ChaosRipjaw
How We Roll Winner
Jun15
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Even from here, Hydna could see the very tall woman get impaled on the end of the massive glaive. She could see her fall.
That could very well be her own fate in the next few seconds. [Warning.]
[Temperature levels reaching 150°.] Temperature– what? She wasn’t anywhere near the tree–
Hydna looked up. Sizzling schnitzels her brain said, but her mouth opened and closed wordlessly.
The branches of the tree were reaching out toward her, looking for all the world like the tentacles of a goddamned pyro-kraken. Sounded like one too, for a great roar overtook the entire battlefield. She’d come too far to die now! She wanted to yell but searing pain lanced through her swollen jaw. Hydna ran–
–but the tentacles – branches – were on her. The world became hot as an oven as the wind picked up and a tornado of the burning petals enveloped her.
The warmth mutates into an uncomfortable heat, but it is gone as soon as it comes, to be replaced with a biting cold. “Cut it out guys,” she complains, opening her eyes. Everyone is laughing.
“That got her,” Telesilla says approvingly.
“How do you have time to sneak all these things into her ship?” Messene wonders.
Scyllis tuts disapprovingly. “Blatant abuse of shipyard security!”
“Awake now, Hydna?” Commander Thyone asks kindly.
“Yeah yeah, I’m awake now,” Hydna says, embarrassed. “Sorry for falling asleep again.”
“Don’t worry too much about it, Fury Five,” Telesilla says. “Anti-space travel’s way worse than highway hypnosis.”
The others murmur agreement.
“Come on now,” Thyone says over the chatter. “Wake up Hydna.”
Wake up? Wasn’t she already awake? Wait–
Hydna opened her eyes to a gray, featureless sky that somehow emanated light.
No no no no …
Back where she started in this nightmare. Back in the lifeless city of black and white.
Only it wasn’t so lifeless this time.
Hydna sat bolt upright. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
Impossible.
“Commander?” she asked in disbelief.
Commander Thyone smiled faintly. She sat in a kneeling position, near Hydna who had been lying supine. There was no mistaking it, that unscarred face that had survived so much, the signature Greco-futurist wintery suit that combined bulkiness and skintight in flowing elegance.
A fountain of relief swelled in Hydna’s chest and tears came to her eyes. Rescued! Finally–
No.
The fountain seemed to freeze over, turning her blood to ice. She wanted to deny it, wanted to believe she had been saved. But deep down, even before the suit AI confirmed it, even as the automaton adjusted itself as though in response to her memories of the commander, Hydna knew.[No biometrics detected.]
[Unidentified power source.]
[Checking material …]
[Compositional material: unknown.] “Who are you?” Hydna whispered.
Thyone smiled. “I am whatever you need me to be.”
“You’re not the commander,” Hydna hissed, then winced and groaned in pain. She fell back on her back, breathing.
“Talking with a fractured jaw is ill-advised,” Thyone chastised. Her tone and inflection were exactly as Hydna remembered. Despite the fact that this … this thing was just an illusion, a mirage, a spitting reflection of the commander, hearing her familiar tone set Hydna at ease.
“This should help.” Cold fingers that imitated soft, gloved hands but lacked all of the heat and comfort of the living pressed something moist and chilly to Hydna’s skin.
Medi-gel. Hydna sighed as the swelling rapidly settled down, the T-nanos in the gel repairing the broken blood vessels and bone fractures. She closed her eyes. For several long moments, she just lay there, soaking in the silence. At least this time instead of plummeting to her death, she got to lie in an empty courtyard.
“Where am I?” Hydna asked, without opening her eyes.
The automaton didn’t breathe or emit any sound, but Thyone’s reply came, “You are now a resident of the Chequered City.”
“You’re really not the commander, are you?” Hydna had to ask, even though she knew the answer.
“Well yes, but actually no.” Thyone’s eyes twinkled, giving her mechanical eyes the uncanny illusion of life. “Everything you remember about the commander is given shape and form in me.”
Hydna shook her head. The crypticism, the humor, all of it was just like the commander in life.
“Come now,” Thyone said. “Don’t be shy. Speak freely.”
The words, reverberating from a previous life, cracked something in her. “I’m scared,” Hydna choked out, and the floodgates opened. “I don’t understand what’s going on. There’s no one here, I can’t remember anything–” and she found herself recounting everything that had happened since the crash. Fighting for her life … killing a man.
Thyone sat quietly as Hydna spoke. She looked at the starless sky in silence, seemingly deep in thought, as Hydna trailed off.
“Do you remember that story I told you,” Thyone said softly, “about the redwood forests?”
Hydna shivered. “Yeah.”
“You know a redwood doesn’t grow to its height without trials of great hardship,” Thyone said. “Ants, woodpeckers, wind and thunder, earthquakes and lumberjacks … everything is against it. Everything wants to topple it.
