// Quantum Crisis \\
The grime, muck and walk was enough to torment him in several degrees but now he was sitting in what looked like a worn out buried garage, and an engineer was in front of him, he’d seen him off and on enough for them to be greeting eachother..they were terrified at first to see him walk but he spoke of his place..where he would bring them should he win…they were not so eager to remain if they could have peace elsewhere.
So in due time.
He sat there, Aleph sat there to be precise and was worked on, his armor had been broken it wasn’t exactly incredible to begin with, durable enough to survive-reentry some of the more devastating and few kinetic attacks the Mechra even had and strikes that rattled windows and buildings nearby directly to it.
It was constrictive, noticeably pieces were thrown off around all major joints, he was halted by this armor initially but he could see it would be lessened, a massive bulky part of the faceplate and chunk of the helmet was missing, it was stripped down to a hyper-durable skeleton excess fat gone...
“Good thing any part left was just joint-restrictions..it’s like they designed this to halt you, I’ve heard of early armor of Shocktroopers from Preacher, he spoke about it…you all often he’s been old enough to witness one…this armor is close to what it used to looklike now albeit more worn out.” The man spoke
Aleph realized these past encounters would be too close to be older generations but other units…were all of them on New Persia prototypes like he was?, to think that was interesting was putting it lightly it was damning evidence for why New-Persia wasn’t like his ancestors or Delara had spoken…Under Shocktrooper authority as an enclave…
but it was obvious this world was under occupation and invasion, deliberately built and facilitated like this, cultivated to war against to build better doctrines, all the technology, access points was utilizing his own peoples technology.
The Empire built their home, built the walls of it, put them in and invaded them relentlessly it was cruel but he imagined it was efficient enough for this Empire to last hundreds to thousands of years being strategically intellectual enough to last against the Mechra.
Broken from his thoughts by a voice answering an earlier request “I can get this back together in a moment, but it’ll take some time…can you wait?”
“I can wait for some time, ditch anything not absolutely necessary, get the helmet fine and online I can repair any long-term damage after we leave…”
“Understood.”
[…]
Saiyah was gone that day they hit the tower, she disappeared when Aleph didn’t appear and she hunted for him without a second word to anyone else…
It occurred to her she felt him falling and as her eyes bounded to a skyscraper so far it was nearly out of view despite it towering everything else there he was, falling…falling….
She made it to the crash site and by the time she appeared the street was patched up, crawling with hostiles she couldn’t stick around long…where could he have gone!?
He didn’t crash underground did he…..
Ever since…
She’s been chasing her heart to look for him she’s dispatched enemies and patrol and still hasn’t discovered him in two months she knew he was active felt what she shouldn’t feel, a heart beating… like before in the wastes
She knew she had to find him then but alas she couldn’t track it even following her hear
t because it couldn’t possibly be calling her underground and she had no shovel, she’d already scoured through the inherent pathways leading to subway tunnels, But when searching one the subways she found cause of where her heart had dragged her to, she encountered a large structural steel door in a false subway tunnel
it was like a ladder to the depths but stairs were stretching down from where her eyes could scarcely get angle to see, she perched herself behind some building’s wall looking past trash littered streets and rotten corpses…, she spotted two sentries guarding it.
She didn’t want to openly engage, she could get rid of them fast enough…
‘They wouldn’t see it coming, but a sudden switch off of the turrets probably be cause for patrols to investigate’ She weighted her options but a particular explosion far from her sounded, a skyscraper collapsing, she could see thunderous clouds and air-raid sirens as roads were blocked.
In the time since Aleph disappeared and she’s hunted it has been two months, now she has found this place, and she is assured they’ve all been fighting hard…without help..Without chosen leadership…
‘They’re occupied enough with the rest of the 144,000.’ She thinks in decision, and she vanishes from her place.
There was a moment when she twitched and an arm was seen in the two minutes she held behind the wall of a grocery store, and then suddenly gone as if the visual feed of the security turret skipped…
Then Darkness!
As Saiyah’s fist collided through the reinforced metals of its barrel, an attempted discharge of plasma halted, it was in that same moment she bounded to the same turret opposite end of that massive door,
large cylindrical rotating tubes holding large tank-like heads of the turrets at the popped from the pressure of the hit heat sparked at impact her fist steaming,
a crash as they launched up and hit the overhang before crashing again into the ground…
the reinforced plating had effortlessly collapsed around her fist leaving scratches on the armor,
she gave similar mercies to the door, clawing it open.. then speedily rushing in
She felt a lurch as she missed by a few steps and cracked half of them down center pounding her feet as she thundered downwards an abyssal hallway lit by the outside leading
Not even a machine can spot me….
