Jula's fingers flew across the control terminal, her voice hoarse from frequently shouted orders. A collection of men, women, and children – the ones deemed too unfit to physically join the fight against the government – were assisting in other ways from the safety of a secretive bunker, deep in the Magnus Desertus. Sweat dripped from their faces, a combination of the lack of air conditioning and the tension of their required tasks. With each order she made, redirected from the council's authority, they nervously followed through as swiftly as they could. She was losing her voice, but she could not stop now, could not take a break.
Today was the day their destiny would change.
"Triarchy soldiers, three clicks out from reinforcements in the southern convoy!"
"Aggrebots completing boot sequence in fifteen minutes."
"Heavy casualties along the coast from both sides. Exceptions deployed!"
"The northern front has breached into the city center!"
"Where's my mommy?"
The voice of the small child cut through the chaos, and she spared a moment from glaring at readings to meet the child's gaze. A young boy, barely six years old, carried a stack of sealed papers under his arm. Every pair of hands they could spare had a role, but the kid had frozen with terror, disturbed by the noise or the pressure of what was a simple task for him, but one of likely monumental importance for the world outside.
Cassian….
Jula pushed the worrying thoughts from her mind. The brat had gotten himself into this mess. Her idiot of a father supported it. At the end of the day, if she had no one left, then they had none but themselves to bla-
"Central command."
Aggregor.
Jula pressed a button to activate her microphone on the console. "Command to Aggregor, this is Jula speaking. Status update?"
"I've breached the city center," he explained in a digitized voice. The console updated to show his location on the map projection before her. "No sign of Reach forces."
A spark of hope revitalized her body. "Are we in good shape then to hold the city through the night?" Even holding the place for one day greatly increased their chances to rally others across the planet to fight back. Each hour of success was an hour of footage they could use to display to the masses.
"We can hold Cato's Legion. If Gordia or Seneca join them before we are more firmly established, we stand heavy risks-"
"Central command! – No, aunt Jula!"
She snapped her fingers, forcing one of her assistants to swap the signal immediately. Cassian's voice boosted louder in her ear. "I'm listening!"
"We- we found Father. And Gabriel!"
Jula's heart skipped a beat. The assistant, a mousy-haired woman with horns, gaped at her upon hearing the news. The former businesswoman could barely hold herself together. "Are you sure?"
"He's here!"
A hesitation in the feed brought with her a pit of fear. What if this were some trick? It could not be true. Perhaps the Reach had-
"Jul, I- I don't know what to say."
Hope filled every thought in her mind. "Brother, you- this is too much."
"Jula, Aggregor is-"
"Not now," she barked to the assistant. "It can wait a few seconds."
"We don't have much time for a reunion," Cassian's voice continued through the audio. "Gabriel has information that must be shared immediately. The entire operation could be at stake."
She had mixed feelings on the man, but she was glad to hear he was alive. At the end of the day, the man's involvement in their lives had drastically set them on a different course.
"Put him on," she replied carefully.
"What I am going to say will be difficult to hear, but I am an alien from another planet. An agent of a secretive organization called the Plumbers, that works across the cosmos in places the Guardians of the Universe cannot directly touch." He paused, and she could hear shouting as fighting progressed in the background.
Jula had no context for what this man was saying, and she had little reason to believe him unless what he was going to say actively helped them in some way.
"I don't have time for the full damn story. My bosses can't get directly involved in the Reach's war crimes, so they send Plumbers like myself to investigate and subvert enemies like them. I have a lot of knowledge about how they operate, and the shit they do could fill the damn Library of Congress a hundred times over. Know this now, Carnifex – if you continue along this path, you may doom the entire planet. Everything you've been fighting for? Reduced to ash."
The bunker largely continued its operations, as they could not all hear the words of this strange man. The one's who could hear it though? They had completely halted, hands hesitating to input commands, to activate headsets, to send updates. Jula herself struggled to wrap her head around the information.
"Cassian."
The child's voice, heaving with breath, entered the feed. "We h-have to stop, uh, to -"
"You trust him?" she asked carefully, a significant portion of her hoping that Gabriel was a liar, a Triarch sympathizer. Someone who was just trying to turn them away from their path.
"I do. For more reasons than you know." He hesitated for a long moment. "He kept Father alive and sane. That's good enough for me."
