by Luca Braña
“Papa! PAPA! Come on! We need to go!” Shiro frantically shook him. Engines sounded behind them; their still intact transport helicopters were being used to aid in the evacuation alongside the large vehicles.
“T-they have breached the fortress! They are quickly moving this way!” an operator yelled in terror as he looked at the blue streak that plowed through the landscape, accompanied by an aiding pink blur, and two others who used seemingly arcane powers to destroy anything and everything.
“O-others have also breached through the other side!” another operator yelled, causing the commander to bash his fist against the console.
“Escape through the windows! Order a helicopter to wait by and forget any weight limits! Retreat now!” he yelled out his orders just before the doors that lead inside the command bridge burst open with several streaks of blue light. From the smoking corridor, Cyko came in, followed by Magy, both of their eyes glowing with the power that was coursing through their veins.
“Oh? Look who we have here,” Cyko said with a predatory smirk, glaring straight at Dr. Gacha and Shiro, raising his right blade and pointing it right at them. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, Snow, along with your father. I’d like to introduce both of you to my new friends,” the enhancer said, gesturing to each of his holo blades and Magy, who said nothing as she made her scythe glow with dark energy.
“C-Cyko… M-Magy…” Shiro whispered in disbelief, still refusing to believe that her two friends would want to kill her father… Hissing, she stepped in front of him as sparks of energy surrounded her body. “Stay away from him! You already won! Just go to the other side! Follow the trucks! Leave us alone!”
“Did you know, little Shiro? Myo is dead,” Magy revealed with an evil grin before a brief frown flashed across her face as she forced herself to keep her hard expression. “Thanks to your ‘father,’ who forced us to fight against each other. He was so terrified, he never wanted to fight, he wanted to live, like a normal boy. Free and with a loving family.” Her smirk disappeared into a cold, loathing glare.
“W-what…? N-no… No! You are lying, right? RIGHT?!” the feline girl yelled through wide, horrified eyes, looking up at her father whose stony disposition stayed.
“It’s true, the child known as Myo is dead,” the monotonous voice of Reddox echoed through the room. She whipped around to spot the redhead and the green-haired girl who had played with her on that day.
“I was searching for a cure for his situation. If I had enough time, he would have been fully freed from his debilitating condition,” the mage explained with an emotionless face, noticing how Shiro twisted up in pain.
“All of us witnessed his death,” Ellyn added as she pointed her bow at them, not willing to let them move. “Cyko and Magy were the first to try to save him, most of us joining to try to destroy the barrier that was keeping Myo and Drago in. That was when things went bad, the mutants rushed in to stop us on Drago’s orders,” she moved the bow to point at Dr. Gacha, “and then, he activated those cursed bracelets. We were forced to watch as Myo was killed, incinerated by the dragon’s fire…”
“N-no… Myo… I… Why… Why this…” Shiro whispered to herself, the lighting around her body dying out as she was overcome with grief, tears spilling from her eyes. He had… he had been a friend…
“YOU DON’T DESERVE TO CRY ABOUT HIM!” Cyko lurched forward, blue eyes glowing with hatred as he glared at her. “When… when we found out you were related to him, when you defended his actions, when you betrayed us, do you know how much Myo cried? How much he suffered?! HE TRUSTED YOU!”
“N-no! You got it wrong! I never betrayed any of you! I never wanted to hurt you! I-I never wanted Myo to die!” Shiro pleaded, tears running down her cheeks. “I… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…” the white cat sobbed out, falling to her knees.
“Shiro…” her father spoke out suddenly, putting one of his hands on her head, causing the girl to turn her head to him, looking at the scientist’s own, regret-stained face. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. You did nothing wrong, far from it. The fault lies with me, I was the one who allowed Myo to be killed. We were attacked by a mental intrusion, they even controlled me, whoever they were, they wanted to stop the fight between Myo and Drago. Myo had to pay the price… for my lack of foresight,” the scientist admitted, closing his eyes as he let himself feel regret for the first time since the project started.
