Chapter 329: 329
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Terra.
Earth.
A little blue marble with patches of green and brown.
The third planet from the sun.
Such a simple little world, a little bigger than most life sustaining planets, with an oversized satellite that was large enough and close enough to effect the tides of the great oceans that covered roughly 70% of its surface. High gravity for its size, but still active enough that it wasn't solid all the way through. A molten nickle/iron core surrounded by a liquid mantle under enough pressure it was more plasticized than liquid. The surface was covered with tectonic plates that still suffered geological instabilities.
The surface was covered with plant life, some naturally evolving, others genetically altered, and still more synthetic to fill in the gaps of an eco-system that had been destroyed.
The planet had endured much. Meteor strikes, a solar corona ejection that had wiped out the majority of the species, all manner of natural catastrophes.
It had suffered other types too.
Every time it came back.
It was a hardy little planet, despite its small size.
It bred hardy creatures.
Each extinction level event another life form rose to dominance. Beneath crackling bromide skies from a meteor impact that destroyed the entire planet's eco-system rose a race of primates. Small, nearly defenseless in the arms race of tooth and claw, scale and fur, it had an oversized head and used problem solving to get at the scarce food. It developed navigation systems in its brain to follow herds and seek out new grazing ranges.
It learned endurance, patience, pack bonding, and above all, adaptability.
The evolutionary arms race came to a screeching halt when the primate hefted a rock and bashed in the skull of an herbivore designed to outrun and outlast anything else.
Others, who came later, did not understand why the primate loved its world so much.
It was geologically unstable. Its magnetic field received enough solar radiation that the northern skies lit up with a fearsome display of radiation. The majority of the water was undrinkable, full of everything from heavy salts to radioactive elements. Every creature was designed to kill or parasite off of every other creature. The rain was corrosive, oxidizing anything left out. The wind and rain tore apart stone in storms that hit with the force of atomic weaponry.
But the primate loved its chaotic, violent, deadly world.
It remade other planets in the little blue planet's image.
It took dead planets that were little more than cold dead airless rock covered in radioactive sleet from the stellar mass and lovingly reformed them in the little blue planet's image.
It took toxic high pressure worlds where no life could thrive, and nurtured it until it resembled the little blue planet.
It took molten worlds that would never support life, never be anything but a fiery orb of doom, cooled it, gentled it, took it in their hands and remade it in the image of the little blue marble.
The primates loved their world, referring to it in familial ways, creating songs, artwork, and many other things to praise and show their love for the little blue planet.
It was scarred. Damaged. Had been injured.
But the primates didn't erase all the scarring, left some behind, as their lives left scars upon their bodies, souls, and minds, but they eased the little blue marble's injuries.
On the smaller of the two northern continents, were two mountain ranges, where the continental plates had pushed against each other until the plates had buckled and surged up into mountains. The western ones were sharp, jagged, reaching for the sky to claw at it. The eastern ones were older, more rounded by wind and rain and gravity. The were mantled with snow, frozen H2O crystals, in the winters, covered in trees all the times, many of them that were always green.
At one time the green had been twisted by genetic manipulation to attack the primates.
But the primates had overcome it, tamed it, or just let it exist along side of them.
In some ways, highly aggressive plants that would kill the unwary were comfortable and understandable to the primates.
After all, they just wanted to eat.
The western mountains were home to many plants that were willing to kill for protein. Home to ruined cities and wrecked metropolises, abandoned towns and slowly crumbling villages.
In some places the damage was beyond the standard three dimensions. Time itself had been damaged. Things reset, or didn't change, or just sat in an endless moment. Damage to what some called 'spacetime' had not been fully repaired, as many worried the repair would be worse then the damage.
The primates had learned their lessons about messing with time.
It was in one of those places, that was always early evening, that legends gathered.
Not many. There were reasons. Some were understandable, like several of them would try to kill each other on sight. Some were esoteric, like one's shadow would vanish for several days if they were near the other. Some made no sense, like 2+2=Yes, Oranges, Thank You if two of them were too close to each other.
But those are the kind family issues that crop up when your family is made up of Immortals.
