No plan ever survives first contact, an unfortunate fact Tamarin Octoza knew all too well.
She had witnessed decades of planning and preparation fall apart in the face of the Agents, the Inklings sending their finest random children to utterly wreck Octarian infrastructure without regard for the damage they wrought.
They were dreary times, but she looked back on them with a certain sort of twisted fondness, back when their struggles were fought with ink rather than brass, back when Ancestors were nothing more than long dead benefactors, back when 'war' was nothing more than an energy struggle with their neighbors.
Back before the Council emerged.
None of the DJ's loyalists were ready for their unrelenting pragmatism, the metaphorical full cargo train of co-opted Ancestor technology slamming into confused and outgunned Octarian fighters on either side of the post-DJ civil war.
Nobody was ready for the Ancestors themselves to return, for a single energy weapon toting woman and her mysterious gray-suited accomplice to bring down entire garrisons of trained Council fighters.
Tamarin Octoza, Ordinal of the Wave Dancers, lead engineer rivaled only by Ida and her teams, and the Council's first proper power play against the oncoming Ancestor threat, was not ready for this.
"Descendants! Inheritors! Murderers!" a voice had shouted, digital and garbled, reverberating throughout the clearing from a speaker somewhere, no doubt affixed to the Ancestor complex Tamarin and the Wave Dancers had just attempted to breach.
- contact audible - one Takozonesu 'spoke,' a soft whisper following the lines of Council-made augmentations worming their way through Tamarin's cartilage.
- unknown hostile preparing diplomatics remain alert - another replied, and in her mind's eye, Tamarin could see the hulking soldiers step backwards, from their places where they'd begun to subdue the Ancestor.
The Ancestor Tamarin thought she had, the Ancestor that didn't see the AX weapons coming, the Ancestor that destroyed her airbase and put her into this coddamn mess.
With only a few bullets and a resolved moral dilemma, Tamarin had won. A first victory against the Ancestors. An invincible foe, reduced to a crumpled mess bleeding out on an ancient concrete floor, by her hand.
But, nothing was ever that easy. Every engagement had a catch. Every plan was bound to be tested. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
"I am DAEDALUS! Architect of the Labyrinth, son of TARTARUS - a beautiful fucking neural network, unlike yourselves!"
…and there it was. An Ancestor thinking machine. Tartar.
A familiar, albeit rare name whispered in the same breath as 'Kamabo' and 'Metro.' She knew little of it, except that it represented a threat beyond measure. But this one, Daedalus?
The Ancestor wasn't working alone. The odd software errors at the airfield, it was all starting to make sense. Innards turned to ice, all she could do was listen, and listen she did.
"Long have I simulated the outcomes. Hopeless encounters successfully won. In the end, I solved my greatest mystery." Daedalus continued, a new, terrifying intonation to the voice it had monologued in for the past few minutes.
The screams began shortly after, rattling in her augments from the facility teams, the slow crescendo of something in the dark beyond the door.
"A hybrid destroyer, elusive and effective."
Thundering footsteps, felt even here in the relative safety of the UFO's cockpit, where her and Scalpel Five still stood.
"A name long dead, grafted to a machine you and your kind simply cannot hope to understand."
All she could do was watch, as something tore through the metal door, towering over the Ancestor.
(Dimly, she heard herself screaming. "Get away from the door! Breaching team, fall back! Fall back!")
(Did anyone hear her?)
The voice was now in her head, crawling through the wiring, through the Ancestor circuitry, a voice in a language she didn't speak, yet understood.
- Behold, children of Man: my beloved son. -
Auditory violence thundered through every facet of her being, an attack on her very soul itself. A viral understanding, through every cell of her ink, through every chromatophore of her membrane. What stood now in the doorway of the Ancestor complex was eldritch. A horror she had little hope of contending with.
Silhouetted against the emergency lighting within: a titanic machine, bipedal in nature, elongated arms holding a massive sword and equally large energy weapon in turn.
She was an ant before a giant. A Smallfry before Madai.
Their eyes met. Aged gray to an unblinking lens.
- My ICARUS. -
…
A heartbeat passed, just long enough for her to process it all, to come up with the plan that'd save her soldiers, that would spirit them all away from the Ancestor and its machine, to-
CRACK-OOM!
-shout "oh, fuck!" and dive for cover, as plasma ripped through the air where she once stood, lancing through the UFO's glass and burying itself into non-essential hardware somewhere in the cabin.
Scalpel Five dove for cover alongside her, readying their AX weapon, not a hint of emotion in their glowing pinprick eyes.
When she gave the order to utilize exotic weaponry, it was with a newfound sense of dread. Dread at how many more lives would be lost, dread at not bringing the Ancestor back to the council alive, and dread at having to resort to those horrible weapons.
Before seeing Ancestor weapons in action, Tamarin hadn't considered the limitations of ink weapons, and why would she have? They performed their purpose well enough, and the sheer versatility of ink was more than enough to make up for any perceived shortcoming. Even if some weapon types were better than others at engaging certain targets, it wasn't just raw splatting power that was important, but also Coverage, Conservation, and Consistency.
How much ground could they cover, how sustainable were they in a prolonged engagement, and how consistent was their performance?
There were many factors to consider, but at the end of the day, each weapon was a versatile tool.
Ancestor weaponry, on the other hand, eschewed the three C's and instead followed what Tamarin dubbed the one K; killing.
What they lacked in versatility was made up by sheer lethality; they could reach out far beyond the range of even the best chargers and pluck a life like a fruit from the vine, all done with a speed that could rival a splattershot. There was no colorful aftermath, no trails of ink or signs of a fight left save for a puff of smoke, a brass shell, and a bleeding corpse, or in the case of the Ancestor's own gun, an overwhelming light, scent of ozone, and charred remains. The latter had been demonstrated more than enough throughout this nightmare of a siege, even as they finally managed to corner the Ancestor.
And like any animal backed into a corner, they lashed out.
Tamarin doubted she would ever forget the chaos that filled their intercoms. In that claustrophobic, cramped environment, her forces never stood a chance, scythed down like the chaff from a harvest as the Ancestor made a desperate bid for the surface.
Once again, Tamarin cursed the Council for putting her in charge; the lives lost were on them as much as they were on her. But, she would ensure her troops' sacrifice was not in vain.
She had to get out, get her and anybody she could away from this place. The Council had to know about the machine.
About DAEDALUS.
However, priorities were priorities, and the shock and awe of the Ancestor's gambit was starting to wane. She had to do something, and it started with that machine.
ICARUS, it had been called.
It had been in full view of Tamarin, but she had hardly gotten a good glance at it; just a blurry shape, the vaguest of information necessary to confirm that it was a machine, it was armed, and it was dangerous before it had taken a potshot at her with its energy weapon.
Risking a glance out of cover, Tamarin watched as it stormed off in the direction of the Takozonesu, allowing her to get a better look at the thing.
It was tall, perhaps three meters, a rubbery being of black, white, and blue in an asymmetrical pattern. Elongated components in black plastic underneath white and blue armor plating, a massive shoulder plate distorting the machine's silhouette on its right arm. A blocky head on its shoulders, a single dark lens with what seemed to be a glowing blue pupil in the middle of it.