She was indeed right not even the sensors of the machine picked her up, its ocular organ had desperately scanned again and spotted nothing but shadowy disturbance, it was as if a vaguely humanoid shadow appeared, then the machine was powering off….
Sparks that had flown agitated her….
Thankfully She hadn’t been noticed, she was invisible…–
She was used to that, she was silent and invisible for most of her time servant amongst humans, she was invisible, and it was a gift her parents paraded her around for, she doesn’t admit it to Aleph but she knew the neighboring humans-servants a tad bit as strangers, her mother and father albeit knew them as family for as long as she could remember.
They let it get in the way often and almost refused to send her off, rather she join the human band, she be like a human prayer like them too…there were a lot of humans in New Persia that worshipped, she assumed maybe it was the way of the weak to cling to whatever cruelty endured….She hadn’t known or cared.
She instead was proud of herself, and her ability, and in time danced around with this inherent talent not even her father or mother had or inherited... For her to have something so inherently powerful it was amazing, scientists from all over the planet had swarmed her mother and father’s house at request once it was learned, she was the talk of the area, and for a time she pondered if she was amazing, she was fast, strong, and deadly…she would fight other shocktroopers who hadn’t been sent to that training yet, who hadn’t been drafted, playground brawls ended in her victory, they could never see her coming.
A blink and she was gone, a shadow emerging from darkness, it was less supernatural, she felt…less like she’d become translucent, she felt like she had an inbuilt connection to an equation... a living equation a random bit of knowledge…
Like any Shocktrooper compared to the humans she was a natural genius so when she wanted to apply her innate gift, her caste, and her ability to the Imperial military she was denied by her parents, desiring she lives as the servants do…she couldn’t imagine living like prey... so in her pride
she ran away from her parents at the height of her pride… she was hunted like a dog not just by her parents but by the humans they loved to be around…and other shocktroopers in her pride, she was happy delighted to escape, yet one day she was caught…not by them she would’ve felt no loss of pride but by another child….by Aleph
She whined and wailed when he ratted on her, worst of all learning he was raised by humans….,
she swept by those who had hundreds of years in expertise in warfare she was like a silverfish in the cracks of reality she stepped out into darkness yet that wasn’t enough to be unseen by that one.
She was wrangled back home yet this only proved to her parents she needed to be utilized, this came from shocktroopers, older than her mother and father. From the founding generation.
From Earth and the colonies in the Milky Way…. A galaxy she wondered if she’d ever get to see…
[…]
Saiyah was left thinking if her loving Aleph enough to hunt for him like this even mattered, he went dark entirely and was gone for two months, she couldn’t find him in the city…everyone else would’ve presumed he was dead, scorched by plasma…..
She should just regroup, finish the mission is what a rational part of her mind thought, but her rational mind was also emotional, Saiyah towed the line between caring and insane considering she was already headed to find him even now…she senses him again as if he’s been revived even if he had died..in her mind the her more emotional-rational side didn’t want to lose someone she deeply had connection with, the only one to see her…
It was something that caused her to think there was in a literal sense
‘Someone that had eyes for her.’
After reminiscing She ran headfirst with corpses many corpses…. Oddly none of them are old enough to be from the past they all looked beaten, bruised and rotting…
As if someone tortured them, then tossed them down the steps some wounds were superficial that were too weak for mechanical hands…
Their bodies were broken and exposed to very damaged bone, she traveled down as they had robes, some were beheaded, others were struck by solid projectiles of great power and force, she could see what is like granite stones! sticking out from their skulls… Whatever torture this was, it had to be at least two months ago–– Strange…
Her mind was precise, and a vampire could always see and sight the condition of any potential or un potential meal, one of the things that made crimes of humans so hard on their worlds they were all natural coroners,
doubly so for a Shocktrooper.. she could see their internal damages measuring they didn’t die on impact but collapsed and bled to death,
she saw how far rot had set in like under a microscope... she looked at rotted corpses but saw potentially what a fine replenishing drink of blood would’ve been.
Humans killing humans.
Nothing new.
‘I scent more blood ahead anyway; I can probably feast…’ She thinks then disciplines herself, smacking her own eyes through the broken visor of her helmet, she’d be gorging herself at that point…but she wouldn’t mind stress eating…
After some time thinking on what potential humans, she senses ahead… She’d finally of the long straight steps downwards made it to the bottom of the steps, seeing a ratty underground, the remains of what must be a large concrete structure, akin to something she’d never see on her own world, it was massive...