There were arguments, of course. Uncle Jack gets drunk every time and tries to punch out Cousin Reggie. Aunt Sophie always throws her wine in Aunt Betty's face. Cousin Bob and Cousin Malcolm always end up fighting with knives before the pig is roasted.
Just like any other normal family.
But eventually the party winds down, the gathering loses steam, and the group breaks up. Promising, but knowing their probably lying, to get together soon, to not wait until the next reunion, to come see the new house and kick back on the porch and have a few beers.
In the end, it's always one person sitting out back.
And someone always loops away from the others to go back and talk.
In the dark.
And that's when things get the most interesting.
-------------------
Daxin stood over the bonfire, his hands held out over the flame, staring at them.
It had been thousands of years since he had requested a doctor cut away the flesh and replace it with cybernetics.
He had tried to explain it to doctors, to surgeons, and they all had reacted with horror that he wanted the flesh cut away.
His body, his soul, his flesh and blood and bone, remembered the presence of the Digital Omnimessiah, and the loss burned deep inside of him.
He was like this fire, warming, comforting in our pain and anguish, but when he was gone, we grew cold, the heavily muscled human thought to himself.
He had eventually chosen a half drunken digital sentience inhabiting the frame of a surgical bay to slice away the flesh that had grown cold and begun to ache. He had chosen the DS carefully, knew that the DS wouldn't build some weird shrine out of his flesh or try to clone him or even sell it on the black market.
Instead, the DS had flushed the excess tissue down the disposal, installed new cybernetics to replace the heavy Combine, Republic, and Imperium cybernetics, and bit by bit, piece by piece, left his body behind in an attempt to leave behind his own humanity.
Because to humanity life was defined by pain.
The gravel deeper in the half collapsed parking structure crunched and Daxin didn't bother to look.
"Come stand by the fire, Dhruv," he rumbled.
Dhruv had abandoned the look he preferred as Legion, showing himself in a form that he would let few other people see.
Slender, hairless, sexless, an androgynous slender brown person with wide eyes and an almost permanent servile expression built into the structure of his face.
Dhruv moved up by the fire, putting his hands out to warm them.
"Kalki was upset," Dhruv said, conversationally.
"He's always felt that you should kill POW's, not coddle them," Daxin chuckled. He reached up and touched the slight swelling under his eye, all that was left from his orbital socket getting smashed in by a fist swung by an enraged Immortal. "Every time he brings up that if the Mantid had just killed me, I wouldn't have ripped off the Omni-Queen's head, and every time I get pissed and punch him in the mouth."
"And every time Bellona steals the last of your whiskey," Dhruv said.
"We meet here, and we repeat our last meeting," Daxin said.
"Right down to me coming back," Dhruv replied. "We can't move on, can we?"
Daxin shook his head. "No. We repeat ourselves over and over every time we get together. We're drawn to this place."
"Indeed we are," the rough voice came from the shadows.
Daxin's hand went down to his thigh as the cybernetic limb opened up and a heavy pistol whirred out, the butt fitting smoothly into his hand, the compartment closing as Daxin brought up the pistol, thumbing the safety even as the pistol recognized his DNA.
Dhruv blurred and four of him separated out, two rolling backwards, one with a pistol, one with a rifle, all four armored up. Lasers speared into the shadows from underneath the weapons as the targeting systems were brought online.
"Easy, my brothers, easy," the voice said.
A shadow detached from the darkness, moving forward. Three legs, soft curly dark brown hair, big wide eyes with large pupils, one arm on either side and one on the front, upraised ears. It walked forward, the middle leg moving out, taking the figure's weight as the first one then the other leg came forward.
"It always looks like you're walking on your dick, Bputun" Daxin snorted, the compartment on his leg opening back up.
"That's why the ladies love me," the Pubvian said, baring its meat eating teeth in a smile as Daxin smoothly put the pistol away.
The four extra Dhruv's puffed and vanished into dust that swirled down around his feet and seemed to suck into the bottom of his shoes.
"You've never come back here after our meeting before," Dhruv said. He looked at Daxin. "This is new."
"It is," Daxin said, watching as the Pubvian moved up and began warming all three hands over the fire.
"I noticed that Matthias didn't make it to our meeting," the Pubvian said. He looked at Daxin. "Did you two finally have it out?"
