K: "Harbor no illusions, Gold, my task is to bring you back to our home world dead or alive. Make no mistake; I am not your enemy. Since you are a fellow Rotkennk I would rather bring you back in one piece."
Gold: "You asked my purpose earlier."
K: "And what is it?"
Gold: "My purpose is to have no purpose. I am a free being and that I shall remain. If your goal is to take me back to K’OS and those Overmind torture lovers then you are my enemy and there is only one thing left to do."
Xen: "Well you certainly will die free now won't you?"
Immeasurable Power
The Rotkennk twins and heralds of K'OS, K and Xen, were face to face with a very powerful rogue Rotkennk in the vastness of space not too far from the graveyard planet Robespierre. The three warriors were still, but only briefly.
Without warning, the rogue Rotkennk, who styled himself Gold and whose body was colored thusly, released a large golden energy orb composed of unstable explosive particles. The orb began to quickly travel through space and track K. K began evasive maneuvers as soon as he noticed the attack. He flew towards the ball at high speeds and just as he was about to make contact with the orb he rose and flew straight up, but the orb continued to follow.
K continued to out speed the ball as he flew upwards. When he created enough distance between himself and the threat he flipped backwards and punted the globule while upside down. The golden orb flew even faster now towards his brother.
The orb reached Xen in no time and the Rotkennk warrior extended his shining circular blades in anticipation. He made the blades spin in a fiery rotation at the end of the spinning device on his hand. He smacked the ball full force with the flat of his blade and it rebounded with quadruple the force back towards Gold. It tagged the rogue Rotkennk hard and yet Gold was unaffected by it and simply absorbed the excess energy.
Gold: "I hope that this isn't all the fabled Masked Ones are capable of. You seem to be all flash and no substance."
Xen took to the offensive and attacked Gold with a few acrobatic swipes of his blades. First horizontal then vertical then vertical again then horizontals going outwards with both blades. Gold managed to dodge all of Xen's attacks. Xen then banged his blades together which shot a pressurized shockwave at Gold. Gold stood still smiling as the attack crashed into him. Gold flicked a single finger at Xen and shot a golden beam at him much faster than he could react to. Xen was rocketed away into the nothingness of space. K noticed that his brother's hand was bladeless as he shot right past him.
Xen: "Bingo."
The blade spun from behind Gold and hurtled towards him. It bonked against Gold's thin energy aura and floated through space listlessly. Xen recalled it with a mere thought and it was back on his hand in no time. Gold, who was noticeably angry, retaliated.
While he was focused on Xen, K stealthily blasted him from behind with a dark ray blast, energy capable of absorbing light particles. Gold was caught off guard from the force of the blast, but quickly righted himself.
Gold: "Of course, dark rays."
K: "One of the few energy sources capable of bypassing your defenses, I suspect."
Gold simply smirked. Xen furiously spun forward towards an off guard Gold and caught him straight in the face with a furiously wound kick. Gold flew backwards and reactively activated his aura. His body's nanomachines worked quickly to repair the damage and end his dazed state.
Gold thought to himself, I can't be so careless. My aura always needs to be up at full power.
Xen to K: "I should've gone for the killing blow and cut his head off."
K to Xen: "It's better that you didn't. He's Rotkennk after all."
Xen: "A hard head and a soft heart, our lord father must be glad you're one of a kind."
Gold: "Both of you are fast, but I wonder if you can dodge this?"
Sixteen tiny explosive orbs of golden energy appeared in front of Gold in a four by four grid. The orbs glowed bright and grew huge in no time before Gold fired major shots from them. The orbs shot linear lasers that fired minigun style in K and Xen's direction.
Xen to K: "Wait a second, these are tracking us."
The brothers instinctively flew in opposite directions.
Gold thought to himself: This is going to be harder than I thought. These two are natural fighters. That strategy came to them without a thought. It was instinctive.
Gold: "Smart, but I'm not finished yet."
Gold created another four by four grid in front of himself.
Gold: "You two are good, but not this good."
