***Zelda64_Awakened_Fears_of_the_Gerudo The light of Heaven, a sunset over expansive plains, an explosion with a nebula in the background. Sounds of running. Sounds of clashing metal, of fighting. Sounds of guns firing. The sound of taping against metal as footsteps or quick, light jumps. "...Matt?" He blinked. His overcoat came to rest around him as he stopped walking. "Yeah?" "Are you...sure about this?" He shook his head. "No." He pushed open a massive door that seemed to appear in front of him. The two wooden bohemeths swung aside and a strong gust of wind and flash of blinding light filled his eyes. "What's going on?" He looked to his right, then to his left, both sides of his vision were filled with stars and a nebula looming to his side. His arms and legs were relaxed, but there didn't seem to be anything solid. He looked down at his feet and saw nothing but stars. He was drifting in space, but although he wasn't wearing any protective suit, he was fine. He turned around and saw a planet not all that far with its sun just coming around the planet. The orange glow and warm light touched the exposed skin on his face and set his hair ablaze with a glowing orange. Even his eyes held an orange glow. His body turned to look out, away from this scene. There he saw it. A dark winged demon of chaos and death. It had an odd light about it, yet seemed to glow of darkness. White trails of smoke were cast in its wake. He could hear it. Somehow in space, he could hear the thoughts of darkness and chaos. His own jaw set. His eyes narrowed. His right hand instinctively moved to the left side of his waist and he leaned forward, his body jetting forward. "Darkness...death...destruction...Chaos demands it. Stand aside!" He was moving faster now, a trail of orange behind him mixed with a blur of white silver. With a metal ring that pierced the darkness, he pulled his sword free of its scabbard and held it directly out ot his right. "Decay, dispair, pain, suffering...it will all end for them. It will end for all. Would you keep these things happening to them?" The trail of white smoke and the trail of orange and silver led toward each other. Light billowed around him, orange flashing before him, billowing like smoke, and silver trailing from his sword's inner glow. "Now it is time for the destruction of mankind, and here is where it all started, so here will it all end." "I and the Tsunami disagree. This world is under out protection and the devine power of the light. You can't be swayed, so you will be destroyed..." Orange and white clashed with a connecting flash of silver and black. A shockwave spread from the impact. Passing each other, orange and white came about and smashed into each other again. Twice more they did this with glancing blows, then once more they came and this time smashed headlong into each other, triggering an eruption of power, an explosion that flashed between the stars. "A...dream. That's what I saw in my dream." "Haha, don't let it freak ya out too much, kid. It was just a dream, right?" "Yeah, I know. But it was...weird, even for my dreams." "Hah. True enough. Just focus on your work, it'll get your mind off any scarry ol' dreams." He rubbed his hand in Matt's hair, messing it up more than it already was...which actually didn't make much difference. "H-hey! Knock it off!" Matt pulled back and away from the captain's hand, running his own through his hair in a failed attempt to straighten it. "Don't worry about it, I'll do my part, Captain." "That's good to hear," the man said, walking away. "I'll be on the bridge, the flight deck is all prepped." Matt scratched his head. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be ready to launch in just a few. Gotta get the last preflight checks done. I don't wanna antiemplode out there." "Why can't you just use...ah nevermind. This looks like a find, but be careful. Who knows what could be out there nowadays, especially until we figure out the origins of those ships the debris came from." "Right, we will be." On the bridge, the captain sat in the central command chair. The bridge itself was on the top of the ship and had a dome of high strength material that was transpartent save the struts that held the plates and support structure of the dome. The dome itself was angled forward and slightly downward. To the left and right of the command chair were two chair with a mirad of displays and control touchpads around them with holographic displays floating in an arch in front of them toward the fore of the ship. Directly in front of the command chair was a seat extending over a holographic display on the floor that displayed the space "under" the ship, giving the pilot a near full view of all space surrounding the ship. A young man sat in the chair to the captain's right. The other two seats were vacant. There were also two seats similar to the ones on the command chair's right and left, but with less active displays and control pannels, which were near the back wall directly in line with the right and left chairs. "Alright, everyone ready to do this?" The captain asked. "All stations check out, Captain. The Faetris is ready to go. How are our two divers?" The young man to his right asked. "I'm fine," Matt said, his voice slightly warped over the comm. "I'm amped. Que the music already, I need something to listen to while I'm salvaging," came a second voice over the comm. "Ah geeze, do we have to, Jack?" The young man to the right of the captain tapped several commands on his pannels, bringing up a new holographic window in front of him. He reached out with his gloved right hand, tapped the window, which vanished, then tapped his finger over to his right where the window