The sun was setting over the mountain range on the far end of the city, and long, golden ribbons of light fell across it, casting a gilding of iridescent orange-gold across all that fell under it's gaze. How poetic. He thought ironically. The ceremony for the four who were killed in the power plant a week ago had been that morning, irrevocably ruining his day.
"Mr. Zero?" Allouette stood in the doorway to the balcony. "Mr. Zero, are you okay? You looked really sad this morning."
"Yeah, I'm okay." He turned around, ruffled her hair.
"Okay then, let's go play!" She said, turning around and running through the doorway. Zero followed, motioning to chase her, she laughed as she ran down the crumbling stairs, but screamed and tripped when she got to the bottom to find Zero (Who had leapt from the stairs) already waiting for her. She squealed with laughter as he grabbed her, swung her over his shoulder, and carried her around kicking, screaming, and laughing. He finally lifted her off, placed her on his shoulders, and ran around in a circle. Once thoroughly dizzy, he ran out of the decrepit house with Allouette's arms spread wide.
"Having fun?" Said a voice as they passed by. Allouette's mother stood leaning against the doorframe, smiling at them.
"Momma! Mr. Zero chased me down the stairs, and then he caught me, and then he put me over his shoulder, and then he-"
"Sounds like you've had a good time." She reached up and took her from Zero's shoulders with a dejected 'awwww…' from her daughter. "Oh, Zero, I need to talk to you later, can you meet me under the central screen in the control room after dinner?"
"No problem." Zero said, giving a final hug to Allouette, and running off to the base.
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Zero sat in the control room, digging through the history files on the computer, trying to find out whatever he could about his history that Ciel hadn't already told him. Several words stuck out in his mind as he read them: Sigma, Eurasia, Zero Virus, Repliforce, and a few others were most prominent, but a single name he couldn't shake from his mind. Iris McAllister. He had scrounged and perused every letter held on the file and came up with only a few pages of information. Why did it seem so important? All he could find was that she was the brother of a Colonel McAllister who served in the Repliforce (an all reploid freedom army that went too far, and nearly wiped out the human race), a short biography that gave little information, an image, and the simple fact that she died on the final weapon when it was destroyed. Still, he couldn't shake the idea he was missing something.
He was reading the information he had collected for the fifth time when the door opened. Allouette's mother walked in, a young girl in a green uniform beside her. "Hello." Allouette's mother said in a very somber voice. "Zero, this is my older daughter, Jordan McAllister." Zero's eyes widened at these words. "She wanted to talk to you"
"No I didn't!" The young girl, who's head had turned away, snapped her face back to meet her mother's gaze, flinging strands of red hair from their keeping place under her soldiers cap, "You are the one who wanted me to talk to him! I didn't give a damn!"
"Jordan, you can't just let this go! You have to talk to somebody, and there's no-one better to talk to than the-"
"Don't try to patronize me! I don't care what you think I need to do! Will you shut up already! You have no Idea what's happening! You aren't even human!"
Her mother gasped at these words, "Jordan! You of all people have no right to say that! You kno-" She was cut off again.
"Shut up! Screw you! Screw Zero! Screw Dad, Screw everybody!" She turned around and ran from the room, tears glittering in her wake.
"I take it you specifically weren't the one who wanted to talk to me." Zero said.
"No. It's just that, her father was one of the men killed in the disposal center, and she never had a good relationship with him, but now she hasn't spoken to anyone since news came that he was dead. I think that she blames herself for her father's death."
"And you thought that since I tried to save him that I would be the best person for her to talk to right now, right?"
"Well, yes." Iris replied.
"I understand, I'll talk to her."
"But you don't even know where she-" Iris again found herself cut short.
"I have a hunch." Zero said, running towards the door.
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"You know, she was only trying to help you."
"I don't care, she shouldn't have."
"It's not like she hates you."
"Except that it is."
"Why would your own mother do something like that to you?"
"That's exactly it; she's my mother."
"Why don't you want to talk about your father anyway?"
"How did you…?"
"She told me"
"Whatever."
"I don't consider this to be a 'whatever' situation. No matter how much you don't want to talk about it, I promise it'll help."