“The question is,” Thyone asked, “can it endure?”
Hydna was silent. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Thyone admonished, wagging her finger. “By your own admission, by your own experience, you’ve gotten quite far, especially on such scant resources.”
The words resonated with something deep in Hydna’s subconscious. She remembered her fear when she had first crashed. She remembered fighting with all her might. Even underequipped, she’d never really spared a second thought on what could have happened, except for brief moments when she’d been beaten bloody. Still–
“Having my power rifle back would make me feel a lot better,” Hydna muttered.
Thyone laughed. “And so it would. But sometimes Fury Five doesn’t have her power rifle, just as those redwoods don’t always have the best weather to stand in.”
“Except it’s not always about the weather,” Hydna pointed out. “Sometimes it’s got old guys with axes going at it.”
“True, true,” Thyone said. She smiled. “In which case, I have my little Furies on my branches to protect me.”
“You’re down a Fury then,” Hydna said. “Last I checked, my ship’s turned into a souffle.”
“All a Fury needs are her wings and her talons.” Thyone inclined her chin, gesturing toward Hydna’s holster. “Both of which you definitely have.”
Hydna’s fingers brushed against the handle of the Savager, then went up to absentmindedly stroke the cable launcher built into her left forearm guard. Talons. Almost in response to her thoughts, her suit confirmed: [Power levels at 100%.] Wings.
“Is that what the commander would have said?” Hydna asked dryly.
Thyone’s eyes twinkled. “That’s what you know she would have said.”
Hydna snorted. Then she started to laugh, giddy from exhaustion and the post-adrenaline. The commander was right. She wasn’t just a little tree that was growing. She was also one of the Furies. Talons and wings. She had them both, and she knew how to use them.
Thyone laughed with her but it quickly faded as she looked toward the sky. “The time is coming,” she said, even though there was no sun with which to gauge. “You’ll be going soon.”
Hydna sat up. “It’s not over?”
“No,” Thyone said. “You should get some rest, Fury Five. The storm is coming.”
“But, what about the rest of the Furies?” Hydna yelped. “They’re still up there–”
“Indeed.” Thyone nodded. “The Furies are still up there, fighting for their lives. And maybe, just maybe …” The automaton stood in one smooth motion and turned to leave. It hesitated.
“A parting gift–” Thyone extended a hand. Hydna raised her cupped hands and Thyone tipped a cascade of large bullet-shaped stones into them. [9 projectiles acquired.]
[Total ammunition: 12.] “That’s it?” Hydna asked.
“That is it.”
Hydna’s fist closed around the bullets, and quietly she tucked them into her utility pocket. These things would be her key to survival. Thyone nodded and straightened to leave.
“You know ‘Commander’,” Hydna said, looking up. “If you’re just an automaton based on my memories of the real commander, then does that mean she would actually be praising me?”
Thyone’s eyes twinkled again, but this time Hydna could have sworn she saw a glint of something else in them. Pristine. Old. Powerful. “Am I?” the thing that looked like Thyone asked. “Or are you finally discovering who you really are?”
And she was gone.
“All wings report in,” the commander calls.
The responses begin. “Fury Two, standing by.”
“Fury Three, standing by.”
“Fury Four, standing by.”
It is her turn. “Fury Five, standing by,” Hydna says.
“Shields forward, arm weapons, be ready for anything. Can’t be too sure what’s out there,” Thyone warns, as the squadron drops out of anti-space. Instantly the blank, negative whiteness outside the cockpit becomes the familiar, star speckled blackness of real space.
“What the–”
“There’s nothing out here,” Scyllis says. “Fury One, signal triangulation positive?”
“Positive, Fury Three,” Thyone says, and Hydna can practically “hear” the frown through the comms. “That’s weird. Stay sharp everyone.”
“Gravity gradient is nonexistent,” Telesilla says. “We’re literally in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why would a task force drop out in the middle of nowhere?” Messene wonders.
There is a moment of silence. “No other ships on the sensors,” Scyllis reports.
“If something’s out here waiting for us,” Telesilla mutters, “we’d literally be Sitting Ducks Squadron.”
Their serene surroundings suddenly look ominous. Even with her heater on, Hydna feels goosebumps pop up on her flesh. The whirr of the heater is making her nervous; she turns it off.
A warning light flickers on Hydna’s dashboard. She taps it and it goes dark. “Fury One, I’m picking up something,” Hydna calls.
“Elaborate, Fury Five.”
“Below us. Uhh, 5 o’clock, Z.”
Hydna’s ship hums as she turns it around. “It should be right … here.” She taps the map on the HUD and a pointer appears on all the squadron members’ maps.
“Uhh, what?” Telesilla asks. “There’s nothing there–ahh!”
