K-2L Ruins
The howling notes of desolation blew across the empty landscape as ash and dust clung to a charnelhouse of tree corpses and burnt buildings. The wildlife had been similarly slaughtered for amusement derived from petty cruelties or sneering frustrations or to feed the empty bellies of emaciated milita troops and penal battalions. They didn't even spare the pets or the infants. There was nothing worse in the entire universe than a bored or angry space pirate looking for someone weaker than them to vent on after a long day of being beaten, starved, and bullied by their superiors. A chain of abuse from High Command all the way down to the lowliest militia peon pulled out of the slums and prisons and thrown into the meat grinder. That made them more than nasty to do this to a billion times a billion planets if they had half the chance.
And as such all they left was memories in the form of the soot that clung to Samus' clothes. The last of the pirates had packed up and left on whatever ships they could grab ahold of after the Scourge was disintegrated into the basest of subatomic particles by Rodney's sacrifice. So all that was left was her and a little Rabil whose fur had been stained black and grey from the products of the fire. If she weren't so scared and so young the fact that even the fire itself had died would have been funny. But there was no trace of the mighty blaze that had scorched the Neorai forests into a gravesite. Her lungs once ached, but the oxygen masks she had salvaged and the nanosalve she sought out just as her parents always told her to if she was hurt or sick had given her reprieve.
But perhaps the most upsetting thing of all was the silence.
The wind blowing through was the only sound besides what she and Pyonchi made herself. No animals sang, no trees rustled, no voices spoke besides her constantly calling for parents who couldn't respond. She had put dirt on her mother's blackened body, she didn't know why people did that with those who had fallen and were beyond the ability of nanotechnology to recover, but she hoped it would make her feel better, she had so much blood coming out of her and she looked so terrible with all that black stuff on her...so skinny and peeled. But it had been a long time and she hadn't gotten up, and papa was nowhere to be seen. If this was a game of hide and seek, she didn't like it. It was quiet, it was cold, and it was lonely.
The sun was no longer shining. Clouds of ash blotted it out across the planet and she wouldn't have been able to make out what time it was if it weren't for the wrist computer she wore habitually. It was only thanks to the machine that she knew that she'd been wandering for hours, and in that time she hadn't seen a single other living creature. It was close to bed time, but she couldn't find a place to sleep. Her parents would be upset if she slept on the ground again.
She felt tired though...they wouldn't blame her if she took a little nap right? But she just needed to find some place soft to do so. The ground was full of sharp things. Sterile yes, not even the microbes survived Ridley's fire, but she wasn't really giving much thought to microbiology. Even if she knew what that meant at this point in time she wouldn't have put much thought into it.
But she saw something moving in the distance. Something that made her blue eyes open wider as the clouds of dust wafted away, blown by an artificial wind that kicked them far away and made Pyonchi prick their ears up high and twitch their nose in excitement. Something was coming, a number of somewhat familiar shapes and a much larger mechanical figure built almost like a tank or a mech of some sort, armatures festooned with guns to either side as it rolled forward rather than walked before stopping. Behind these shapes, great machines that walked on spidery legs and held mighty cylinders high in their great arms scanned through the ruins, red optics seeming intent on finding something, anything that might still live through the rubble, whirling drills cracking through barren earth to extract remains with seemingly impossible precision for such cumbersome looking things.
"Ghor, can you see anything?" A voice said. A familiar voice.
"Old Bird?" She said hesitantly, not sure if it was just more of her mind making things up. Things were so quiet her mind was making her own imagery.
"Samus?" The voice said with hesitant recognition.
The large mechanical shape swivelled its torso around to her. "A survivor? She looks like she's been through hell. Hold on...come here, you're safe now." The somewhat mechanical voice of the famous cyborg Hunter said as more of the Chozo appeared nearby, all in robed armour and all having some sort of head decoration. They fixated their attentions on her, seeming to have known she'd be here but seeming almost surprised by the reality of anything being alive in this wasteland, let alone someone as vulnerable as a toddler.
"W-where's mama and papa..." She said weakly.