Daxin nodded as Dhruv moved up and handed the Pubvian a bottle of whiskey that the label had faded and tattered.
"Yeah," Daxin admitted. "We fought before the face of Crying Anne," he said, watching the Pubvian take a long swig off the bottle of whiskey that they had shared for over 8,000 years.
"Another legend for the mortals," the Pubvian said, smacking his lips at the taste of the whiskey. He handed the bottle to Daxin. "It sounds so epic, when it was just two old men fighting in front of a huge metal door."
Dhruv chuckled.
"I bring news, brothers," the Pubvian said as Daxin took a long drink off the bottle.
When he handed it to Dhruv, the level had not dropped.
"The Legion of the Damned has fallen," the Pubvian said. He reached up with his third arm and rubbed his face. "They were wiped out to the last man."
"So? That's not the first time it's happen. They'll make inspection by dawn," Daxin said as Dhruv lifted the bottle to his mouth.
"They've been dead nearly a year. They aren't coming back. They died on Mercury, but they held until Mercury's defenses could rally," the Pubvian said.
Dhruv choked on his mouthful of whiskey, spitting the alcohol into the fire, which roared up the fuel.
"Holy shit, the kid did it," Dhruv said.
Daxin turned and looked at Dhruv at the same time as Bputun. "Did what?" they both asked.
"Before the Case Omaha, I was Black Boxed. One of the Daughters caught me, put me in charge of figuring out why the SUDS was red dotting across the galactic arm," Dhruv said. He took a long pull off the bottle and handed it to Bputun. "We spent months, making no headway, until I grabbed a kid."
When Daxin growled Dhruv shook his head. "No, not a child soldier, Dax. A hacker. A good one. The kid hacked Nebula-Steam and some really high security stuff before he got caught. I told him I wanted him to break into the system."
Bputun shook his head. "I thought backtracking the signal was a dead end."
The Pubvian accepted the bottle.
The level had dropped slightly.
"It was. At least, I thought so. The kid came at it sideways, I mean, like Bellona sneaking up on a pile of butterscotch candy," Dhruv said.
Both of the other men chuckled at the joke.
"He figured out what the signal was. Figured out that everyone had spent all their time basically trying to hack into cloud storage, where what we needed was the find out the access point to the servers the cloud storage was on," Dhruv said.
Daxin grinned. "So SUDS was stored on a cloud system?" he laughed. "The jokes write themselves."
Dhruv nodded, taking the bottle and taking a drink. "He must have got in."
"Which means he processed the Legion's SUDS records," Daxin said. He rubbed the side of his face before accepting the bottle. "So you're kid's in the system, messing with stuff, and didn't know to not interfere with the Legion of the Damned?"
Bputun made a sound that was a mixture of a belch and a laugh. "Dax, they died on Mercury. Let it go. They fulfilled their oaths."
Daxin sighed and looked at the fire.
"We should... I don't know... figure out some way to let the galaxy, mankind, go on without us," he said.
"You tried that," Dhruv said. "And here we are again."
Bputun nodded. "Here we are. But I stand here with you, where I haven't stood before."
"So things are changing," Daxin said slowly. "Even in this unchanging place, things are..."
Bputun suddenly jerked, standing straight up, bringing his middle hand up to wrap it around his own throat in a protective gesture.
Two Dhruv's peeled off the original, looking around, pistols in hand, even as the compartment on Daxin's thigh opened.
Bputun's eyes were wide and his hand came up, shaking, to touch his implant. His other hand came out, palm up, the holo-emitter in his hand gleaming.
A Pubvian female's face appeared.
"Talinvan, my love, I am back. Your children and I are back. Our clan is back. Your people have returned to you. When the Case Omaha is released, please, come home," the female said. Tears began to wet the fur beneath her eyes. "It has been so long for you, my love. Come home. Come home to your children.
Her hands came up, reaching out to her husband, who she knew as Talinvan, from before the Digital Omnimessiah had touched his brow and renamed him.
"Come home to me, beloved. Come home to Pubvia."
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Terra.
Earth.
A little blue marble with patches of green and brown.
The third planet from the sun.
