for the new capital planet or the Imperial Cybran Empire will cast them out once more…As for the test, she will have to endure the emperor's wrath for 15 minutes or if she chooses mine. If she decided to bail out…" Vexis snaps her finger as the Megalith lights up its quad laser beams and it dies down shortly after. Both walked in her directions as Vexis begins to yell. "Now candidate, choose your opponent!" Lena takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, feeling the massive dark matter aura came from Vexis and howling call of demonic hunger for supremacy from Naiki. Her sword turns on purposely and pointed directly at Naiki as the both of them stops. Vexis scoffs at Lena as she looks at her. "Well tough luck for you, the emperor's hunger for destruction is quenchless; not like me who enjoys the thrill of battle."
Naiki's irises lit in ember red as he taken the stance at her opposite with a devilish glare. "Don't break the rules on this battle Emperor, or I will have to intervene." She says directly at Naiki. The timer counter displayed at the projector. Lena takes an offensive stance with her plasma gun pointed out at him while Naiki stabs the tip of the sword at the ground. A loud low tone sound from the Megalith starts the match. Lena fires the first salvo, Naiki effortlessly cancel the plasma energy with his aural spark. He pulls the sword directed to Lena, it extended beyond what the others have imagine and sends Lena flying. "Arghh!" She screams out while covering her open wounds on her left hip and shoulder. Vexis quickly breaks her fall with her powers. "My god, Emperor. I said hold back a little." She says to him but Naiki only responds with an intense glare making her back down of her words.
The Estcallian is extremely surprised of the emperor's power. "I-is this the same Atlas that is before? Where did he get his powers like that?" Callan says to Maya. She only remains in silence while seeing Lena recovers from the attack. All of the estcallian begins to whisper as they see the princess hand covering her wound begins to glow in a quick moment. She looks at her wound, it is recovered slowly by her unknown power. Vexis sees it and extremely happy that she is not just the normal looking anthro. At predictable speed, she locked swords with Naiki. Naiki grinned that she can use light step to launch herself at him. With Lena busy trying to land a strike at him, Naiki pulls two hover shock canons out of nowhere. Lena sees it and begins to take evasive maneuvers in a zig zag pattern. The canons fires at her with deadly precision, Lena only managed to dodge till the second salvo as the third one hit her legs; making her stun in place of the shock. With his right-hand dematerialize the chain sword and gesturing to his side, dark energy begins to amass at his palm and he grasp it. It turns into a long energy like sword, Vexis eyes widen on what he summoned can kill a lot of normal people if he uses it.
As Naiki strikes Lena with a downward slashing, Vexis instinctively dissipate the energy. "What are you doing? That can kill her you know." She vented out at him. "War will not choose who is its favorites. She must learn that." Naiki voice rang out loud as the Sakhalin fox watches him. "I won't give up that easily" Lena says it in her thoughts and steps back into battle at Vexis side but she gestures her to stop. "Fine then…" Vexis says calmly. Before even Lena can react, Vexis already entered into battle against Naiki while exchanging strong blows that shakes the ground. Vexis warped on the sky just to throw multiple dark matter bolts at Naiki followed by wave motion blast. With a sweep of his left arm, the bolts disappear just before they hit him including the blast and Naiki shoots out electrical charge from his palm to counter her.
She absorbs it while landing, giving a satisfying smile at him. Lena fires a few shot at Naiki with Vexis light up the battleground with her eternal flame while all of her tails appeared, it even affected Lena of its unbearable heat. One of Lena shot nearly hit him but Naiki directed the plasma to the ground. His eyes sparks of sudden luminance, two precise summoned lightning hit both of them in their place. Kneeling in pain, the Sakhalin fox cough out blood and tries to heal herself even out of paralysis using her not known before powers. Seeing Lena's blood splatter riles up Vexis who told him to hold back. Unaffected by the eternal flame, Naiki thuds the ground multiple times using the tip of his sword making a battle drum rhythm that the cybrans loves to hear in battle. Most of the spectators of the Cybran Empire remains silent as they know who will win in this match if the emperor did not hold back and uses all types of his unnatural powers. The Estcallian however; begins to feel the fear of the emperor and the empress. "The two of them can easily tear anything that is thrown at them. I think even the draconians did not stand a chance against them." The captain says out loud.
A cybran that sits behind her laughs of her statement and it catches the others attention. "The emperor, once was a normal human. But he turns into this because of the sacrifices that his people did before we became this strong. We exile ourselves into space during a coup; and a decade ago we nearly lost a war against sentient killing machines. Sacrificing himself so that we can rise against them as the victor."