"How would you know?"
"I'm not precisely sure how, but I do."
"I don't believe you."
"Why not?"
"Why the hell would I trust an over-inflated egotistic celebrity like you?"
"Give me a good reason why you wouldn't."
"Will you leave already?"
"No."
"Please leave."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because your mother asked me to talk to you, and besides, I want to know what's happening."
"The-the last thing I s-said to him… w-was 'I h-hate you…'"
Jordan fell to her knees, slats of blackness falling over the pallid, moonlit figure from the railing of the derelict balcony, and sobbed unrestrainedly. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up to see pale-lit face of Zero, looking at her with an expression of care she had never seen in a reploid. She didn't care if he was one of those damned robots; she thrust herself into his shoulder, holding him close to her.
"I'm sorry!" She sobbed, "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be." He whispered in her ear, "It wasn't your fault."
"Y-yes it w-was!"
"Don't try to talk," He held her tighter, and she felt exactly like she had when her father used to hug her.
"Thank you, Zero." She closed her eyes, and almost immediately fell asleep, pressing a final tear from her eye. Zero picked her up softly and slowly, and walked back through the black door to the base.
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Zero sat in his room the next morning, running through his personal computer, searching through Jordan's history. He had felt the same kind of compassion for her as he had for Allouette, and he was still unable to pinpoint it. All he had learned so far was that she was an orphan, and she had been adopted by the DeRouge family at the age of two, and become a soldier at age 13 (she was now 16). A beep from the other side of the room lifted his head. He hit a button on the projected keyboard(1), and brought on the screen an image of Ciel standing outside the door, looking expectantly at the camera watching her. Another button opened the door, and Ciel walked in.
"Hey." She said, walking in and sitting beside him on the bed.
"Hey, need something?" Zero asked.
"Well, I heard about Jordan, and I just wanted to thank you for it."
"You knew her then?"
"I know everyone around here, Zero. Since her father died, Jordan hadn't spoken to anyone but her mother before you did, and even then, she was snappish and angry. But now, she's like a different person! I don't know what you did, but she's happier this morning than she had been in almost a week."
"Don't mention it, it's the least I could do after you've taken me in like this."
"Well, yeah, but-"
"Really, you owe me nothing, and I owe you nothing."
"Okay, if you say so. By the way, there's an assembly of all soldier personnel in the control room this evening, if you want to show up, you won't be denied the privilege."
"Thank you. I'll be there." He said, turning back to his computer.
"Um, goodbye then." She stood and walked out of the door, waving goodbye to him. He returned the motion, turning back to her with a slight smile on his lips. His eyes only flitted across the screen for a moment before his eyes widened, and he ran out of the room, a frantic look on his face.
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The doors on the sides of the hall flew by in a blur, several people turned to talk to him as he ran by, he paid them no heed. Nothing mattered, he had to find her. Such thoughts flew through his mind, and it was these thoughts that caused him to trip over Allouette.
"Mr. Zero! Are you okay?" She asked, bringing her hands to her mouth.
"Where's your sister?" He asked, standing without a word to her question.
"She's in our quarters, why?" She replied timidly.
"Where is that?" He neglected again to answer her question.
"Down the hall that way," She pointed, "number 354c." Zero ran off almost before she had finished her question. The room was not far down the hall, and even before he had turned towards it, he had let out three loud TONKs on the metal door. He continued to pound furiously on it, so distracted that he almost hit Jordan's head when she opened the door.
"Augh!" She screamed, sidestepping the fist that Zero had intended for the door, "Zero? What're you-?"
"Who are you?" Zero interrupted.
"Wh-what?" Jordan was taken aback by the odd question.
"I asked who you are." Zero stepped past her, into the plainly furnished quarters. "Now answer my question." He turned his head toward her.
"Zero? You know me, why do you need to-?" She was again cut short.
"There's something you aren't telling me. Now who in the hell are you?" His eyes were grave as he confronted her eyes with his own.
"Zero, there's nothing I'm keeping secret from y-"
"Shut up! Just shut up! Quit dropping me this line, and tell me the damned truth!"