Such a simple little world, a little bigger than most life sustaining planets, with an oversized satellite that was large enough and close enough to effect the tides of the great oceans that covered roughly 70% of its surface. High gravity for its size, but still active enough that it wasn't solid all the way through. A molten nickle/iron core surrounded by a liquid mantle under enough pressure it was more plasticized than liquid. The surface was covered with tectonic plates that still suffered geological instabilities.
The surface was covered with plant life, some naturally evolving, others genetically altered, and still more synthetic to fill in the gaps of an eco-system that had been destroyed.
The planet had endured much. Meteor strikes, a solar corona ejection that had wiped out the majority of the species, all manner of natural catastrophes.
It had suffered other types too.
Every time it came back.
It was a hardy little planet, despite its small size.
It bred hardy creatures.
Each extinction level event another life form rose to dominance. Beneath crackling bromide skies from a meteor impact that destroyed the entire planet's eco-system rose a race of primates. Small, nearly defenseless in the arms race of tooth and claw, scale and fur, it had an oversized head and used problem solving to get at the scarce food. It developed navigation systems in its brain to follow herds and seek out new grazing ranges.
It learned endurance, patience, pack bonding, and above all, adaptability.
The evolutionary arms race came to a screeching halt when the primate hefted a rock and bashed in the skull of an herbivore designed to outrun and outlast anything else.
Others, who came later, did not understand why the primate loved its world so much.
It was geologically unstable. Its magnetic field received enough solar radiation that the northern skies lit up with a fearsome display of radiation. The majority of the water was undrinkable, full of everything from heavy salts to radioactive elements. Every creature was designed to kill or parasite off of every other creature. The rain was corrosive, oxidizing anything left out. The wind and rain tore apart stone in storms that hit with the force of atomic weaponry.
But the primate loved its chaotic, violent, deadly world.
It remade other planets in the little blue planet's image.
It took dead planets that were little more than cold dead airless rock covered in radioactive sleet from the stellar mass and lovingly reformed them in the little blue planet's image.
It took toxic high pressure worlds where no life could thrive, and nurtured it until it resembled the little blue planet.
It took molten worlds that would never support life, never be anything but a fiery orb of doom, cooled it, gentled it, took it in their hands and remade it in the image of the little blue marble.
The primates loved their world, referring to it in familial ways, creating songs, artwork, and many other things to praise and show their love for the little blue planet.
It was scarred. Damaged. Had been injured.
But the primates didn't erase all the scarring, left some behind, as their lives left scars upon their bodies, souls, and minds, but they eased the little blue marble's injuries.
On the smaller of the two northern continents, were two mountain ranges, where the continental plates had pushed against each other until the plates had buckled and surged up into mountains. The western ones were sharp, jagged, reaching for the sky to claw at it. The eastern ones were older, more rounded by wind and rain and gravity. The were mantled with snow, frozen H2O crystals, in the winters, covered in trees all the times, many of them that were always green.
At one time the green had been twisted by genetic manipulation to attack the primates.
But the primates had overcome it, tamed it, or just let it exist along side of them.
In some ways, highly aggressive plants that would kill the unwary were comfortable and understandable to the primates.
After all, they just wanted to eat.
The western mountains were home to many plants that were willing to kill for protein. Home to ruined cities and wrecked metropolises, abandoned towns and slowly crumbling villages.
In some places the damage was beyond the standard three dimensions. Time itself had been damaged. Things reset, or didn't change, or just sat in an endless moment. Damage to what some called 'spacetime' had not been fully repaired, as many worried the repair would be worse then the damage.
The primates had learned their lessons about messing with time.
It was in one of those places, that was always early evening, that legends gathered.
Not many. There were reasons. Some were understandable, like several of them would try to kill each other on sight. Some were esoteric, like one's shadow would vanish for several days if they were near the other. Some made no sense, like 2+2=Yes, Oranges, Thank You if two of them were too close to each other.
But those are the kind family issues that crop up when your family is made up of Immortals.
There were arguments, of course. Uncle Jack gets drunk every time and tries to punch out Cousin Reggie. Aunt Sophie always throws her wine in Aunt Betty's face. Cousin Bob and Cousin Malcolm always end up fighting with knives before the pig is roasted.
Just like any other normal family.
But eventually the party winds down, the gathering loses steam, and the group breaks up. Promising, but knowing their probably lying, to get together soon, to not wait until the next reunion, to come see the new house and kick back on the porch and have a few beers.
