02-14-2011, 07:44 AM
“I'm going down to the surface.”
Victoria stepped in through the door, the room instantly filling with a dull white-blue glow. She seemed almost as though she had shattered and pieced back together with flowing ki for glue. Her eyes burned with the intensity that had always resided within her, and her flesh seemed to be in an eternal state of peeling away and healing back. Several long cracks and fissures ran over her, seething power rolling out in between. Her hands and feet seemed to be almost completely replaced with glowing replications of their original forms.
Sigfried raised his eye to the strange abomination of power as she loomed in the corner of the room. At least she seemed calm. In fact, more than calm, she seemed focused, euphoric even. Not that those facts made him wanna get in her way anymore but at least she wasn’t blowing holes in things just yet.
The Captain’s assistant, Daniel, spoke up first after the ethereal being that was Victoria had joined them. “The invaders are preparing weapons; we have to decide what action to take. The canon can't be used until it recharges, and we don't have any more asteroids kicking around.” He was an enterprising man, smart and to the point. You didn’t get this far ahead in the game by being a lazy retard though. In this case, he was right. The issue needed to be handled, and quickly. Losing the Utterance and the people that were currently on it would mean that the ECM would become nothing more than a bunch of peasants with rifles. Getting out of range of the weapons systems of the Grand Ship was to be a priority.
“We’ll take over the space port.” Sigfried drummed his fingers over the heavy metallic material of the table in front of him, his eyes floating around the conference room. “This ship wasn't designed to take part in aerial or space combat; you should take the rest of the crew out of Namek's space. We have no idea what those invaders have in store for us, and I don't think we want to find out, Captain.” They needed the space port, if they had any plans of getting the remaining soldiers off of Namek. It was unfortunate that they wouldn’t be able to rely in the might of the Utterance from above in their assault, but he was sure it could return and deal a heavy blow to the Grand Ship once it had gotten a good resupply of power.
He glanced over to Captain Alexander, who thumbed casually at his cavalry saber which he had brought with him to the meeting. The officer gave a short nod in agreeance. Sigfried was sure that if the man was given a time to collect his thoughts on the issue, he would be able to bring the ship down. His record and disposition lend him to being a master of orbital combat, a skill he was sure to use in a battle between the two large crafts.
“The more help, the better, we need to save this planet.” Victoria spoke up again suddenly. She looked out the clear viewport to the majestic, ravaged planet below. “I won't stop until they're all eradicated. These aliens, invaders, they have no right to bring an onslaught upon such a peaceful planet.” Her voice was lofty, as though she wasn’t truly even seeing things from behind her own eyes. “If they're conquering other planets I'll wipe them out.” When the woman moved, the veins of essence floated up out of her eerily. “We have a planet to save.”
Her eyes locked onto Sigfried, and he could feel her trying to burrow those white pupils into his soul. She wanted something of him, more than he could give her. She wanted the truth. A truth that had been so deeply buried, so far unreachable that no coercion could garner its release.
“The alien's will have no idea what hit them.” She said this matter-of-factly before striding out of the room, leaving streamers behind. As her feet struck the ground, little pats of blood were left behind, only to evaporate in the heat of their own radiance.
As the powered door sealed behind her, the Captain turned to Sigfried. “What the hell happened to her?”
Sigfried shrugged casually. “She had to put a lot into that battery operation. Maybe she’s pushed herself hard enough to transcend into something more, like the Saiyans do. Maybe she’s the world’s first superhuman.” Such an idea, and the name he had coined to describe it, were ridiculous even to him.
Alexander’s brow quirked and he reclined back in the chair, tapping the scabbard of his weapon on the ground. “Well I just hope she’s stable.” He tapped his temple with his index and middle finger gingerly. “You know, up here.”
“She seemed to be a little out of it, but I didn’t think she seemed that crazy.” Jarka spoke up for the first time in the conference, a topic of which she finally had some sort of authority. “If she starts freaking out, wouldn’t it be better for her to be on the planet anyways?” The dapper young captain smiled and tipped his wide hat to Jarka from across the room, acknowledging her input.