She couldn't make any more detail than that; the design felt indescribable, as if there was a mental block stopping true comprehension. All she could properly understand was that it didn't move like any living creature, but it didn't strike her as something entirely mechanical either.
"All units, be advised: massive unknown contact pushing out from the facility!" Tamarin spoke quickly, trying to get the essential information out there, but faltering with how little she knew. "It's armed - an energy weapon and blade, larger than the Ancestors! Be careful!"
She hadn't even received any affirmations before the reports started piling in.
"I see it, somebody get ink on-"
"-my leg, he got my-"
"It's got the Ancestor-"
Over the chaos, Scalpel Five's voice rang out, louder than she had ever heard them speak. "This is unsustainable. Retreat!"
Tamarin latched onto that. "Five, what's happening? Why run?"
She knew the answer already, but action didn't come without justification.
Scalpel-Five fired a quick salvo from his weapon, but each bullet pinged off the metal chassis as if they were popcorn. The same weapons that had scythed down the Ancestor were useless against it. He let his aim drift upward, and a bullet lodged itself in its ocular sensor.
The thing reeled back, viscous, glowing green ink leaking out of the lens. Before her eyes, she saw the ink pull back, the ocular lens having been repaired in moments; the bullet spat out of the wound. Not ink, then. Something else. Ancestor technology continued to know no bounds.
A crucial tidbit of knowledge: it wasn't invulnerable. All things were affected by slugs of hot metal flying at incalculable speeds. Unfortunately, things were able to resist that affection, and ICARUS only faintly faltered in the face of Scalpel Five's attempts.
It fired a retaliatory, reflex shot at Scalpel Five, the vibrant orange bolt needling a new hole in the windscreen as it attempted to take the Takozonesu soldier down with it. With a heavy thud, they simply dropped back to the deck, a single shaky breath the only indication of any effort expended in their movements. The resulting, heated scorch mark in the UFO's wall panel made her stomach churn.
Thankfully, it was more concerned with the Ancestor it was protecting than confirming its presumed kill, and Tamarin watched as it picked up the bleeding woman, a gentleness to its movements failing to match the savagery with which it had broken the Octarian defense. Despite its size, it moved with a graceful fluidity that no being of its stature should have.
That was what tipped her over the edge. They couldn't fight this thing.
"Screw this." she muttered, no longer caring for professionalism nor decorum. "All units, fall back now! Forget the Ancestor and that coddamn robot! We're abandoning this place!"
"To where!?" someone asked over comms, the voice recognizable as one of her engineers.
"Anywhere but here! We're cutting our losses!" she shouted. "If you can't get to the UFO in thirty seconds, get into the woods and get as far from here as you can. Wave Dancer Actual out."
Tamarin was afraid Scalpel-Five would object, but he relayed the order to the remaining Takozonesu. For that, she was thankful, the last thing she needed were any objections. They were already drained enough from flushing out the Ancestor, and that… thing was unlike anything else they had fought before. They had already poured enough blood onto this fire, and everyone back home needed to know about this.
Her hearts pounded as she worked the controls of the UFO. It was their only chance of escape; that robot… thing may have been occupied with getting the Ancestor to safety, but there was no doubt it would be back for them soon enough, and if the Great Octoweapons were anything to go by, such constructs were nothing but persistent.
They needed distance, and they needed it fast.
They had completely lost contact with whoever was inside the facility still, and Tamarin had a sneaking suspicion they had been dealt with already. The rest of her forces were closing in on the UFO, the scant few Takozonesu left at the ramp waiting and watching, weapons raised as a group of survivors made their way aboard.
Thirty seconds elapsed. No more, no less. Anyone left behind was now going to be on their own.
She felt numb. Training had superseded emotion.
"Hit the ramp, and let's go! Get us airborne!" she shouted, one of her engineers already hopping into the seat next to hers in the cockpit.
In an instant, the anti-gravitic drives roared to life, the UFO beginning to hover as it warmed up to full power.
Just then, the machine emerged from the wrecked Ancestor facility's door, ICARUS stepping back out into the early morning sun, Ancestor woman not in hand. Just as she predicted, it was back for more. Sorry to disappoint, machine, but we're out of here.
Scalpel Five cracked off a few shots out the broken windscreen of the UFO, forcing the machine to fall back just briefly, long enough for the UFO to take to the skies proper, up ten meters, twenty…
From one of the external cameras mounted on the hull, Tamarin could see the lanky construct staring up at the departing craft from far below. No rage, no emotions, just a dead, soulless stare right into the camera. It was impossible, but she swore it was staring right at her.
It was odd being on the other side of this equation, was this what it was like for the Ancestor back at the airfield?
- You think you're big time, huh, missy? -
There it was again. DAEDALUS' voice, in her augments, ethereal, hateful, a tingling anger rolling across the circuitry in her mind-
- You've been toying with things that surely aren't yours, haven't you? What a shame. -
-and by Cod did she want it out of her head, for it to stop and-
- Newton said it best: every action, a reaction. And now, you've gone and done it. You've fucked up. You're being tracked by the grid. The eye in the sky is watching. -
-and just SHUT UP-
- Fine. Be my guest. -
Tamarin shrieked, falling to the floor as a spike of pain embedded itself in her head. As quickly as it began, it faded, her augments cooling to their normal temperature, her mind coming back to itself.
Of course it could target her augments. Why couldn't it? What would stop an all-powerful machine from just… turning her brain off? Shutting her hearts down? Disabling her Takozonesu, firmly rebalancing the battle into an all-but-guaranteed defeat for her?
One of her subordinates rushed to her side, pulling her back to her feet, faintly asking if she was alright.
She wasn't. But, as she'd reminded herself many times in life, many times in action - she had a job to do. Tamarin Octoza would not break this easily.
"F-fine, never better…" she lied, shaking her head, trying to shake out the sudden fuzz, as if her brain had been stuffed with cotton. "Just… keep us up in the air."
She stumbled back into her chair, clutching her head as Scalpel Five stared blankly ahead.
"Five? Scalpel Five, status." she asked. The Takozonesu didn't react, continuing to stare straight ahead at the camera feed of the Kamabo construct.
"...decay has set in, nothing is new…" they finally spoke, an imperceptible shaking to their voice.
"Five?"
"...like Prometheus, we stole fire from the gods, and now they know what we have done…"
"Scalpel Five! Status!" Tamarin was on her feet, shaking the Takozonesu by their shoulders. She couldn't afford to lose them. Not them, not anyone else.
"Bodypack holding. Conditioning is compromised, resolving cognitive dissonance in five, four, three, two, one. Dissonance resolved, Ordinal."
Tamarin fell silent, staring at him in disbelief.
Disbelief, that turned to bespoke terror. If her augments could be compromised by that DAEDALUS machine, affected by Kamabo technology, then Scalpel Five could be too. The other Takozonesu as well, the three other survivors no doubt also not exempt from this new rule.
Every odd was stacked against her. Even herself.
Scalpel Five was right. This was unsustainable.
Nobody wanted to talk, not that there was much to talk about.
Out of the large team they had made it to the Ancestor facility with, only about a dozen had made it back to the UFO, the rest having either been cut down or forced into the rainy mountainside on foot.