In the end, it's always one person sitting out back.
And someone always loops away from the others to go back and talk.
In the dark.
And that's when things get the most interesting.
-------------------
Daxin stood over the bonfire, his hands held out over the flame, staring at them.
It had been thousands of years since he had requested a doctor cut away the flesh and replace it with cybernetics.
He had tried to explain it to doctors, to surgeons, and they all had reacted with horror that he wanted the flesh cut away.
His body, his soul, his flesh and blood and bone, remembered the presence of the Digital Omnimessiah, and the loss burned deep inside of him.
He was like this fire, warming, comforting in our pain and anguish, but when he was gone, we grew cold, the heavily muscled human thought to himself.
He had eventually chosen a half drunken digital sentience inhabiting the frame of a surgical bay to slice away the flesh that had grown cold and begun to ache. He had chosen the DS carefully, knew that the DS wouldn't build some weird shrine out of his flesh or try to clone him or even sell it on the black market.
Instead, the DS had flushed the excess tissue down the disposal, installed new cybernetics to replace the heavy Combine, Republic, and Imperium cybernetics, and bit by bit, piece by piece, left his body behind in an attempt to leave behind his own humanity.
Because to humanity life was defined by pain.
The gravel deeper in the half collapsed parking structure crunched and Daxin didn't bother to look.
"Come stand by the fire, Dhruv," he rumbled.
Dhruv had abandoned the look he preferred as Legion, showing himself in a form that he would let few other people see.
Slender, hairless, sexless, an androgynous slender brown person with wide eyes and an almost permanent servile expression built into the structure of his face.
Dhruv moved up by the fire, putting his hands out to warm them.
"Kalki was upset," Dhruv said, conversationally.
"He's always felt that you should kill POW's, not coddle them," Daxin chuckled. He reached up and touched the slight swelling under his eye, all that was left from his orbital socket getting smashed in by a fist swung by an enraged Immortal. "Every time he brings up that if the Mantid had just killed me, I wouldn't have ripped off the Omni-Queen's head, and every time I get pissed and punch him in the mouth."
"And every time Bellona steals the last of your whiskey," Dhruv said.
"We meet here, and we repeat our last meeting," Daxin said.
"Right down to me coming back," Dhruv replied. "We can't move on, can we?"
Daxin shook his head. "No. We repeat ourselves over and over every time we get together. We're drawn to this place."
"Indeed we are," the rough voice came from the shadows.
Daxin's hand went down to his thigh as the cybernetic limb opened up and a heavy pistol whirred out, the butt fitting smoothly into his hand, the compartment closing as Daxin brought up the pistol, thumbing the safety even as the pistol recognized his DNA.
Dhruv blurred and four of him separated out, two rolling backwards, one with a pistol, one with a rifle, all four armored up. Lasers speared into the shadows from underneath the weapons as the targeting systems were brought online.
"Easy, my brothers, easy," the voice said.
A shadow detached from the darkness, moving forward. Three legs, soft curly dark brown hair, big wide eyes with large pupils, one arm on either side and one on the front, upraised ears. It walked forward, the middle leg moving out, taking the figure's weight as the first one then the other leg came forward.
"It always looks like you're walking on your dick, Bputun" Daxin snorted, the compartment on his leg opening back up.
"That's why the ladies love me," the Pubvian said, baring its meat eating teeth in a smile as Daxin smoothly put the pistol away.
The four extra Dhruv's puffed and vanished into dust that swirled down around his feet and seemed to suck into the bottom of his shoes.
"You've never come back here after our meeting before," Dhruv said. He looked at Daxin. "This is new."
"It is," Daxin said, watching as the Pubvian moved up and began warming all three hands over the fire.
"I noticed that Matthias didn't make it to our meeting," the Pubvian said. He looked at Daxin. "Did you two finally have it out?"
Daxin nodded as Dhruv moved up and handed the Pubvian a bottle of whiskey that the label had faded and tattered.
"Yeah," Daxin admitted. "We fought before the face of Crying Anne," he said, watching the Pubvian take a long swig off the bottle of whiskey that they had shared for over 8,000 years.