Sigfried glanced over to the man and tipped his chin upwards. “If you warped out and came back, do you think you could take the Grand Ship if we hailed you?”
He tilted his hand back and forth subtly and he toyed with his waxed beard. “Maybe. It just depends on the state of the net and the remaining drones and fighters. We can’t take on the smaller stuff with only four remaining ships. We just wouldn’t be able to keep up. If that blasted net is still operational there would be no way to get within range of the planet to fire down at the thing.” Planting an elbow on the table, he gestured towards Sigfried. “Not to mention we don’t even know what kind of weapons that thing is packing. If all it’s loaded down with is lasers and energy weapons we should be totally safe because they aren’t affected by the gravity of the planet. We’d just shoot ‘em down from just beyond the horizon.” With a long drawn sigh he quirked his neck in contemplation. “Then again they might just fling one big bomb at us and put us out of commission. I’d hate to find out what the atmosphere feels like up close and personal.”
Skoll glared out the window at the big blue and green orb strung out before them; Hati mostly stared at the people surrounding him. It was easy to tell they wanted to put in their two cents (one cent respectively) but it just wasn’t their place. They had their spots to hold in the echelon of authority, but they mostly served as Sigfried’s companions.
Sigfried already knew what they were thinking. Skoll wanted to either pick up and leave, knowing that the safest call was to simply not be there or to continue to go ahead and get shooting the damn thing down and get it over with. Hati wanted to take all the boys up and board the ship and show those stupid alien bastards who had the real nuts in the situation. Neither of their ideas were very good.
“I suppose the best thing to do is to just drop and hope for the best, then.” Sigfried did the best to make his word sound final. With a smooth salute Captain Alexander stood from his seat and began towards the stern of his vessel, already on to the next task of his mission taking his assistant Daniel with him. Skoll and Hati smirked and nodded to the red draped leader and then to each other, standing and returning to their respective quarters. All that remained in the room was Jarka and Sigfried.
The young man looked over to her and twiddled his thumbs nervously. “You know, you don’t have to go down to the planet with us. You can stay here with the boys and the Captain.”
“No.” She shook her head as she cast attention to his eyes. “No I want to go. This is my fight too. This is all that’s left for us, right?” A faint smile traced her lips as she spoke. “It’ll be a testament to… to something new.”
Before he could respond she stood and turned away, beginning towards the exit. “We’ll win, Sigfried. You know that.” She looked back one last time. “Just look what we’ve already done.”
The pneumatic hiss of the door indicated her departure, and he was left alone.
He stood slowly and paced to the massive viewport, the soft glow of the planet brushing against his face. What had he done to get here? What was he still even doing? Why was he here, halfway across the sector, fighting a war that he had nothing to do with? It was all politics, smokes and mirrors. The very things he had learned to disdain as a citizen he was no employing as a leader.
“It is not the truth that matters, but victory.” The voice emanated from his own reflection, though he couldn’t comprehend how it might have been his own voice.
He responded to the voice, though he knew not to whom he spoke. “But when does the world that I wanted come? When does the veil get pulled away? Will there ever be a time when people live enlightened? Why am I here, doing this, if it isn’t to make the world a better place?”
He waited a long time for a response, but it never came. He was alone in the darkness of space, about to land on an alien world for the first time. For the first time he would be on alien soil, and he would be bringing war.
The clattering of weapons being readied seemed to ring out over the thrum and vibration of the ship as it decelerated and headed towards the planet’s surface. Sigfried stood near the rear of the craft, with the soldiers and Jarka. Victoria stood upon the opened ramp, gazing madly out over the battlefield. Was she calculating a strategy for the upcoming battle, or simply foaming at the mouth, awaiting the taste of combat? Even Sigfried could not tell.
“Let’s light them up.” Her voice practically boomed through the drop ship. Her mythical presence seemed to both inspire and terrify the troops that had come down with them. An aura seemed to surround her as she prepared for battle, flickering as the winds kicked up.
