Maxim sat in his room, playing his games without really paying attention. All he could think about was what had happened on that ship, and what Masambe had told him. He'd said that that wasn't how that event was supposed to go, but if that was true, and the future was set like Masambe seemed to think, and Maxim had changed that, did that mean something? He'd also muttered something that Maxim hasn't caught, the ship interrupted him. What would have happened if he hadn't done that? What if he had fired at the Muton's? He had felt like that would be way to start it, take out the muscle first, then mop up the Psionic guys, but he got a clear shot at the leader and just had to take it. Apparently William would have died, and they'd all get injured, so surely that was for the best, but, Maxim remembered several narrative game's he'd played had things called 'The Butterfly Effect', so that things you did differently would affect the future of the game, and, some things that seemed to save someone just go them killed more brutally later on. They'd held a kind of funeral for Masambe, with nothing to bury they'd just got a picture of him, and put it on the memorial to the fallen. There was a surprisingly low number of pictures on that wall. Just Masambe, the girl that had joined then been killed in the ambush, Maxim couldn't even remember her name and hadn't looked at the wall, and 2 others that Maxim has never met. Losing 4 soldiers over a year of fighting never before met aliens had to be a good track record. But then the wall didn't show all the non-X-COM forces lost fighting the aliens, the armies of earth were badly weakened from having to fight the aliens all the time, and millions of people had been killed by the aliens. But they'd finally driven the aliens off. There was still the occasional attack from the remnants of the alien forces, apparently they didn't believe in surrendering, but the army was more suited to that task than X-COM.
There was talk about X-COM being mostly disbanded now. They'd keep the HQ obviously, and they'd continue to research the tech, but soldiers weren't really needed any more. They'd probably becoming something like a special forces unit, called into action every now and then, but for the most part living normally, which sounded pretty good to Maxim, after a year of this he was wondering how he'd even gotten into this at all, to think he ended up joining after passing a T.V store on the way home from buying, was it milk, bread? He couldn't remember any more. Would it have ended differently if Maxim hadn't been there? Or would there have just been someone else In Maxim's place. What was he thinking about before? Oh yeah, X-COM, being disbanded, he wasn't sure what was happening to the Engineers and Scientists, but he knew the soldiers were going home in a few weeks.
Keith, William, Harold, Joe, and Eva were apparently going to form a Special Forces group, Maxim wasn't sure for who, but, kind of like The Avengers, if shit ever went down, they'd be called up to stop it. That sounded pretty awesome. 'Oh yeah, that badass group, that's basically a real-life superhero team, yeah, I know those guys, we hang out every now and then. Used to kill aliens together'.
Karl said he was going home. Getting back to his art stuff. Apparently Anti-Alien stuff had become quite popular recently, and no-one did Anti-Alien art like Karl.
Maxim didn't know what Ryo was going to do, and didn't really care.
Maxim himself was heading back to England, but he was bringing someone, Aya was coming with him. He'd be bringing a girl home, a feat he'd never thought he'd actually manage without being set-up by someone. Maxim had tried to imagine Aya as a typical house wife, but it wasn't possible, it just returned to her and Chuck Norris getting into a fist fight, and destroying the planet by accident, Maxim had a strange imagination. Maxim had spent some time catching up on the news, and found one thing really tickled his morbid funny bone. Apparently, a Gorilla name Harambe (Which Maxim misread as Masambe at a first glance), had been killed after a kid had fallen in to the pen, and Maxim just couldn't help reading It as Masambe now, imagining Masambe dragging the kid around before being shot. He just laughed so hard every time, then felt bad, then went back to laughing.
Maxim would miss some things about X-COM: Being able to hang out with the squad every day, his armour and it's servos (It made all physical stuff SO much easier), The Commander being stupid, messing around with his Psionics in the facility (he'd have to clamp down on using it in the real world or he'd scare the crap out of literally everyone). But there were a few things he defiantly wouldn't miss: being worried about Ryo being, well, Ryo, that damn inter-com that always interrupted him mid- "EMERGENCY BREACH. EMERGENCY BREACH. ALL UNITS TO THE ARMOURY" -thought, apparently.
The power went off for a second, then came back on, all the lights were now red, and the alarm was still blaring. Maxim got up immediately, and ran towards the armoury. He bumped into Aya on the way "What's going on?" he asked as they ran
"Sounds like we're being attacked" She replied, slowing down her run since she could easily out-pace him. Seriously, how is she so fast?
They were almost at the armoury, just up ahead, they ran to a T-Junction.