“That’s bull! Don’t you dare sit there and lie with a straight face!” Cyko retorted. He pointed behind him, gesturing to the side of the desert they had invaded from. “You killed over fifty children with those weapons of yours! Children, kids! Kids who had been lied to, who expected a better life! Who wanted nothing more but to have a normal life! To be free of this prison YOU PUT US IN!”
“You are a hypocrite,” Dr. Gacha replied, his face shifting from regret to calculation, looking at the murderous child straight in the eye, noticing how his words seemed to have struck a nerve in the boy, judging by his expression. “You could have resorted to knocking out the guards and letting the scientists, who couldn’t fight back, go. But no, you murdered, maimed, and tortured everyone in your way. A genocide. And now, you want to kill my daughter, whose only fault was wanting to be your friend. How is that any better than what I’ve done?” His voice dripped with venom. Even Cyko’s friends flinched at his words. Magy frowned, Ellyn let her bow down and softly cried while Reddox closed his eyes as he lowered his face towards the ground.
“We… We were only children! You forced us into becoming like this! You wanted this!” Cyko didn’t let down, his own heart stinging at the realization that, perhaps, his own transition into a monster was already complete. “We never wanted this! We never wanted to become soldiers to fight your war!” He thought back to all the suffering he and his friends had to endure over the months they spent here.
“Then I’ll tell you something, Cyko. I, too, was forced into becoming like this. I too didn’t want to resort to this, but having experienced what I did at the hands of the Creators, I was willing to do anything to protect this world,” the scientist answered with a hard glare of his own, hands in his pockets. “Tell me… How does that make you different from me?”
He refused to answer such a question.
“You can ask that all you want. It won’t make you any less guilty of all those innocent deaths. I swear to you, I’ll avenge them and end this once and for all. Killing you is my top priority!”
At this, Shiro snapped her head up at him in disbelief. They still… they still wanted to take her father away from her?!
Just as the enhancer dashed towards them intending to cleave the scientist in half, the commander appeared in front of him, punching Cyko in the face, sending him flying towards a computer. He took out a shotgun and fired while the others sought cover.
“That’s enough of this emotional garbage! Everyone! Retreat NOW!” the commander ordered again as the sound of helicopter blades approached the windows of the bridge. Cyko tried to get up to stop them, but several purple-colored spheres crashed into him, each one hitting with the force of a speeding car.
“I SAID, GO!” The commander looked straight at Shiro, who snapped out of her shock and was covered in lightning once again. Before her father could open his mouth, she took him in her arms and escaped out of the window.
Cyko yelled in rage as he rolled away to evade more of the spheres slamming into him, glaring at his current obstacle who was surrounded by dozens of purple orbs.
“My name is Darius Neon, a leader of the Neon Lunatics!” the man yelled as he pumped his weapon for another shot. He would not have any more of his men and women dying if he could help it!
“TELA! SNOW IS ESCAPING WITH DR. GACHA! DON’T LET THEM LEAVE!” Cyko communicated to her, before turning to deal with the mercenary leader, making several clones as he did so, his friends ready to join him in battle.
They would make short work of this guy and hopefu
lly be able to stop Dr. Gacha in time.
9
As Shiro flew towards the exit, she wondered what went wrong. Why was all of this so hard to understand? Why couldn’t they all just get along?!
She knew her father admitted his guilt for Myo’s death, but she had already forgiven him for it, there was no need to kill him! Her friend’s death was tragic, but losing her father… it would kill her. She couldn’t allow it. If she were to choose between her friends and her father… The choice was clear.
A large wall of sand appeared in front of her, almost causing the girl to crash right into it. She panicked. Projectiles from different elements shot at her. What was going on?!
She dodged them all before noticing that several spirits were surrounding her. She hissed and spun into a wide kick, the light powers in her body extending her reach and disrupting the hostile spirits. Taking advantage of the opening, she jumped away, running towards the exit.