"It's true. I was a wreck, Jula," her brother added into the communicator a second later. "Gabriel told me stories, entertained me, gave me reasons to hold on."
Jula sighed. All around her, those nearby were waiting with bated breath. Other members of the council were issuing orders, preparing the launch of the Aggrebots, readying logistics to support the operation. Her own Father was out there, holding the line alongside a group of soldiers and maintaining an on-site defensive position.
"You believe this?" the assistant closest to her asked. "This- surely they can't be right-"
"How bad is it?" she asked. "Gabriel, if the Reach go through with what you're saying, how bad is it?"
"Total annihilation of the planet's biosphere," he replied grimly. "They've got the tech to do it in a matter of hours. A few different kinds of death – orbital bombardment, atmosphere incineration, magnetic field disruption, gravitic manipulation…"
This…
This was far too specific to be a lie.
"Patch him through to Aggregor," she ordered without fanfare. Then, "Inform the council of the stakes."
OSMOS V
May 13, 10:49 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
With only a few words, my understanding of the cosmos had shifted.
I now knew what the Earth was like, and the idea both excited and terrified me. With the knowledge that there were, in fact, Guardians of the Universe patrolling their sectors, the death-defying fight that Gabriel had had with the Scarlet Scarab now made far more sense. The green energy he'd utilized must have been connected to the same power as the Green Lanterns, but he had no ring. I didn't know what a Plumber was either. The DC universe was real, and I'd been born and raised on a planet I didn't recognize from any of the comics.
I couldn't dwell on any of the information, because I needed to keep moving. Reflection would come later.
I couldn't stop fighting, and I had more reason to do it now, not less.
Father could barely walk, and Gabriel refused to let me help support him because I could still fight. Others in my team were dead, injured, or separated. Only the twins were nearby, trying to provide covering fire for the newly assembled crowd of prisoners. The beastly Exception had fallen sometime in the last few minutes, putting the crosshairs on the fleeing group.
The mine around us as we fought on was largely a wreck, some buildings were on fire, and it was honestly a wonder that we hadn't accidentally exploded the whole place. Turrets fired automatically from various high positions, though most had been swiftly disabled earlier. One particular sniper popped blaster fire into the crowd, but there were too many bodies for him alone to stop. It had become a mad dash to the perimeter, and I refused to leave Father's side.
"Son, how are you doing this?"
"Not the time," I shot back before he could argue. My metallic arm held up a solid piece of debris – one that must have weighed a half ton or more – and hurled it as swiftly as I could. The makeshift fastball impacted bodily into an oncoming soldier, the man's torso caving in on itself as his body dropped two more behind him. "I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm keeping you alive."
He said nothing else and followed under the support of Gabriel's arms, though it was clear he was biting his tongue.
"You got any more explosions in your tank?" I asked the human, thinking back to the tech he'd used years ago.
"'Fraid not, or the last few years would have been very different." Gabriel gestured to his temple with a free hand. "I still have some active implants, but they aren't useful in a fight and don't have enough charge to do much of anything at all. Need to return to my ship to recharge and restock, if it still exists."
I nodded, the idea of a ship bringing me such joy. "Any chance it could serve as an escape hatch if the Reach go doomsday?"
Using that word is confusing now. Was Doomsday a thing here?
"Unless it's parked outside?" Gabriel shrugged. "I couldn't get more than a few dozen people off-world. Don't have the resources for a long trip either, so it's not a viable option."
That was more than frustrating to hear, but I let it sink into the back of my mind. There was a job to do.
With a heavy leap, I crashed like an iron meteor atop a supporting wall on the edge of the mine's quarry. The platform beneath my feet cracked under the force of it, and three men tried and failed to take me down. A fist to the throat left one sputtering blood until he drowned, while the other two fell to gunfire from the twins below.
"Through the gate!" I repeated, hoping the reserve trio were ready to assist in arming anyone who managed to make it out. Gabriel and Father managed to exit the interior of the mine alongside others and enter the outskirts of the city proper.
A few blocks away, the coastline stretched before us. A sight that contained a few promising vessels in the distance, one's likely in place to deliver the best force multiplier we had.
The soldiers and guards manning the Distinian Mine certainly had not stopped gunning for us, but those that managed to meet with the trio were already arming themselves and doubling back to assist.
All things considered, this had been an overall successful operation.