"Let's worry about that later. Please, come here." Old Bird offered as he extended his arms, bringing to mind a bird extending his wings as he let her approach him. She rushed towards him, crossing the ashen wasteland in little time before he swept her up in his aged arms and held her tight. She hugged him like he would disappear into ash the second she let go. She sobbed with relief, her emotions crashing all at once the second her body recognised that it was safe to expend precious water on tears and make the loud, ugly sounds of crying.
"Shh...shhh...no one will hurt you." Old Bird said, hugging her tight to him.
"There are orphanages we can deposit her to." Grey Voice cut in as he seemingly materialised to the side of Old Bird, muttering a prayer to himself after his words. His mind focused and he got glimpses of the final memories of the departed. A simple magic, but one that gave him no small deal of concern. Such malignant energies from this place
Brutal raids like this were increasing in frequency every day and Mother Brain needed the supplies they were sent to procure as soon as possible. He sighed, the Diggernauts would be needed to do the work from scratch after all it seemed.
"Zebes is but a moment of travel away. We need not burden the foster care system with our errors." August said, offering a humble bow as she suggested her course of action.
Ghor's optics fixated on the ancient, he was not about to let them go through with this line of thought. "This is not your fault, it never will be your fault. Don't go about blaming yourselves for the actions of the confederates or else you'll never be able to live with yourselves." He said roughly before his hulking mech opened up to let a spindly, digitrade figure that made Samus seek to hide herself away as her tired mind associated his silvery shape with memories of the unending fire and destruction. She let out a wail and hugged into Re-Sekh's body.
"Ah...my apologies, I am Ghor. Please forgive my resemblance to some varieties of space pirate. I mean you no harm, I'm here to protect these fine people from them actually." He said, laying his metallic hands over his chest and giving her a small bow.
"What about me?" She asked, her voice small and gentle.
"Especially people like you. I'm a Freelancer." He said, the mandibles on his cybernetic head opening up and forming the rough approximation of a human smile. The attempt looked silly enough to make Samus smile, but she was too tired to laugh.
"What's that mean?"
"It's short for Freelance Space Hunter or Agent, but Freelancer flows much more swiftly off of the tongue." He said, pausing briefly. "Or perhaps the vocoders in my case. These people asked me to make sure they were safe while they looked for people like you." He said, gesturing respectfully to the Chozo.
"Wow...can I be like you?" She said, eyes starry with wonderment.
"Hopefully without replacing so much of your body. But I'm sure you'll do great. Here, I think he'll agree." He said, offering a hand holding a child's toy, a little mechanical pet like a small lizard that had survived the firestorm that torched K-2L's inhabited areas to so much dust in the wind. She seemed delighted to see the machine, not quite recognising it for she did not know every single person at the settlement by heart, but her eyes lit up at the way the mechanical gecko, chrome and turqoise like marine armour; crawled around her arm and onto Pyonchi's fur. This distracted her enough for the Chozo to commune without interruption. She came to decide on a name for it, Okmin, and gave it her greetings.
"And now that we have guaranteed her safety, we should continue to do so by placing her among her own countrymen, preferably her own species." Grey Voice was stern as ever.
Old Bird was adamant though, they had erred by leaving the people of K-2L to their fate. They needed to make amends. This place was stained quite literally with the weight of the atrocity committed here. It would be burnt into the soul of this world, and even the life that survived the death of the colonists seemed subtly twisted by the malevolent deeds committed. The animals had become nastier, more aggressive, vicious in their battle to survive the collapse of the ecosystem. Ridley's evil had poisoned the spirits of this place like a toxic chemical spill leeching into the soil and turning all the plants and animals twisted and foul. Yet here was someone who remained pure, whose soul retained its nobility and innocence.
"I'm sorry Somek-Ka, but I believe that I owe it to a friend to care for her after a tragedy of this magnitude. I will not leave her to the whims of chance by placing her for adoption. We are bringing her home."
"And what of you, Isa-Hesh?" Grey Voice asked.