“Ow!” Hydna yelps at the same moment, as a crackle of static slices into her ear. Suddenly, the warning light from earlier lights up, much brighter than it should be able to.
“Fury Five! What’s–” Messene cuts off, gasping in shock. “Holey swiss!”
Suddenly, the dead black space is very, very much alive. Unearthly colors that emitted no light, yet were clear as day filled up the void.
The voices cried out–
–and Hydna realized she wasn’t in space in her memories. And though her surroundings included black and white, she was not in the Chequered City either.
The storm is coming.
If she thought she was dreaming before, back in the arena with the burning tree, it paled in comparison to this landscape. The sky swirled with color, while the floor lay in stark black and white as though in firm opposition against the chaos overhead. Hydna tried to stand, but found she could not; something was pressing her to her knees. As she watched, twin waterfalls churned down from a pair of linked disks suspended overhead. A mighty roar echoed across the field and before her eyes, the waterfalls froze, forming two massive pillars. The ice didn’t stop at the pillars, they spread into perfect rings around them. [Temperature levels reaching 7°.] This universe really did seem to be playing funny tricks on her with the temperature. She exhaled and it came out in a puff.
The voices called out the names. Bloodlust and Symphony, Duality and Machines. Forge and Sky, Force and–
Knight of The Stars. Wild, yet Empty. Rise, Hydna, and soar to your memories.
Oh haha big funny, Hydna thought, incensed. “Soar to your memories,” more like getting punched in the face to start remembering anything. At least “Knight of the Stars” had a nice ring to it. Yeah, if she ever made it out of this place alive, she’d be keeping that title.
“Join me,” called out a single voice, one so very much like the commander’s. “Fight in my name, and I will give you purpose. Fight for Order!”[Multiple adversaries detected.]
[Total: 4.]
[Calculating distances.]
[Square partition lengths: 30 feet each side.] Wait. One, two … Four on her side, four on the other side. So … everyone on her side of the field was … her teammates?
In which case, I have my little Furies on my branches to protect me.
Hydna recognized the super-tall scarred lady, Serihl – sizzling schnitzels, Hydna swore she saw her dead earlier – and the other shorter armored lady with the giant blade thing on the other side of the field. The Knights of Force and Bloodlust, respectively. Hydna wasn’t sure what creeped her out more, the fact one of them was somehow resurrected, or that the other one was responsible for the death of the first.
“But thanks for this,” said one of the women – Unmakyr, Knight of the Forge, Hydna recalled. In her hand, she brandished – Hydna did a double take – also a Savager! Instinctively she reached for her own gun but it was still there, securely in her holster on her right hip. She couldn’t have been pickpocketed anyway; the Unmakyr was standing to her left.
“Uhh, sure?” Hydna said but the Unmakyr was already charging for the guys on the other side of the field, the Knights of Chaos. Not just her, both Serihl and the last Knight – Cirra, Knight of the Sky – were all already going straight for the enemy team without preamble.
An all female team of the Knights of Order …
All wings report in.
Hydna shook herself off; that was then and this was now. Speaking of which, of all her opponents, what drew her gaze immediately, aside from Murder Ma’am – Suraeko – was the gigantic crab mech.
A crab mech. An actual crab mech. Fragging hell, Hydna swore. How did someone manage to bring in a crab mech while all she had was a damned Savager handgun? [Language detected.]
[Database match.]
[Caution: old.]
[Language detected: Rengru’s Children affiliated race.]
[Beginning translation.] That was when she realized the crab – or rather, the crab’s pilot that was standing on it – was talking. Some kind of rat-like alien named Gith. The translation came through– [This is not your place, *bzzt* planet *bzzt*!]
[[Warning: language database corrupted.]
[Firewall activated.]] Oh. Nice. A super old, obscure language combined with that dumb firewall she’d never figured out how to disable. Thanks a lot, Telesilla. That would have been pretty funny, except what he said next that she could understand without the translator was anything but.
Did she say “talking”? “Talking” was an understatement. Screaming bloody murder, more like.
“I will finish what we started years ago, till every Fury is wiped from the void!”
Till every Fury–
Hydna’s face lost a few shades of color as the memories came flooding back, though this time from an entirely unanticipated source: Xenohistory 2312. Hydna had never really paid attention then, but here in the middle of a cosmic chessboard, she remembered every detail. Every detail. A few pages from a textbook. A field trip to the Museum of Xenohistory to see an ancient mech of a very particular design.
A chiming sound accompanied by a sudden cloud of sparkling dust broke Hydna out of her reverie.
Sizzling schnitzels! Hydna yanked out the Savager and began to run.[Approximate distance to first pillar: 84.85 feet.]
[Power levels at 100%.] ”Hey guys, wait for me!” she yelled.
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