A Human mall
it was the peak of a society's power, something human societies often had if they were strong enough, it was an uncommon luxury for humans if the Empire could help it.
But they may have, it had an access panel that looked vaguely familiar…only select-few human worlds pumped full of resources, mind-numbing indoctrination had su––
“Rebellion…. this world was a rebel cultivation center, is that why resistance is so strong!? They were already fighting us...” She thinks back to the dead they saw, it was one of those training worlds.
Even she often pondered the brutality of the concept, an entire world cultivated to war against, to develop doctrine in war...
But most notably are bodies down here, they’re at the bottom of the steps
She steps forward, pacing many steps and this darkness that clouds her is nothing, water drips…She senses blood much blood, a wall of it, bounds of it marching toward her direction…
In the darkness far ahead she sees something and marching with blood stacked behind it is something she sees right through, in a far distance she spots him her eyes fixed like a sniper’s scope, she reads that form like reading the fine print of a document from more than 700 meters.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
He was Seven hundred meters because she’d already seen him at the eight-hundred and been moving…
She in a picosecond lurched and herself forwards, she was at nearly full speed in mere moments, bounding step after step…
That stance, the way that eye doesn’t look down toward the sound of a whirlwind approaching but her precisely It’s him..he sees me!
Her target grows closer and closer, her foot twists with each impact and some of the ground tiles and black tarred moldy pavement.
She’s diving forwards every few feet rather than sprinting like a killer-rabbit with appetite for blood, prowling like a overly-agile hunter after him
her armor buckles and shakes under the velocity.
[700 meters, seventeen seconds.]
Her weapon buckles as she collides with him, he takes the brunt of her full impact and skids backwards five feet still on two feet
-
Aleph wanted to remark and scold her for having him brace one-point-four tons of weight in impact considering he saw her propel herself like a weapon….
He was happy to hear her, joyful…
But he wouldn’t dare remark ’You’re too heavy’….
Not that it mattered.
He turned to those behind him, hands raised “Calm down! Calm down!” There were fearful murmurs like whiplash, the clash of metal drummed ears, but he struggled to fully turn as she clung to him, grabbing his arm.
Attempting to apprehend.
“Who the hell are they!? Where were you!?”
He is restrained momentarily in front of them, her voice is booming through the open and broken helmet, and they can hear her voice, see her eyes….
The preacher asks Aleph amidst the startled crowds huddling together, backing away “Is this Your wife?”
They both pause at this question….and Saiyah struggles to hide the expression that creeps up at that assumption…
Aleph immediately corrects “Hang on! I will explain everything!”
-
So, he did…
The rest of the people were in the other places in the mall, whilst Aleph and Saiyah were in a department store..
they, the humans and the preacher scavenged elsewhere safely
Aleph deeply divulged of his time underground up to the now of this present moment
It was a story that gave a reaction of Saiyah letting out a big deep sigh as he went on about the humans…Her interest waning but the joy of seeing him growing evermore by how he babbled on…
Both of them sitting on the floor next to an old shelf
“So you in that skyscraper, you…what did you see? You said you gained info? Is it on the tower? Or just…”
“I was in the hivemind briefly.” And that had Saiyah’s eyes blown open wide, recalling in the past when he interfaced technology…
“You’ve been reading these machines for awhile but…doing that, did they just have an access panel?”
“I broke in with my mind…” A sentence weakly uttered and for good reason Saiyah’s mood lightened as she almost laughed, weak belief in her heart “Oh?”
“Yes and that’s why I understand why this city was built the way it was, why they had shields around this place, why it’s so fortified…why this planet is so important and why we are here potentially….”
Saiyah gave a nod “Yeah, we were dumped on the planet, presumably with no orders until you just magically gained them, has me half-way believing such inane nonsense is true.”
“I found out what they’re doing Saiyah, all that religious iconography…these people down here are considered unbelievers, they’re Christians.”
“Like your father?”
“Yes like my–“ Aleph pauses and rapidly shakes his head.
‘How does she know that–‘
He counts that into a mental folder to question her about should they live long enough to survive Fracturia and escape…his mind was working like a computer now complimentary of this deviation in his mind…this ability he has…..this–– Quantum Connection?
He shakes his head and answers first before she can speak.
