Episode 41- Where strong and shaky alliances are struck.

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'Pick me up, I'm by the main bridge.' Mina and the Fox lady raised their heads, and looked at each other. Then towards the cosmos, which was just behind the almost invisible barrier of the hangar bay.

"She just wants to do a show." Her furry companion nodded her head. "I'm just a pilot anyway, I don't need to question it." She walked to the steering wheel, and clicked a few buttons on the console just beside it.

The sides on the boat opened, and the rotors emerged. At the same time, the barrier separating the deck from the cold cosmos lighted up, automatically. A few slow spins, and the turbines roared to life.

A few seconds later, and they were in outer space, rotors retracted back, and the sails fully spread. One of the technicians watched the somewhat primitive ship, and was a little inspired. It's not like EVERY ship must be able to traverse the cosmos.

"HYAA!" Spiked roots surrounded the big 'flower', all black, brown, and pulsing with ominous, red light. A moment later, a wisp, made from green light, and with small wings, hit the source of corruption.

The 'flower' vanished into nothingness, the zergling corpses lost their unnatural black layer, and the whole world reverted from monochromatic to the one with full colors.

'Huff, huff' Pixie, was leaning against the rock wall, which was a part of a rather sizable cave. The last of the enemies were cleared out, and the Tree of Dreams was safe. The Dream was safe.

'You were amazing, pink nara!' 'You performed better than I expected, nara'

She looked at the floating plant fairies before them. Aranakin, the 'lean' one was happily dancing in the air, singing her praises.

The second one, Arabalika was 'chubby', as in, his body and head were one and the same. It was giving her reluctant respect.

Pixie did half the work, of course. Thorny roots covered almost every inch of the ground, with zerg corpses impaled in many places by it. Arabalika was… surprisingly strong. With a weird small branch that looked like a question mark, he launched all those monsters into the air, and embedded them into rock walls. Marshmallow stayed away from the magick, and just stayed by the Pixies side. Aranakin wasn't very strong, he just kept throwing small balls, which released something into the air, something that slowed enemies down.

Pixie, finally raised to standing position again, her hair spiked into every direction, like hedgehog quills. A little bit of electricity ran through it every second. She had to get the energy from Somewhere after all…

Ziemowit was left somewhere by one of the protoss buildings. It was one giant cylinder with a glowing opaque top, surrounded by four smaller ones. Additionally there was a… vent? And some long spikes. Of course, it all was a fancy and shiny protoss metal, and the glowing parts. If his brief introduction to Protoss told him anything, it was a cybernetic core. Some protoss was standing just by it, clicking some buttons displayed in the empty air.

Looking a little around, Wit could see a mesh of protoss building, the golden & blue of Khalai mixed in with the gray & dark green of the Nerazim. In all honesty, beside the colors, there was no difference.

Seeing no better thing to do, the shroomy walked over to the lone Protoss. The most distinguishable thing? He was from Khalai caste (yes, the same as the 'tribe'), judging by his clothing, lack of armor, and the robust gauntlets that rather didn't serve for creating psi blades.

"Um… hello?" voice unsure, the question was asked.

The Protoss before him turned around. His face was… more easy going than most warriors? It's hard to tell with their lack of mouth, but his brows were certainly more relaxed, and his eyes weren't squinted. Coupled with something akin to a beard, he made a rather pleasant impression. The pain from losing Aiur was seen, shown in the barely glowing eyes, but that was it.

"I am Karax, a Phase Smith from the Khalai Caste. I was tasked with calibrating you to our warp network. Come over to that disk, it shouldn't take long."

Wit did just that. Standing in place, watching the working Protoss. Watching the screen floating before him, Karax started tapping the inmaterial buttons. A moment, the circle powered up, and created a wall of soft blue light. Additional circles appeared, floating up and down, like some kind of scan.

"Hm… Uhm. And… there. You are attuned to our grid. Now, I am sending you to executor Artanis, as instructed. If you feel some discomfort, contact me. It's supposed to be seamless, but was used only on protoss before.

Hexes replaced the circles, and a gentle pillar of light surrounded him. Then, the person within vanished, leaving Karax to his work again.

"You must admit, Admiral, that even if it's a very simple mode of transportation, it doesn't lack the dignified presence."