She leapt from the transport ship and fell several meters before striking the ground, leaving a crater in the wake of her cracking might. Soon after, the ship’s altitude dipped down even lower and the remainder of the transport began to file out into the decimated streets of Ja City.
These men were veterans, each equipped with specialized body armor and weapons created by the Sentinels research department, each had seen battle too many times in their lives. These were the finest men and women that Earth could offer and by the hundreds, by the thousands the fell from the heavens on wings of steel to join Sigfried in battle.
Then there was Jarka.
A scared chef turned soldier, fighting for a cause she did not know that she believed in. She was loyal and smart and brave, but was she a soldier? Her eyes were filled with apprehension. He couldn’t help but wonder if she really belonged here, amidst all this. She never joined the ECM with hopes of being a warrior. At the most she should have been back on the Utterance cooking the meals.
Then again, she had chosen to be here. She was the master of her own path and there certainly wasn’t any turning back now. She would either fight or die.
“Come on!” Sigfried grabbed her by the collar and began to drag her from the craft and down onto the rugged roadway below. The two struck the ground with a huff of breath and looked around the scene.
The destruction spanned the entire section of the city, but apparently it had been even worse in others. When they flew over, he had received reports that half of the city had been lifted up off of the map by some sort of nuclear attack of unknown origin. The invaders may have used it as a shock tactic or perhaps the locals had dropped the weapon on their own in hopes to catch the foe unawares. In any case whatever half of the city that remained was now swarming with yellow.
The hastily constructed wall that surrounded the borders of the space port were filled with pock marks and craters. A large jagged crack opened up off to the left of the drop site, and within it could be seen the writhing masses of the Invaders climbing and snipping and biting like ants.
Victoria had already begun to sprint wildly towards the breach of the barricade, ki flowing from her in great spanning wisps. Chunks of her skin seemed to molt off as she grew ever more powerful, ever more hungry for slaughter.
Sigfried twisted about and locked eyes with the Sergeant in charge of the retinue of people. The Q-waves were flowing out from every hub coordinating the troops through the city as the other drop ships landed in roaring bursts. “Take your men and do your work.” He took a hold of Jarka’s wrist and turned away once again. “We will move ahead and clear your way.”
With that the young chef found herself upon the back of a great and terrible beast, swooping and panting as it chased after Victoria. Her terrified fingers clung and dug into his back, eyes beaming with rage and hatred as it swooped into the fight. “Sig...” He heard her murmur from above, but she was talking to the wrong entity. This beast was just that: the beast. No matter how much Sigfried was and could not avoid being the mind behind the creature, he lost himself in the form.
This creature was born of some dark dream, some drug-induced insanity that broke free of him when the glare of the sun was just right. It was the tension and hatred and confusion that arose when he could not bear to look upon his own heart. It had a voice, calling out from inside him. It told him things he would never utter to another soul, lest they be of his most trusted companions.
“I am darkness, this is my path. My friend... I will never lose the light of my eyes. I am the death that awaits the weak. I am strength that humans ought fear. I am the terror in the heart of man when he faces his own limits! My name is death.”
As this beast rose up through him so did a mighty caterwaul, bounding behind his glowing companion. As she burst through the remainder of the crumbling wall, a horrible chain of lightning sprang forth from her hands and enveloped one of the troops in front of her, consuming him and casting his form to ashes before it bounced and danced between his allies.
Sigfried raced up to her side, his red hood fluttering behind as Jarka attempted to catch up from behind, her ride suddenly no longer present. Something about the beast had changed him, rattled him, twisted his nerves in just the right way to allow him to flutter through and beyond the fact that they might die here.
He looked behind to Jarka and tilted his head towards the oncoming maelstrom of warriors. “Are you ready?” She didn’t seem to him that she was ready. She seemed afraid, as though this was all unreal. She clutched at the weapon she had been assigned, a hefty hand canon of a pistol, the clip full of ki-tipped rounds. He furrowed his brow in frustration and pointed towards the yellow. “Well, you’d better get ready.”
With that he faced the crashed waves of the enemy and bellowed out, “My name is death!!”