The city itself, however, was on fire. Dozens of newly armed prisoners, fitted with weapons and simplistic vests to keep at least their torsos safe from small arms and ordinance, were ready to take the fight to its streets, while dozens more were equally as ready to avoid the inferno.
I did not blame them in the slightest.
Once it was clear that the operation shifted into the second phase, I raced to my Father and embraced him a second time, flesh having returned just before.
"I've missed you. So much. Everything – it was all for you."
And for Mother.
And for myself.
The man gripped me tightly, covered in rags and coated in soot. I was equally disgusting, and I doubted I would get better before the day ended.
"You joined Carnifex."
"I, uh, did. It's bigger than it was, when you were invovled. Full-on resistance to the damn Triarchs."
For what it had been worth.
Now, I wasn't sure we should be continuing. The Reach could, at any point, destabilize any semblance of safety to live on the planet. As tyrannical as the Triarch Elders could be and had been in the past, it was nothing to the hold the Reach had on us. They could flip a switch and escape a doomed world.
"I'm… proud of you."
My eyes widened.
Misty tears welled, but I didn't let them fall.
This was more than overwhelming to hear from the man, and it was something I wished I could hear from my real father again. As strained as things were with Hortatio, the overprotective instincts were better than no instincts. Dad had been too autistic to be a good father, without the tools in his pocket to compensate for any social graces he lacked.
Now, I could barely believe I was here, that Horatio was here, and I wanted nothing more than to return to the site I once called home, rebuild, and live out my days with the man at my side. I'd fought to find him, I'd lost Lucrecia in an effort to save him, and now I'd gotten him back.
We just had to live through all of this.
The freed prisoners who joined forces were halfway to the proper city battle when the sky alit with activity.
Dozens of creatures flew between buildings, over rooftops, and exited the coastal waters. Shaped almost like manta-rays, the creatures would stop in mid-air, fast speeds reduced to nothing, and unleash bolts of energy into the populace, into buildings, into friends. A flying swarm of aliens were fighting on the side of the Triarchy, aiming their energy blasts from tails and eyes toward the rebels.
"Aerophibians," Gabriel clarified in a Southern drawl. "Natural fliers and swimmers. Can survive in space. That light they fire hits you, your nervous system breaks down about as well as any Taser, if not more."
"Great to hear," I muttered and then tapped the communicator. "Central Command, this is Cassian. Mining operation a success. New reinforcements incoming. But the Reach have unleashed a flock of damn space aliens with energy weapons."
Someone- not Jula- responded, "Standby for update."
"No," I say simply as a realization hits. "If we stand any chance at saving the planet, we need to draw out Xandros and any other Scarab warrior. We take them down, and it will be that much easier to-"
With an influx of displaced air that sent shockwaves for miles, strong enough to nearly throw me to my feet, the sky above Vincendis became a field for what must be Reach ships. There were a half dozen of them, covered in almost insectoid plate and featuring segmented limbs, and each was spaced equally throughout the city. They were larger than any buildings, flying with unknown propulsion systems.
From them dropped soldiers - Osmosians and Reach alike – to descend upon the city. To my absolute horror, each dropship released plasma bombs into the city, explosive acidic bursts of heat and smoke that could melt stone and corrode metal. Towering buildings collapsed into piles of steel in seconds, and their allied forces began to sweep across the city. We would be overrun in a matter of hours, if we were lucky.
"Fuck," I muttered under my breath.
Gabriel blinked, not at the sight of the intense explosions and renewed fighting, but instead at me. "What did you say?"
My brow furrowed. "Uh… fuck?"
The man whipped his hand up to check something behind his ear. "My translation implant still works. Did you, uh – what does that word mean?"
…
Oh.
I decided to be honest. "It's a not-so-nice expletive."
"How- how do you know that word?"
I lean into his space and whisper, in perfect English, "I know a lot of things about Earth, but if we don't figure out what to do, everyone I love will die."
OSMOS V
May 13, 13:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
The Ambassador watched the scene unfolding from the orbital station. Probing machines and monitoring scanners revealed the extent of the battle below, and it was so very wonderful to see the thorns in the Triarchy's side finally come into the open to challenge them. They perfectly placed themselves into the path of the Reach, and nothing would stop them now.
Why Carnifex decided to do so now instead of earlier was a mystery to the Reach Ambassador, but he was not going to complain. When the day was over, the rebels will have had no choice to but to surrender to their ultimate control or die trying.