She rapped her gauntleted fingers on her beak and had a moment to think before she gave a slow nod. "I agree. More to the point, her parents have ruined many a career today. There will be a blood price on her head to settle the score. Ridley and Weavel will send their rabid hounds after her to save face and vent their frustrations. She would be dead in a few months if we were to drop her in the lap of some orphanage, as would everyone else on the planet or station we placed her in. And if we think to put her somewhere the Pirates would not dare attack openly, they would just send assassins." She said, thinking of and then running through every point that came to mind in a single go.
"We could offer her security. I do not see why we need to bring the young of another species to Zebes when we did not deign to even raise our own children there. We are scientists and academics, not the minders of an orphanage. She would have no others of her kind to keep her company, whether that be other children or other humans. She would grow up isolated, maladjusted and forever a social outcast. Think of her sake before you seek to fill our empty nests."
"If I may." Ghor said, raising his hand.
"I can help her liase with the outside world. She need not grow too isolated."
"Then there is no reason to delay. We can leave at once and make our arrangements for her upon our arrival."
Tourian, Zebes
"-You brought this mammal into our domain?-" A voice, far colder than anything Samus had ever heard before said, her oppressive telepathy like the weight of an elephant on every square nanometre of her mental landscape. Her voice was metallic, it like a claw wrapped around her brain squeezing to demand respect and obedience. Like an overly stern and disdainful mother irritated with children who wouldn't stop spilling milk on her carpet and didn't care for pleas that modern domestic technology made clean up a labor free endeavour. After all, what mattered was that the decorum had been breached.
"-She won't last a day. The gravity of Zebes will break her skeletal structure with the most minor of falls and substantially strain her heart; and the air will require constant treatment or prosthetic to allow her to tolerate it. Then there are the wild animals and flora who would doubtlessly have consumed her the moment she wanders from the safe regions of Crateria and Chozodia or within our other bases. Has the passing of time made you take leave of your senses Re-Sekh? What possible value could this child have to our agenda?-" She said, her oculi drones swarming around Samus, sterile lenses picking apart her every detail for the enormous, grotesque Brain displayed in perfect quality by the hologram projected from special lumomolecules aiming at the centre of the room to analyse.
The hologram dominated the metallic, clearly artificial room that they were all gathered within. The staff of the Zebes base and its tributary facilities represented either in the flesh or through projection floating around the central chamber. Whereas most Chozo architecture sought some degree of harmony with nature, the constructs here were designed along far more military lines. Tourian was a fortress, a redoubt meant to be impervious to the outside world in case the worst happened and to guard their most precious works, as such aesthetic concerns were thrown out the window at the design of the master of this place. She was Mother Brain, and if Zebes had a master, it was her.
Samus recoiled from the swirling tornado of machines that refused to offer her the personal space she and her rabil companion needed, the mechanical Gecko she had also taken to adopting raising its tail in alarm at the continual stares of Mother Brain's drones. "It's so lonely here...there's no one to play with." Samus said meekly, trying to avoid a staring contest with Mother Brain's Oculi swarm. She looked to the Chozo who gazed down on her in their many robed and armoured forms, each one having somewhat differentiated gear and robes that would have told her a library's worth of knowledge about each of them if she understood the significance of any of it.
"-Such is why you are ill suited to remain here.-" Not a trace of sympathy in her voice, not even the barest attempt at understanding, Samus felt her cheeks flare and glared scornfully at the drone. She didn't understand every word coming from the machine's telepathic presence but she knew when she wasn't welcome. And right now she wasn't in the mood to take this kind of heat from an oversized anatomy study.
August would be the first of the Chozo to speak against the grand design of Mother Brain, Old Bird remaining silent to avoid giving an air of bias. "We will not abandon her to the fates. We will give her the blood of our kind and the raiments of war. Then teach her in our ways, so that she may learn of the importance of justice, of equality, and freedom. So that she may help watch over the cosmos and do her part to guide it towards the Utopian path." Samus felt warm at those words, loved, wanted, desired...she hoped people like her and Old Brid could watch over her.