His grid then morphed into one that was much longer horizontally. Gold counted out a grid of twenty by one hundred. Again the orbs pulsed with golden energy and grew larger and larger.
Xen to K: "Oh no! Look at his power!"
K to Xen: "His energy must be limitless. Keep moving!"
Gold fired the lasers from the grid, but to Xen's surprise sent all the blasts at K. K managed to dodge the initial barrage with ease. Another wave followed that one and K dodged nearly all of those blasts until he missed a single one that hit his mask. The blast exploded on impact and left K vulnerable for just a second which was enough for him to get caught in the hellish barrage of blasts that remained.
What neither Gold nor K noticed was that Xen had surrounded K with two of his hovering reflector blades. The blades moved with blinding speed and kept most of the damage off of K. Xen kept two blades hovering around himself as well.
Gold: "Very impressive. You'd be better off protecting yourself. You can't keep you and your brother safe at this rate."
Xen: "My focus is unwavering. I can keep my brother and myself safe with no effort at all. You see, we were made for this, for battle, for conquest. I have complete control over my skills. You however do not and are much too overconfident. You don't even know your limits. You're like a child with a new toy and it's not even fully unwrapped."
Gold: "Strange expression Masked One. My skill level is low, sure. But every second that I spend fighting against opponents of your caliber gives me endless opportunities to learn. I'll tell you this; I won't make the same mistake twice."
Xen: "We'll see. You're looking more green than Gold to me."
Gold smiled and readied another assault. He knew he needed to stay on the offensive if he had any hope for survival.
The Green One
The infinite black that men called space provided the battlefield for this fight of kin. The Rotkennk space warriors and brothers Anar K and Nexus, who forthwith shall be known as K and Xen respectively, sought to capture their Rotkennk kin known as of this battle as Gold. Tensions mounted as both sides prepared for their next move. All the creatures communicated telepathically as space held no atmosphere to carry their voices.
Gold: "Are you two now realizing how fruitless this is? I only grow stronger by the minute. You soon won't be able to even touch my radiance."
The lowborn Rotkennk was way too arrogant as K and Xen would have it. But he did have a deadly point. Gold was definitely gaining fighter's instincts as the battle continued. While not naturally a fighter, his raw power had been enough to give the Masked Ones some trouble.
Xen: "Don't worry, we will finish this soon rookie."
The brothers communicated between themselves on a separate telepathic channel.
Xen to K: "We will have to kill him and now. What he says is right."
K to Xen: "No. We have a chance to capture him. He's kin and to have a Rotkennk with such potential...it would be a waste to kill him."
Xen to K: "You're a fool. Can't you sense that he hasn't weakened yet? Even with that impressively wasteful showing earlier his energy levels are still the same. He's dangerous and becoming more and more so.
K to Xen: "Capturing him isn't beyond us."
Xen to K: "I'll try once more, but after if I see another opening I'm killing him so you better hope we can capture him before then."
Gold studied both brothers.
Gold:
"You two are very quiet now. I have only just awakened to my vast powers and am a novice in telepathy, but I'll bet you have a way of talking between just the two of you."
Gold's body glowed bright as sunlight and was getting brighter and brighter by the second. He projected an aura that was initially nearly form-fitting. The aura could be seen over his body, only slightly though. He expanded the auras length, width, and height by a great margin until it was a huge sphere. Gold started laughing madly from his show of power. It felt good to the fledgling warrior to finally loosen his restraints. K and Xen were forced to fly backwards a few miles to not be engulfed by the burning aura.
Gold: "What do you think of my might Masked Ones? Does it cause you fear?"
Xen: "I've already told you green lad, your tricks aren't amusing. My brother and I have learned to control our stores of energy long ago during our childhoods."
K: "What you are projecting now is wasteful. All that energy would be put to much better use if Xen or I were wielding it."
Gold: "But you are not haha! I am the wielder of all this magnificent power - me - a lowly Builder. That must anger K'OS' favored sons to no end."
Xen: "I'd only be mad if I couldn't kill you, but you're a boisterous fool so I'll have only joy when your head rolls."