"Attacked? By who?" As if on que, a bolt of plasma fired over his head, coming from the T-Junction and struck the wall behind him, he slid to a stop, coming back a few steps to be in cover behind the wall. Aya was, somehow, on the other side of the junction to him. He poked his head around the corner, and saw a Sectoid standing in the open, firing at Aya's side to keep here there (Have they not figured out how she moves yet?). Maxim focused, and the alien stiffened and collapsed.
"That answer's that question" Aya said as she continued running towards the armoury with Maxim.
"I thought they were basically finished"
"Apparently not quite"
They reached the armoury, and grabbed their equipment. Feeling pressed for time, they didn't grab the armour, since it would take them a good 5 or 10 minutes to get it all on, although Maxim grabbed the combat-goggle things for his suit, since he could just put them on without the armour. He got a strap to hold the sniper rifle on his back, put the plasma pistol on his wrist, and put the goggles on, Maxim looked at Aya, she had a shotgun in each hand, and a half-dozen pistols on her belt. Maxim raised an eyebrow at this "I prefer to be prepared" she replied
"Where to?" Maxim asked
"It said to meet at the armoury, guessing that there's no-one here, I'd say the Command Deck"
"Let's go then"
"That aint happening" Maxim said as they saw what was going on at the Command Deck. They were able to go unnoticed purely because the aliens were too busy swarming the place. It looked like everyone was pretty much wrecked on the ground floor, just 1 pocket of resistance left at the back corner was as that was left. The upstairs was doing O.K, the stairs up to it were destroyed, so no flanking or melee for the aliens, and they had consoles and stuff up against the railing for cover, but Maxim could see they were being slowly overwhelmed.
"We should go, see if we can help someone" They were about to do just that when they heard an ungodly shout of rage, at first Maxim thought it was from a Berserker, but then Maxim saw a figure covered in blood of all colours, burst out of the aliens lines, and sprint for the exit, what looked like a sword in one hand, and a shotgun in the other, some of the blood clearly belonged to them, but most of it was alien, and there was a massive hole cut in the aliens line. Maxim was about to suggest they go and help now, when the upper floor suddenly buckled, and collapsed.
It crushed a good portion of the aliens, but it left everyone that had been on it injured, stunned, and exposed. Except for 1 figure still standing, a plasma rifle in a metal arm, the other arm hanging limply by their side, firing at the aliens, Joe wasn't going down just yet. A plasma bolt flew towards him, but a table was thrown in the way, and another figure stood up, holding a massive gun, and firing a hail into the aliens, as this figure stood up, the other people around them began getting up, moving objects to make cover and firing back. Maxim identified roughly a dozen in total, a mix of scientists and engineers (Maxim noticed Rebecca wielding a rifle and firing into the aliens), as well as Joe, William (who had been the one levelling the machine gun), and Ryo, firing with dozens of pistols on his person, and switching between them incredibly fast. The aliens were being decimated by the quick recovery of the X-COM forces, and it looked like the X-COM forces were wining, but Maxim noticed that Ryo's pistols weren't actually firing shots, he was about to comment this to Aya, when Ryo turned, and fired his pistols, for real this time, into Joe and William.
Being shot from the unexpected angle, and with no armour on, left them with no chance to defend themselves, and the 2 were taken down by a hail of plasma bolts to the chest and head, their upper bodies a mess of blood, bone, meat, and, in Joe's case, metal. Before the other soldiers could react, Ryo dropped a pistol, pulled out a grenade and threw it into their midst, too stunned by the betrayal they didn't even think to move, and almost all of them were killed by the blast. Only 1 person was standing after the blast, and that was Rebecca, who turned to fire a shot directly into Ryo's face, but nothing happened, she was out of ammo but not one to go down easily she tried to smack him with the rifle, but Ryo nocked the rifle aside, and grabbed her around the throat, lifting her into the air with 1 hand, and Maxim could hear him speak from across the room, because the aliens had stopped firing, and it was now disturbingly quiet
"I've been counting the shots" before he broke the silence, and pumped a shot into her chest. She gasped as her lungs were blown out her back, leaving a massive hole in her chest. Even as she died she kept trying to fight him, a hand reaching for his face as she died, but before her hand reached his face, Ryo released her throat, and dropped her body to the floor, and then put another shot into her head.
"NO!" A shout came from across the room, and a bolt of plasma struck Ryo in the side of the face, the force spun him around and he fell. In the doorway was Keith, fully armed and armoured, and beside him, also fully armed and armoured, was Eva. The shout had come from Keith, and the shot had come from Eva. They sprinted towards the cover, firing at the aliens as they went. Maxim turned to Aya to see what they should do, but Aya was already halfway to the alien lines.
Maxim got the rifle off his back, and began lining up shots, taking out the aliens with impunity.