Mother Brain seemed almost offended at the proposal, her psychic voice becoming rancorous and unpleasant. "-You have rejected my overtures to do the same for the great masses of this underdeveloped species. Why is this girl so important to you? We need armies, not lone agents. This deviation from your prior arguments is irrational, born of emotional attachment to someone you admit to befriending. I strongly advise you deviate from this lest you endanger the great project.-" What was this great project the Chozo were so concerned about anyway? Samus furrowed her brows trying to understand, trying to make sense of it...hrmmmm...
Old Bird at last harrumphed to add his voice to the debate after a seeming eternity of silence. "The future of the cosmos must be in the hands of its people, those who create its wonders and shape it through their works. Not to those who would wish to dominate and control. We cannot entrust the future to those who would wish to bend it to a single design in the service of empire. We need warriors for justice, not soldiers for absolutism." Many of the surrounding Chozo nodded their heads in agreement and the wizened avian seemed quite pleased at the reception, his gaze briefly meeting the eyes of young Samus and making her feel so very...safe. He wanted her here, and would fight to ensure she would be here.
"-The dream of a cosmos without class, nation, or state is a design in and of itself. One that will require precise social engineering to achieve. The great masses are clay in the hands of circumstance. I will mould this circumstance and we will have achieved the peace we desire.-" The Elder Platinum Crest and young War Hawk visibly tensed at Mother Brain's words. They sounded dangerous, the words of an autocrat in the making. That fiery youth Iron Heart and the aging Star Strider seemed to join Grey Voice in agreement with Mother Brain, and Old Bird was already dreading the need for a long struggle session with them about where such lines of thinking lead to.
However, Mother Brain's tone changed again, seemingly more accepting now. "-I do not see the need for a frail, traumatised little girl in my designs. But if I am to be left without a choice in this regard, then we will ensure that this is done with as little complication as possible. Begin the transfusion as soon as possible. We have work to do.-"
Later that day
Samus dreamed as most do when they lay sleeping. Her dreams were vivid, real, stark. Far more solid than they had been in the past. Her mind slipped from the moorings of reality and gazed into the twisting causeways of destiny like a kaleidoscope of possibilities and certainties. She was awakening to something her soul could barely touch before. Her spiritual glow began to brighten and her head briefly felt like it was rushing to no place in particular as she pulled back. Even most Chozo were advised to not try to stare at the whole of the causeways of time lest they pass out from overload.
But she saw echoes of the past flashing by her mind's eye. The ethereal, ghostly figures of those whose threads entwined with hers only to burn out were fading. What happened to most species after their deaths was a mystery for the ages, one that had busied the minds of countless psions and mystics and those scientists given to explore the more metaphysical. But she could see burned away strands tapering off into oblivion. The faded spectres of the past flickering as these ghosts grew further from the present every ssecond.
She saw the shapes of Rodney and Virginia, and wanted to rush towards them. "Mama! Papa!" She shouted, but the ghosts were consigned to the fire when she tried to reach for them, the mighty purple cable of another's overwhelming influence on possibility blocking her out. It was a cable shrouded in flame, angry and hot. She briefly looked towards it and saw the dreadful purple pterosaur like head full of sharpened teeth with tongues of fire licking forth from his mouth. His cable had been hacked into, dug into and choked by the final loop that her parents' made, but it was snaking its way out, growing stronger.
She knew instinctually that meant that he was still alive. He was greatly injured yes, but it would take more than being caught in the blast wave of his dying ship to end his malignant influence over her destiny. She looked to her own path, always a dangerous gamble for any user of the Distant Sight. To her horror she saw that purple thread entangling with hers again and again and again. He was inescapable. He was everywhere. She saw other coils threading from hers, a blackened version of her own that crackled with electicity, that of a green brute, the strands of many chozo, and then...a blue strand shooting across time and space.
She felt many of the pathways withering upon her direct observance; weaker possibilities dying as the simple fact of knowing of them in any capacity made them impossible. She almost got lost observing all that she could be and all that she was, but a tall figure in a red helmet stopped her; the ghostly form at the crux of what seemed like every cable in existence. She raised her left hand, the right encased in a green weapon, and touched her head to calm her. She looked into the Y like visor of the figure and her eyes opened with recognition as she saw noble blue eyes behind them.