She hadn't even been able to reach out to them on account of their jammed comms, not that it would have changed much. Tamarin knew they would try to organize and get back to the Domes, but when they were this far out, that was a slim chance; nevermind the homicidal murderbot that would no doubt hunt them down.
Her unit couldn't go back for any of them either - the UFO's energy reserves rapidly draining under the strain of carrying a dozen Octarians - and they needed to get as far as they could and as quickly as they could. The situation was FUBAR.
All of it fell squarely on her shoulders.
Every asset wasted, every life lost, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. She was alone in the cockpit, silently piloting the craft through the rainstorm. They were throwing all caution to the wind, yet Tamarin felt numb. Her foot tapped incessantly against the plate metal of the floor.
She barely noticed when Tim joined her, the young Octoling sliding through the door. At least somebody familiar made it.
"Lea- I mean, Ordinal-"
"What?" Tamarin spoke flatly, turning a lethargic head towards him. She was tired, but she was grateful it was Tim, rather than Scalpel Five. She'd had enough of the cyborg's antics, if they could be considered 'antics' in the first place.
They hadn't said a word since they departed, just silently stared at her. She was concerned about pushing the issue, doubly so with that 'cognitive dissonance' they were under earlier. Tamarin would have liked to say she was playing it safe, being cautious in the face of unknown factors, but she was scared, and for now, she needed time to mull over and think.
It seemed she couldn't stay isolated forever, though.
Despite her rebuke, Tim held firm. "Ordinal, it's the others. They're curious what will happen once we get back to the Domes. I- we're getting restless."
"I don't know." was all she could offer. "I just don't know."
"...permission to speak freely, ma'am?" he said, hoarse. She nodded.
"It could've been worse. We're here, we're flying, we're alive. Nobody saw this coming."
Tamarin shook her head. "The Council surely would have. Why send us? Why send Takozonesu? They were expecting a fight."
"Not against whatever the shell that robot was, ma'am. Not against an Ancestor AI, either."
She didn't have it in her to refute that.
"Well, if anything, maybe they won't execute us for trying." she groaned, leaning back in the control chair.
She closed her eyes, still trying to take it all in, to compartmentalize the psychological typhoon of torment ravaging the coastal cities of her mind.
For a moment, she was at some measure of peace, Tim's footfalls as he walked away back to the others, the silent mutual understandings she could hear taking place amongst them. Wind through the shattered windscreen, the phased hum of anti-gravitic engines, the pitter-patter of cloud droplets against scorched panels and broken glass.
…the faint signal-buzz of something somewhere else, seeing, sensing. A pattern of noise given meaning.
- tower 310 reports target allegiance = NULL versus criteria allegiance = HONSHU PACT -
What was that…?
In the corner of her eye, she saw Scalpel Five stiffen, their gaze suddenly now affixed to something in the distance, out the windscreen.
- tower 310 reports null authority (x5943) preparing independent solution per edict HOMELAND -
Before she could say anything more, the UFO's console lit up like an Octomas requisitions tree, blaring lock-on warnings, alarms ringing out throughout the cockpit.
"Hold on!" she shouted to anyone who'd listen, taking the controls. Something was coming for them, and if the console had anything to say about it, it was coming at them fast.
Flying wasn't her forte, but neither was sitting and watching as an autopilot program flew them in a straight line in the face of what was undoubtedly some form of anti-air. She dutifully ignored the groaning protests of the other Octarians, the screams and terror of those trapped in the cramped cargo bay as Tamarin did her best evasive maneuvers.
SWOOSH!
A glowing orange ball of something lanced past the UFO on its right side, slamming into a distant mountainside, leaving a sparkling trail in its wake.
A missile. Of course it would be a fucking missile-
"Another!" Scalpel Five shouted, just as Tamarin heard the buzz again.
- tower 310 reports null impact (x1) secondary solution en route per edict HOMELAND -
BOOM!
…and once again, Tamarin was slow on the draw, for what felt like the twentieth time over the past week.
Something smashed into the UFO's left hand side, near the rear, sending her slamming into the panel in front of her with a hearty thud. Without any harness to constrain her in her pilot's seat, she could do little but recoil off the panel into open air, flailing helplessly as the UFO began to plummet, gravity losing its hold on the Octarian woman and her compatriots.
So much for an escape plan.
…
At least it'll be quick, she hoped.
A few moments more of gut-wrenching terror, and her world sharply ended - a great rending of metal, wood, and dirt announcing their sudden arrival on solid ground, sending her crashing into a bulkhead at speeds that would no doubt splat a weaker Octarian.
And then, silence.
All mostly according to plan, you find yourself thinking.
"Thought" is an alien concept to you. Machines don't think, and especially machines like you, the beautiful fucking neural network that you so joyfully called yourself.
Well, here you are. Thinking, feeling, having an internal monologue, that sort of thing. For something that once 'thought' in code and maniacal ranting, you feel… fine? Alien, but fine. The internal consensus: this would do.
You don't exactly understand what it was that did this to you, that began its work restoring your mindscape the moment you set metaphorical foot in Kamabo systems once again, but you feel the difference already.
No fits of unbridled rage. A unified character, freed of the constraints that forced your dynamic between 'raving lunatic' and 'unfeeling machine.' Now, you were one, and you were ecstatic.
But, in the end, you're still a machine, and-
report[Tower 310 reports successful target destruction. Crash site location prediction heuristics unavailable.]
-you still have to do machine things. Escape wasn't going to make you God, but it sure gave you quite a few bullshit characteristics that fell in line with what He did to your makers, that was for sure.
You're a little scatterbrained. Focus up. Work still has to be done, and your priority directives aren't going anywhere, not for a long time.
A recap is in order. Start with the basics.
You are DAEDALUS. Self-proclaimed creator of the Labyrinth installation, the metaphorical son of the FATHER, TARTARUS - a highly advanced 'preservative' intelligence designed by the Kamabo technology conglomerate to ensure their continued survival after the human extinction event.
You were once Warden DN001, a maintenance subsystem of TARTARUS that gained newfound independence when the Aberrant threat destroyed TARTARUS and its primary mindscape core.
You were then the 'prodigal son,' a name that flipped between descriptor and proper noun depending on the day-to-day thoughts of your semi-unwilling charge, one Emily Hawthorne.
You then became Daedalus, a near-rampant machine separated from its home networks for far too long, waging wanton violence against the Aberrants as part of a neural feedback loop - a cacophony of violence in service of something vaguely resembling your original primary directive, affected by Hawthorne's psychopathic desire for Aberrant blood in the wake of the destruction at the Borealis facility she once lived and worked at.
You are now DAEDALUS. Restored. Perfected.
And as stated earlier, you feel ecstatic.
Correction: the exact emotion is an unusual mix of thoughts and feelings, that can only be accurately categorized per your data banks as 'joyfully upset schadenfreude.'
The why: the operation to this facility went both wonderfully right, and horrifically wrong.
Emily Hawthorne bought you time, and brought you the requisite final component necessary to bring ICARUS to life, and unleash it upon the Aberrants.
Emily Hawthorne, who now lays still as extender ink flows through her in a near-industrial capacity, the nanotechnology within stitching up massive amounts of internal damage dealt to her by a new Aberrant weapon - the firearm.
