UNTITLED: Book One

DAY 134.75

I want death

I want destruction

Then peace

The Warden stands in the center of the vast Isi-Iyi, his focus currently lost deep in thought in the midst of the raging war around him. He’s reminiscing of the first war he fought here, side-by-side with Sollar.

He looks around, surrounded by explosions, fire and smoke. Within all of the smoke and explosions, his memory of the old times shows itself in the form of mirages, replaying their fights in the first war. A clash here, a clash there, standing back-to-back over there—crying, shouting, and loss. He’s clearly not focused on the current battles happening around him.

After all, despite being sure his fellow Earthlings have prepared even better this time, he’s had plenty of time to understand this planet. He looks down at the twin blades in his hands. Too much time, because even a little improvement in the understanding of these transcendent technologies keeps him light-years ahead of them.

He sighs with sadness, rather than relief, as he snaps out his thoughts and back to the bombardment that his shields have been fending off. Two battleships hovering direct above the island have been raining down fire on him nonstop, surrounding him in a storm of smoke and fire, but he hasn’t broken so much as a sweat using his shields.

Seemingly bored and disinterested, he nonchalantly slashes one of his blades up and over his head, sending a crescent shaped wave that increasingly grows as it rises through the air until it slices through one of the battleships. It cuts the ship clean in half, sending it crashing down on top of him in an intense explosion. His shields still hold with ease, covering only himself because everyone on his side of the island is already dead.

His head is slightly bowed as he stands there, unmoving, in the middle of the high flames and wreckage. Looking like a shadow in all the destruction as his coat flaps behind him.

The other ship immediately stops firing after its sister ship’s destruction. Then, the humongous mothership in orbit launches a single pod down through the burning, warring sky. It slams down on the island. As the pod nears, Warden realizes that it’s a person that is falling down. This person lands on the island, in a crouch, with amazing force. Enough to even crack the hardened ground of Isi-Iyi and blow away some of the fire and smoke of the crashed battleship.

The Warden raises an eyebrow. Impressive, he thinks to himself. But it’s still not nearly enough. He sends another slashing attack at this person before they can even stand upright. Not interested in fighting pointless battles. The attack actually manages to tear through the island ground, leaving a trail and exploding upon impact with the person—blowing away the rest of the debris. Warden then turns his back to explosion to survey the rest of the ongoing fight, wondering where he should go to next. He then looks up at the city, then the mothership, realizing he has to destroy that thing first if he wants this war to end any time soon.

As he begins to make his move, the battleship that wasn’t destroyed begins to slowly move through the sky. The battleship moves to align itself over the area that the person landed. Then that same type of energy that the mothership shot at the shields of the city in the sky, to turn the shielding into a cage, is then shot down towards the battleship. The battleship seems to absorb it.

As the energy hits the battleship, it is then captured by an antenna, causing the ship’s shields to glow extremely bright, it lights up the night sky like a flare. Next, the battleship sends the energy down to some flames that cover the area where he attacked that person.

The Warden watches all of this transpire while the flames from his attack are still raging where they struck the person that launched down—one of his weapon’s many abilities. Suspicious now, Warden makes the flames disappear immediately with just a twitch of his wrist.

Standing there, unmoving, and unharmed is the person that shot down from the mothership. They begin to walk towards him.

The Warden snorts, “And so they send another Hero…that comes with tricks,” he bluntly mocks, no passion in his voice.

As the Hero nears, the shocked Warden’s brows raise above his sunglasses with his mouth agape as he nearly stumbles a step backward. A ghost!aA specter from his past returning to finish the battle he had already thought finished after all these years. He thinks to himself, taken aback by the sight of this middle-aged woman in armor approaching him.

Surely, there’s no way she would still be alive?? He takes in all her features: same broad shoulders, same built frame, same woolly hair that she always wore in a bun—it would look like a puffed ball on the back of her head. And the same scar—wait. He rubs his right temple to as he regains his composure.