"There's nothing I'm keep-" Instead of a voice, she was cut short by the back of Zero's hand.
"What is so important that you can't even let me know you know it? Will you just tell me already!" Zero raised his hand again, only to have it stopped by a hand. He turned to see Jordan's mother, her face held low.
"W-who a-are you?" The anger in his eyes melted away to a terrified confusion at seeing the look on her face.
"I can't tell you that." Her expression halted any response from Zero. "I cannot tell you my name, just call me Cornelia, I am not your enemy. That is all I can tell you, that is all you need to know, now please leave." Without lifting her head, or releasing Zero's arm, she pointed to the door.
"B-but, I-"
"Just go, please."
Zero, still bewildered walked wordlessly through the door, not looking back. The moment he was gone, Jordan's mother fell to her knees, crying. A single tear fell before she wailed miserably, and sobbed as she beat the cold steel floor. Jordan was thoroughly upset by the affair, and unknowingly began to cry herself, running out of the room.
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Zero ran blindly, stumbling past anything and everything, giving no heed to whatever he met. It was this confused path that led him to crashing halt over a green-uniformed soldier. The two tumbled to the ground, and Zero felt himself hitting several other bodies, and as he landed, he felt them again, this time landing on him. He pulled himself up, feeling several people trying to do the same, and saw a large crowd, gathered in the central command room, and a "code green"(2) flashing on the central screen. Zero stood in the crowd as those in the circumference of the domino effect made by his crashing into it recovered as well.
"Looks like we have a visitor." Chuckled a haughty, arrogant voice from the front on the room on a small, makeshift podium from directly below the central screen. "Mr. Zero, if you are going to take part in the military actions of this organization, please, take care not to disrupt every bit of it." Zero, being slightly taller that most of the soldiers assembled, could see to the front, where a tall, unnaturally slender reploid stood, supported on legs that seemed far too long for him. Although a "him" it hardly was; His wardrobe was almost entirely pink, and thick, luxurious blonde hair spilled over one side of his femininely shaped face, while the other half was covered by a golden mask that revealed only a slit where his mouth lay, and a diamond shaped hole showed a bright, piercingly red eye. "Anyway, as I was saying, this transport has been only known to Ciel, Cerveau, and me until this point, the announcement of its special cargo was to be this evening, but we have reason to believe there is an intercept laid by Neo Arcadia, and we will need every available hand to defend it." Zero gasped, understanding immediately what and where the interception would be. "Before we send you out to meet the convoy to escort it, you'll have to know what you're escorting: Please allow me to present, Calliope!" He made a wide gesture with his hands, and an image of a small, shifting ball of light appeared on the screen. "This is the ultimate cyber-elf! A warrior of its own, with the most advanced hacking powers known to man or reploid, and abilities beyond your wildest dreams!" An uproar flew from the crowd, and the man grinned, "This convoy hold the victory to the war! You will protect it with your lives, am I right?" The army raised their fists with a cheer, "We will depart in one hour! Prepare for the final battle, prepare for peace!" The multitude roared again, and dispersed quickly, eager to get on to the mission. Zero pushed through the crowd, having serious trouble fighting the currents that had developed as the soldiers tried to leave. He had to get to the front, speak to whoever that man was, figure out if this plan was going to really save the convoy. The bodies bumping him continually knocked at his shoulders, and his progress was excruciatingly slow for a while, but the massive number of bodies decreased at a fairly swift rate, and Zero soon found himself easily able to walk up to the platform on which the man stood.
"Mr. Zero, I presume." He looked with disdain towards the cool grey eyes that were forced to look up at him due to his elevated position.
"You would presume correctly, and may I ask who you are?" Zero replied.
"You may, but I may not answer you, and perhaps not even truthfully at that, but you have every right and ability to ask my name."
"What a funny man you are." Zero said, leaping high into the air, landing only two feet in front of where he had previously stood, but now on the platform. "I have no time for petty games; tell me why you mobilized them."
"Why? Because the convoy is carrying precious cargo that we can use to our advantage, we need every bit of that we can get."
"Cut the crap and tell me what your real reason was."