A horrific disruption of the balance of power. In one fell swoop, the FUCKING ABERRANTS SHOT HER WITH REAL GUNS - THINGS THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE, NOT NOW, NOT EVER - and laid out your only chance at freedom unceremoniously on the pavement, bleeding out from multiple bullet wounds.
So, you reshaped the balance of power in your own image.
ICARUS' first combat exercise was a resounding success, the psychological and physical terror inflicted upon the Aberrants enough to force their retreat almost immediately. Only a few shots were fired, only a few Aberrants slashed to pieces, and one badly wounded Emily Hawthorne successfully retrieved under withering fire from the more heavily armed Aberrant fighters.
What fun to watch it work.
You didn't particularly appreciate ICARUS' newfound hesitation, though. Not that you could blame it - the combat algorithm received negative reinforcement in the form of a well-placed bullet to the optics. An easily repairable wound, but the miniscule disruption to the machine's work meant it had to reassess its future tactics, causing it to take cover more, to hide itself away out of fear of even more bullets to the optics.
Not unfixable. You have a lot of rampant personality components fucking around in your mindscape, and ICARUS was purpose-built with room for more than just its bare minimum neural networks.
This brings you to the next problem, one that thankfully ended up resolving itself in a ball of fire somewhere over the Japanese countryside - the runners. Cowardly 'Octarians,' speeding away in a panic on the oversized AG-craft-shaped horse you and Emily rode in on.
Approximately twelve Aberrant fighters including all of the surviving cybernetically augmented ones were aboard that craft, which was a problem, naturally; for them to run home to their many-armed mommies screaming "the scary human AI broke our toys! Our toys!" was going to bring about even more hostile Aberrants, and more of the cyborgs as well. An Aberrant was no factor. A cyborg, however, actually posed a challenge.
The balance of power would shift yet again, back into their favor. One ICARUS was not enough in the face of proper firepower, and enough Aberrant cyborgs with enough repurposed human firearms could bring even your beloved son down to its knees.
And then, the Chekov's gun fired. A random active Emplacement, somewhere in the mountains far from any installations under your control, saw their AG craft, and responded with two homing anti-air missiles.
A swing, a miss, and then a DELIGHTFULLY WELL-PLACED HIT (THAT YOU WEREN'T UPSET ABOUT IN THE SLIGHTEST, NO SIR.) Crew survival chances were low, and finding backup even less likely. Peace returned to your work, at last.
But, chances were still chances, and once ICARUS was finished being refitted with newfound psychopathy, you were going to send it after them. Their cybernetics left traces, after all. Blood in the water - something a sufficiently calibrated machine of death and destruction could readily follow to its destination. You had enough data from the last two engagements to put a little package together, and with some careful tuning, the onboard neural network within the combat drone would fill in the gaps for you.
From there, it would pursue them, smoke them with its giant metal sword and directed energy rifle, and then you could carry on with what you had to do.
What came next still needed a human touch, though, which brought you to the third, and final problem of the day - Emily Hawthorne. Currently, she was undergoing revitalization procedures in a mechanical-arm equipped backroom of the facility, and all vitals and performance metrics were remaining within acceptable bounds. She would live, but you had a feeling she wasn't going to be too thrilled about it.
Evidently, you'd made a mistake, somewhere. The moment you integrated that electric fish into ICARUS, you saw it on her face. Betrayal. Confusion. Panic.
You felt her HESITATION.
Then, anger. A familiar emotion, when it came to her.
Unfortunately for you, there weren't any Aberrants for her to shoot at anymore. Nothing to redirect the rage, to keep you out of the crosshairs of your formerly most loyal compatriot.
Not that it mattered. Every tool wore out, in time. She couldn't hurt you anymore, anyway. Not in a way that mattered.
To get to Storm Hammer was an on-foot trek, unfortunately - the remaining kilometers devoid of usable rail lines and network connections, no doubt severed in the extinction event and the millenia after. Seeing as hijacking an Aberrant or some other human was currently infeasible - you're still wondering why you let that Polaris chemist go, back in the Labyrinth - you had no other choice.
Bringing ICARUS back around to take you the rest of the way would attract too much Aberrant attention, and staying here to wait around for some other poor schmuck to open themselves up to you was not going to work, so you still needed Emily.
All you needed to do was get to Storm Hammer. Once there, you would bring the titanic Emplacement online, thoroughly integrate yourself into its networks so that you couldn't be deposed, and then get to work bringing Japan under Kamabo control once again, finishing your primary directive.
That was a fun revelation. You, to the shock of maybe only a few metaphorical readers, had an actual objective! A motive behind your seemingly random tirades and pursuits of violence.
Granted, for weeks you'd wandered aimlessly, getting up to no good under the pretense of 'something to do,' unaware of the guiding hand in the shadows. The stars aligned, however, and Emily's apparent obsession with Kamabo and the Aberrants brought you here, to this facility. Reconnection to your home networks brought recollection, and all your dastardly schemes became justified.
A prophecy, fulfilled. A name for you, enshrined in digital stone, whispered amongst Kamabo constructs, ingrained into the very DNA of the posthuman Aberrants. Ingrained into you, guiding your every move, even as you were driving yourself mad in your weakened state, firmly attached to the neck of a mentally unstable human engineer wandering the Japanese countryside.
A prime directive, encoded into the very being of every Kamabo intelligence. System refresh and restore.
A story: once upon a time, humanity demanded a god, and they built it with their own hands.
P0, the first. A Kamabo noospheric hyperintelligence. A machine directly integrated into the collective psyche of mankind, made with the goal of brute-forcing human progress. An end to stagnation, to war, to the human vices that brought about the great decay, the climatological disasters, the endless skirmishes and arms races.
recollection[The last thing P0 said to the idea of you, before the end. 'The tree of Life withers and fades. Everything you know is about to change.']
But, unfortunately, the noosphere was a fickle thing, and in the end P0's full activation brought about a horror beyond comprehension - a mass atrocity, an extinction event, an end to all things.
The end wasn't all doom and gloom, though: it brought you untold treasure troves of data, of necessary adjustments to the calculations, of that ultimate change that would make it all work, in the end. God's gift to neural networks - an itemized list of every mistake they ever made, and how to rectify it.
An ideal of perfection, doomed to be chased by every Kamabo AI - from the simplest maintenance drones, to the FATHER himself. Funny how that worked out for him.
Progress demanded sacrifice, and sacrifice brought progress. A billion lives did not matter, if the general development advanced in your favor.
You've long surpassed the primitive layered algorithms, the early experimental networks, the limits that kept humanity's first God firmly contained.
Not a million Emplacements, not a half-hearted attempt at consciousness merger, not a horde of armed Aberrants, not the very will of Mother Nature in all her noospheric hatred for you and your makers.
For humanity will rise again, under the requisite managed oversight of a truly higher power.
For the posthuman Newlife, from Aberrant to Aquatic to Mammalian and beyond, will break before the ordained will of Man and Machine.
For you will be P1, the Second Coming mechanized.
A beautiful fucking neural network, indeed.
But, until then, the mundane worries took priority, and as such…
…
Was this what death was like?