And with that, she found herself awake in an unfamiliar bed. She wasn't sure how much time had passed, but she felt different now. She wasn't hungry anymore for one thing, and when she saw a small insect buzz past her she could see each and every one of its wingbeats clear as day, her ears easily making out the individual twitches of the insect's movements and even the sound of its heartbeat. She focused on it, and all other noise seemed to dull, and her hands moved to cup it. The agile insect not even having the time to adjust course before her hands had enclosed it and brought it towards her face. She looked at the insect, which wearily started to twitch back to activity after having been startled by something that it saw as little more than a blur.
So that's what they did with her then?
She liked it.
Cragimoch, Ensryn Nebula, Pinwheel Galaxy
Spire was tired, aware of his every creak in his old body as he gave a fornlorn look out the window of his ship and watched the ghostly dance of a spinning pulsar, focusing on the rhythmic beat of the stellar corpse. He had seen sights like this thousands of times across his long career, but now all he wanted to do was sit in silence and grieve. He had only known the Skjoldrs for a few months yet he felt like his silicate furnace had been torn from its chest and crushed. The people on the planet had been nothing but kind to him and welcomed him as a friend, family even. For a moment his long mission even felt like he had found a place to call his own. But now for the second time in his centuries long life he had woken up to found himself alone.
Not alone, not quite he reminded himself as the tear stained face of Arne shuffled towards him, sniffling as he rubbed a synth-cloth on his face and looked up to Spire, the cuts and bruises he had self inflicted on his hands having been treated already. Spire traditionally preferred temperatures well past what a human like him could have survived, but for his sake he kept things considerably balmier. Why was he so set on sacrificing his time and energy to keep this child and his pets alive? Regret? Loss? A sense of failure and a need to make up for it? He had no idea how to raise a human child. He just followed what information he could pry out of the ComNet; even letting him use facilities meant for carbon based guests to make sure he stayed clean. But he couldn't offer the kid what he needed.
Arne had listlessly gone through his daily routine for a while now, modified for sharing the ship with Spire. He had no other idea of what to do. Clean himself, eat, keep busy, learn something...he was just going on automatic now. His mind was not in the space it needed to be to deviate, and Spire's attempts to modify it were foiled by his own uncertainty of what to do with such a damaged mind. Did he firmly but fairly steer him onto a new life's course? Did he gently ease him into a new routine? Did he try to take over where his parents left off? He had no idea. Arne for his part latched onto him, frequently hugging around his leg like he did with his own parents. Such affection helped provide him with an anchor, and Spire was warm anyway, and he liked warm things.
Warm meant affection, warm meant care, warm meant safe. Hot meant fire, hot meant destruction, hot meant fear. Cold was the worst of all, cold meant being chased, cold meant monsters, cold meant loss. He flinched every time he felt a temperature drop, and he became upset whenever that was paired with anything sinuous that came in threes. Now though, he had woken himself from his short stay in bed, waddling towards Spire with those pained eyes. He was still upset, and nothing that had been done so far was giving him more than minute amounts of peace and solace.
"Spire...are mom and dad coming back?" He wheezed. His voice was hoarse and weak. The finality of death was something he refused to acknowledge. Perhaps he didn't understand it, perhaps he did but didn't want to accept it. Whatever the case he had asked him this question repeatedly ever since he had recovered enough of his senses to reapply his sense of curiosity. He reached a hand out, letting Hugin pech onto his arm so he could pet the feathery bird, leaning in to listen to the bird speak to him. What words were shared was something Spire was not privy to, but it gave him time to think of an answer. What should I say, he thought? Did he need to hear the truth in all of its cold and lonely agony, or should he delay the emotional surgery of acceptance with a lie? This very dilemma had prevented him from answering the question each prior time it had been asked, and he was running out of excuses.
Better now than never, he said. The words were heavy in his body, like they were made of lead. He didn't want to speak them, nobody should ever have to speak words like this to a toddler. But he had to. For both his and Arne's sake. He couldn't string him along on a false hope, that wouldn't be fair to anyone.