promptly reappeared. "Of course, Ben! It's a tradition!" Jack's voice came back. "Captain?" Ben asked, his eyes slightly pleading. "Well, they have to be out there, let's let em decide. Matt?" "Well...it is kinda quiet out there without-" "There, that settles it," Jack said. "Music, professor!" Ben mumbled something before tapping the comands that started the music that Jack had picked. As always it had a bit of a heavy beat starting into it, but once it began going, it became more insturmental. Ben thought how it seemed to more suit Matt's style than Jack's. ***DKC2_Savage_Seduction The flight deck was a large room with several robotic grabber arms that were recessed into the wall. On one end was an airlock, a fairly large one, and beside it a smaller one. The large one led into the secondary cargo hold for the ship, the small one led to the elevator that went to the upper levels. At the far end of the fairly nondiscript, dim metalic room was a large door, tilted with the bow of the ship, that opened by sepperating (the top half receeding into the cealing and the bottom half into the floor), in essense a large blast door. There were also several white guide stripes and squres designating possible landing possitions, as well as areas that were covered in a yellow and black stripe pattern. The flight deck was, after all, designed as a small fighter bay. Two small vehicles walked forward. Their design was simple enough. They had a forward facing dome that was held in place by a metal cage. This was connected to the central part of the vehicle. On either side was a mechanical arm. The right arm on both had two metal rods that folded out and bent back inward in the middle similar to a person's elbows. The tips of the rods were flattened and had thick, tough black rubber grips so that the arm could hold things. The end of the other arm contained a small vicelick grip, again the inside coated with tough armor grips, and on the top part had a cutting torch attached. Just aft from the arms were wings. Short wings extended to either side. At the end of the wings, they had a crossbeam which gave them a sideways T shape. The backs of the wings were coated with thrusters that bent up and down on the main wing like flaps, and left and right on the end assembly like a rudder would. This allowed for maneuvering in space. The main engine muzzle was placed center on the back of the vehicle. They both also had two robotic legs on either side to walk, and a third smaller one that extended from just under the cockpit dome which was used for stability when the unit stopped. The one on the left turned slightly so the pilot could see the one on the right. "So Matt, ready to do this?" The one on the right continued looking forward. "I guess I'm always ready, Jack. Ben, open the doors, we're ready." "Alright. Depressurization complete. Opening hanger doors." Had there been atmosphere, Matt and Jack would have heard the loud mechanical assembly of the door's locking mechanism releasing followed by the grating of the door opening slowly. Although they couldn't hear it, they could feel it as the feet of their salvage pods were still in magnetic contact with the hanger deck. As the doors opened, the outside space became visible. A bright orange nebula covered the ordinary backdrop of stars, but also lit thousands, no, millions, of tiny black spots. All debris in the field that lay before and slightly around their ship. The nebula cast a strange red-orange glow on everything making the dark grey metal of the hanger and the patchwork shades of gray and tan of their mechs shift to an orange tint. It was almost like the effect of a sunset. "Doors are fully open," Ben reported. "Alright, Matt, let's go. Releasing magnetic lock..." Both of the mechs lurched slightly as the lock holding their robotic feet down was released. They, of course, stayed in their positions. The feet folded at the knee joint and then upward into the recesses for them on the bottom of the vehicles. The feet ended up flat, the legs folded up and hidden higher in the recesses. The two pods stayed there, hovering eerily above the deck. "Legs retracted and locked." "Same here," Matt said. "Okay, follow my lead." Jack's pod's main engine spurted a few times before coming to life, a dull yellow glow. It slowly accelerated forward followed by Matt's which followed behind and to the right. Both of them moved forward over the deckplates and the white stripe patterns, then passing through the door on the other end and emerging from the ship into space. "Alright boys, let's start our preliminary scans," the Captain said on the bridge. "Ben's uploading the position of what we think may be the computer core of the ship nearest our position. Nothing risky, just head there and get an uplink. We need to find out who or what we're dealing with before we start salvaging too much." "Sir," Matt said, "This is an increddible amount of debris. I'm not even sure the entire armada could leave this much scrap." "Kid, do you have any idea how big the armada is?" "He's right," Jack said. "This much scrap...it would have taken a whole fleet to leave this behind. And I mean one BIG fleet." The captain scratched his forehead. "Well, we'll start with the cores." "Yeah, we're on our way." Jack tilted his craft toward their waypoint and then pushed to high throttle. Matt followed suit almost flawlessly. Both craft began slowing down as they neared the first batch of scrap. They carefully piloted through it and then spead back up until they closed in on their target. There was a large black container floating amidst several metal plates and bulkheads. Jack skillfully used his pod's robotic right arm to move the plates out