Victoria stepped in through the door, the room instantly filling with a dull white-blue glow. She seemed almost as though she had shattered and pieced back together with flowing ki for glue. Her eyes burned with the intensity that had always resided within her, and her flesh seemed to be in an eternal state of peeling away and healing back. Several long cracks and fissures ran over her, seething power rolling out in between. Her hands and feet seemed to be almost completely replaced with glowing replications of their original forms.
Sigfried raised his eye to the strange abomination of power as she loomed in the corner of the room. At least she seemed calm. In fact, more than calm, she seemed focused, euphoric even. Not that those facts made him wanna get in her way anymore but at least she wasn’t blowing holes in things just yet.
The Captain’s assistant, Daniel, spoke up first after the ethereal being that was Victoria had joined them. “The invaders are preparing weapons; we have to decide what action to take. The canon can't be used until it recharges, and we don't have any more asteroids kicking around.” He was an enterprising man, smart and to the point. You didn’t get this far ahead in the game by being a lazy retard though. In this case, he was right. The issue needed to be handled, and quickly. Losing the Utterance and the people that were currently on it would mean that the ECM would become nothing more than a bunch of peasants with rifles. Getting out of range of the weapons systems of the Grand Ship was to be a priority.
“We’ll take over the space port.” Sigfried drummed his fingers over the heavy metallic material of the table in front of him, his eyes floating around the conference room. “This ship wasn't designed to take part in aerial or space combat; you should take the rest of the crew out of Namek's space. We have no idea what those invaders have in store for us, and I don't think we want to find out, Captain.” They needed the space port, if they had any plans of getting the remaining soldiers off of Namek. It was unfortunate that they wouldn’t be able to rely in the might of the Utterance from above in their assault, but he was sure it could return and deal a heavy blow to the Grand Ship once it had gotten a good resupply of power.
He glanced over to Captain Alexander, who thumbed casually at his cavalry saber which he had brought with him to the meeting. The officer gave a short nod in agreeance. Sigfried was sure that if the man was given a time to collect his thoughts on the issue, he would be able to bring the ship down. His record and disposition lend him to being a master of orbital combat, a skill he was sure to use in a battle between the two large crafts.
“The more help, the better, we need to save this planet.” Victoria spoke up again suddenly. She looked out the clear viewport to the majestic, ravaged planet below. “I won't stop until they're all eradicated. These aliens, invaders, they have no right to bring an onslaught upon such a peaceful planet.” Her voice was lofty, as though she wasn’t truly even seeing things from behind her own eyes. “If they're conquering other planets I'll wipe them out.” When the woman moved, the veins of essence floated up out of her eerily. “We have a planet to save.”
Her eyes locked onto Sigfried, and he could feel her trying to burrow those white pupils into his soul. She wanted something of him, more than he could give her. She wanted the truth. A truth that had been so deeply buried, so far unreachable that no coercion could garner its release.
“The alien's will have no idea what hit them.” She said this matter-of-factly before striding out of the room, leaving streamers behind. As her feet struck the ground, little pats of blood were left behind, only to evaporate in the heat of their own radiance.
As the powered door sealed behind her, the Captain turned to Sigfried. “What the hell happened to her?”
Sigfried shrugged casually. “She had to put a lot into that battery operation. Maybe she’s pushed herself hard enough to transcend into something more, like the Saiyans do. Maybe she’s the world’s first superhuman.” Such an idea, and the name he had coined to describe it, were ridiculous even to him.
Alexander’s brow quirked and he reclined back in the chair, tapping the scabbard of his weapon on the ground. “Well I just hope she’s stable.” He tapped his temple with his index and middle finger gingerly. “You know, up here.”
“She seemed to be a little out of it, but I didn’t think she seemed that crazy.” Jarka spoke up for the first time in the conference, a topic of which she finally had some sort of authority. “If she starts freaking out, wouldn’t it be better for her to be on the planet anyways?” The dapper young captain smiled and tipped his wide hat to Jarka from across the room, acknowledging her input.