"Another legend for the mortals," the Pubvian said, smacking his lips at the taste of the whiskey. He handed the bottle to Daxin. "It sounds so epic, when it was just two old men fighting in front of a huge metal door."
Dhruv chuckled.
"I bring news, brothers," the Pubvian said as Daxin took a long drink off the bottle.
When he handed it to Dhruv, the level had not dropped.
"The Legion of the Damned has fallen," the Pubvian said. He reached up with his third arm and rubbed his face. "They were wiped out to the last man."
"So? That's not the first time it's happen. They'll make inspection by dawn," Daxin said as Dhruv lifted the bottle to his mouth.
"They've been dead nearly a year. They aren't coming back. They died on Mercury, but they held until Mercury's defenses could rally," the Pubvian said.
Dhruv choked on his mouthful of whiskey, spitting the alcohol into the fire, which roared up the fuel.
"Holy shit, the kid did it," Dhruv said.
Daxin turned and looked at Dhruv at the same time as Bputun. "Did what?" they both asked.
"Before the Case Omaha, I was Black Boxed. One of the Daughters caught me, put me in charge of figuring out why the SUDS was red dotting across the galactic arm," Dhruv said. He took a long pull off the bottle and handed it to Bputun. "We spent months, making no headway, until I grabbed a kid."
When Daxin growled Dhruv shook his head. "No, not a child soldier, Dax. A hacker. A good one. The kid hacked Nebula-Steam and some really high security stuff before he got caught. I told him I wanted him to break into the system."
Bputun shook his head. "I thought backtracking the signal was a dead end."
The Pubvian accepted the bottle.
The level had dropped slightly.
"It was. At least, I thought so. The kid came at it sideways, I mean, like Bellona sneaking up on a pile of butterscotch candy," Dhruv said.
Both of the other men chuckled at the joke.
"He figured out what the signal was. Figured out that everyone had spent all their time basically trying to hack into cloud storage, where what we needed was the find out the access point to the servers the cloud storage was on," Dhruv said.
Daxin grinned. "So SUDS was stored on a cloud system?" he laughed. "The jokes write themselves."
Dhruv nodded, taking the bottle and taking a drink. "He must have got in."
"Which means he processed the Legion's SUDS records," Daxin said. He rubbed the side of his face before accepting the bottle. "So you're kid's in the system, messing with stuff, and didn't know to not interfere with the Legion of the Damned?"
Bputun made a sound that was a mixture of a belch and a laugh. "Dax, they died on Mercury. Let it go. They fulfilled their oaths."
Daxin sighed and looked at the fire.
"We should... I don't know... figure out some way to let the galaxy, mankind, go on without us," he said.
"You tried that," Dhruv said. "And here we are again."
Bputun nodded. "Here we are. But I stand here with you, where I haven't stood before."
"So things are changing," Daxin said slowly. "Even in this unchanging place, things are..."
Bputun suddenly jerked, standing straight up, bringing his middle hand up to wrap it around his own throat in a protective gesture.
Two Dhruv's peeled off the original, looking around, pistols in hand, even as the compartment on Daxin's thigh opened.
Bputun's eyes were wide and his hand came up, shaking, to touch his implant. His other hand came out, palm up, the holo-emitter in his hand gleaming.
A Pubvian female's face appeared.
"Talinvan, my love, I am back. Your children and I are back. Our clan is back. Your people have returned to you. When the Case Omaha is released, please, come home," the female said. Tears began to wet the fur beneath her eyes. "It has been so long for you, my love. Come home. Come home to your children.
Her hands came up, reaching out to her husband, who she knew as Talinvan, from before the Digital Omnimessiah had touched his brow and renamed him.
"Come home to me, beloved. Come home to Pubvia."