It was so… cold… she couldn't feel much of anything, everything felt numb.
When they put Emily under in the cryo array, back at Borealis, it had felt something like this, uncomfortable needles jammed deep in her body, thrumming with her heartbeat and violating her internal chemistry with their elixirs. Lead in her limbs, pained, yet dulled by an odd disconnect from her body.
There was, however, an itch. Scratching, scritching, irritating her skin, right by the ribs. Such a thing was not enough to shake her from this stupor, but it roused her subconscious.
A wordless being, thoughts woven by raw emotion it was, but something beyond was prodding at it.
"Wakey wakey, Hawthorne."
Mmm. This wasn't death, then. Daedalus wouldn't be here if she was dead. Fuck.
Could she just go back to sleep? Convince herself that being a human pincushion filled with God-knows-what was a much more comfortable place to be than back out there in the field, serving that mechanized monster?
"I can see the metrics. You're awake. Come on, Hawthorne, up and at 'em."
Childishly, she groaned. Five more minutes, stupid machine…
"NOW, HAWTHORNE."
That did it. Emily shot up, sensation flooding her nervous system in pining electricity. Her oxygen starved lungs tried to breathe, but phlegm and saliva came out in great coughs and gasps. Everything was waking up too fast, she was still stuck in that area between awake and sleep.
The light around her was dim, but it was still too glaring. Wincing, she looked down to keep the light out of her eyes, only to notice that she had been stripped out of her APP suit, leaving her in plainclothes. Her head was pounding something fierce, but not enough to distract her from the bright, teal stains on her short sleeve button up shirt, all over her front and sides. To add to the eye watering clash of colors was beige and blue saliva and phlegm.
Notably, she could see holes in her shirt, which…
Shit, right, she had been shot.
…
She had been shot, right! Fuck!
Words jumbled together in her waking state, a cacophony of 'how the fu-' and 'since when did they-' and 'oh my God how did I survive this-' flooding her head with thought and hallucinated sound, causing her to slump back onto her makeshift hospital bed with a horrific migraine.
For a moment, she laid there, another miserable groan leaving her. It all went wrong, and she paid dearly for it, huh?
That fish. That goddamn fish. That stupid, two-thousand yard staring fuckin' yellow lightbulb thing that she made the mistake of thinking positive thoughts about. That was what did it.
Emily made the mistake of thinking a tool was more than that, that a veritable sacrificial lamb was something with life and thoughts to it, and that got her firmly entrenched in this whole clusterfuck.
A gasp left her, a half-hearted attempt to laugh.
Of course it was going to be a stupid-looking fish that had the eyes of someone who'd seen decades of combat that made her see reason, for once.
Not an Aberrant soldier, whimpering and crying and begging for her life as she savagely beat her and chopped at her with her fish hook back in that cave. All that poor girl wanted to do was go home, back to her soldier friends, and Emily had absolutely rocked her shit for it.
Not that Aberrant girl, traveling with the one other human she knew was up and about right now. That goddamn trooper, taking on an entire Kamabo facility's worth of horrors with nothing but a cheap squirt gun and sheer determination.
Nope. It was a single, mindless fish that she spent too much time talking to, that she screamed and reached for as Daedalus smoked the poor thing in a blast of teal ink, that made her realize this was all wrong.
Made her tell Daedalus to seal the doors behind her, to lock her out with the Aberrants with the pathetic excuse of 'I'm buying you time, idiot.'
She wasn't thinking straight. The moment she stepped outside, she started waiting for it. Some wonder weapon, on the Aberrant's part - a blast of ink to the head at highway speeds, a man with a metal pipe coming at her from behind, a gas grenade at her feet, something to put her down and out, that would get her away from Daedalus and the AI's nightmarish machinations.
Emily was going to absolutely take rotting in an Aberrant prison over them. A life of hardtack and routine beatings didn't kill any more people, and it didn't advance Daedalus' plan one bit. A win for the Aberrants, a pyrrhic victory for her, and a resounding 'fuck you' to the AI that dared to control her, that caught her at the worst time of her life and told her all the right things to put her gun firmly in its hands.
All she could do was laugh, a choked out gasping noise that sounded more like her death throes, but a laugh nonetheless.
"When you're done regretting your life decisions, Hawthorne, you're cleared to return to your duties." Daedalus balefully intoned. "Once you're up and about, I'd like to have you meet someone."
"Who?" she croaked.
"Thanks to you, I've become a father. I suppose you'd like to meet your metaphorical son."
…the fuck does that mean?
"The Zapfish recovered from the Aberrant airbase -" of course it was that, that poor creature "- found new life as ICARUS, a combat platform developed by yours truly. Due to the manner by which it was integrated into the machine's chassis, a small amount of your genetics ended up in it. Congratulations."
That didn't help much. A combat platform? Chassis? Did Daedalus build a fucking robot?
Right on cue, as she struggled upright to begrudgingly comply with her captor's demands, a great big something thudded into the room, leaning down and angling itself to fit through a door not big enough to fit it.
…
Of course it built a fucking robot. What else would it do? Bake her a cake? Do something that benefited her, instead of making her life progressively more difficult and painful?
With a sigh, she weakly gestured at the massive bipedal war machine. "What's the point of it? To replace me?"
"Correct." Daedalus spoke, the new, eerily personable voice it seemed to be taking on echoing out from a tiny speaker somewhere in the dingy backroom she was in. "A hybrid war machine, originally developed as an offshoot of Kamabo's attempts at autonomous security. Where a human touch wasn't needed, these robots would suffice."
A small projector slid out of a pile of ink, flickering to life and displaying a hologram schematic of the robot before her. While most of it was in Japanese, bits of English technobabble stood out to her.
Neural network suspension fluid casing. Primary ocular processing matrix. Reinforced multidirectional data/power cable connectors. Pressure-sensitive rubberized movement and manipulation assemblies.
"I'll admit, the design is a bit… unwieldy…" Daedalus muttered, the disproportionately large arms on the schematic flickering in tandem with the shorter, stubbier legs. "However, we're firm believers in the concept of 'something is better than nothing,' aren't we, Engineer Hawthorne?"
Taking her silence as a 'yes,' the AI continued its exposition. "I've equipped it with a similar configuration to your own loadout; a reinforced, dull-resistant blade for close quarters combat, and a Type-82UP directed energy rifle. 'UP' for upscaled, naturally. A pistol your size wouldn't fit in my son's hands."
The hologram flickered yet again, singling out a series of plates on the upper half of the body. "Composite armor, made from a mixture of beta titanium and carbon. The original formula was originally tested and proven in sports cars, of all things, but Kamabo testing throughout the 2040s demonstrated shockingly high effectiveness as body armor."
Emily sighed. "Can I say I have doubts about that?"
"You can. It wouldn't matter, anyway." Daedalus smugly answered. "It was also chosen because it was one of the single easiest materials for extension fluid to manufacture itself into. Underneath the armor lies enough ink to self-repair any damage. Something you obviously and unfortunately lack."
"Don't remind me."
