Everflame 2 (FINISHED)

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

"Roger that Mr. Elite Sir," turned off his communicator just as a whisperof laughter was about to take him. After Chronin talked to Tabby she giggled and lightly slapped Chronin's arm, and then bullets flew. The first ricocheted behind them. Tabby turned and saw the street filled with gangsters charging forward with knives, chains and the occasional firearm. Tabby leapt back, taking cover around a corner. She looked round its edge, and pulled out two pistols, firing them into the crowd. The squad ducked and scattered, pulling further and further back.




Out above the capital sphere, a small craft darted through the black, until it sat in the path of Nero's ship. It stopped, faced him, and unfurled an oversized emitter. Lights blinked and a transparent force was fired towards Nero. Light distorted in its wake, skewing the stars and the capital sphere seen behind it. It slammed into the ship, knocking it away to drift away through space.




Seema smiled. "Yes well, the scientists and engineers were mostly male. They know what body parts are important to you." She wrote something down on her datapad, and lay it in her lap. "Would you say that you're a well adjusted person? You've lost seventy percent of your body and are taking it in your stride. What's more, you're going to be sent on military missions where you will have to kill a lot of people. Are you not at least apprehensive about any of that?"

[KittKat chunky~]

Annie looked up at the gunshot, eyes flicking from Blaze to the door... Calculating, the soldier in her alert all of a sudden... "Blaze.. You stay here, imha go see whats going on..." She stood up, leaving Blaze to sit on the bed, looking through old photographs. Annie walked out, drawing her pistol from its thigh holster and walking left down the corridor... Turning several corners she finally arrived where the gunshot had originated, pistol loaded and primed...


Blaze meanwhile looked from a photograph of his father, proud and straight-backed beside Annie and Kate, back down to the Marine Core badge on his chest... The very tip of one wing had been completely torn off, a semi-circular hole where a bullet had entered his fathers chest. The first of three such shots, from less than a foot away... The silver badge was still stained with a rusty-red smear...

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chronin unholstered his plasma rifle, and actually fired with cold accuracy, not even phased at the screams of the gangsters who take the shots full-on. Some of them actually stopped when they saw that some of them had limbs fried off. Figures, gangsters can't work up the gut when the smell of burning flesh is permeating through the air...

One of them, a fox-wolf, actually managed to get around the crowd of burnt or dead, and was moments within stabbing him with a 10'' knife, but Chronin spun around and badly cutting up the wolf with his taloned foot. There were about fifty bodies on the ground, most from Chronin's firing, the rest went back to the alleyways, but the bullets still flew. He went behind cover and sighed while pulling down on his face with the left hand. Its like Everflame all over again, only my actions drove the gangs to throw themselves at me...

This was one of the few times that his hair actually fell down from depression, instead of calm or elation. "Tabby, get behind cover, and cover your ears!" he yelled as he 'turned on' his port-a-bomb glove and decided to shut them out to prevent more casualties that would only breed more hatred...

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

Reggie's door was half open, revealing a tiny room, with barely space for a bed and some shelves, covered in anything he'd picked up along the way. The big fox was sat down with the rifle at his side, and a little yellow bulldozer in his gargantuan hands. His ear twitched to face the corridor. He heard footsteps and as Annie turned the corner, he shoved the toy into his pocket.
"Oh, hey. Sorry about the noise, I probably scared you-- no wait you don't get scared, uhm well." He clasped his hands together wringing his fingers. "Sorry about just now and... before." He let out a nervous laugh and got up off the bed to leave his little room. Closing the door behind him revealed a massive hole where the lock had been.





Tabby leapt behind the building and crouched down, hands clamped over her ears. The rest of the squad dove behind whatever they could, bracing for impact.

[Entaru]

Nero's ship twirled through the black like a helpless toy.  As soon as it was out of sensor range, Nero turned the ship back on to steady it.  As soon as it was stable again he turned it back off.  Allowing himself to melt into the crystal, he rematerialized on the outside of the ship. 

He could see the Capital Sphere in the distance...tens of miles of space between himself and the Sphere.  Nero looked down at his ship...knowing it would be useless.  This was about stealth, and he was far too tempted to simply fly in and rip the Sphere apart in search for the Everflame or any information on it.  With a silent sigh he stepped off the hull of the ship and began to walk to the Sphere as if there was solid ground beneath his feet.

Space seemed to bend and warp with every footstep, sometimes shifting him much farther than the step should have allowed.  His own form seemed to be in flux as well.  At times he seemed to not be moving at all but the next moment his body was nothing more than a vibrating blur.  Traveling like this was taking a toll on his borrowed body...he would need to feed again when he got to the station.