Terra.Earth.A little blue marble with patches of green and brown.The third planet from the sun.Such a simple little world, a little bigger than most life sustaining planets, with an oversized satellite that was large enough and close enough to effect the tides of the great oceans that covered roughly 70% of its surface. High gravity for its size, but still active enough that it wasn't solid all the way through. A molten nickle/iron core surrounded by a liquid mantle under enough pressure it was more plasticized than liquid. The surface was covered with tectonic plates that still suffered geological instabilities.The surface was covered with plant life, some naturally evolving, others genetically altered, and still more synthetic to fill in the gaps of an eco-system that had been destroyed.The planet had endured much. Meteor strikes, a solar corona ejection that had wiped out the majority of the species, all manner of natural catastrophes.It had suffered other types too.Every time it came back.It was a hardy little planet, despite its small size.It bred hardy creatures.Each extinction level event another life form rose to dominance. Beneath crackling bromide skies from a meteor impact that destroyed the entire planet's eco-system rose a race of primates. Small, nearly defenseless in the arms race of tooth and claw, scale and fur, it had an oversized head and used problem solving to get at the scarce food. It developed navigation systems in its brain to follow herds and seek out new grazing ranges.It learned endurance, patience, pack bonding, and above all, adaptability.The evolutionary arms race came to a screeching halt when the primate hefted a rock and bashed in the skull of an herbivore designed to outrun and outlast anything else.Others, who came later, did not understand why the primate loved its world so much.It was geologically unstable. Its magnetic field received enough solar radiation that the northern skies lit up with a fearsome display of radiation. The majority of the water was undrinkable, full of everything from heavy salts to radioactive elements. Every creature was designed to kill or parasite off of every other creature. The rain was corrosive, oxidizing anything left out. The wind and rain tore apart stone in storms that hit with the force of atomic weaponry.But the primate loved its chaotic, violent, deadly world.It remade other planets in the little blue planet's image.It took dead planets that were little more than cold dead airless rock covered in radioactive sleet from the stellar mass and lovingly reformed them in the little blue planet's image.It took toxic high pressure worlds where no life could thrive, and nurtured it until it resembled the little blue planet.It took molten worlds that would never support life, never be anything but a fiery orb of doom, cooled it, gentled it, took it in their hands and remade it in the image of the little blue marble.The primates loved their world, referring to it in familial ways, creating songs, artwork, and many other things to praise and show their love for the little blue planet.It was scarred. Damaged. Had been injured.But the primates didn't erase all the scarring, left some behind, as their lives left scars upon their bodies, souls, and minds, but they eased the little blue marble's injuries.On the smaller of the two northern continents, were two mountain ranges, where the continental plates had pushed against each other until the plates had buckled and surged up into mountains. The western ones were sharp, jagged, reaching for the sky to claw at it. The eastern ones were older, more rounded by wind and rain and gravity. The were mantled with snow, frozen H2O crystals, in the winters, covered in trees all the times, many of them that were always green.At one time the green had been twisted by genetic manipulation to attack the primates.But the primates had overcome it, tamed it, or just let it exist along side of them.In some ways, highly aggressive plants that would kill the unwary were comfortable and understandable to the primates.After all, they just wanted to eat.The western mountains were home to many plants that were willing to kill for protein. Home to ruined cities and wrecked metropolises, abandoned towns and slowly crumbling villages.In some places the damage was beyond the standard three dimensions. Time itself had been damaged. Things reset, or didn't change, or just sat in an endless moment. Damage to what some called 'spacetime' had not been fully repaired, as many worried the repair would be worse then the damage.The primates had learned their lessons about messing with time.It was in one of those places, that was always early evening, that legends gathered.Not many. There were reasons. Some were understandable, like several of them would try to kill each other on sight. Some were esoteric, like one's shadow would vanish for several days if they were near the other. Some made no sense, like 2+2=Yes, Oranges, Thank You if two of them were too close to each other.But those are the kind family issues that crop up when your family is made up of Immortals.There were arguments, of course. Uncle Jack gets drunk every time and tries to punch out Cousin Reggie. Aunt Sophie always throws her wine in Aunt Betty's face. Cousin Bob and Cousin Malcolm always end up fighting with knives before the pig is roasted.Just like any other normal family.But eventually the party winds down, the gathering loses steam, and the group breaks up. Promising, but knowing their probably lying, to get together soon, to not wait until the next reunion, to come see the new house and kick back on the porch and have a few beers.In the end, it's always one person sitting out back.And someone always loops away from the others to go back and talk.In the dark.And that's when things get the most interesting.