He takes a moment to take a closer look at the woman. The infamous scar he had expected to see running down her neck, even before she became a Hero, was not there. This woman also looked slightly older than who he remembers.

Of course, the person he’s thinking of would be his same age, except look much older than he does now because he knows she never got the treatments he got, nor did she ever have these. He looks at the twin blades in his hands.

As he recovers from his initial surprise he also notes the most obvious fact to consider. That despite looking so much like the 10th Hero of Core—The Millennium Hero, from fifty years ago, this was not the same woman because her body is buried underneath the War Cry statue. By him, personally. He glances back at it, way across on the other end of the island.

“…I heard that long ago, my Mother once trusted you. Her closest friend. Like a brother.” She says as she nears within earshot. She sarcastically chuckles at her own words while she flips over the dead body of an Old Guard.

She squats on top the body, releasing a dramatic grunt of exhaustion as she sits, then continues, “…Look at where that got her.”

Watching this, The Warden’s grip around his blades tighten. His vein bulging on his forehead. His jaw clenching.

“Ohhhh stawwp... Mister I’d-sacrifice-anyone-in-a-heartbeat…You forget, I’ve seen you kill children.” She says, her ominous tone dense with hatred.

The Warden still doesn’t reply. He stands there silently fuming, ignoring her feelings about his war crimes. Calculating the fastest way to kill her, painfully.

His head subtly tilts in the direction of the battleship transmitting power to her armor, then up towards the mothership.

“Killing me would be easier than that. I mean just between us, I came here to die, and to bring you,” she says before gesturing at the world around them, “and allll of this, with me. But for that plan? The one you’re thinking right now? I’m just saying, there’s a lot of ships out there for me to use… And I will use every last one if I have to…You’ve inspired me, after all.” Her voice trails off as she looks down at the face of the dead Old Guard she’s sitting on, strumming the fallen soldier’s lips while getting lost in thought herself.

This angers The Warden greatly, “YOU DARE?” He exclaims through his gritted teeth and clenched jaw.

Her casual demeanor fades again, and a dark aura fills the air. She looks up at him, then across the island towards the War Cry statue. She stares at it for a moment with deep sorrow in her eyes before finally looking back to him to deliver a piercing death stare, silently calling out his hypocrisy.

Somehow, she knows exactly where her Mother’s body is buried.

She closes her eyes for a moment and exhales, then stands up. Her eyes are watery and her casual demeanor entirely gone now. “I thought I could enjoy this…this end. Mocking you first. Humiliating you, before taking all this from you. But honestly, this is just too much for me to take. I’m finally here and being this close to you right now, with all you’ve done to me. This show I’m putting on is pointless… I hate you…I just really hate you, far. Too. Much.”

Ahh. It finally clicks now. He knows who this must be, and what her business with him is.

“My Mother was a soldier, but she knew the dangers of the job. And unlike me, she chose that life. This wasn’t even meant for me—originally, but hey… shit changes.”

She punches her fists together and the suit glows slightly brighter now, powering up. The ground around her vibrating. She continues, “My name is Anaye (ah-nAH-yay). I am the 11th Hero of Core—The Dawn Hero. I’ve come to collect ALL that you owe, Warden.”

“Cute.” The Warden replies. Still angry about the desecration of the fallen Old Guard.

Tears begin to stream down her face as she gets into her battle stance. “Yeah… what would I expect from a monster like you. Absolutely nothing in this universe could stop me from becoming this. Nothing could stop me from coming for you. Not after you—…”

Still in her stance, her focus never leaving him, she begins to choke up, half-sobbing the next words through her gritted teeth and tears. “…after you fucking killed my baby boy!” She wipes her eyes.

The Warden shifts slightly, his glasses concealing his confusion. Was Aiye not an exchange? He asks himself. One that I reluctantly accepted… but an exchange nonetheless? He distinctly remembers finally accepting Aiye as homage to his once dear friend, his sister that he killed. He subtly traces the slash wound down his body, a gift from the previous Hero.

Aiye was an offering of sorts, offered by—? Ah, I see. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know anything.