Sigfried glanced over to the man and tipped his chin upwards. “If you warped out and came back, do you think you could take the Grand Ship if we hailed you?”
He tilted his hand back and forth subtly and he toyed with his waxed beard. “Maybe. It just depends on the state of the net and the remaining drones and fighters. We can’t take on the smaller stuff with only four remaining ships. We just wouldn’t be able to keep up. If that blasted net is still operational there would be no way to get within range of the planet to fire down at the thing.” Planting an elbow on the table, he gestured towards Sigfried. “Not to mention we don’t even know what kind of weapons that thing is packing. If all it’s loaded down with is lasers and energy weapons we should be totally safe because they aren’t affected by the gravity of the planet. We’d just shoot ‘em down from just beyond the horizon.” With a long drawn sigh he quirked his neck in contemplation. “Then again they might just fling one big bomb at us and put us out of commission. I’d hate to find out what the atmosphere feels like up close and personal.”
Skoll glared out the window at the big blue and green orb strung out before them; Hati mostly stared at the people surrounding him. It was easy to tell they wanted to put in their two cents (one cent respectively) but it just wasn’t their place. They had their spots to hold in the echelon of authority, but they mostly served as Sigfried’s companions.
Sigfried already knew what they were thinking. Skoll wanted to either pick up and leave, knowing that the safest call was to simply not be there or to continue to go ahead and get shooting the damn thing down and get it over with. Hati wanted to take all the boys up and board the ship and show those stupid alien bastards who had the real nuts in the situation. Neither of their ideas were very good.
“I suppose the best thing to do is to just drop and hope for the best, then.” Sigfried did the best to make his word sound final. With a smooth salute Captain Alexander stood from his seat and began towards the stern of his vessel, already on to the next task of his mission taking his assistant Daniel with him. Skoll and Hati smirked and nodded to the red draped leader and then to each other, standing and returning to their respective quarters. All that remained in the room was Jarka and Sigfried.
The young man looked over to her and twiddled his thumbs nervously. “You know, you don’t have to go down to the planet with us. You can stay here with the boys and the Captain.”
“No.” She shook her head as she cast attention to his eyes. “No I want to go. This is my fight too. This is all that’s left for us, right?” A faint smile traced her lips as she spoke. “It’ll be a testament to… to something new.”
Before he could respond she stood and turned away, beginning towards the exit. “We’ll win, Sigfried. You know that.” She looked back one last time. “Just look what we’ve already done.”
The pneumatic hiss of the door indicated her departure, and he was left alone.
He stood slowly and paced to the massive viewport, the soft glow of the planet brushing against his face. What had he done to get here? What was he still even doing? Why was he here, halfway across the sector, fighting a war that he had nothing to do with? It was all politics, smokes and mirrors. The very things he had learned to disdain as a citizen he was no employing as a leader.
“It is not the truth that matters, but victory.” The voice emanated from his own reflection, though he couldn’t comprehend how it might have been his own voice.
He responded to the voice, though he knew not to whom he spoke. “But when does the world that I wanted come? When does the veil get pulled away? Will there ever be a time when people live enlightened? Why am I here, doing this, if it isn’t to make the world a better place?”
He waited a long time for a response, but it never came. He was alone in the darkness of space, about to land on an alien world for the first time. For the first time he would be on alien soil, and he would be bringing war.
--=~*/| o |\*~=--
The clattering of weapons being readied seemed to ring out over the thrum and vibration of the ship as it decelerated and headed towards the planet’s surface. Sigfried stood near the rear of the craft, with the soldiers and Jarka. Victoria stood upon the opened ramp, gazing madly out over the battlefield. Was she calculating a strategy for the upcoming battle, or simply foaming at the mouth, awaiting the taste of combat? Even Sigfried could not tell.
“Let’s light them up.” Her voice practically boomed through the drop ship. Her mythical presence seemed to both inspire and terrify the troops that had come down with them. An aura seemed to surround her as she prepared for battle, flickering as the winds kicked up.