Several children, bodies surrounded by different colored auras, tried to stop her, but she jumped over them and kicked, sometimes slashing them into backing away.
Then, she felt her body being taken ahold of by an incredible force.
“That’s far enough, both of you,” an authoritative voice called out before it turned Shiro’s whole body around so she was face to face with Tela’s hard glare, the rebel leader.
“You won’t escape. For the crimes you committed, you can’t leave!” the telepath declared, face set in stone as she glowered at the scientist who had gotten to his feet, while his daughter desperately struggled against Tela’s powerful hold.
“No! NO! LET ME GO! PAPA!”
A subtle look towards his daughter sent a flash of worry across his face, but he assumed a stony gaze towards Tela. “If I surrender myself, will you let my daughter go? Free and unharmed? To live as she will in the outside world?” His words sent her into a struggling fit, tears streaming down her face.
As far as she knew, while the girl might have spied on them and provided her father with useful information, she didn’t seem to be guilty of any crime against them, beyond being associated with the head scientist, that is. Just as Tela opened her mouth to agree, however, Cyko appeared at her side, glaring at the scientist.
“Yeah right you will! You are just stalling, aren’t you?!” he accused.
Tela’s eyes widened as she noticed that this whole time the man had his hands in his pockets. She scrambled to enforce her telekinesis over the man, but he seemed unaffected. She gasped as her hold over the man’s daughter broke.
“W-What did you do?!” the rebel leader cried out. The others are still making their way here, but it wouldn’t take them long, so no matter what he tried to pull, he wouldn’t get far.
“You’re right, I have been stalling for time. I’ve been working on this small device of mine, and just booted it up for this emergency battle. It is a little something I have kept as a memento from the last war. It had been destroyed, but I restored it.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled smugly, hugging his daughter as she clung to him. “It has been a while, but this device does not require experience, only a keen and imaginative mind to pilot it.” Dr. Gacha took his hands out of his pockets, one empty while the other held a black sphere with a red eye drawn over it.
“I’ve noticed my mistake; I realize what I did wrong during this whole project. I closed off my emotions too much, I treated you too harshly and because of that, I created monsters. Now, however, I know what I need to do. If I let you escape and leave this place, you will kill more humans. You’ll seek me and my daughter out and torture both of us and any friend or relatives we might have. But, thanks to this little thing, that won’t happen.” His face changed from the neutral mask into a grim determination as he let the black eye go, making it float in front of him before it glowed and suddenly expanded, covering both the scientist and his daughter.
“You are insane! We want to be free and have normal lives! Away from monsters like you, who lied to us and brought us to this place against our wishes!” Tela willed her power to work at maximum output, her partitions informing her of every child’s position as they surrounded the duo, preparing to attack at any moment.
“Let your own actions speak for themselves! You let your little soldiers kill, torture, and destroy everything. Not once have you tried to convince them to spare their opponents! You think it’s justice, I say genocide!” the scientist yelled as the sphere surrounding both him and his daughter turned dark as a large, mechanical eye blinked open and floated higher into the air, with two large, plane-like metallic wings materializing on the eye’s flanks, followed by four, smaller eyes materializing around it.
It appeared to be some kind of corrupted fighter jet.
His words felt like a knife to the rebel leader, because she realized they were true. She had not once tried to stop her friends and allies from killing the defenseless staff, not even questioning whether they were guilty of helping in their suffering or not. But now was not the time to dwell on that. Now, she was face to face with the monster responsible for their misery. She shook her head and refocused.
“If you try to stop us from being free, then we will kill you! JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE STAFF OF THIS WRETCHED PLACE!” Tela screamed, eyes glowing with power as she shared her desire and determination to escape with everyone, causing a large chorus of war cries to resound across the desert.
“I see, so that’s how you did it, that’s how you made this rebellion happen! I can finally see it! Your tentacles have every single rebel firmly in its grasp, your own emotions influencing theirs!” the scientist mused, his voice projected for the arena to hear over the loud hum of the eye.