“I was in the hivemind I was able to read their plans their purpose here and they’re…. going to do something that’s fairly catastrophic....It’s why they have a cult obviously on the surface, why some have implants and some don’t.” he spoke and opened up and Saiyah just listened nodding along, mouth agape.
Aleph openly divulged his heart “These ones with plain appearance, are half-human, these machines…they worship humans….but these ones down here, they worship them too but I learned being down here they buried them and their homes under here….” He spoke up…
“. These humans I want to save, have been refusing they havnen’t been going along with it, so the humans that are…are killing them because of it–”
“Yes, I can see they’re not the freaky humans we’d feasted on in th e surface, these ones look non-deluded, starved and beaten, but how does that matter?”
Aleph frowns at her,
Saiyah shakes her head in reply having heard the “sob story” She remarked it was about these humans
this had him frown under his helmet, glaring at her…. The light and monoeye to his helmet off but face obscured.
Her own countenance was one of disbelief a sarcastic look at everything he’s erratically divulged like a mad man who had seen something true but spoke it like a maniac..
“Look these machines, they’re doing something in that pyramid tower, it’s an experiment….” He picked up an old battery beside him off the floor of this abandoned mall.
“Pretend this is a human…” He held it up
“A battery!?” She laughed
Aleph grew tired of her mocking and snapped his fingers as she began to start speaking
Saiyah shook her head “Okay, I don’t need you to– “
The battery in hand arced with electricity strangely, or so it appeared until the fusion battery between his fingers spun up and accelerated into premature fuel-death, popping in his hand…
She jolted surprised “How did you do that!?“
“With the method I’ve been using to aid us in assaulting these machines with how I disabled the tower, we need to stop these machines….they’re worshipping them…they want to re-ascend man to some deluded idea of ‘godhood’ but it’s not going to work….”
“What!? Shouldn’t they y’know not do that!? Why would a machine believe in god or gods!? Aren’t they smart? Worst of all…I thought these bloodbags had this worship thing the other way around here!?”
He wants to speak and starts attempting to but she cuts him off baffled at what he suggested
“Even if this is the case, they’re far greater than what we’ve been told as kids, they smashed our fleets, smashed the fleet carrying us here…” She intones and Aleph gives a slow nod understanding where she is coming from
“it’s a wonder not even one of us had died in two months…you think they don’t know what they’re doing and are lost trying to make a god!?”
“They are doing it and they do have no idea they’re lost but don’t know it……. They think their error will be a success; they’re going to turn these humans into something terrible…something like them…A “god” in the image of machine, war stop them.”
She gives a slow nod “Well dealing with them planetside has always been our objective….” She thinks to herself
“Say if this is true….is that why?–“ She thinks to herself and snaps her fingers with plated purple gauntlets
“So! that is why they sent us with no intel?…you’re like…built for this…Like in training, like now, you’re like a weapon against machines…technology, Aleph you’re thinking–“
“Like a machine.” He answers and nods, “And my body is working like a machine too internally a fault one… but it’s the cost of this ability I’ve gained…for it to work at all is antithesis to my state, Saiyah my existence as a–“He doesn’t finish the words hesitating
“As a Vampire.” She finished for him so smoothly he thought he’d said it and didn’t draw attention to her words seeing it as an opportunity to continue but stopped sensing her about to speak…. “But I think you were anti-thesis to that before, maybe it is why you work so well, why your heart beats a few times…”
“You all felt that!?” Aleph’s voice broke… “Of course we’re predators, we sense prey…” She thinks about what she’s said, and Aleph already raises a brow.
“Well, no not like that!” She sighs and rolls her eyes “I’d eat you first. ~” She teases flashing fangs as her head tilts down staring deep into his eyes through that helmet…
and Aleph feels the mood crack, a light in the darkness... He’s quiet for a second causing her grey-toned flesh, her cheeks to become light in darkness, and a faint glow to her red irises…
He pauses a bit blankly, staring at her.
“Aleph.” Her voice catches him and breaks him from his unbreaking gaze as, turning her odd joke into something with the awkward repercussion of his strange reaction that has her visibly concerned... Made worse his face remains obscured by his helmet.
Awkwardly fidgeting her neck as her eyes scrape the ground idly…
He sees that love he saw in these humans…maybe he’s rubbed off on those around him…or maybe this concept of humanity is too universal...
“My heart beating was how I began to realize this ability…”
“Ability? Is that why you’ve been so erratic…lost? Is it what we encountered in training when we almost died?”