Once the Triarchy had no enemies from within, the Reach's true hegemony over Osmosian meat could begin in earnest. Generations from now, the universe will no longer have the capacity to stop their enhanced forces, and they will truly have an army worthy of dominating any celestial empire. All will be in the hands of the Reach.
"Ambassador, vessels along the sea have sparked with intense power outputs."
That Analyst struggled to see the bigger picture the way the Ambassador did.
"A volley from a dropship will do."
The order reflected within moments. A viewing panel expanded into view, displaying the maneuver for them all. One of their vessels – a single segment of their hidden fleet – shifted toward the boat in the harbor swiftly. Its weapon systems activated, primed, and -
Exploded.
Like dozens of gnats, automata entered the sky en masse. Armed, apparently, with enough firepower to destroy one of their ships while working in tandem.
"Dropship down," an Analyst shouted.
A flurry of activity erupted within the chamber, and the Ambassador could not believe their bad luck.
The Aerophibian Assets moved with the push of a button to engage the swiftly-flying robots, shaped like the men but made of intricate pieces of metallic plate. The converted aliens clashed with them, easily able to fly faster than the Carnifex machines, but the machines had the numerical advantage. It was a wonder that they'd managed to build this many, and the Ambassador doubted that this was the full extent of their numbers.
He had an option.
"Xandros."
"But he is-"
"Deploy the Scarlet Scarab!"
OSMOS V
May 13, 13:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Central Command had not changed their mind.
I raced through city streets as explosions rocketed the ground and the sky in every conceivable direction. The Aggrebots had evened the odds, as we had hoped, and their heavy weapons were capable of harming even the toughly defended Reach ships. Even still, they could not do enough damage quickly to stop the dropships altogether, and more plasma bombs ripped the city apart. Each second that passed was another second where I might be caught in the blast radius of something I could not predict, but I couldn't stop here.
Boots on the ground fought and died for every inch of territory gained on either side. Every death was a number, one that was likely going to be uncountably large if we did not change our methods.
Central Command had not changed their mind.
Behind me, Gabriel followed alongside the soldiers I had rescued, the soldiers that were working incredibly hard to fight an additional front. Carnifex swarmed the city from all directions, and I suspected that we'd have covered nearly every inch of the place by now if not for the Aerophibian swarm and the Reach's reinforcements. A few of us had broken off each block at a time to secure shelter, to hold in position, to grip our feet firmly into the area. Somewhere amidst that chaos, Father had settled in with the reserve trio to recieve healing and to watch over Marcilia for me – deep enough, I hoped, that there would be no chance of a plasma bomb barrage breaking the defenses.
Central Command had not changed their mind.
"This is not going to end well," I shouted to Gabriel. Something downed an Aggrebot, the machine shattering into a hundred pieces as it landed ahead, an impact crater in its wake. "Can't you do something? Even a hoverboard…?"
He shook his head, a blaster pistol releasing its charge into an oncoming vehicle. "I'm limited, Cassian, to what I have on hand. What I have on hand is not going to save the planet."
"Then we need to stop this madness!"
"I agree, but Central Command did not change their mind."
My mind wracked with activity to think of something – anything – that could stop this insanity.
A Gifted soldier nearby turned to glass to avoid a blaster shot from Gabriel, only to recieve a stone fist from myself into the back of the head for the effort, leaving him a shattered stump for a neck.
Until they stopped throwing themselves at us, this wouldn't stop.
"Central Command to all available elites," Jula's voice declared across every communicator. "Open rebellion has begun in every in-range population center. Protests, riots, violence – we ignited a revolution today. Aggrebots deployed across the globe to maintain the momentum."
I locked eyes with Gabriel, ready to denounce everyone and everything before it was too late, until I saw him.
Him.
A red armored figure rocketed across the sky, insectoid wings outstretched from the back of his scarab. The Osmosian unleashed a sonic attack from his gauntlet that single-handedly destroyed three Aggrebots in pursuit of an Aerophibian, the alien caught in the crossfire and downed in a heap.
Gabriel gripped my arm. "Cassian. You can't-"
…
Central Command had not changed their mind.
"Don't tell me what to fucking do."
I launched into a full sprint, not for Xandros, but for the manta-ray like alien around the corner, lying prone and bloody in a heap against the side of a garage. I ignored Gabriel's shouting voice, raced toward the Aerophibian, and gripped my hands against its torso before it could blast me with its weakened laser eyes.