Before a pale Tela could even try to deny his claims, Cyko put a hand on her shoulder, face momentarily shifting into an affectionate smile before turning back to glare at the scientist.
“Well, guess what? We already know Tela can mess with our minds if she wished to, but unlike you, she never made us do anything against our will!” Cyko shouted before vanishing and appearing in front of the fighter plane, ready to slash it in half, only for the round machine to fly backwards, avoiding his attack.
The final battle had begun.
CHAPTER 7
RETRIBUTION
1
Inside the fighter machine known as the Paradox Warper, Dr. Gacha turned to his daughter, knowing they would have to talk fast.
“Shiro, if you want, I can deliver you directly to the exit while I hold them back. This will be very dangerous for both of us,” her father said frantically, but she shook her head.
“No, Papa! We either leave together or fight together! You said you wouldn’t leave my side, I won’t leave you alone!” the girl declared as she glared at the children below who were trying to kill her father, wishing she could blast away from them. “Tell me what to do! If I can’t help here, then I’ll jump out and join the fight!”
“I knew you would say that…” the scientist said before he turned back towards the holographic cockpit of the eye. “Turn your back, I’ll put the interface over your eyes so you can control the Warp Gazers. All you need to control them is your mind. Imagine them moving, will them to fire. They can be charged for stronger attacks and can move away from the fighter up to seven kilometers for now, which is more than enough,” her father explained, pressing a button that put a red filter on her vision as two joystick controls appeared in her hands, all of them holographic.
“I can see it! It’s a little confusing but… I somehow know how to control all four of them! I’ll do my best, Papa!” The girl hissed as she found several targets and fired the attacks, the red lasers flying away towards the children on the ground, who barely evaded them.
Turning back towards his console, the scientist made his own strategy.
The Paradox Warper was a powerful weapon, created to wage war against Creators and match their combat level. Installed on the fighter was a powerful, one-of-a-kind scanner which allowed them to see things that
were not visible to the naked eye. Momentous changes in space and time, alterations in reality, wormholes, spirits, failures in the fabric of reality, the flow of magic in the air… Anything that is invisible or imperceptible becomes perceptible. Anything that is too great for a human mind to understand turns comprehensive.
And that was not all it was capable of, those were only a few of the scanners that the PW had installed. Its barriers were made to protect the eye from any attack, both physical, magical, metaphysical, and conceptual, while also being able to calculate the best routes to evade attacks received and the best ways to counter them.
When engaged, the machine could communicate with its pilots, real-time information being fed to their brains in such a way that felt natural. The machine converted and renovated the air, making sure it always had enough oxygen to provide for all pilots inside it.
Its weapon system was also designed to combat Creators. It could fire special kinds of lasers, streams of energy specially designed to strike the soul, piercing through any physical defense. The largest eye was actually the main ‘gun,’ able to deliver a devastating blast of soul-destroying laser when charged. The wings contained several missiles and missile factories that produced weaponry from leftover particles in the air.
The Warp Gazers were made to act as defensive turrets and drones to fight for long distances, hundreds of them could be controlled by a single pilot, and if they got destroyed, they would rebuild themselves in seconds with the fighter’s automated regeneration system, made to repair all damage suffered as long as the main modules behind it, even one, remained operational. The true machine of war was designed so anyone might use it, no matter their expertise or level of intelligence—it made the perfect anti-Creator weapon.
Lacking several of its core systems and with many of its physical parts having been swapped for a long obsolete technology, Dr. Gacha could only salvage four out of the dozens of original Warp Gazers. He replaced part of the body and with the wings unable to support the body; it was a miracle it could even fly. In fact, the magic rituals and wards used to repair it were the only thing keeping it together and afloat. He had considered asking for funding to engineer as much of the fighter’s components as possible, to replicate as much of it as they could and then mass produce it… But he knew it would be impossible, and a waste of money. Just to repair it on his own, he had to use many resources.