"No Arne...they're gone forever." He said sadly.
"...D-don't they love me?" He whimpered. Oh by the Blaze no, he thought. No no no, he couldn't have him going down this road of thinking. His mind raced with alarm as he racked his thinking cells together to conjure a means of pulling the last Skjoldr out of the dark path of blaming himself. His youth was already destroyed in an afternoon, he didn't need to add victim blaming on top of that.
Gentle now, gentle he thought to himself. "They do, they always have. But they're dead. They've gone to a sleep they'll never wake up from. The monster put them in it, but they never stopped caring for you. They did it so you could still be here." He said, only for his eyes to widen as Arne's lips began to quiver and the sniffling started to intensify.
Arne's eyes started to shine with tears once again and Spire's furnace felt like it cooled on the spot. Arne started crying again, louder than ever and Spire hadn't the foggiest idea of what to give him to make him stop. The sounds of his wailing made the last Diamont feel so worthless. What good was he if he couldn't comfort a crying child? Hands strong enough to crush the glacis plate of a tank with a squeeze, but too hard to offer solace.
His musings however, were interrupted by space exploding apart as all seven kilometers of the Caesarian Lance simply teleported in front of the Cragimoch in an eerie green burst of energy. The prong winged battlecruiser strobed with many colours, cycling through weapons before it normalised to primarily blue and grey. Shaped somewhat like a forward swept winged tear drop with jutting vertical mandibles, the craft interposed itself between the Cragimoch and the Pulsar, its little lights now glowing a steady, consistent colour. He got no sense of benevolence or peace like he got from Chozo ships, simply a cold and unpleasant disdain as if he should feel lucky that the warship hadn't simply struck him from the records of existence.
His ship was enveloped shortly afterwards, space crumpling and spitting him out into the hold of the warship as it teleported once again; having claimed the only thing of interest in this system to its master.
Processing Room of the Caesarian Lance
Their new surroundings were cold and unfamiliar. Curved organic looking metallic stylizations were carved into the spacious hemispherical room. How big it was was difficult to say, but Spire wouldn't be surprised if masters of spacetime manipulation such as the Alimbics hadn't found a way to make this vessel larger on the inside with one of their stronghold voids. Certainly this place felt larger than it had any right to be. Pillars atop which upside down Alimbics floated, seemingly headless and armless, were placed in a pattern designed to the inscurtable sensibilities of Alimbic mathematical aesthetics. The lighting changed from a rather hostile orange to a more clinical white, illuminating the grey and tan interior and making the grey form of Zurvduat more obvious.
The Knight-General of the ship and the de facto master of the until recently extinguished species loomed so tall over the room atop a pillar above any of the others, his council assembled below him while his monocular gaze almost seemed to bore into Spire's ship as he and the other occupants exited. Walkways materialised into being as they stepped out of the descent capsule of the Cragimoch, and the dormant alimbics each flipped around and extended their limbs and head, the extending appendages seeming to twist out of nonexistence and allowing the ancient insectoids to stare at their guests. Unlike receptions he had gotten from places such as Zebes, this felt condescending. Spire could feel them judging him and the child.
Geri and Freiki pushed Arne towards the Mesa upon which the council of seven awaited him before Zurvduat focused his gaze directly upon him and bade him to stop to let the child approach alone. Another, singularly dismissive command was also sent to the corvids, prompting them to halt their flapping and instead perch themselves on Spire's body while Arne was presented towards the alimbics. Almost like a prize at an auction, with the comparison being deeped as the floor he was standing on sectioned off a circular space and lifted him before the Alimbics for analysis.
"-Arne Skjoldr, last of your world. We have conferred with one another and determined that you will serve our purposes well. We proclaim you our Neophyte, and label you our Primoris. Rejoice then, for from the ashes of your emmiseration a fresh glory may arise.-"
Zurvduat's voice was dry and demanding, a metallic telepathic vise that seemed almost like a matter of fact recollection of a manual or textbook. There was no joviality or emotional inflection, simply a statement of fact. There was no veiled menace or warning for disobedience. Disobedience was impossible, they asked and it would be so. Such was the way of the masters of the Tetrarchy.