of his way and then grabbed the large rectangular shape with the left arm. A small, multipronged device extended from the central joint of the right hand of his pod and slid into a matching recieving port on the black shape. "Locked on. The uplink should be all set." Ben's hands went across his control deck. "Yep, got it. Starting download into the secondary memory storage core now. This may take a few minutes." "Yeah, yeah, I know. Not like we had anything else to do, right Matt?" "Yeah..." Matt's pod was still moving around the pile of debris Jack's was anchored to and Matt was also examining several of the nearby debris clusters. Most of what was left were pealed back and melted metal plating and bulkheads, but they were still on the outside of the main debris cluster. "Hey, don't get too far off, Matt," Jack said. "I don't wanna have to go off after ya." "I won't. Sides, this whole thing gives me the creeps." "Why's that?" "Think about it, whatever could cause this much destruction would not be so fun to run into." "You think just one thing did all this?" The captain's voice came across their comm systems. "I'm not sure. I haven't seen enough of the debris yet to figure that out. So far it all seems to have a similar pattern. Another thing that bothers me is there aren't any...bodies. Sure, maybe they all abandoned ship and were rescued, but when have we ever seen that happen?" "What's wrong? Matty think something came and gobbled them all up?" Jack asked jokingly. "Not at all. But still, it is kinda strange, don't ya think? I mean, you're right near the computer core. Presumably, there should have been decks and people all around, right?" "Don't worry about it, Matt. Wait until Ben gets the core's data record and we can see what happened ourselves." "Yeah, it's probably nothing." Matt's pod made a slow, sweeping arch as it turned back around and headed back toward Jack's. As he did so, he was almost sure he saw a pannel that looked like it had a large bite mark in it, but after looking a second time he decided that probably wasn't what it was. It was too large to belong to a Wongapol, so he figured it was probably just a stress fracture. He made a note on his map to investigate it later though. "Okay, I have the last ten minutes or so from the log on record before the core was cevered from the ship's network," Ben reported. "I'll patch it through and start the playback." ***disappeared The data recorder displayed the bridge of the ship it belonged to. The bridge itself was a long platform with chairs and stations allong either side, and a pilot station on the forward end. There was a raised platform where four more stations were, and jutting out from that was the command chair. The entire bridge was similar to the Faetris, just on a much larger scale. It had an ovular dome across the top with two arch struts that held the transparent material in place, and it had an open space under the main platform where the deck curved to complete the shape. This lower portion, where it went from being glass to being deck, was covered in a persistant hologram to give a total panoramic view of the surrounding space. A large fleet of ships filled the dome and the holographic displays, the space around the ship, this ship itself being one of many. There were several hundreds, possibly over a thousand. Mostly Longarm class frigates and smaller, but there were also five mammoth command ships. Several dark swirls of blackness appeared before them. The fleet was somehow expecting this. From the fleet pulses of red energy, beams of blue energy, and small projectiles, some yellow, some purple, shot out toward the swirls. Although it was difficult to tell how many there were, the swirls solidified enough so that they could see there were definately five in a loose x pattern. As the energy and projectiles from the fleet neared the swirls, many explosions and burst of energy flashed. The swirls were at least three kilometers away from the lead ships of the fleet, but they could definately see many, many small black things coming out of the dark vorticities. The explosions from the first wave of fire destroyed them. For a moment, there was an eerie silence on the bridge of the ship. The tension was thick and the silent dark swirls foreboding. Then it came. Shots of black shot out from the swirls followed by thousands of small black things. It was as if a swarm of darkness was emerging from the vorticities. The shots of black shot through the fleet, taring apart all the ships they shot through and then continuing into the space beyond. The fleet, down already by at least a quarter their number, retalliated. The bridge of the ship being displayed was chaos, but the guns fired. An order was yelled out: "Launch the fighters! Launch the mechs!" The blaze of fire from the fleet was destroying the swarm on a massive scale, but they continued coming. The black swarm began to overtake the fleet, and there, in between the massive capital ships, shot both fighters and mechs, humanoid and robotic, in a firefight of such an enormous scale as to have never been seen before. The guns on the ship rotated and shifted to continue firing at the swarm that was all around it. The main cannons shooting the blue beams continued firing forward in their fixed positions, vaporizing all the swarming things that crossed their path. Finally, after several minutes that seemed an eternity, all the fire stopped. The swarm was only so much dust filling the space amongst the fleet ships with an inky, if particled, blackness. The fleet was now down to less than half their starting number. A chear was yelled out. The commanding officer tried to quell it and got a report from the four