“You think me the only monster. But I too am from Earth. I too once served the Core. What was it you said?” With his demeanor stoic once again, The Warden simply says, “You knew the dangers,” parroting her own words.

Anaye makes a grunt-growl noise in response to this and readies to fight.

“I’m going break you Warden, then destroy everything you love. I’m going to avenge my family, and when I’m done I will rest with them.”

The ground is still vibrating around Anaye. Then, she lunges at him.

Unlike all Heroes before her, she has no weapon other than her fists and the armor she wears, but even still, she looks just like her mother before her—just like the Millennium Hero.

The Warden, not one to take chances in a fight, takes a defensive stance to brace himself for a strong attack. Instead of relying on the automatic shield that erects upon contact, he creates an opaque, violet force field that etches out a perimeter into the ground. It’s meant to shield him from any and all attacks, but its solid color and lack of transparency also shields him from sight.

Anaye doesn’t let that stop her. As she flies towards him, her suit shines so bright it’s blinding to even those across the vast island.

Now, The Dawn Hero, looking like a star flying towards the violet moon, punches his shield with all her strength. The shockwave scatters debris from the crashed battleship and the bodies, spreading them across the island and into the ocean. Not only that, his shield shatters and the force sends him flying off the island, across the ocean waves, also into the water.

Anaye walks up to the edge of the island he flew off from, staring at the spot he fell into. She says to herself, while scanning the water, “They call me Hero, but I assure you, I’m just here to hurt you.”

She looks up at the city in the sky, the top of it sparking, showing signs of a battle going on. “Between myself, my brother, and the rest of Legion, we will take everything from you. You’ll know my pain, Warden.”

—

Aiye doesn’t know why he did it, attack them that is. What came over me? He asks himself this as he dodges the swipe of Silver’s halberd by spinning to the right. But it was a fake. Silver takes another swipe down at him, only to have her weapon taken from her as Aiye spins back left, simultaneously catching it and pulling it away from her by using the combined momentum of her swing and his spin.

He whacks Silver away with her own weapon and then immediately jumps after her to deliver a fatal blow, but he changes his mind mid-air so that he can block Gold’s attack, who comes out of nowhere to defend Silver.

Gold’s attack sends him across the lawn of the city. The strength of her attack reverberates through the shaft of the halberd and up his arms, but he doesn’t have time to recover because Carbon comes crashing down on him, punching him multiple times, into the ground, before getting off of him and taking a step back.

Carbon wipes the blood from his lip where Aiye sucker punched him.

“It’s unfortunate. Disappointing really. All the shit they’ve pumped into you, all the changes—alterations…” he says the last part as he looks Aiye’s body up and down condescendingly.

“I prefer it this way. You choosing them, that is. You’re clearly no longer fit to be one of us. This way, I’ll spare my sister the disappointment.”

“Whatever you needa tell yourself…You knew I was alive already.” Aiye mutters. “The Dark State cells, that was you…”

“Hah, Dark State. I forget that this is what you call us. Yes, Aiye, I knew you were alive, because I sent the spies with the help of one of your own. You’re correct.”

“Why though? Why didn’t you-?” Aiye asks, genuinely confused and bordering hurt.

“Why didn’t I reach out to you? Save you? It’s nothing personal, I assure you. You see, your mother, she was the perfect candidate to become Core’s next hero.” He doesn’t miss Aiye’s shocked expression, “Yes. The Hero. She is here right now, a part of this campaign. Your mother whom I had always known to have a hatred for Core for taking: our Father, her husband, our friends, and even our Mother—your Grandmother—whom she didn’t always get along with.

When she thought the Warden killed you, her newborn baby boy, it unlocked something inside of her that revealed the inner potential we had always believed her to have… Aiye, there was no greater conviction, no stronger power, than the willpower of a parent who witnessed someone take their child from them. A parent who lost everything, and knows exactly who took it—and has the ability to get it back! The determination! She has since become the single greatest product Earth has ever produced. Far surpassing even our own Mother’s strength—the 10th Hero. So you see Aiye, you have to die. Because the moment she finds out you’re alive, all that which drives her to be our greatest Hero, will disappear. Earth is falling apart. Core is at the weakest it has ever been. And the cowardly colonies sell themselves to the highest bidder. Earth needs its Hero, or there will be no more Earth. So as much as I love my sister…and I love her, so. Dearly. I do… I would make this sacrifice a thousand times.”