“The doors?” he scarcely remembered vivid visions of his time nearly dead on someone's shoulder, and nodded “Yes it…it–brings me alive each time, it must be why my pain tolerance was so low, It is akin to a human’s and twice as high…”
“Does that mean when we fitted armor…. –Is that why you’re so different now…I hardly recognize you.”
Aleph remembered that pain, he blanked out, his mind cut, and he grew used to pain then, now he thinks about it…He hardly recognizes himself and if he looks back, he sees who he used to be, that being closer to the humanity he’s finding again still in that elevator, watching it all go
Arianne….
“Aleph.” Her voice catches him and breaks him from his grievous thoughts “You’re spacing out again.” She clarifies here, seeing how this usage of his ability has now broken him it appears…
Awkwardly fidgeting her neck as her eyes scrape the ground idly…
“This all doesn’t explain how these people came so close to you. Why you are intertwined with humans, you’re still a vampire as human as you appear outwardly...” She accused
Aleph bit his tongue hearing her say that…
“I’ve been here, paralyzed for some time they were the first to find me, it was only recently maybe a day ago I was able to stand? –“
“You repaired your armor that fast with local materials?” She gazes upon the ramshackle but very professional re-welded pieces of his armor,
Saiyah could see it either required the best welder in the galaxy or an incredibly advanced welding tool to piece their armor back together, especially at its melting point….
bits of scrap that don’t fit in like stray purple plating’s akin to something the Vis-stasi wore, like wreckages they left behind plastered around to piece things back together…
the hyper-personalized utilitarian molds welded and added to his armor suited him nicely….
“No one of them did this...” And her eyes perk up, considering how broken her armor is…–
“I see you’re taking these humans back, so if we survive we have servants, like some of the others back on Persia?” Her mind immediately shoots to utility for the humans, rationalizing…Her voice upbeat.
Aleph doesn’t answer and she just stares blankly at that..
She goes to speak but he cuts her off
“We’re going to assault the tower and stop their plans, rally these people find a way off this planet and go back to New Persia.” He readdresses
Saiyah shakes her head “We’d be abandoning the mission?”
“The entire planet should’ve swarmed us the hour we invaded this town it’s a simulated capital by nature of what’s stationed here….” Aleph speaks aloud as if realizing himself
“They have, before I arrived here, I was looking, for you.” She starts and then stops “The others are dealing with armies, swarming in, we collapsed buildings with weapons charges it appears, but that’s just not enough has to be millions of them attacking flanks into the city…” Saiyah answers
“No.” Aleph starts, “I mean artillery, orbital weapons, strikes and air-support.” Aleph finishes clarifying sharply.
“Oh, and why do you think that is they haven’t? We aren’t worthy enough?” Saiyah casually remarks leaning back…tilting her off to the side
“If we weren’t lost, knew our objective earlier we would’ve crashed the tower earlier, especially if you struck the defenses yourself Saiyah and came back.”
“.The issue is that the humans in there are too valuable and the Empire itself doesn’t know..they were relying on us…”
Saiyah’s head straightens and so does her torso, realizing how his erratic theory or really his revelation makes sense how it’s true….
she presses her lips together... “I think I believe you now, it’s so obvious…” She shakes her head “The way we deployed, our lack of connection to an enclave, limited equipment…Aleph..-“
Aleph realizes it too but not earlier than her, but here and now and he states it, bringing his palm up and slamming a closed fist into it “We’re a last hope of learning whatever it is they’re doing here, they dropped us here as a final hope…Saiyah”
“They sent us here to uncover their plans and stop them.” Saiyah falsely realized, then mimicked his action slamming a fist into a palm “Or die trying…” She answered
Aleph furiously shook his head at her…
“No, they can’t afford something like that, the Empress…Eternia must’ve known I could figure it out.. that’s why she arrived, why our training hasn’t sounded like anything other shocktroopers have had, we’re meant to brute force this, survive…and discover whatever they’re doing….”
They calculated it correctly. Truly the Empire hadn’t been aware this was in desperation to be sent here...
“Aleph…are you suggesting, they knew about what you could do in training? That it was preparation or this!?”
“They didn’t just know…. they calculated it, planned on it…. like we’re in a simulation…they ran the numbers, too bad for me they’re right…”
He was a tool of the strangeness of his caste, that inherent humanity crafted to bring this about…. a being like him...,
“How can we manage then?” Saiyah doubted clenching a fist “Outnumbered, outgunned even if we escape as you said, you sound like you can only delay them…
“. What makes you so sure this can work? Is there something to this inherent connection to humanity you have?”