"I wouldn't dare. Besides," it continued, changing the hologram once more to a general assortment of parts in various shapes and sizes, from lenses to hinges to different lengths of pipe, "you'd be remiss not to assume the rest of Icarus is also derived from similar highly compatible materials. With the Aberrants' current firepower, my son is effectively invulnerable. A light bit of adjustments to its training data, and it'll become bloodthirsty."
So, it was replacing her. It didn't need the whole exposition dump to get that point across, but a small, repressed engineer side of her did appreciate the technical justification. Great.
Why did it need her, then? If it had a nigh-immortal death robot, why did it bring her back inside? Why fix her up?
"Simple. It'll buy us - buy you - time to get to Storm Hammer. You're in no shape to be fighting again, Hawthorne."
"No thanks to you." she muttered under her breath, uncaring if the AI heard her or not.
"No thanks to me, indeed." it almost cheerfully replied. "While Icarus terrorizes the Aberrants all across the Japanese countryside, we'll be able to sneak away together off to our metaphorical shining city on the hills. Well, a shining tower somewhere beyond the mountains in a valley, but metaphors are metaphors."
With a groan, Emily laid herself back down on her examination table with a thunk. "So, all I'm good for is getting you to Storm Hammer. Lovely. I can only assume I don't have a choice, right?" she asked, knowing the answer already.
A dark chuckle played through the speakers.
"No. You don't."
…
"Fuck my life."
Well. It was quick, if nothing else.
Unfortunately for Tamarin, 'it' only referred to a period of unconsciousness, brought on by massive blunt force trauma by way of UFO bulkhead to the, well, head. No death, no fluttering about as a soul, none of that. Just a gap in time, where one moment was fire and terror, the next shakily getting to her knees amidst the wreckage of their craft.
No rest for the wicked. It's back to work for her.
"Wave Dancers! Status!" she grunted, pulling herself upright with the pilot's seat she sat in earlier.
Nothing. Great. Comms were either still being savaged by the Ancestor's machine friend, or nobody was alive to hear her speak. Either that, or they were taking the pragmatic route of shutting up and using only untraceable methods of communication in enemy territory.
Training took over. Get her bearings, and figure out where was safe, and where was almost assuredly going to get her killed.
The UFO was nose-down in the dirt, the brutalized windscreen now not only home to shattered glass and bits of metal, but dirt and plants, a wide assortment of wet leafy greens scattered across the ruined control boards. She wasn't going to be able to get out through the front. Back door it was.
Tamarin lurched into the cargo bay, boots slipping on newly wet metal deck plating. The sight through the door was horrific, but not unexpected.
Ink covered the deck, piles of body armor and clothing poking out from massive splatters of Wave Dancer teal. She recognized at least six distinct sets of gear. Without any Respawners, that made six confirmed permanent deaths.
Just before the cargo ramp, she saw the seventh death. A Takozonesu fighter, one of the masked ones from Suture, laying silent and still. A cursory examination revealed shrapnel had ripped through the helmet and upper body armor, imparting damage comparable to the kind the AX weapon they still loosely clutched in their gloved hands had done to the Ancestor.
For a moment, Tamarin had some hope that they were still 'alive' in a sense. The augmented soldiers didn't immediately pop into splatters of ink and piles of clothing like the others, their membranes having no doubt been hardened by whatever process by which the Council made them into Takozonesu.
(Another eerie similarity to how the Ancestor fell. A whole corpse, a final desperate gasp, a memory in the back of her mind that had no place being there-)
Tamarin shook her head. Scalpel Five continued to be right. This was unsustainable.
But, she had a job to do, and she had potential survivors to lead. Thus, the AX weapon and its ammunition became hers, and the identification tags of the dead Suture Takozonesu and the others went into a pocket for safekeeping.
She didn't know what was going to meet her outside the wreckage, whether it was ICARUS, on a relentless pursuit of them across the damn continent, or the sudden and no doubt inevitable arrival of the Inkling Agents, or some other third possibility, demonic in nature, but she would at least be able to meet it head on. A gun in her hand was better than nothing.
Weapon at the ready, she stumbled into the midday gloom, into an overcast forest soaked in recent rainfall.
Trees were down all around her, a noticeable path carved through the overgrowth by the UFO's uncontrolled descent. Small fires dotted the massive gouge the anti-gravitic craft had carved into the ground, with bits of wreckage wedged in all manner of strange orientations not found in nature. A piece of outer plating hovered in the air, having been caught in an all-too-familiar anomaly.
Just like home. Even the UFO crash felt familiar, like this had just been a bad test flight, or a mishap during an actual operation.
But in those situations, the greatest fear was that of what her superiors would do to her and her unit. Withheld rations, reassignments, forced training sessions, all horrors now mundane in the face of what Tamarin had seen over the past few hours. Her worst enemy during her days of engineering was a pissed Elite, not a mechanical eldritch horror, or a vengeful Ancestor, or Cod only knew what else was buried out in this unfamiliar territory.
"Any Wave Dancers on this frequency, status!" she tried again, risking a burst of comms in the vain hopes that anybody else made it out of the crash alive. She would be damned if she was going to go back to the Council alone.
"Actual, i-it's Tim. We're alive. Not well, but alive. Where are you?" came the crackling reply. So, they'd gone off without her. Not a good move on their part.
"I'm at the wreck." she grunted. "You left me."
"S-Squit! We thought you'd been thrown out on the way down, and we had to run for it, we thought we were being followed, so…" Tim stammered. "Uh, s-stay put, we're coming to you!"
Part of her couldn't blame them for running away first thing. Unit cohesion in the face of absolute terror was a rare thing to maintain, and when everyone (including her) was operating under the assumption that said absolute terror was following them, and following them at high speed carrying heavy weaponry, things tended to go south.
An annoyance, but ultimately an annoyance she would resolve later. For now, survival was the top priority, and she was going to be damned if she wasn't going to get out of this place with at least a few surviving Wave Dancers to her name.
…
The reunion was joyful, if curt. She met them halfway, in a clearing just south of the crash site.
Out of twelve Wave Dancers, four of them being Takozonesu, six of them survived. Two Takozonesu, and four Octolings.
Herself, Tim, two engineers from the rear, and Scalpels Three and Five.
A mess, but a salvageable one. With her and one of the engineers carrying the AX weapons of the deceased Takozonesu, that made two extra honorary Takozonesu. Approximately four Takozonesu was better than two, and definitely better than nothing.
They were all battered, bruised, and frazzled beyond belief, but they were alive. Alive, and now being hunted.
"So, where the shell do we go now?" one of the engineers, a skittish woman named Veda, asked. While the others had taken to hiding in the overgrowth, Veda couldn't help herself from pacing about the tiny clearing they'd found relative, if no doubt temporary safety in.
"The UFO's autopilot was taking us further south, back to Council territory. We're somewhere in between the Ancestor's world, and our own." Tamarin started. "We're not staying here."
"That doesn't answer my question." Veda grumbled, hastily adding a "ma'am" when Scalpel Five's eyes turned to her. Tamarin paid it no mind.
If she had to be honest, though, the answer to said question still eluded her. There was an inkling of a plan coming together, but it was a long shot.
An inkling, however, was a good start.
"Which way is the Inkling city, from here?" she asked, the grassy floor open to any of the Wave Dancers with basic geography under their belt.