"What makes you think there's another reason?" The man looked at him inquisitively.
"I can see you don't want to tell me, and as I've said, I have no time for you, Where and when is this convoy supposed to meet up with its escort?"
"I have no good reason to disclose this information to a mundane recruit like you, what gives you this authority over me?"
"Dammit, you're useless." Zero turned and hopped off the stage. "By the way, you never told me your name.
"Nor do I intend to." Said the pink-clad man, walking to the side of the platform, and taking a small staircase on the corner of it.
"Elpizo, you're an idiot." Ciel walked up from the back of the platform, looking with contempt towards the haughty figure descending the steps. "If you must know, Zero, then come on up here, and I'll show you." She held out her hand to help him up, but he ignored it, bounding high over her head, landing upright behind her. She turned around, slightly perplexed at his actions, but walked over to an empty computer. She pulled up almost the same precise satellite image that he had seen in Neo Arcadia. She hit a few buttons, bringing up the same path he had seen in the meeting as well. She drew a point of intercept halfway between the bridge where he knew the Arcadian forces would be waiting in ambush and the resistance base. Zero swore loudly, flipped open his fingerflash(3), and plugged it into the computer, quickly extracting the map and all coordinates.
"When is this meeting to take place?" Zero asked Ciel, pulling his finger from the port and looking towards her.
"Tonight, around 1800 hours, why?"
"That's to late, get every soldier to that bridge," He pointed, "By 1500 hours at the latest."
"What? Zero, that's impossible, and why in God's name would we need to do that?"
"There's an ambush."
"Wai- what?" Ciel was flabbergasted.
"I said, there's an ambush. It's waiting on that bridge, and it's going to go down the moment the convoy reaches it. Half of Fefnir's army will be there, as well as nearly all of Harpuia's, and their going in a pincer movement. While what little defense will be already with the trucks is busy in the front defending them, there's going to be an air raid from behind to steal Calliope, then they're simply going to detonate the bridge."
"You're a fool Zero." Elpizo chimed in from behind them.
"I thought you had left." Zero snarled.
"I was going to, but then I heard this preposterous load of manure you were spouting, and felt it was my place to so graciously correct you. I happen to have inspected that bridge myself, and within the last hour. There was nothing there, and you have nothing to fear. I understand your concern for the resistance, but you really need to straighten out your facts first. If you are truly so concerned, then go prepare with the other troops, and follow them out there, instead of wasting the lady Ciel's time." Ciel shivered at the gaze that fell on her. "Now, if you don't mind, Ciel and I have our own separate business to attend to." He held out his hand in a disgustingly haughty, gentlemanly manner, only to have it brushed to the side by Ciel, who walked past him wordlessly.
"Sorry Zero, as much as I hate him, Elpizo's right; we do have something we need to oversee, and there's not enough proof to your claims to cause that much of a fuss over it."
"What? You mean that the risk of losing or winning this war isn't high enough to mobilize the resistance a little faster?"
"There are other things to take into account Zero. The civilians will get scared if we're in too much of a rush to move out, the troops may be under prepared if we move them too quickly, and besides all of that, we already knew there was an ambush waiting, and we happened to have had our last mole get us the information on it just before he was found out and killed. It is not to be on the bridge, but farther along, and later at night."
"Who was your mole, then?"
"Andrew Ferguson."
"I knew Ferguson." Zero's eyes narrowed, "The man was a bastard, that's why I killed him. He was never found out, He himself tried to kill the two of us when we were escaping."
"I happened to know Andrew very well, and he would never try to do something like that to us!"
"I happened to know him as well, and I know for a fact he would. Did it ever occur to you that Neo Arcadia has a much larger intelligence unit than you? Don't you think it was possible he wasn't playing double, but triple agent? There's no way they wouldn't have known about him 'leaking information', and struck a bargain for him to give you faulty intel."
"Shut up! Andrew wouldn't to that to us, h-he was a good man, He- he loved me. And he wouldn't do that."
"Yes he would, Ciel, the man was a-"
"Just go away!" Ciel turned and ran off of the platform.