K shot Xen a dirty look. Xen didn't miss it even though they were separated by many miles, a testament to Rotkennk eyesight.
Gold began to try something new. While he was now used to flaring his power aura outwards he now tried his hand at making that same aura smaller and more condensed. It was a lot easier with less energy particles to control, but with so much now he had trouble. He finally succeeded, but not without a pained effort. The condensing had made the aura stronger, a fact that hadn't escaped the Rotkennk brothers.
Gold: "Now I'm unstoppable! Come Masked Ones...and burn."
K flew in closely and surrounded himself with a thickly layered dark ray aura. Dark rays could absorb light and would provide K with some protection from Gold’s light based attacks. The aura appeared black and almost invisible in ordinary space, but when K approached Gold and entered the territory of his aura K's own took on a purple hue. Gold now strained himself producing more of his aura in order to push K backwards. K's own aura thinned the closer he got to Gold until he made it close enough to take a swipe at Gold's face with his claws. Gold managed to produce enough energy to push K backwards and expel him out of his aura, but not without a major effort. K quickly charged his dark ray aura and flew upwards and entered Gold's aura from the top where it was weaker since Gold pushed most of it to the front to expel K. K’s great speed and dark rays allowed him to easily cut through Gold’s aura. He was above Gold in an instant and punched him hard enough to send him flying outside of his own aura. Gold's jaw was nearly dislocated, his nanomachines fed on his energy reserves to repair the damage. K was left surrounded by the burning aura as Gold condensed it in an effort to crush him, but he lacked the control he needed to do it as fast as he wanted. He made the energy expand then condense, but that made it move erratically and caused it to explode violently. The explosion rippled throughout the area and its force had even pushed Gold back a little.
He reactively surrounded his body with his golden aura, but wasn't quite fast enough to avoid Xen's razor sharp blade. It caught him dead in the chest and knocked him far and fast. His aura protected him from most of the damage, but he still felt the pain of the blades weight against him. He now had the sense and reaction to keep his aura about him and closer to his body. He was surprised to find himself still in one piece, but the blade had felt more like some weight than a cutting instrument. He saw a flash and felt himself crash into something that was small and circular at his back. Another of Xen's blades no doubt. Xen appeared faster than he could react to and crashed into his sternum with a long kick. Gold was smashed between the force of the kick and the weight of Xen's blade. His aura had provided him minimal protection this time and he and the blade went soaring until Xen recalled it and Gold with it. This time Gold pushed the blade away with a flaring of his aura and sent a small army of tiny golden energy globules at Xen while he attempted to recover. He had to have launched thousands.
Xen prepared himself for the assault by detaching the four of his reflective disc blades, one from each hand and foot. The reflective discs hovered about him and he was glad to have them for this battle. Like the rest of his body they were made of nanites that he could control by mental will. He decreased the thickness of the blades with a mere thought so that they could move unfettered. His mental state was the most difficult to prepare as he'd have to be focused on each of the blades, himself, and his opponent, but he was ready. He had trained to fight like this for a long time as all sons of K'OS had.
Xen dodged and weaved through the globules and any that came close were halted and reflected elsewhere by the discs that Xen controlled with surgical precision. Then more came from the opposite direction.
Xen: "What in the world..."
Now attacked from two sides Xen had much more trouble. One wrong move and he'd end up like K. When the barrage wouldn't let up he recalled the discs to the tips of his hands and feet and used them to deflect all incoming attacks at close range. He was successful for a time until he found himself attacked on all sides.
Gold hadn't limited his attacks to Xen's flanks. He placed golden grids on four sides around him and also above and below him. Gold had effectively trapped Xen in a flaming golden prison where explosive golden energy rained down from all sides. Xen resisted and reflected for as long as he could, but it was too much. He was overwhelmed and being blasted from all sides.
Gold was satisfied and smiled at his victory. It wasn't every day when someone could claim to have defeated the Masked Ones.