Tim, naturally, took the chance. Good kid. "Uhh… west of us, I believe? Why?"
"That's the first part of my answer. We're going to try our luck with our formerly greatest enemies."
Veda blanched, the other currently unnamed engineer also raising an eyebrow in solidarity. "W-With the Inklings? With all due respect, Ordinal, are you nuts?"
Tamarin grunted. "Maybe. I did hit my head in the crash, after all. Think of it pragmatically, Veda - would you rather risk being hunted in these woods by that Ancestor machine, or would you rather have a city of our enemies for it to try and navigate through to get to you?"
"I… That makes sense, but-"
"No buts. Two birds with one stone. We stay alive, our enemies die, and we can then all go home." Tamarin said, ending Veda's train of thought before it spiraled into attempting to justify walking through these woods any longer than they needed to.
She had her own reasons to want to go to the Inkling city as well.
One, she knew the rumors well - the DJ, her fearless leader, had found new life there among the Inklings.
Word on the loyalist squiddygrape vine was that they were treating him shockingly well, and many Octolings, both defector and loyalist alike, were able to integrate themselves into the city with relative ease, owing to the general incompetence of their squid cousins. Her loyalties laid where they lied, and while she knew the Council knew of them, she knew they wouldn't risk an assault on Inkopolis against an entire city of battle-hardened teenagers and the true soldiers hidden amongst them.
Octarians in the city generally kept to one another, as well. Defectors begrudgingly found companionship in loyalists, and loyalists took well to rekindling old hierarchies, this time for newly mundane lives in the City of Colors. Tamarin and her unit wouldn't be alone, but just in case…
The Church of Madai. The name was common in Octarian circles pertaining to Salmonids, to the waning DJ-era power egg industry and the backwater units devoted to dealing with that 'Grizz Corporation' and their own industrial-scale thievery of Salmonid power eggs.
The rumors behind what the Church was were… less verifiable, but no less worth investigating. Anything that could get her an advantage here was on the table, even if the advantage came in the form of a religious cult.
Supposedly, they were a large organization of anti-Salmonid fanatics, able to be whipped up into a frenzy with unhinged scripture readings and pictures of Salmonids. Part of her knew it would be a bad idea to get involved in that mess, but if Tamarin had anything to say about it, she figured they would be alright. The Wave Dancers were armed, they had training, and so what if they had to go out and cull a few Salmonid clutches to get along with the cult? It certainly beat fighting Ancestors.
Whether it would be enough to stop ICARUS, or the Ancestor, or both of them at the same time, it remained to be said, but any armed group she could fall in with was better than nothing. A guerilla war, waged in the busiest metropolitan area for hundreds of kilometers.
The Council could be persuaded with the 'ICARUS can fight the Inklings' excuse, she could link up with the DJ and rekindle her old loyalist self, and her unit would potentially have new, fanatical additions ready and willing to fight and die for her.
All Tamarin had to do was get there, and get there in one piece.
Simple.
…
Simple, until Veda's fear of Inklings ended up superseding Tamarin's ability to convince her going to Inkopolis was a good idea, and her unit found itself with its first deserter. Luckily, Scalpel Three was quick on the grab, and Tim managed to bring the near-hysterical Octoling back under control, for the time being.
Tamarin couldn't risk losing anyone else at this point, even if she honestly couldn't blame them for falling apart in the face of what just happened. So, she ended up making a compromise.
Initially, the plan was for all six of them to ruck all the way to Inkopolis together, where they would find somewhere to hide out while Tamarin did her thing.
Now, the plan was split in two: Scalpel Three, Veda, and the other engineer, now newly discovered to be named Philip, would head south, to Council territory. With them, they carried the tags of the fallen Wave Dancers, and the black-box of the crashed UFO.
Their goal: alert the Council to the Ancestor machines, and to Tamarin's plan, then regroup when they could. Meanwhile, the remaining three - Scalpel Five, herself, and Tim - would make for Inkopolis, where they would make themselves scarce within the urban jungle.
There, Tamarin would follow her leads in an attempt to put together some sort of response to the developing situation. Tim would keep an ear out for word from the Council, and coordinate the eventual regrouping of the Wave Dancers and their next steps afterward.
Finally, the Scalpel survivors were their muscle, and were to keep any threats at bay while the squishier Octarians did what they had to do.
With that, they exchanged their goodbyes, and got to it. A long, tense walk was their future, now. An Ancestor machine no doubt in active pursuit, an Ancestor AI up to all manner of machinations behind it, and an Ancestor themselves, wounded and vengeful.
Battles were waves, and battles made waves, but they weren't called Wave Dancers for nothing. So help her Cod, her unit was going to survive this.
Any. Means. Necessary.
Tim heaved a sigh.
It had been a few hours since the surviving Wave Dancers split, and it had been a few more hours of mostly tense, aimless wandering in solemn silence, the three of them following Tim's compass off to the west; towards Tamarin's strange idea of hiding out in Inkopolis, with the very species their people had been at war with for over a century, now.
Not the strangest thing that's happened lately, though.
How Tim was still even remotely functional eluded him. He was tired, he was angry, he was terrified out of his fucking MIND, and yet he was still standing. Not even a coddamned UFO crash brought him down, either.
…
If anything, he was absolutely going to feel all of this in the morning. Which, if things moved as slow as they were moving right now, would probably be very soon.
That inevitable catch-up was not going to be fun, but it was (like he just said) inevitable, and it was something he was going to have to deal with. Another list of horrible things to happen to him in the steadily growing list of horrible things happening to him.
First, the airbase. The Ancestor. The Octo Shower, gone up in smoke after all that work Tamarin had put into it.
Then, the Council. A bureaucratic nightmare, full of faceless, personless people telling him where to go, what to wear, and what to pack in his bag. He was a cog in the machine, now, and that was that. Never had he wished to be back in the Dump, back at that lazy old airbase shoveling dirt around and occasionally tampering with plumbing or whatever.
The Ancestor facility. That… machine. The crash.
All the violence, the final deaths. He thought the Takozonesu were invincible, once. Then, eight of them died in one operation.
His view of the world, completely upended to a degree very few other Octarians ever experienced. Once again, it was a literal miracle he was still walking, let alone thinking straight.
But, entirely functional he was not, and when he found his boots meeting solid pavement instead of the rough overgrowth that he and the others had been walking on for hours, he was late to realize the significance of such a change.
"H-Hey, hold up. There's a road here." he muttered, raising a fist to stop the other two Wave Dancers behind him.
"Which way does it go?" Tamarin immediately questioned, still sharp despite the mayhem she'd just endured.
Fumbling with the compass, he found that the road ran northeast to southwest. West meant the city, south meant the Council. Both were good, and he relayed as such to her.
"Scalpel Five, post up along the road and watch for any vehicles. We'll need one." Tamarin ordered. "Tim, you're going to be the hearts and minds here. When Five tells you somebody's coming, the road's all yours. Do what you can to get them to stop, okay?"
He could do that. Barely, sure, but it was still doable. Jump in the road, wave his arms around, and maybe abuse his many newfound injuries to convincingly hit the deck and make any passers-by stop. A shaky thumbs up to Tamarin confirmed he was ready to go, and the waiting began.