"You really should learn some better manners, Zero, or things like this will happen all too often." Zero clenched his fists, but restrained himself long enough to walk past Elpizo, and quickly remembered that he needed to leave, and quickly ran to the elevator, and told it to take him down.
Once down in the underground bay, he ran into Cerveau's lab to find him welding together some large robotic object in his 'garage' room (Adjacent to the medical room that one finds immediately upon entering.).
"Cerveau!" Zero called over the loud hiss and crackle of the welder. Cerveau lifted his head, and slid the mask up, revealing his face smudged with oil and sweat.
"What do you need, Zero?" He asked, setting down the welder, and standing to his full height.
"You remember that Red Pheonix I rode in on? Ciel said you took it."
"Oh, yes, A fine specimen, I do have it, you know, that's one of my favorite models of-"
"Not right now Cerveau, Just tell me where it is!"
"It's in the hangar, where else?"
"Where's the hangar?"
"Just opposite my lab, over that way, but you need a launch code to take off with anything."
Zero swore, and ran out of the lab, finding a large double door set just where Cerveau had told him it would be. His password transmitter gave him an access code, which his fingers worked frantically to input; the doors gave a reluctant hiss and slid back when he had finished. Zero was disgusted by what he saw inside: a junkyard. Or close enough. Several dilapidated helicopters lined leftmost wall, with faded, dented tanks lay in rows beside that. Several dusty, old transport vehicles resided beside that, though a few were out of order, nestled snugly among the tanks. A few fighter jets, although new, sat small, weak, and outdated in the next section. Beside these, on the right wall, lay personal transport vehicles: bikes, hoverbikes, PSUs(4), and the like. Zero immediately saw his Phoenix, sticking out like a sore thumb. Not sore because the bike itself was unattractive, but rather because it was by far not only the most effective weapon, but it was the only thing in there brightly colored, shiny, and with all of the pieces still attached to it. He stepped on, revved the engine, and flew allowed the bike to levitate the both of them a foot or two above the ground before realizing there was no way out, He swore, and looked around for a way out. Before he came up with any Idea, he heard the roar of a second engine behind him. An old, scratched, and dented bike floated up aside Zero, supporting Jordan. The logo Titan(5) was hardly visibly underneath a deep scratch.
"You really need to learn to plan things out more carefully, you'll never get anywhere without a launch key." She beamed at him.
"And I suppose you have one?" He had to raise his voice slightly to be heard above the engines.
"Yup!"
"Ok, give it here." He held out his hand. She made no movement, "Come on!" Still no movement. Realization dawned on Zero, and he frowned angrily; "Jordan, there's no way you're coming with me! You get back inside; you're way too young for this kind of thing!"
"Ah-hem!" Jordan reached with one hand, and tugged at the stripes on her uniform. Zero studied them, and realized that she held the position of lance corporal. "Actually, I outrank you, so I think it would be in your best interests to let me go with you."
Zero scowled, but really had no choice but to consent. Jordan grinned widely, and activated the key. Zero watched in astonishment as a colossal slab of stone, nearly fifty feet above him, letting the early afternoon light cascade downward like a waterfall, spilling onto the machines in the back of the room, then flowing forward onto the vehicles row by row, releasing them from the black confines they were previously held in, breaking them free in a flash of pallid, white sunlight. Jordan's vehicle moved forward first, and Zero's followed soon afterwards.
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"Sir, are we ready to set up?" The fool's voice asked the same question for the third time over the intercom.
"Did I tell you to do anything yet, you idiot? Wait for my order!" Fefnir closed the intercom, and stood from his resting place on one of the protruding understructures of the bridge. The explosives had just been set, and all that was left to do now was to wait. He walked off the edge of the support, activating a jetpack on his back as he did so, and flew himself up to the surface of the bridge. His intercom beeped again, and he reluctantly picked it up, "Fefnir Here."
"Fefnir! Why aren't you ready yet, you idiot, the convoy will be there any minute!" X's voice snarled menacingly even without the image of his face being there.
"Sir, we have reason to believe the resistance will be making a final sweep of the area any minute now, and if we're set up along the bridge, they'll send the convoy a different direction."