“Neither that nor my vampirism, Saiyah I’m neither of those things, I’m born for this…I’m not human or undead, I’m a weapon and that’s how I know we’re going to win.” He speaks with confidence and not pride.
he is assured he can stop the Mechra and win
-
Yet the mechra were elsewhere busying themselves…with sending the angels to fight.
\\ THE TOWER //
Joan was preparing to leave, she felt intensified pressure, here was where many refugees were, the pyramid tower was massive it housed many people, most of them from the city others hadn’t made it but enough had made it…she thinks to herself….
In her hands the powerful helmet, having dotted cybernetic eyes a downstream hand-me-down of the oculary-organ technology in some of the Mechras power vessels and caste-types, here she was utilizing the apex of this technology.
She was weaker than the machines, even if she could now bend steel….It had her on edge.
Her foot impatiently tapped across the ground sat upon one of the small crates in an antechamber leading outside, Miriam and Hera weren’t here yet they were busy getting equipped, they could do it quickly, but Joan could do it quicker and she wasn’t going to babysit them…
She wasn’t even sure if they’d survive as much as protocol demanded she do that and more before taking herself to a preparation site….
It was leading outside, the main exit, she could see faded alien writing on walls of the facility and bowed her head into her hands…Not caring to pay attention to the sound of a door opening behind her
The sliding door of the ante-chamber went open and Joan’s head snapped upwards, as smooth metal hissed…. repelling each other, one sliding left and the other right into a wall
This is it…
“Joan?.. How is your condition servant?” The voice broke matter-of-factly, stern and motherly, creases in the dimples of a smiling face betraying the alterations to provide eternal youth, hiding the decay….
Joan twisted her gaze away from the woman, her reverence gone placed with doubt….
Not a woman a goddess… Joan corrected herself, faith lost at the sight of the bodies…she held cloth talismans in her right hand with stains of wax each with a number
“You appear troubled, you’ve neglected ensuring the readiness of your unit, of your fellow warrior she-nephilm…Joan what troubles you? You’ve been silent…” She inquired suddenly, or more like interrogated.
Joan was silent for a while not answering–
‘I look troubled. Hmph…’ She thought hard ‘How can gods die?’, Joan breathed as if figuring out what vexed her so.
And for some strange reason the woman, Astaria highest of them all tilted her head…
Joan herself hadn’t realized she had asked the question aloud…her hands clasped her mouth upon reading Astaria’s face…
“Hmph–A worry I know all too well…let me still grant you blessing before you leave little faith.” The woman, adorned like a synthetic priest, gracefully toward Joan with forward steps taking a knee to bind her ankles in written talismans, three on each leg, the number of a man on each talisman.
Joan recognized her as one of the highest, Astaria she was a tall woman in lithe frame, she was wrapped in a fine synthetic blackened-navy blue bodice.
The metallic walls reflected the extruded mechanical spinal column of her tech suit. She had a form Joan coveted at times: womanly, gracious, and gifted in figure, beautiful yet powerful in stature…
And she was going to “bless” Joan…...
She doubted it, but something renewed her faith as that woman came closer. Astaria wasn’t speaking more…..
“I sense your faith, is weak.” She gazed over Joan seeing the girl’s countenance broken.
Joan gave a hesitant nod and folded her hands together….. “I’m sorry, but…these monsters took so many of you…The Mechra have taught us–…” Joan hiccuped hands clenching into fearful fists… Her gaze down not daring to read Astaria’s reaction as she sees her fingers flinch.
“The Mechra revealed to us.” Joan corrected herself
“the godhood of man the mastery of this love a being warlike malevolent but dazzling, that is what you are…but you are so fragile…I saw so many…–“
Joan doesn’t finish.
“It’s because we are not as we are, not as we should be…..but there is a time in which we split the atom, built a tower to reach the heavens, we have pierced the heavens, touched the stars….that man will come back to us soon enough, we will be gods, generals again soon enough.”
“Should our faithful angels shepard their sickened gods, Joan, should you all bring us to victory.” She held her shoulders.
“It is no coincidence you are like a prophecy of a great savior, a warrior flesh and machine come to save us all Joan you are…. A savior of–“
“Broken gods”
Joan didn’t let her finish she was invigorated her faith faltered but now it was on a pedestal, kept on life support…Joan clenched a fist near her chest
“She could do this.”
But the cause of her weakened faith remained all around, her and her squad saw that…
She pondered if she would make it…. But faith drove her forwards even if it was misplaced