Funeral Pyre
Two brothers - both warriors of incredible power and made even stronger with the strength of their own dead brothers of yore – were now humbled, belittled, and broken. Their only joy now was the disquieting stillness of the black space that surrounded them. The silence was a mercy. Their bodies were shielded from and accustomed to the complete lack of heat, but their opponent brought them warmth...and destruction.
They floated on, broken things they were. The twin sons of K'OS, brought so low and by what - a mere Builder. Like all Builders he was born with no name, indistinct from the other Builders except that he had a twin brother and on the Rotkennk living planet, K'OS - the sire of K and Xen, that made him special. Vicious experiments were performed during these rare twin occurrences to test the limits of Rotkennk power and ability. This experiment was taken too far and this Rotkennk Builder that now styled himself as Gold was far too powerful.
He smiled and surveyed the vacuous battlefield. His handiwork had offered him amusement. Masked Ones broken at his own whims. Never in his life did he imagine this for his future. For a mere Builder like himself to accomplish such a feat was unheard of, but could he call himself a Builder anymore? No, he thought, I'm so much more now. He could only think of himself as the strongest in the universe at this point.
No force could withstand the Masked Ones and yet he shattered them easily enough.
These were K'OS' favored sons and prime warriors he sent out to conquer in his name, but that didn't mean they would be the last. With a planet's worth of resources under his control the giant ruler would spare no expense to fix this slight and Gold knew he needed to be prepared.
He still had more than enough energy at his disposal, his stores seemed to constantly replenish themselves as long as he didn't completely deplete them, but his limitations seemed to keep expanding so he wasn't sure what his current limit was. He looked over at the bodies of the Masked Ones, strewn about space in pieces. Gold's rapid and numerous energy barrages had ripped them both apart especially Xen. They weren't dead however and Gold wanted to finish the job. He wanted nothing to remain of them once he was done.
Gold flared his energy aura and concentrated the flow into his hands. He sti
ll had trouble focusing his energy, but he had so much of it that it didn't seem to matter. He laughed to himself and basked in the amazing feel of his aura. So much warmth and other things he couldn't describe. He looked around for both brothers, almost losing them completely in the blackness of space. He wasn't used to being out here, but he would be. His power would carry him across the universe to wherever he wanted and he would do whatever he wanted. Power meant complete freedom.
He found Xen's body and aimed his hand. Xen's mask, Darcell, had separated from the Rotkennk warrior and was nowhere in sight. That chilled Gold for some reason. Why, he didn't know. If the sentient mask was nothing with its owner then why would it pose a threat without him? Gold wasn't satisfied yet. He flexed his voice via telepathy.
Gold: "I do believe that you told me that I'd make a deathly mistake that would prove to be my undoing. An interesting prediction...Xen, but not an accurate one. You've made the critical mistake and that mistake was underestimating me."
Xen: "Sure rub it in why don't you. Hahahaha, yes I have made a rookie mistake and I can't say that it feels good to be in such bad shape. But..."
Gold: "But? What else can there be Masked One?"
Xen: "Your defeat, of course. You haven't won yet and my brother and I still have the advantage."
Gold scoffed at that.
Gold: "Advantage? What advantage? You're all but dead, only alive because I allow it for right now."
Xen: "But alive nonetheless. When I called you green I meant it."
Gold: "I've had enough of this. You and your brother will burn."
Xen: "Haha cough hahahaha. What brother...?"
Gold made the realization and looked panicked as he whipped his head around looking for K.
Gold: "Where is he? I've lost him. No matter. You're still here Xen, and your life is now forfeit."
K: "Shade."
Gold didn't think it possible for the black space to become blacker, but it did. He launched the full fury of his golden blast at Xen before it was too late. He had no way to tell if the blast hit or not. It had not exploded and became lost in the encroaching darkness. Gold flared his aura out to combat the darkness and managed to clear it away, but not without a great expense of effort and energy. They were gone, the both of them, and not because of his efforts either. That he knew, he felt it.
Story of K: An Infinite Golden Light (Sci Fi Action) (Space Fiction) (Robot Fiction) Page 2