Never mind. I know exactly why I attacked this piece of shit. Aiye rolls over to his stomach and pushes himself up onto one knee. Silver walks up next to him and snatches her weapon with a huff, pissed off at him, or herself—or both.

Aiye takes a while to catch his breath. He hasn’t really had to work this hard except when sparring Solara—WHEREVER THE FUCK SHE IS RIGHT NOW.

He shakes off the frustration. He then spits a little blood, wipes his mouth, then stands. He’s back in battle stance, but Carbon looks unimpressed and annoyed. He shakes his head and then unsheathes his sword, which glows a dark grey—nearly black—just like his suit.

“Okay. I think I’ve got the hang of y’all,” Aiye says as he takes time to look at each of them individually. “So, let’s try that again.”

He then spins around in a flash, significantly faster than he’s been moving this entire time, and he crescent-kicks at Silver’s head. Silver barely blocks it with the shaft of her weapon, but the force of the kick sends her into the ground nonetheless.

Gold once again comes to her aid, except now Aiye knows Gold’s attacks are too strong to block repeatedly, so instead he diverts her attack. When she swings down her rod, he diverts in to away from himself so that it slams onto Silver’s chest. The scene is gruesome and causes all three of them to pause—Carbon and Gold in shock, and Aiye jumping back to create some separation. Preparing himself for their incoming rage-filled attacks.

Except, they don’t go into a rage. They do something much more concerning. They get silent. In a way that normally they would appear stoic and heartless if it weren’t for the sorrow in Gold’s eyes that he briefly caught a glimpse of.

So now Aiye knows it is just a new determination. There will be no bargaining, and he is definitely no longer one of them—not that he felt it to begin with. And they are no longer going to treat him as some misguided kid they need to kill. This time they will come at him with everything, whatever that means when it comes to these people.

Their suits glow brighter now and the ground around them starts to vibrate. At the same time, Aiye notices that the pod with the antenna, is also glowing brighter. Synchronized with their suits.

Huh, interesting. So I for sure need to destroy that thing—woah!

Gold once again takes advantage of her preoccupied opponent, this time with a side swing of her rod to his neck. He ducks her attack just in time. The force of the attack sends a shockwave behind him. She’s even stronger now, Aiye notes. But not only that, A LOT faster now too.

Gold begins to swing away at him, still using only one arm, but now she is barraging him with attacks as if she’s swinging a lightweight stick. Aiye is barely managing to dodge each attack.

Suddenly, she fakes an attack and instead swings upward through the ground, using debris to block his vision. He swipes away some debris and blinks away the dirt. She uses that opportunity as she rests the tip of her rod on the forearm of her other arm, pointing it at him like a shotgun.

“Fuck,” is all Aiye can say before the rod lights up, like when she hit Solara, shining bright gold now—illuminating the entire top of the city in a blinding flash.

Aiye closes his eyes tight and assumes a blocking stance, but he could feel the insane heat and bone-crushing pressure from the weapon before the attack is even released. His clothes starting to burn. Then, it’s released.

Everything, from the ground to the grass, washed away by the heat like ocean water rushing up the sand on the shore. The only thing left standing is the large Narra shade tree. Unharmed. Firmly rooted into the ground and unmoved.

That, and Thema Thema who was standing directly in front of Aiye, not flat on his ass. She’s holding her sword out, with the blade face down.

As smoke clears and steam flows off of Thema, she turns her back to Gold who jumps back to create some distance between herself and this new threat. Turning towards Aiye, she looks down at him and places the tip of her blade to his neck.

“Aiye…what the fuck. Is Earth?”

The thunderous drum strikes once…