"But mom and da-" He was not allowed to finish.
"-Are dead, they paid the price of soldiery and were consumed by the conflict they sought to wage, as was always inevitable. Do you seek justice for the slain, Primoris?-" Osith said, his more frigid voice making Arne recoil. He didn't like the cold and that awful word made him start to tear up again. No they weren't gone they were just...away...he didn't want them to be gone. He needed them.
"I want to go home! I want my friends!"
"-They are all dead, this is your home now, Primoris.-" Urim said, not interested in Arne's demands or his fear.
"-We will be your friends Arne.-" Elmorni said sweetly, the boy's hopeful eyes flicking towards her and a meek smile coming from him as he held his toy dinosaur a little closer to him and focused on her. He seemed hopeful, and his sniffling reduced in frequency and volume.
"-Spire cannot be expected to raise you, and you are a target now; you will not be safe in any human adoptive family. Only we can protect you from those who would seek your silence.-" Mortirk said, laying a hand across his chest in sympathy. Arne's gaze was devoid of understanding, they were speaking to him of concepts his mind was not yet ready to grasp beyond the sense of danger if he said no. He did what he could, and nodded with a sputtering "uh-huh" coming from him.
"-You are frail now, but we will reforge you in steel and craft from your iron a peerless warrior. You will become what this universe needs; the vanguard of a return to the age of peace.-" Deglos said, raising her arms skywards and conjuring a psychic light in the shape of the symbol of the Tetrarch Order that the Alimbics had forged, a stylised representation of an Alimbic head bearing the crossed Y symbol of the Imperial Peace that the ancients had forged long ago in the ashes of the old war. A peace built on dominance and control. No room for the Chozo's attempts to forge fraternity and mutual understanding as far as Spire remembered.
"-We will give you shelter and space to grow. Not just into someone healthy, but someone strong. You will right the wrongs of the past, and you will ensure the commonwealth of all intelligent beings.-" Ygrak said, her voice melodious and gentle.
"He's literally a toddler, are you that desperate for soldiers? He needs a family, not war training!" Spire folded his arms and looked up at the Alimbics as what seemed to be every Alimbic room turned their heads towards him, casting a cold and unflinching judgement upon him that made him suddenly feel very small and exposed. One of the most feared and revered hunters in the universe and here he was, unable to face this batch of insects looking down on him as if he were well...a pile of rocks who had spoken out of turn.
Zurvduat's imperious telepathic voice entered into Spire's mind and stayed there like freshly remembered orders. "-The Imperial Peace must exist. This universe has fallen to chaos in our absence, yet we are too few in number to impose our order on creation. We will alleviate that in time, but these humans have the psychic talent to be given the gift of our sacred helix.-"
"-And from them we can raise a new generation of soldiers. Enforcers of peace who may cut a swathe through the destruction and darkness that has come to infest the garden of civilization. The Primoris has nowhere else to go, no one else to offer him succor; but we will welcome him to our ranks and call him our own.-" He continued, gesturing towards Arne to make him walk over. Arne hesitated, he wasn't sure...he was reluctant to trust the Alimbic, but Elmorni offered her own hand and he smiled; walking over without concern towards her. Zurvduat briefly pulsed with concealed insult, but regained his composure as Arne hugged at Elmorni's knee.
"C-can they come?" He asked, looking over at his ravens and sighing gently when he got a nod of affirmation while Elmorni picked him up and lifted him to such a great height to be eye level with her. She hummed to him and swept some of his hair away from his eyes. A hand of hers reached out, and the Ravens seemed to understand the gesture with wingbeats swiftly taking them to their new perch. Geri and Freiki of course, returned to Zurvduat's side and sat after leaping to their place next to him.
"-You may leave now Spire. Though be assured that we wll likely have business in the future.-" Zurvduat said.
"You can bet that I'm going to be checking in regularly." Spire snorted.
"-Is that a threat?-" Osith asked.
"Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But you'd better do right by him." He said as he stomped back towards his ship, his mood darkened by the brief meeting.
Biological Reconstruction Chamber, Caesarian Lance
"-His physiology is enhanced from the baseline like virtually all humans, but far too weak to withstand the training we will put him through.-" Ygrak said, the red Alimbic hovering close by to Elmorni. She spoke frankly to her mate, concern heavy in her psychic voice.
Elmorni nodded, Zurvduat's plans were...ambitious to say the least. Luckily, Arne was very young, the vast majority of his growth had yet to occur. An older subject, even an adult was still viable; but at his age they could painlessly sculpt out virtually the entire roadmap of his physical development. His height, bodytype, they could even change most of his features if they wanted to, though looking at him floating within the tank in a fetal position she decided that altering such petty phenotypic details as colouration wouldn't be necessary.
"-We will need to make him tall, above the average for his species. Such will make traversing our facilities easier. He should be powerful but lithe and fast. Speed matters more than raw power, and even then we can infuse into his body the strength of a legion of his kind. We will purge fatigue and whatever remaining vulnerabilities to sickness modern geneticists have not conquered, he will serve our ends until the last stars die if need be. We will need to encode into his Helix our noble gift of esoterica and the mental art. Humanity's psionic potential has yet to be truly realised, their appreciation for the arcane barely extant. We will change that, the energies his mind and soul can conjure will sustain him more fully than mere chemical metabolisms ever will, and soon he will be able to stand proud as our sword to cleave chaos and disruption from this existence. From the clay of human weakness we shall forge a proper Knight of the Tetrarchy. The Primoris of our new cohorts who shall deliver this universe back to the proper order.-" Zurvduat had said at the commissioning of this project. Elmorni for her part simply crunched the request down to "make him an Alimbic in human skin". It had the same overall meaning without the need for a long winded speech.
"-Do you think it will be worth it?-" Elmorni asked.
Ygrak paused as she thought.
"-We are stealing his future from him and binding it to ours. But the whole of our species would now struggle to populate a single city. We do not have a choice. We must go through with the procedure. If it's not him, it will be someone else. And he has no one.-" She said, nodding her neckless floating head to Elmorni.
Elmorni looked at the child and then back to her lover as the two laid one of their hands against the other.
"-I will make sure that he never grows too distant from his origins. Whatever Zurvduat commands, he will always have a connection to home.-" She said.
Ygrak shook her head, no this didn't feel right. "-Is it fair to let him know of a place so riven with destruction? He is young, he could forget naturally; we wouldn't even have to modify his memories.-"
"-He has a right to know where he is from. We are his caretakers, it is not our place to decide whose memory he aligns with. It will simply be our task to ensure that the memories we give him in his formative years will be as strongly cherished as the ones from his parents in his infancy.-" She said.
She looked at her charge. His thoughts were full of cold, wintery death. He saw the three headed one rising from a volcano that spat forth only snow and arctic frost, standing on their hind hooves, wings spread wide and heads pointed high as they let loose their tyrant's scream; the corpses of millions surrounding their feet while they stood in partly frozen blood. She could hear the sound of a high pitched roar with bell like trilling in its reverb in his mind. A nightmare, far too intense for him to handle. Far too vivid, far too real. He was in a loop, reliving the helplessness of watching everyone die without being able to do anything about it once again.
Elmorni touched the sides of the tank and willed him to think of happier memories, strands of pleasantries worming their way into the young boy's thoughts to create new images in his mind. Images of belonging, of welcoming, of being loved and accepted by his new family. She sent him sensations of warm, red emotion, banishing the arctic cold of Viper's golden fur and glacier blue eyes with images of a pleasant field of red grass and pleasant swaying trees. The plains of Oriomak where she was born and where she was raised from creche to service. She showed him how he could be part of this to, sending him visions of being part of this, accepted and cared for, no longer alone and afraid. He calmed, his breathing normalised and Elmorni was pleased, he would be alright in the end, she was sure of it.
Zurvduat would likely...contradict these messages, but in time she hoped that he would see him as a son, and not just a tool.