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chronin turned on the reticle for his built-in HUD, and then aimed right where a blast would cause the most efficient blockage. He then stood up behind the cover and charged his bomb to about the size of a melon, then shot it at the target, making a rather audible 'boom' and cutting off the bullets from one of the alleys. One down, seven left he inwardly groaned as he now ducked behind cover to charge again...

[Kitt_R_Beesley]

"Well I wouldn't say so much well adjusted as logical, and on top of that mostly optimistic. I can pull a bright side out of almost anything. As for the thought of killing things, or as my reality now is, people, everything has to die at some point and time. It is simply a matter of training my mind to be able to view them as, well, prey. Although I would have to say I would like the development team to make some spare limbs so I can still move of my own accord whenever they need to make adjustments to my standard limbs. God, I never thought I would be speaking of my body as if it were a vehicle." Kitt laughed a little at the previous statement and let loose a resigned sigh. yes he had a lot of mental training he would need to do for his new life but he did have alot of pent up aggresion to help him with that objective. "Seema, as to the later question on the military. I do belive that I am going to require a training regimine to help me with the stated mental aspects. In theroy it works but reality is a very different situation. So the one reason why I resented my own choice to join the military is that I fear that I will enjoy one too many of the aspects of the life."

[KittKat chunky~]

Annie let the pistol drop to her side, safety back on with an audible click... She shrugged, eyes searching over Reggie´s expression "Dont worry... Just checking, you know, gunshot n´ all..." She stepped aside to let him pass as he closed the door behind him, glancing briefly at the space where a lock had obviously once been. She sighed, slipping the pistol back into its thigh holster she smiled warmly... "Look, Reg.." She paused briefly, pushing her fringe out of her eyes "I... I know how you feel... I always worry about what could happen to Blaze one of these days, and before him, heaps of friends who i cared about..."


Back in the medbay, Blaze flicked through another photograph. Annie and Kitt stood proudly side-by-side on the paradeground. Then after that, the two and a few others he didnt know the names of, at a night out off duty... After that however, his father was in no other photographs... Only himself, Blaze, and Annie...

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

The street felt the blast, tearing into the street, blasting holes into collapsing walls. Tabby crouched lower, gripping her ears and shutting her eyes tight. After the blast, she turned to Chronin, breathing hard with an open, incredulous smile.
"What the hell was that?!" she said. Her eyes were shining. The rest of the squad clambered to their feet to scramble further back down the street behind the dragon.




Seema leaned forward, cocking her head to hear more, and understand better. "Enjoyment? Don't worry, you can enjoy it as much as you like as long as you follow orders." She flicked the pen down the datapad, scrolling through its files. "You'll recieve the regular military knowledge and training as well as some special ops excercises via dowload. You won't need to do these straight away, since your body and to some extent, your mind have been engineered to already be better than any soldier we have, so don't worry about that. However, just in case you do get overwhelmed by anything, there is a function in your suit that injects certain chemicals into your bloodstream. They will accentuate those psychological impulses that a good soldier needs and diminish those that get in the way. You won't be scared, you wont panic, and you wont lose your self control. You'll be alert, and ready to handle anything that comes your way in the appropriate manner. Your higher functions will be supported by the AI, and your reaction times will go through the roof; but don't use it too much. It's not good for you." She brushed her hair out of her eyes and sat straight in the chair. "I have one more question before you can go to sleep and get your body parts back, including spares," she said with a smile. "What's your greatest achievement in life so far?"





Reggie looked into her eyes, seeing himself reflected in the amber tones.
"I guess I'm just not used to it." He clasped his hands together, then broke them apart, reaching one into his pocket to feel the metal of the toy bulldozer. "There were my parents, who disappeared; and then there was Jaack. That's all there's ever been, really." he laughed a little, and looked at a wall, pressing his palm against it. "I guess I should have gotten out more, eh?" His laughter subsided, and his smile disappeared. "I don't really know how... I can't... He can't disappear as well, you know?" He gripped the toy tight in his hands, and he fidgeted, turning and shifting on the spot. He was looking around, at anything that wasn't Annie. "You should get back to your son."

[Chrono Blackwyng]

"A momento of my father" he half-mumbled as he formed a another 'bomb' in his hand, which looked like a bubble with glowing yellow soap. He reduced the size because apparently the blast was not as well-contained in this area. He fired another and took out a second ally-way before spotting Tabby's favorite ment getting behind cover and laying down suppressive fire. "Took you long enough!" he yelled before forming another 'bomb' in his hands...