She leapt from the transport ship and fell several meters before striking the ground, leaving a crater in the wake of her cracking might. Soon after, the ship’s altitude dipped down even lower and the remainder of the transport began to file out into the decimated streets of Ja City.
These men were veterans, each equipped with specialized body armor and weapons created by the Sentinels research department, each had seen battle too many times in their lives. These were the finest men and women that Earth could offer and by the hundreds, by the thousands the fell from the heavens on wings of steel to join Sigfried in battle.
Then there was Jarka.
A scared chef turned soldier, fighting for a cause she did not know that she believed in. She was loyal and smart and brave, but was she a soldier? Her eyes were filled with apprehension. He couldn’t help but wonder if she really belonged here, amidst all this. She never joined the ECM with hopes of being a warrior. At the most she should have been back on the Utterance cooking the meals.
Then again, she had chosen to be here. She was the master of her own path and there certainly wasn’t any turning back now. She would either fight or die.
“Come on!” Sigfried grabbed her by the collar and began to drag her from the craft and down onto the rugged roadway below. The two struck the ground with a huff of breath and looked around the scene.
The destruction spanned the entire section of the city, but apparently it had been even worse in others. When they flew over, he had received reports that half of the city had been lifted up off of the map by some sort of nuclear attack of unknown origin. The invaders may have used it as a shock tactic or perhaps the locals had dropped the weapon on their own in hopes to catch the foe unawares. In any case whatever half of the city that remained was now swarming with yellow.
The hastily constructed wall that surrounded the borders of the space port were filled with pock marks and craters. A large jagged crack opened up off to the left of the drop site, and within it could be seen the writhing masses of the Invaders climbing and snipping and biting like ants.
Victoria had already begun to sprint wildly towards the breach of the barricade, ki flowing from her in great spanning wisps. Chunks of her skin seemed to molt off as she grew ever more powerful, ever more hungry for slaughter.
Sigfried twisted about and locked eyes with the Sergeant in charge of the retinue of people. The Q-waves were flowing out from every hub coordinating the troops through the city as the other drop ships landed in roaring bursts. “Take your men and do your work.” He took a hold of Jarka’s wrist and turned away once again. “We will move ahead and clear your way.”
With that the young chef found herself upon the back of a great and terrible beast, swooping and panting as it chased after Victoria. Her terrified fingers clung and dug into his back, eyes beaming with rage and hatred as it swooped into the fight. “Sig...” He heard her murmur from above, but she was talking to the wrong entity. This beast was just that: the beast. No matter how much Sigfried was and could not avoid being the mind behind the creature, he lost himself in the form.
This creature was born of some dark dream, some drug-induced insanity that broke free of him when the glare of the sun was just right. It was the tension and hatred and confusion that arose when he could not bear to look upon his own heart. It had a voice, calling out from inside him. It told him things he would never utter to another soul, lest they be of his most trusted companions.
“I am darkness, this is my path. My friend... I will never lose the light of my eyes. I am the death that awaits the weak. I am strength that humans ought fear. I am the terror in the heart of man when he faces his own limits! My name is death.”
As this beast rose up through him so did a mighty caterwaul, bounding behind his glowing companion. As she burst through the remainder of the crumbling wall, a horrible chain of lightning sprang forth from her hands and enveloped one of the troops in front of her, consuming him and casting his form to ashes before it bounced and danced between his allies.
Sigfried raced up to her side, his red hood fluttering behind as Jarka attempted to catch up from behind, her ride suddenly no longer present. Something about the beast had changed him, rattled him, twisted his nerves in just the right way to allow him to flutter through and beyond the fact that they might die here.
He looked behind to Jarka and tilted his head towards the oncoming maelstrom of warriors. “Are you ready?” She didn’t seem to him that she was ready. She seemed afraid, as though this was all unreal. She clutched at the weapon she had been assigned, a hefty hand canon of a pistol, the clip full of ki-tipped rounds. He furrowed his brow in frustration and pointed towards the yellow. “Well, you’d better get ready.”
With that he faced the crashed waves of the enemy and bellowed out, “My name is death!!”
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]