"Dammit, you fool! That's of no concern to you; we've taken care of their security, now just get ready!"
"Yessir!" Fefnir shut off the intercom, and motioned for his troops to get into position. The repeater troops(6) took awhile, which concerned Fefnir, but everyone was set up within ten minutes, which was a good time. Fefnir smiled as he watched a small dust cloud slowly building up on the horizon, as well as a group of tiny dots appearing to the east over the canyon the bridge spanned. "It's almost time." He said to himself, followed the tactic his troops had used, and activated a cloaking device.
The cloud slowly grew larger, small black dots that marked the trucks wobbled uncertainly back and forth through the desert heat like sunburned ants. Harpuia's jets were now barely distinguishable from the form of black specs they had so recently been disguised in by distance. A spread in the grin of Fefnir caused a slight ripple in his invisibility as the projectors on all sides of him scrambled to shift the image they displayed to what the image on the other side of them now displayed(7). The trucks were now distinguishable as well, and Fefnir heard his troops assuring their positions on the ground, shuffling their feet to make themselves feel better about their footing. The trucks were entirely defined, and the sunlight made Fefnir wince as it ricocheted like a white, blinding bullet towards the cybernetic Eye that so readily made a deep, black repository for the continual stream of the stuff. The trucks were now 300 meters away, according to the diagnostic displays roaming before his eyes. 250… 200… 175… 150… 125… 100… Fefnir could distinguish the drivers in the front seats… 90 meters, Fefnir lowered his cloak, and the troops followed suit… 80, 75, 70, they were slowing down, 65, 60, 55, 50, 49, 48, 47, 46, 45… They stopped. Fefnir raised his massive handgun towards the foremost truck, and called out to the driver:
"You are not to move forward. I want you out of that cab, with your hands behind your head, do you understand me?" The driver looked utterly terrified, and slowly lifted his hands off of the wheel, opened the door, and walked out, hands stiffly stuck up on either side like some puppet moving only by a cruel master's hand. "Now order your men to bring me the Calliope project." The truck driver motioned slightly with his hand, and a pair of men, just as stiff as him slowly climbed out of the cab from their hiding place under the seats, and slowly walked backwards to the back of the truck. Fefnir grinned again, but such a smile was greeted with a face full of burning hot concrete, he tried to figure out what had happened, and his question was answered when he felt a weight lift itself from his head, and saw a red figure running off towards the trucks. He screamed in pain when he felt a second thing hit his head, and his face plowed into the ground again. This time when he lifted his head, he saw an obviously female person in green following the same path as the red one who came before her. He stood quickly, raised his handgun and shouted to the troops standing moronically still behinds him:
"You idiots! Kill them!" The soldiers roared loudly, as if to make up for their hesitation with enthusiasm, and ran forward.
Zero leapt to the top of the front most truck, a small metal case in his hands. He turned around, and immediately saw several gun barrels gazing with their dumb black pits at him. He yelped, and stumbled back down to the area behind the truck, and drew his saber. Jordan, surprised by his reappearance, drew two long pistols from a holster under her uniform shirt. All of a sudden, several of the enemy's army flew around the corner, and quickly began firing. Zero leapt back to the top of the truck, and Jordan duck to the side, leaving the two soldiers they had been protecting to cower in the fetal position on the ground. Once the soldiers noticed the two were gone, they ran into the truck, and Zero fell down into the back of the dark truck, his figure illuminated eerily by a green light from his saber, a sadistic grin on his face. The soldiers screamed in terror, tried to run out of the truck. Nearly half fell to Zero's saber, and several others were shot down by Jordan soon afterwards. The few remaining men fled in panic to the remaining soldiers in their army. Suddenly, Zero was assaulted, finding a metal knife dive before him not even a centimeter from his face. The blade was followed by a man in a black uniform, whom Zero quickly realized was not friendly, and swung his saber at him. His opponent, without even looking up from his bent position on the ground, rolled away with blinding speed, and immediately sprang back towards Zero, His forearm held forward- as if holding a shield before himself. Zero raised his saber, but found his sword arm repelled the same way it had when he had fought Aztec. It was this magnetic push that saved him as the man in black flew past him, and would have cut his head off, had Zero not been flung backwards by the push of his saber. As the man continued on his trajectory towards the ground, Zero plunged towards him with his saber, and before he could turn around, the green saber was in his back, and he fell to the ground dead. Zero turned back to run to his Red Phoenix and perhaps gain an advantage from the air, but as soon as he got around the truck's edge, he met several repeater troops and barely dove back behind the truck to avoid their fire.