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

The new arrivals pulled out whatever weapons they had an opened fire. All around the violence, screams pierced through from gangsters and the fleeing innocent. The gangs began to disperse,  joining the civilians to run for their lives. Thread jogged over to Chronin. "Looks like we've been missing a party."  He was barely murmuring, as he looked around at the chaos, with hard eyes.

[KittKat chunky~]

Annie looked up at Reggie, sighing. Some part of her, the motherly instinct, wanted to hug him. Hold him close and say everything would be okay. She sighed again, torn between her son and Reggie "Your parents... they... I mean, how old where you?" Annie stepped closer, around to face Reggie. Blaze could wait for a moment or two...




A roiling pain had started somewhere in Blaze´s gut. A short stab of nausea and a prickling feeling all over his skin. The small screen on his wrist flashed twice, along with a continual beeping and scrolling message --Incoming Message--- His face brightened, despite the pain, as he flicked up the screen to answer it "Hey, Tess... that you?"

The screen now showed the caller, a young vixen with bleached-blond hair. Sweat ran down her bangs, and behind her was the sound of welding and cutting. She smirked, flicking her fringe away with an upward huff of air from her mouth. "Yo Blaze! Just calling about your Mag-Bike, finally got it fixed... When you gonna be back at the carrier next?"

Blaze grimaced, the stabbing pain increasing, now in his chest... "Ugh, i dunno... It woulda been today. But we ran into some trouble..." On the other end of the line Tess rolled her eyes, blowing her fringe away again."Ah, your always running into trouble... Well... Next time you dock with the carrier, make sure to come pick her up from the engineer deck... And dont crash her like that next time!"

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

"Thirteen years, eleven months and six days." He looked down at her and sighed. "I made a point of remembering it. I don't know why; it doesnt change anything, but I remember it anyway." He could see in her eyes, she was honestly worried. He gripped the legs of his space suit, holding the fabric in his hands, just to hold something. "It won't bring them back and it wont make him better and I know it never will." His voice faltered, his breathing sharpened, and his stomach felt as though someone was scooping out his insides. He rubbed his eyes, while shying away from Annie; and he gripped his hair to calm down. It wasn't working. His breathing grew sharper still. Growling at himself, he slammed his head against the wall. This calmed him down, but only a little. "I'm sorry."

[KittKat chunky~]

Annie listened pensively, looking up at him... She flinched suddenly as he banged his head on the steel wall, her hand already half-way up to attempting to stop him. She held it there, rubbing her thumb against the tip of her index finger worriedly. She shook her head, still looking up at him "No... You dont need to be sorry..." With slightly trembling fingers, Annie laid her palm softly on his chest. She looked closely into his eyes, no matter how much he tried to shirk away "You really do care for Jaack... Really, and utterly.... Theres no reason to be sorry for that..."





"Hey! Also remember to tell yer Ma´ that we got some new Explorator Droids in.... She might be interested...." Tess by now had skirted away from whatever work she had been doing, for the sound of heavy machinery was no longer buzzing through the small mic on Blaze´s wrist. He nodded, biting his own tongue against the pain in his stomach and chest...

Tess blew her fringe away again, frowning slightly "You okay man? Y´dont look so good..." Blaze shook his head, grimacing again. Tess´ frown deepened as she quickly looked over her shoulder, and back again "Dude, your not on the Stims again? I thought you quit..."

Blaze forced a laugh, the pain subsiding slightly "Nah... I´m clean since that night in the loading bay..." Tess laughed as well, frown already gone... "Oh... Man!.... What a craaazy night that was..."

[Chrono Blackwyng]

"I think the most ironic about the after-math, is the amount of guff I'll get from my 'commanding' officer for the expenses it would take to repair the buildings.; as well as letting about a hundred 'threats' walk away with their lives. Why did fifty have to get injured or killed for the rest to just give up..." he asked rhetoricly before getting up and 'finishing' the patrol. They said 'elites' rarely see the frontline after they make it there... funny, sure feels like I just "won" a battle He 'crushed' the bomb and looked at the bodies. "Just like Dad said: the hardest thing a soldier must face is the immedeat outcome of his actions and his victories" he mumbled before going to the three soldiers that hadn't fire a single round, that he had dragged with him; the idea only made the disappointment greater. "Why are you here; I don't bring civilians into patrol."

Frustrated that he and Tabby were basically the only ones fighting until help arrived, he only gave her a sad glance before turning his comm back on. "Patrol is over, report back to your dorm on the double." Thread nodded in the distance before getting his group out of the area, then Chronin saw his 'charges' run towards base. He could tell Tabby was right beside him as he walked, and he tried his best to restraing his expression of frustration. "Even unruly fighters can defend themselves... but I guess that explains why they didn't make your top five."