…
Delicious.
Everything became mine.
The Aerophibian became nothing. Dead. A husk.
I launched myself into the sky at incredible speeds, an energy hidden beneath my skin and my eyes just waiting to be unleashed. I was flying – a feeling that was almost incredible enough to ignore the guilt over what I'd just done – but I had no time to dwell. Nor time to think.
With a snap of my hand, a bolt of crackling green light erupted against the Scarlet Scarab. Armor tanking the blow, I zipped to the side of the counterattack from one of his extra limbs, a turret-like attachment launching a projectile that would have certainly downed me had I given him the chance.
I pointed my hands at him and readied another blast, flying under my own power without difficulty. I was not as fast as the Aerophibian's fastest potential, but I was fast enough to be a nuisance. I'd bank on that.
"Xandros! I've waited for this goddamn day. Everything you've done, everything you are – I'm crushing you under my boot!"
The Scarab's helmet peeled away, revealing the haggard man's face behind the mask. "Who are you?"
"Fuck off! You killed my mother in the desert!" I activated my communicator with a press of my finger. "She died protecting me. You betrayed yourself to the Reach, your people! An invasion, supported by you, all to make you look good?"
Recognition must have finally hit, because he smirked. "You're the runt. Just as in over your head now as you were then!"
All around us, Aggrebots and Aerophibians continued to dance throughout the sky. New dropships could arrive any minute, and I could only hope that Osmos V had the numerical advantage against the Reach, now that a true rebellion had begun. Perhaps we could take them down before they ruin everything.
I released the energy charge, the lightning crackling once more. Xandros evaded it with an application of his flight suit, the energy narrowly avoiding his face. Blaster fire from below tried to impact our fight – our side or theirs, I was not sure – but I weaved through them and released a beam of light from my eyes. It struck a hastily-formed shield from the beetle-warrior's hand, but the guns below managed to impact his back, searing into the foreign metal.
Central Command had not changed their minds.
"Call off the attack!"
I raced away from him as I shouted the demand, the Scarlet Scarab attempting to skewer me with a mantis-like bladed sword.
"You idiots started this!" he shouted. "All you had to do was lie down, trust the Triarchs, and you'd be part of a glorious future!"
Someone with an Exception hurled an esoteric shadow monster at Xandros from a nearby rooftop, before getting swallowed in a horde of canine aliens – the same aliens that started me down this very path. The conjured apparition made purchase with the man's armor long enough to slow him down, but dissipated as soon as its creator died amid fang and claw.
All around us, similar moments were happening, powers and weapons clashing with twisted alien soldiers. Some threatened to intervene in the battle, while others remained isolated and momentary.
I blasted him in the helmet, hoping it was the least armored piece, but the green lightning-like shock did nothing to the Reach warrior. My borrowed power was not strong enough to stop the man, but I was fast enough to avoid him. I couldn't take on the full abilities of another species, but even a portion of speed from this creature was enough to hold my own. He tried his damndest to pin me with a tentacle-like whip, but I merely gripped the thing and pulled with as much strength as I could muster.
The metal of the Scarab covered my arms up to the elbow. A swipe of a bladed limb cut downward, and I was not fast enough to dodge completely. A gash nearly split my torso in twain, had I not lifted my arms in time to divert most of its force. Following through with a zip through the air forward, I leaned back.
"Fuck your glorious future!"
And unleashed an uppercut to the man's jaw.
The satisfying crunch of the armored chin was like music to my ears, and I would have celebrated for longer had it not been for the armor almost immediately healing from the damage. My hands alit with borrowed power once more, green light trying to follow up, but the headbutt that sent me crashing through the top of a ruined tower surprised me. In a shower of debris, I landed three stories down, feeling every ounce of hurt.
"No single Gifted warrior can stop, especially no child. I don't care how motivated you are," the Scarlet Scarab decried, "you can't hope to stand against Reach superiority."
I coughed, blood pooling to my chin.
"You're their dog, how could you be superior? How could you stand to see your people?"
Aggrebots intercepted another drop ship nearby, the explosion flashing such light that it brought ominous shadows across the Scarlet Scarab for a split second.
"I will become part of something greater, while you all will merely die, forgotten! You could have been part of it too."