Aya was zipping around, moving incredibly fast, firing dual-wielding shotguns at point-blank range, destroying aliens with every shot, and taking only minor cuts or burns in return, as she dodged rifle shots from point-blank range with seemingly little effort.
Eva and Keith were firing shots hurling grenades (Looks like they'd stocked up), managing to draw the worst of the enemy fire away from Aya by making themselves targets, as they could take the hits on their armour. There was less than a dozen aliens left, and they were mopping them up, it looked like they were going to finish them off.
That was, until Ryo stood back up.
Ryo pulled himself to his feet, the right side of his face a burned, bleeding mess of meat and exposed bone, the pain must have been immense, the left side of his face twitching with rage. Maxim turned to take a shot, but was rewarded only by the click as his weapon ran out of ammo, and he realized he'd neglected to grab spare cells for it.
Keith and Eva hadn't noticed Ryo get up, and there was no way he'd be able to shout to them over the noise of all the gun fire. He tried to use the coms, but only got static. When he tried to use his Psionics he was greeted with what felt like a mental block, as if some power was holding his powers in his mind. He was forced to watch in horror as Ryo limped up behind them, placed a pistol to the back of Keith's head, and fired.
From such close range, and with the armour already damaged from the hits he'd taken, the armour had little chance to stop the bolt, and the plasma shot ripped straight through the back of the helmet, but didn't quite manage to have enough energy left to burn through the other side, so from the front he looked fine, but his head was probably little more than jelly inside of the helmet, he dropped to his knees.
Eva didn't even get the time to notice this as she took a shot to the back of the neck. This time the shot ripped straight through the armour at the neck, and a gush of red shot out of her neck, a thud accompanying the shot as Keith's body finished falling to the ground, she looked like a fountain of blood for a second before she too collapsed, her body collapsing beside Keith's.
"AYA!" Maxim screamed, and he noticed that his mouth hadn't opened, all the aliens turned to look at him at the same time Aya did. And he felt that pressure that had blocked him from hitting Ryo a second ago shatter. Immediately his instincts took over, and Maxim looked over at Ryo and screamed, with his mind "TRAITOR!", no finesse to the power this time, just pure mental force, instead of the usual subdued effects of stiffening and collapsing, Ryo's head just exploded, as if someone had shoved a grenade into his mouth. Splattering blood, brain matter and bone in a huge radius. Maxim then looked at the aliens and screamed, again with his mind "BEGONE!" and the air took a purple glow, started swirling, and all the aliens inside of it just collapsed, as if their very life had been ripped from them as they stood.
Maxim stumbled, and went over to Aya. She looked at him "It appears you are stronger than you thought"
Maxim felt like his own head was about to explode like Ryo's had. He did a count in his head. The only soldiers he didn't have accounted for were Harold and Karl. Assuming the figure that ran through with a sword and a shotgun was Harold, and Maxim felt that was a reasonable assumption, that left only Karl unaccounted for.
"We need to find Karl" Maxim said. Aya nodded, and they began moving towards the door, when another group of aliens suddenly sprinted through either door. There was at least 2 dozen in each side
"It will be a pleasure dying with you" Aya said, as she dropped her shotguns, which were now out of ammo, and took out a pistol in each hand.
"Perhaps. But that won't be today" Maxim said, and destroyed a barrier in his mind he hadn't even known was there, unleashing a flood of psionic energy into himself. He placed a hand on Aya's shoulder. "We're gone" as he said this he unleased the Psionic energy, with 1 simple command 'Home'. The world disappeared, leaving Aya and Maxim in a world of madness and swirling energy. This happened for a split second, and then Maxim saw an area around them that looked just like his old apartment before X-COM, except there was a blackness creeping in at the edges, and Maxim felt himself falling. He struck the floor. Looking through blurry eyes, he saw Aya kneeling over him "I remember the nightmare now" he muttered. He blinked, and his vision was slightly clearer, but it seemed distorted, the light behind Aya almost looked like, wings. He lifted his hand into his field of vision, and it was incredibly pale, almost pure white "The Valkyrie and The Vampire" he muttered before he fell into blackness.
And thus the Gamer's Journey comes to an end. I still need to come up with a name for the 2nd one before I start it. I'll add a 26th part to put the name in so you can find it easily. I'll also put some stuff about the Character's in this one, in case you couldn't pick it up from my hints, and to confirm/deny any thoughts about them you might have. I know I said this was going to come up on Saturday, but I was just too excited to write up this part. I hope you enjoyed this tale. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to see you when I start the next one. Anyway, Thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed and I hope you continue this story in the sequel.