"Hmph"

Everyone on the Aleksander's bridge looked as someone in a normal spacesuit swam through the emptiness of the cosmos. It didn't make much of a sense, really. But DuGall and Alexei both were fairly certain that she was a psionic. Weird bullshit was supposed to be her forte.

Additionally, the psionic sensitivity was the kind of Evolution that the passengers of the supercarriers endured. Let's not forget that the original prisoners sent on this colonisation mission were mostly composed of body modders, who used genetic alteration, cyber technology or psychoactive drugs.

The appearance of psionic sensitive people wasn't that surprising, really. Question was… what about home? Officially, there were none. Unofficially…

Mina watched as her boss swam through the nothingness like water. Dolphin style. Finally reaching the invisible barrier, the short figure did somersault through the air, landing in a crouched position.

Rising up, Bogumila took off her helm, and said "Let's conquer our enemies!"

Mina just looked at her and her standard hostile environment suit. It was the civilian version, of course. The ghost version was full of those glowing lines, and had armor pieces. The helmet, on the other hand, stood out like a cat among dogs. It had a T shaped visor, it was rigid, metallic, and most importantly, it had a plume on its top. Considering the hair on the top looked rather orange, it didn't leave much to the imagination when it came to origins.

Just sighing to herself for the thousandth time, she steered the boat away from the giant flagship, towards their mission destination.

The Fox Lady, on the other hand, just kept sleeping, ignoring everything.

A soft shaking of earth could be felt under Pixie's and Marshmallow's feet/paws/hooves. The floating fairies didn't notice anything, for obvious reasons.

Pixie stopped draining one of the long, green mushrooms, and looked about, alerted. She was scourging energy from whatever source she could find. The zerg were out, mostly because they were dead, and still had not one, but TWO lingering sources of corruption. Her hair was sticking out, trying to catch any electricity in the air. Her skin was slick from slowly absorbing the moisture from air. Some other small plants were already drained from their life. Her eyes were glowing, taking in the energy from sunlight, however weak it could be in the cave.

But still, Pixie was barely standing beside her snow-white companion, taking in large gulps of air. The rumbling of earth intensified even more, then abruptly stopped. She waited with baited breath.

Suddenly, the Earth EXPLODED! And from it, a giant figure shot out, landing with earthshaking thud. Pixie let out a sigh of relief, she could recognize her sister's molebear everywhere. Maybe because it also was the only specimen in existence.

"Ohoho! Trixie spies something nice with her beautiful eyes! Trixie tells no lies! And your sister is here too, she looks absolutely frizzy tho."

Waiting for his buddy, Wit had a chance to look at the protoss gateway in more detail. It wasn't a building you could get inside, but more like… an obelisk? No, not exactly. It was like a pair of tongs, with the floating crystal in the empty space between them. From the other two sides emerged weird spikes, which almost touched the power source. And the rest? To tell the truth, it was just a base, which hid most of the electronics.

Wit itself appeared on a small platform at the edge of the whole thing, obviously designated spot for standard protoss. On the other side of construction was a bigger pad, probably for the dragoons.

Some metallic footsteps were heard, quickly revealing their belonging to Artanis. "Friend Wit, you finally arrived. Our current targets are Cerebrates, something that must be dealt with before anything else. Will you join us?"

Ziemowit looked at the leg, theoretically holding him up, but the 'tick tock' sword, embedded into the ground, and holding the Shroom up told a different story. "I am afraid I must avoid the frontlines, and let my limb regrow. That said, do you have some ranged weapon? I would be at least somewhat helpful that way."

Artanis looked for a moment at his rather thin leg, then closed his eyes for a moment. "I'am sorry my friend, but all our weapons are usable only with the Psionic power. Additionally, most of them have rather big sizes. Being used by our machines does that."

"Maybe… lead me to one you think has the highest chance of working with me, and I will see what I can do to help your war effort."

Artanis looked over their still growing camp. Some zerg attacks already took place, but the mere ground forces were instantly torn apart by the warriors of both tribes. The rest was in majority, as in flying zerg. Currently, both him, and his small friend were rather useless. The deep ravines that crisscrossed the terrain around certainly made the fighting difficult, for both sides.

"Judging by our current situation, I will even look for a weapon for myself."