He reached his hands together, and they morphed before my eyes to become a truly massive cannon. A cannon pointed toward me.
Central Command had not changed their minds.
The energy cascaded through the air in a near instant, and it is all that I can do to brace myself for impact. The air, the smoke, the ashes obliterated in but a moment, searing the space between us. I held my hands together in front of myself and pulled.
A distant warning raced through my memory.
"Son… abuse the Gift. Greatest danger… Psychosis. Paranoia. Hallucinations."
Mother, I need you!
OSMOS V
May 13, 14:26 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Gabriel felt the implant within his ear activate for a fraction of a second.
The sensation tore him away from the scene of the battle around him long enough to send hopeful tremors throughout his arms. Hands shaking, his blaster pistol missed its nearly stationary target, and he pushed himself to the ground to take cover and to take stock in what he heard.
In the distance, the Scarlet Scarab unleashed a truly massive amount of power in a weapon that could eradicate the thickest of walls and penetrate the smartest of defenses. The light flashed with such intensity that it nearly hurt his eyes, and Gabriel turned away from the certain doom that Cassian suffered. His heart hurt for the teen for a moment, but a longer sound burst through his communicator once more.
This was not the implant picking up the local chatter.
This was someone trying to reach him.
And if someone was trying to reach him, perhaps they had hope after all.
"Plum-er Vas-uez." The familiar sound was like music to his ears. "'elp is i-bou-"
Gabriel glanced upward to the sky, expecting to see them arrive at any moment.
Instead, he watched a small boy lift himself out of the rubble, golden light drifting off of him in pulsing waves. Everywhere they touched turned to ash, and the air grew intensely hot for reasons that were difficult to quantify. Had all of his implants been operable, Gabriel might be able to scan to see what type of energy that was, or what type of weapon had just fired.
He didn't need them to see that Cassian had become a walking embodiment of it, climbing out of a crater that had destroyed several city blocks.
The Osmosian boy launched himself at Xandros with such speed that he broke the sound barrier. The Reach warrior tried to dodge the full-body tackle, but his armor began to deteriorate under the presence of concentrated heat. When the boy managed to grab the traitor's shoulder, the metal plating melted away and forced Xandros to scream in agony.
Cassian whipped around so fast that if Gabriel blinked, he'd have missed it. With that motion, the beetle warrior flipped end over end and barely managed to control his flight in time. Cassian was all instinct, shooting through the air after him for but a moment. As soon as he made contact, he gripped and pulled the armored greaves away, hands searing with light as he torched the man's lower leg.
The same place the boy himself had been injured.
The same place the boy's mother had been injured.
Nearby assailants forced Gabriel to look away as he downed three Reach soldiers in quick succession, taking one of the plasma staffs to use as a back-up. An Aggrebot landed nearby and began providing support, letting the man focus for a moment on trying to increase his implant's viability. While the rest of the city continued to erupt, while the rest of Osmos V continued to erupt, Gabriel tinkered.
He looked toward the site of the nearby battle long enough to see the energy starting to fade from Cassian's skin, while the boy stood over the prone form of an armored Reach warrior more than a hundred yards away. The armor was in pieces – he could see that much from here – but he knew better. It would be a matter of time before it healed, and Cassian would be a sitting duck from whatever counter-attack Xandros unleas-
With a scream of defiance, Cassian reached down with a fist to impale the elder Osmosian's chest. The armor contorted to defend itself, to defend its host automatically, and halted the attack just before it made flesh. Several appendages held the boy's arm in place, preventing him from reaching the finishing blow, and the kid screamed in righteous anger. He struggled, he pressed forward, he tried again, but the fight was slowly slipping from him.
When the emerald twilight descended upon the skies of Osmos V, Gabriel felt the fight slip from him, too.
In a matter of hours, everything would be over.
OSMOS V
May 20, 09:34 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Cool water spilled over my face, and I shot forward and gripped the nearest person as tightly as I could, their shirt ripping beneath my fingers. For several impossible seconds, I tried to focus on anything at all beyond the thrumming in my chest, the pounding headache in my ears, the throbbing ache in my muscles.
"Cassian, you have to-"
I let him go as suddenly as I grabbed him, the surroundings slowly returning to my focus. A room – one not on fire or coated in debris – expanded around me in the shape of a hospital or a medical tent or a triage center. With a blink, it was clear this was a temporary shelter, and that the man in front of me was none other than my father, Horatio.