Before Zero or Jordan had a chance at all to rest, the roar of an airplane foreshadowed its presence. They looked towards the sound, and saw three jets in formation releasing a pair of missiles each. Zero grabbed Jordan, and jumped backwards, barely avoiding the missiles initial blast radius, and being carried along with the extended explosion as he tried to run from it. It flung him to his knees, and as he stood and turned around, he saw a large transport helicopter lowering several Pantheons down by ladder. He rushed forward, redrawing the saber he had sheathed, and began to slice wildly through the growing forest of blue and turquoise around him. As he finished cutting one Pantheon in half, a blue foot attached to a particularly malicious pantheon fell from the helicopter, onto Zero's head, knocking him to the ground, and dropping Calliope's case. It was immediately picked up by one of the horde, and a loud siren and series of bright red flashes from its large red eye called all of the soldiers to a halt. The whole of them quickly dispersed, returning to whatever transport vehicles they came with, and quickly sped off. Zero finally had room to stand, and shook the light-headedness that had begun to creep onto him away, before standing and bolting for the Red Phoenix he had left behind the bridge.
Within thirty seconds, he leapt onto the black leather seat, started the anti-gravity engine, the propulsion systems, pressed hard on the accelerator, and sped off after the planes now dissolving slowly against the blue canopy in the distance.
Footnotes:
1. Projected keyboard, in this and most cases, refers to a keyboard crafted purely of light, projected from a central node. A grid of lasers, monitored by four nanobot components on each corner, records where it is broken (by a finger 'pressing' the key), and displays the corresponding character on the screen to where the break occurred.
2. Fifth from the highest level of alert used by the resistance. Denotes a mild threat, although one that requires immediate attention, and could elevate into a red alert (third to the highest) if not quickly put into check.
3. A finger USB storage drive (Commonly known as a fingerflash) is a secondary storage drive stored in a reploid's wrist, usually only about half the size of the full drive in the brain (which is nearly ten times the size of any 21st century supercomputer), and stores all extraneous files a reploid may desire. It is referred to as a fingerflash because the plug is stored in the end of the index finger, and protrudes when revealed from under the false skin flap used to cover it. Tech suits have made adjustments, leaving that section uncovered so the drive will be unhindered when in use.
4. PSUs (Personal striker units) are small, compact jetpack-like instruments, utilizing four aerodynamic wings for precise flight, and equipped with several weapons, most commonly being four small beam cannons, a small set of missiles, and a machine gun apparatus of some kind. Although these accessories are variable; for example, the most elaborate one ever designed was for the infamous outlaw Shav 'the avalanche' Guntri which included ten beam cannons, two auto machine turrets, a rocket launcher, over twenty conventional bullet-fire guns, including ten holsters for his hand guns, three grenade launchers, and a cup-holder.
5. A Titan is an old failure of the hoverbike company Harley Davidson, famous for old fashioned motorcycles in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and then for its hoverbikes in the twenty-second. The company had an odd reputation by this time of releasing alternately extremely high-quality and very popular bikes and poor, shoddy, almost unheard of ones. The titan is one such failure, being large, clunky, and slow, as well as having one of the most infamously ugly model designs.
6. Repeater troops are elite weaponry units, equipped with extremely high power machine guns set up on tripods. Their rapid fire and precise skill give them the ability to 'repeatedly devastate the battle field' as the first account on them said. This earned them the nickname 'repeater troops'
7. A cloaking device works through microprojectors set up in a net-shape around a reploid, each one keeps a detailed watch on the video feed given by its counterpart directly on the other side. The disadvantage to a device such as this is that movement causes the projectors to lose track of what they were recording, and shift and ripples give away the position of the cloaked object.