Braxis was a frozen hell. Over 60% of its landform consisted of giant sheets of ice, and the rest were jagged mountains left by the glacial erosion. Mina was 'sitting' in the base, or more precisely, hovering with the rotors on low power. Stopping the engine would probably result in being totally frozen over. Even the forcefield wasn't strong enough to stop everything from the coldest planet in the Koprulu sector.

Earlier all the three of them were shivering rather violently, that is until Mila did a bit of magic. Now, there was the feeling of burning pyre inside her chest, shared among the three of them. What's more, a soft haze appeared around their bodies, especially seen on the fox lady. It was the heat fighting the cold, almost resulting in a steam.

Mina still didn't know what her boss could actually do, but making fire certainly wasn't her only attribute.

'It's another pink nara! And they look almost the same? I don't understand.'

Arabalika looked at Aranakin. 'Forgetful little aranara, Vana was saved by the Golden Nara twin's, now we have Pink nara siblings.'

The 'thin' aranara put its hands to its head and started to think.

On the other side of the cavern, Ixie jumped off her gigantic companion. Only to be instantly hugged by her shorter sibling. Feeling something wetting her tabard, and with her vision mostly obscured by the spiked out hair, she instantly understood. "Oh sis…"

Ixie put both of her hands on her sister's back, and carefully siphoned out her raw, unstable energy, effectively knocking her out. The hairs calmed down, and just remained frizzy. The moisture stopped being siphoned, leaving droplets of water all over the small pink haired girl. The middle triplet slowly sat at dawn, putting her sister's head in her lap, and started to gently stroke it.

"Color Trixie surprised. To be in an overloaded state for so long, and slay so many…" She looked at the myriad of corpses, mostly moved to block the entry to the cave. "Marshmallow," She called the white creature, which already walked over, and was now leaning against the massive olbear's leg. "What happened? Why is this cannon fodder so strong all of sudden?"

The hippogriff looked at her for a moment, then pointed with her beak towards the two floating fairies, close to that big, glowing tree? It was more like a giant bulb, with a few even bigger leafs jutting out of its core. Add to that the whole thing practically glowed with those purple lines running all over it, and it looked positively mystic.

Going over to them, she got straight to the point. "You, the spring cabbage and autumn radish, answer Trixie. What is that glowing plant, and what's with all those flowers radiating red & black, and why are those zerglings so strong?"

Aranakin quickly got closer, 'White nara can see us? Usually when nara grows up, they stop dreaming, which ends with forgetting Aranara, and not seeing them.'

"Trixie is Trixie, not some white nara. And of course Trixie sees you, as master illusionist, scryer and night admirer, Trixie is capable of seeing EVERYTHING. Now, answer Trixis' questions, pipsqueak."

The second, rotund forest fairy butted in, 'This is the Tree of Dreams, it maintains the Mahavanaranapna, dream version of Varanara, where all Aranara lives, together with our sleeping Lord of Verdure.'

"So, pretty much important. What about all this black stuff, hmm?"

This time, Aranakin had something to say. 'It's Marana, the black tide. It changes every critter that comes near for worse. The Heralds of Marana, those black flowers, if they are left to grow, they will change the Vana into Valuka.'

"Now that Trixie established that the threat is very big, tell Trixie, how to deal with it?"

"There, secret passage. It has practically no defenses, a very good place for a perfectly executed backstab, captain. Though beware the troops, the more mobile ones will immediately run over".

"Your group will take attention from the frontlines, and then the rest of my men will strike the weakened main entrances. But the siege tanks…"

"Captain, I can rush over and disable as many of them as I can."

"Hmm… If you are offering, then you can go ahead and do just that. It's not like I know what uses you have anyway…"

Bogumila let out a nearly silent sigh of relief. Being in the middle of a gunfight made her rather useless, but this way, she got a way to shine. She looked at Duran for a moment. He had this slight smile, never losing it.

She shivered, together with the fox beneath her. but it wasn't the frost. Or rather, not only. The skintight, somewhat thick hostile environment suit shielded her almost perfectly from the icy temperature. Almost, because even the marines in their armors complained about the temperature, it seems their suits also weren't enough.

On top of that, Mila had thrown over her kontusz, which hid the slightly tempting areas of her teen body. Those marines weren't gentlemen, more than half of them were resocialized criminals, at least from Duran's side. As the ending flourish, she had a helmet with glowing vizor atop her head, with comms system, of course.