The Estcallians quietly listens, even when he takes a short pause by drinking his drink while watching Vexis laugh off in the thrill of battle with her relentless attack against Naiki while he toys around her attack. "While the empress is saved by him during our early modernization; she was forced to be isolated into a different space by the emperor so that she can learn to control her dark matter powers, only to be released when the emperor is missing in the other side of the universe during his sacrifice. Since she is the only one that can track him while swallowing 9 planetary suns in the process to power herself up, the empress finally able to take some of the burden off the emperor and always to remind him that he is still a human. We seriously did not know that the empress was once a high spirit being, the emperor is the only one know of it before." The timing was perfect when he says it as he gestured the Estcallians to continue watching the match.
Vexis takes a few meters away from the current battle from Naiki, as Lena recovers her wounds at her side with Naiki completely ignoring her. Engulfing herself in clouds of dark matter, she emerges out in her beast spirit form with all her nine tail tip lights up in eternal black flames while darkening the sky with her high psionic powers. Naiki smiled seeing she did that, he summons walls of mixed arsenals behind him in an array of ballistic, magnetic arc, gauss, laser, plasma and even dark matter weapons while he stands ready with his energy sword from his palm with electrical outburst into the ground. With a menacing look at her, his personal dimensional rift opens wide and make Vexis stand in extreme alert of the thing that is on the other side of the rift. It extinguished Vexis's eternal flame with its breath; making her take multiple steps back. Lena is able to see their aura covering the battleground, she is frightened of what the both of them can do as they grinned at each other. The blaring scream of Megalith sounds off the end of the 15 minutes. Vexis sighs before turning herself back into her anthro form in her dark matter cloud, Naiki disengaged all of his weapons including his dimensional rift and throws a water element directly above him. It drops down and burst evenly to the battle area to humidify it.
"Lena is still standing in this match and not unconscious, I say this is a win." Vexis says it directly at Megalith optics. "What do you say, Emperor?" She looks at him. Naiki walks up to the Megalith and Vexis. "She have what it takes. The title is hers." The Estcallian shouted in joy and relief of the battle. Maya looked back at the cybran that was sitting behind the captain but he disappeared. Vaslov that is watching with a squad of his guards, guided the Estcallian to the city that they built to start organizing their workforce and tasks. Lena fainted out of shock right after Vexis turned off the projector camera. "Darling, get her!" she says out of panic. Naiki fetches her and calmly rested her in his lap while curing the battle wounds with his own healing power. "You did not give up that easily; don't you?" he says it while rubbing Lena cheeks with the cold of his hand. "Darling, I said hold back a little." She says with a scoff at him while crossing her arms. "I did, you want me to crack open this planet that we worked hard to make it into her capital? You were the one that use the eternal flame that can cause a lot of effects including instant hydration." She closes her eyes with her right hand; swearing to herself of the mistake that she has done.
"Emperor?" Lena voice make the both of them looked at her. Naiki grabs an odd looking straw and gives it to her. Vexis is surprised that he have finished it. "Drink up." He says to Lena. She sits down and sips the straw. Surprisingly, water came out of nowhere as she drinks form it. "You finished the prototype?" Vexis says to Naiki. He hand another one to Vexis. Lena hand the straw over to Naiki but he gestures her to keep it in her pocket. "Not the prototype, but the fully mass produced ones. For our field special operators to drink from. The one-way micro portal filters the main water source that comes from which ship they are marked on the straw. The straw still can be used maximum of 5 systems length, more than that it does not work. This one is from the Leviathan; since she is the strongest one that can supply water as far as 10 times more than the other warships." Naiki explained while ordering the megalith to overshadow them from above.
"Neat, now our spec ops soldiers and elite guards won't need to worry of finding water in the field. But naming it 'straw' is odd darling." Vexis says it before taking a drink from it, she was surprised that it was red wine and looked at the red marking on the straw. "Just leave the name as it is for now." He says it while standing at one of Megalith's legs inspecting the main structure. "So this is our baby that you are busy making?" Naiki grinned while saying it. Vexis choked of the excess wine and coughs it out. "B-baby…" Lena says it with a low voice while blushing. Vexis clears her throat while catching her breath; putting away the straw in her personal teleportation inventory. "Technically speaking, yes; I made it into a reality of the type 3 that have been stuck since the center force of the machine is not stable. This one is equally balanced, and the main body can support even after losing some of its legs hence the name Megalith type IV."
"Let's go to your first city, Regent Lenora." He says it formally at Lena and she nods in comply. The three rides off at the chassis of Megalith to the city with Vexis explaining on what her next plan for Lena.