"Sorry," I muttered, face fallen. The headache continued long after I apologized, long after I came to realize where I was. A panel beyond the tent shone with an eerie green light for a few seconds, and I blinked with recognition. Gabriel!
"You're okay, you're safe," Father repeated, before I even realized he'd said the same words three times. "Cass, look at me. Take a breath."
"I can't sit here, there's more. More out there, more to do, more to punch, more to-"
"Cassian, it's over."
I leaned back in disbelief. The words made no sense. I heard them, but I didn't hear them. They couldn't possibly be true.
"The attack on the city?"
"Yes," Father replied. "Jula expects the fighting will be over planet-wide in a matter of days."
What…?
That doesn't.
That doesn't make any sense.
"Son, you've been unconscious for a week. You have a lot to catch-up on, but I think you need to eat first. Drink some fluids."
I blinked. A week- that was wrong.
"Tell me now."
"Lat-"
"No. Tell me now."
Father held the moment for a long few seconds and then began to speak, rubbing at a new scar that had formed over his left eye. "I don't really understand all of it myself, but Gabriel's allies finally arrived. They call themselves Green Lanterns," Oh god! "and they threw some muscle around and managed to stop the fighting. The Reach fled into space or were captured, and only a few more areas are challenging us."
The Green Lanterns.
I forced myself to my feet, wobbling and dismissing Father's concerns in the same breath. I'd be fine, I repeated more to myself than to him.
A coastal encampment stretched before us, the largely destroyed city in ruins. Temporary buildings and shelters were packed to the brim with various folks, and I spotted the reserve trio helping with triage. Marcilia gave me a smile, and I returned the wave until I realized…
… I realized she was missing her leg from the knee down.
I promised myself that I'd check on her later, ignoring Father's continued protests as he followed me using a cane to help him walk. I spotted Grandfather atop a nearby ladder, helping to hang a light fixture above one of the larger tents in the area, but he didn't spot me. I'd check on him too, I told myself, and forced myself toward any sign of green.
Finally, as I climbed an embankment, I spotted them, a slight glow to their features revealing their presence before I could see them properly. A pair of Green Lanterns – wearing the unmistakable body suits of black and emerald green – stood side by side as they spoke quietly with Gabriel, who stood across from them in a white and black outfit. I recognized both figures immediately even from just their silhouette, and I was giddy. A male figure with broad shoulders, a thick gut, pink skin, and a pig-like face: Lantern Kilowog. A female figure with a thin figure, gray skin, and red hair: Lantern Laira.
"Oh hey!" Kilowog yelled as he saw me, and Gabriel walked to greet me with a shake of the hand. "It's the poozer who managed to down a Scarab."
"Not much of a poozer if you ask me," Laira replied with a half-grin. "You're the kid, then?"
"You, uh, you know of me?" I asked nervously, before the reality of what they'd said truly hit me. "I mean, yeah, I guess I am."
Gabriel shook his head. "Give the kid some space. He's earned it."
Kilowog grunted. "Yeah, yeah, Plumber. Catch me later – you'll need to make another statement to the bobbleheads."
Laira gasped in mock surprise. "Jordan rubbing off on you, Kilowog?"
They continued to argue as they effortlessly took to the skies, power rings flickering with green light that enveloped them.
Holy shit.
"Only two of those guys stopped the war?"
Gabriel shook his head. "No, no, it was less about that and more about intergalactic politics. The GLC and the Reach do not get along. Old treaties keep 'em from going at each other directly."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why did they come, then?"
The human considered the question. "Carnifex found proof that they were experimenting on the local populace and were using those experiments in intergalactic conflicts. That proof was broadcast, the local Sector House AI picked up on it, and sent for aid. Would have come sooner, but Oa's a long ways away, even by ring standards."
I understood several of those concepts better than I thought I would, and I'd ask for clarification later. "What do we do now? Is everything really… over?"
"Nothing's ever over, Cassian. The planet'll be fighting over who should lead for a while. There's a revolution out there still ongoing, and if I had to guess, Aggregor'll have the spot in a matter of weeks."
I frowned as the question came to mind. "Yeah, but what should I do?"
Gabriel hesitated and then placed a hand on my shoulder. The touch nearly forced me to back away, even as friendly as it was. "You can start by telling me how you know about Earth."