stations nearest his as he got out of the command chair and walked to them. Suddenly, the bridge fell silent. The chears ceased in an instant. Out of the five vortexes came truly massive objects, one from each. They could be ships, but they could also be creatures. They were black, but the orange nebula nearby cast some light on them, although it was distored, some absorbed, some deflected, and some strangly shifted. The only thing that could be seen for sure was that they were very large. They also seemed to be spinning, but the spinning was slowing down. As the spinning came near to a stop, the objects seemed to have black rays stretch out from their main mass. These apendeges were similar to tenticles, and they extended outward from the objects a considerable distance. Finally, the black swarm came out of the vorticities behind the objects. They parted around the objects and continued toward the fleet. "Fire!!" The command echoed from the commandship of the fleet across space through the comms of all the other ships. It seemed to shatter the silence of space as well as the darkness, for as soon as the command was given, space once again burst to light with the many weapons firing. The swarm rushed into the inferno of its own doom, followed by the large objects. As soon as they were near enough, the objects entered the fight. Their tenticle-like protrusions jutted out into the fleet, in a single strike smashing through upwards of ten ships. A second, then a third... The recording ended when one of the large black apendeges passed through three ships and then into the displaying image. ***FF7_Internal_Affliction "That was..." Ben started. "The armada," the captain said. "Those were armada ships." He rubbed his chin with his right hand, thinking. "Orders, Captain?" Jack asked. The captain scratched his head. "Bring that onboard. Matt, I'm uploading several things to your map. I want you to pick them up. Ben's gonna use the main grappler arms to pick up a few more parts. Once all of them and you two are back on board..." He once again rubbed his jaw. "We'll rendesvous with the Thunder. I don't know what happened, but I'm sure the boss is gonna wanna know about this. We'll figure out what to do from there." "Yes, sir." A fist slammed on the smooth black desk before it. "We should have been told!" The voice echoed in the council chamber. "We're supposed to be allies! If you were going to go up against something like that, which by your fleet's actions, they did expect, you should have asked for our help." "At the time, our sources didn't indicate that the enemy was going to be such a great threat. We didn't see the need to...concern you, or your organization, with something we could handle well enough ourselves." "Well, it seems you couldn't quite handle it so well." "A slight oversight, yes. But not entirely fruitless." "Not entirely fruitless?" The voice asked in exclamatory disbelief. "You lost an entire fleet!" "Actually, no, we didn't. Several of our ships were able to escape, and while we did loose a great many ships, the armada is still large enough for our needs." "I can't believe this. How many ships and lives were lost?" "And you think had your people been their and died there you would feel any better about it?" "..." "We have taken measures and are preparing for their advance. Our armada is quickly reorganizing and we have mobilized Argon, Betis, and Reham fleets as well. Don't worry, we'll take care of this threat. If we need any help, we'll be sure to contact your organization." The holographic comm screen closed before him. "Damn then. I can't believe this. This 'enemy' could wipe us all out but they're treating it like some kind of internal issue!" The intercom on his desk buzzed to life. "Sir, the crew of the Faetris are here, as you ordered." He sighed heavily. "Okay, send them in." Matt pulled his pistal from his holster and fired. Several red beams of light shot through the etherial being. Matt's eyes were wide and his teeth gritted. "Grr, darnit..." He holstered his pistal and reached to his waste to pull a metal staff which extended to full length. He ran at the being and slashed through it. When the staff was in the center, it lit with energy. Matt yelled as jolts of energy filled his body and then sent him flying back. He crashed to the ground in a heap and his metal staff clanked to the ground next to him. "A...aaah. How am I supposed to fight something I can't hit?" "Stop right there." Jack's voice came through clear. His form appeared walking out of the shaddows. "Stay down, Matt. I'll take care of it." "...Jack...uhg..." Matt tried to move, but he could only manage slight motions of his body, he couldn't get up or turn to see where Jack was. "From the lines of space...let energy erupt! Cosmos Flare!" Jack threw his hand forward. An arch that passed through the bulkheads of the ship curving from the wall to the cealing began to glow. It wasn't physical, but something else, and it passed right next to the etherial being. Jack's eyes narrowed, then opened wide, glowing slightly red. The glow blazed orange then erupted in a blinding white light. The eruption followed the arch and burst into the etherial mass. When the light faded, both the arch and the being were gone. "Jack...how did..." "Hey, don't worry bout it, Matt," Jack said, kneeling at Matt's side. He put his right arm under Matt's knees and his left under Matt's shoulder blades. He gently lifted his friend as he stood. "I can tell you all about it later. Right now, we need to get you patched-" Jack was cut off as the ship lurched again. "Damn...! Hang on, kid, we gotta hurry." Jack with Matt in his arms took off down the corridor into the shadows.