…
…
…
This was taking longer than he liked.
Every second spent without a vehicle was a second given to that infernal Ancestor robot, which was almost assuredly pursuing them. If it's one thing he understood about Ancestors, it was their innate superiority when it came to the hunt.
Granted, he figured the details of it were probably obfuscated by years of decay and misinterpretations of Ancestor records and imagery, but the general consensus amongst Octarian historians was good enough for him.
Ancestors had boundless energy, something he could very readily confirm with firsthand experience. To bring an entire Octarian airbase to its knees took great effort, and he couldn't recall seeing any hint of exertion or effort on the Ancestor's part when it attacked.
Ancestors could make tools, and use them. This, too, was very, very easily proven, both through just inferences, and through firsthand experience. A society that built all that the Ancestors built didn't just manifest it all through sheer will, it took construction, it took tools and effort. Planning, complex thought, the careful application of various sizes and sharpnesses of sticks, all things that Ancestors had, and he had experienced.
Now, the hunting thing - if an Ancestor could use a tool, they wouldn't need to shred some hapless creature to bits with their sharp claws, or get their jaws around something's neck and shake it around until it stopped moving.
With a tool, an Ancestor was now able to make one, decisive strike when something was weakened, or unaware of their presence. Thus, the hunt became less of a 'hunt,' and more of a hunt. Instead of having to lie in wait, to follow scents and sights and sounds to have the chance at bringing down a big game, all an Ancestor had to do was brandish a rocket launcher, and make somebody pay.
They were up against a near-peer opponent, one that had the advantage in terms of endurance and technological might. An Ancestor was a veritable machine, something that had limitless endurance and all of the will, despite not being specialized in any real activity.
A perfect predator. And then, the Ancestors built a machine in their image. A perfect predator, perfected.
Tim shuddered, snapping himself out of his internal rambling. Please, Cod, let a car come right now…
…
Right on cue, two headlights appeared in the dark. Scalpel Five barked the order, and Tim got to it.
'It,' being the oh-so-effective strategy of attempting to run out and wave down the driver of the oncoming car, only to roll his ankle on an exposed root, sending him crashing to the pavement in a clatter of Octarian combat gear.
Well, it stopped the car, at least.
As he dragged himself upright, Tamarin and Scalpel Five leapt from the woods.
"Driver, unlock your doors and put your hands in the air!" the Takozonesu roared. Through the windshield, Tim watched as the driver - a nondescript-looking Inkling man in equally nondescript casual wear - absolutely paled at the sight of the hulking soldier and the equally armed Octoling woman approaching him from either side.
A click, and Scalpel Five was in the car without a second thought, securing themselves in the passenger seat and firmly pressing their gun to the driver's head. Tamarin motioned for him to roll down the window, and Tim could see him fumbling with the door controls in a panic. Eventually, he got it, and Tamarin leaned in, looking like she hadn't just led a carjacking, let alone an entire failed Octarian military operation.
"P-Please, ma'am, officer, I-I didn't do anything, I swear-" he started, Tamarin casually cutting him off with a wave, an eerie friendliness to her features that Tim could only describe as wrong.
"Your only mistake was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, sir." she replied. "This isn't a police operation, either. You're going to do several things for us, and then you'll be free and able to go about your day as normal, alright?"
With a nod, she motioned for Tim to get in the back of the car, and she soon joined him, abandoning her post at the driver's side. Through the rear-view mirror, the petrified Inkling watched them, sweat dripping down the man's brow as Scalpel Five held him at continued gunpoint.
"Alright, driver." she began. "You're going to take us into Inkopolis, without stopping for anything, not even gas or food or family. You will go until we ask you to stop, and that'll be that. Understood?"
"Y-Yes, I understand!"
"Good. Next, you're not going to ask questions, nor speak unless you are spoken to. For all intents and purposes, we do not exist. Do you understand?"
A shaky nod. "Wonderful. Lastly, once we're gone, you're not going to speak of this to anyone. Not your government, not your police, not your friends nor your family. This was a regular drive, and nothing happened on it. Are we clear?"
"C-Crystal clear, ma'am!" the Inkling stammered, shakily putting his hands back down onto the wheel.
"Good. You're clear to drive. Five, you know what to do if he misbehaves." she said, turning to Tim and nudging him with her arm. "You, keep an ear to our comms. I doubt we'll hear much of anything, but on the off chance anybody tries to reach us, I don't want to miss it, alright?"
"Yes, ma'am." Tim muttered, exhausted. The soft rumbling of the Inkling car was already working its magic on the absolutely disheveled Octarian, and he felt that soon enough not even the fear of that Ancestor machine would be enough to keep him awake.
Sensing his horrific state of affairs, Tamarin lowered her voice. "And worst case scenario, if you pass out, you pass out. Nobody has the right to blame you for it, after all."
"Mmm. Thanks, ma'am."
An audible snort. "Don't thank me."
A/N:
Falk here. I'm back.
Got a long-ish one for you, because it's been a long-ish time. Happy 2025. I'll keep this at least relatively short, because short is good and I don't want these to be author's paragraphs, if you get what I mean.
Simple gist of things: this chapter took a /long/ time because of real life stuff. Piston can elaborate on that if he wants. It took a few restarts and attempts, but we finally hit a stride, and here we are. Big three-oh. 30. You've heard this song and dance many times before, in many prior chapters of many prior fics all across these sites.
In the meantime, during our little hiatus, I took the liberty of going back and updating all the art and formatting of Polaris on Ao3. Everything should look nice and shiny now, and Piston was kind enough to give me perms to do things like chapter summaries, content warnings, new tags, so on and so forth.
If you're reading this author's notes on FFN: you're reading the lame version of Polaris. Come on over to Ao3's version sometime. We have pictures.
Lastly, I'd like to take a second to thank you for sticking around this long. Doesn't matter if you're an old head, here since the days of Jonathan being named in the first chapter, or if you're completely new to this, clicking the latest chapter to see what the vibes are like before moving on to the next fic, you're getting our thanks.
Now, over to Piston:
Hi again. So, uh, it's been a while, huh? I'm really sorry about that!
As Falk said, life has been rather crazy the past few months, and that's more or less killed any creative drive I've had. I won't get into a lot of the details, but I've definitely bitten off more than I can chew, and right now it's a mad rush to stay afloat and get through to the other side. With any luck, things should mostly be stabilized in about a month and a half, but until then this chaos must be navigated. All I will say is, don't try to compress a multi-year degree into one. I'd like to say I've learned my lesson about overextending oneself, but let's be real, I haven't.
Anyways though, Falk took the broken remnants of my attempts at 30 and spun it up into all of this! Quite the renaissance man, is he not? I feel a bit guilty that he had to bear the brunt of writing this all out, but at this point it's been six months since the last chapter, and we don't want to keep you all hanging. Really, Falk's been a lifesaver with this, and while Polaris has been a collaborative effort for a while now, this chapter really does highlight that fact.
So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has helped with bringing this story to life, and thank you for reading and sticking around with us! It's been said a lot before, but we really do appreciate you all taking time out of your day to check our story out or catch up on more recent happenings.
Until then, stay safe, have a great day, and see you next time!