Right, Samir Duran. She looked at him again, he wore only a beret on his head, and didn't seem affected by the weather at all. Mila returned to looking forward, at the enemy. Her head slowly started throbbing, salvia started pooling in mouth, which she desperately started to swallow. A light sense of vertigo overtook her, prompting her to support herself with hands against the fox's lady's back. Her stomach almost started doing flip flops, and Mila wasn't sure if she would throw up, or choke down on the salvia.

Suddenly, the fire inside her started to burn much stronger, and to a beat too! It synchronized with her heart, supporting her with fighting against the unexpected attack. A brief flare of truly vile influence flashed somewhere in the periphery of her senses, but vanished just as quick.

Her mostly unseen struggles were fortunately interrupted when the Captain ordered an assault.

"I'm afraid that this is the smallest model available, my friend. Made for protoss females, with exceptionally small build."

The two of them were standing before a forge, close to a control panel which served for replacing the weapons broken or lost. Currently, both of them were holding in hands the only weapon available for… normal protoss.

Wit looked at the glaive cannon and psionic amplifier before him. Sitting down, with back laid against the golden building, he tried to feel out the weapon. "It's… a clunky cannon. I would be able to shoot maybe ten times, and then faint." He looked up at Artanis. "Pistol would be more sensible in my case."

"Sorry my friend, but I am just a warrior, not an artificer. The only other weapons uploaded into this forge are different kinds of psi blades, or just for dragoons." He bowed his head a little. The dragoons were ever present, together with the aerial support, true. But it still was an oversight, capable of being catastrophic in unforeseen circumstances.

Wit didn't reply. The psi amplifier, which consisted of half a ring, a full ring, and a golden disk. Compared to other protoss tools of war, this one was calling out to him. Shuffling to the side, still in seated position, he stretched out his hands towards the amplifier, and beckoned it.

Artanis watched in silence, as the first ring, the half one and the biggest of them, slowly, ever so gently, started to rise. It levitated towards Wit, and then behind him, where it seemed to just silently click. The second ring, smaller, followed the firsts footsteps, and stopped somewhat inside the free space of the first one. Finally, the disk raised too, and attached itself into the empty air, in the middle of the medium ring. All of them just remained there, levitating in the air, and not moving an inch at the same time.

After a few minutes, they started to slowly spin in opposite directions, and with them, Ziemowit raised from the ground, still sitting with legs crossed. A moment later, the eye oculars in his mask blazed with blue energy.

"Does Trixie knows what to do?"

"Of course the great Trixie understands her mission perfectly. Don't try to doubt the great Trixie, oh powerful Trixie."

"Trixie was just making sure that Trixie will work as intended. And, Trixie must admit, Trixie's work is, as always, a Masterwork."

The pony copy of Trixie stuck a haughty pose, with a raised foreleg and muzzle held high. This Trixie had platinum white mane and tail, just as original. Pony Trixie's fur was royal blue, the same as the skin color of human Trixie. And you can't forget the witch hat, coupled with a cape, all covered in glitter-y, yellow stars. And, of course, the horn sticking out of the pony's forehead.

Ixie didn't know if she was watching the biggest eggo & narcissism trip ever. Or maybe the copy meeting the origins, which honestly was going both ways. If not for the somewhat see-through body of the pony illusion, Ixie would have gone mad trying to figure out which Trixie was the Trixe.

"Watch and be amazed, as the Great and Powerful Trixie saves the day with a mighty important information!" And she galloped off.

"Make Trixie proud, Trixie!"

"Egh… Couldn't you send out one of your stolen protoss observers?"

Trixe, the original, turned towards her, hands on hips, and a big smirk plastered on her face. "Of course Trixie couldn't. Trixie is a master of illusion, not wireless connection. Without touching one of those big flying oculars, Trixe can't do anything."

"Why must you torment me so, Eldest Sister?" Her response was just an even bigger smile, and some chuckling under the nose.

The aranara hovered to the side, fascinated. That was a great sense of humor, at last by their standards.

Author's bla bla:

I have a little problem with naming Ziemowit other than him, even if he is supposed to be genderless. So it got me thinking, and I will make him into 'them', but a true 'them'. You know, something like Kerrigan is the Swarm, so she can be theoretically called them.

Of course, there will be history added to it, not some half assed redcon.