-------------------Daxin stood over the bonfire, his hands held out over the flame, staring at them.It had been thousands of years since he had requested a doctor cut away the flesh and replace it with cybernetics.He had tried to explain it to doctors, to surgeons, and they all had reacted with horror that he wanted the flesh cut away.His body, his soul, his flesh and blood and bone, remembered the presence of the Digital Omnimessiah, and the loss burned deep inside of him.He was like this fire, warming, comforting in our pain and anguish, but when he was gone, we grew cold, the heavily muscled human thought to himself.He had eventually chosen a half drunken digital sentience inhabiting the frame of a surgical bay to slice away the flesh that had grown cold and begun to ache. He had chosen the DS carefully, knew that the DS wouldn't build some weird shrine out of his flesh or try to clone him or even sell it on the black market.Instead, the DS had flushed the excess tissue down the disposal, installed new cybernetics to replace the heavy Combine, Republic, and Imperium cybernetics, and bit by bit, piece by piece, left his body behind in an attempt to leave behind his own humanity.Because to humanity life was defined by pain.The gravel deeper in the half collapsed parking structure crunched and Daxin didn't bother to look."Come stand by the fire, Dhruv," he rumbled.Dhruv had abandoned the look he preferred as Legion, showing himself in a form that he would let few other people see.Slender, hairless, sexless, an androgynous slender brown person with wide eyes and an almost permanent servile expression built into the structure of his face.Dhruv moved up by the fire, putting his hands out to warm them."Kalki was upset," Dhruv said, conversationally."He's always felt that you should kill POW's, not coddle them," Daxin chuckled. He reached up and touched the slight swelling under his eye, all that was left from his orbital socket getting smashed in by a fist swung by an enraged Immortal. "Every time he brings up that if the Mantid had just killed me, I wouldn't have ripped off the Omni-Queen's head, and every time I get pissed and punch him in the mouth.""And every time Bellona steals the last of your whiskey," Dhruv said."We meet here, and we repeat our last meeting," Daxin said."Right down to me coming back," Dhruv replied. "We can't move on, can we?"Daxin shook his head. "No. We repeat ourselves over and over every time we get together. We're drawn to this place.""Indeed we are," the rough voice came from the shadows.Daxin's hand went down to his thigh as the cybernetic limb opened up and a heavy pistol whirred out, the butt fitting smoothly into his hand, the compartment closing as Daxin brought up the pistol, thumbing the safety even as the pistol recognized his DNA.Dhruv blurred and four of him separated out, two rolling backwards, one with a pistol, one with a rifle, all four armored up. Lasers speared into the shadows from underneath the weapons as the targeting systems were brought online."Easy, my brothers, easy," the voice said.A shadow detached from the darkness, moving forward. Three legs, soft curly dark brown hair, big wide eyes with large pupils, one arm on either side and one on the front, upraised ears. It walked forward, the middle leg moving out, taking the figure's weight as the first one then the other leg came forward."It always looks like you're walking on your dick, Bputun" Daxin snorted, the compartment on his leg opening back up."That's why the ladies love me," the Pubvian said, baring its meat eating teeth in a smile as Daxin smoothly put the pistol away.The four extra Dhruv's puffed and vanished into dust that swirled down around his feet and seemed to suck into the bottom of his shoes."You've never come back here after our meeting before," Dhruv said. He looked at Daxin. "This is new.""It is," Daxin said, watching as the Pubvian moved up and began warming all three hands over the fire."I noticed that Matthias didn't make it to our meeting," the Pubvian said. He looked at Daxin. "Did you two finally have it out?"Daxin nodded as Dhruv moved up and handed the Pubvian a bottle of whiskey that the label had faded and tattered."Yeah," Daxin admitted. "We fought before the face of Crying Anne," he said, watching the Pubvian take a long swig off the bottle of whiskey that they had shared for over 8,000 years."Another legend for the mortals," the Pubvian said, smacking his lips at the taste of the whiskey. He handed the bottle to Daxin. "It sounds so epic, when it was just two old men fighting in front of a huge metal door."Dhruv chuckled."I bring news, brothers," the Pubvian said as Daxin took a long drink off the bottle.When he handed it to Dhruv, the level had not dropped."The Legion of the Damned has fallen," the Pubvian said. He reached up with his third arm and rubbed his face. "They were wiped out to the last man.""So? That's not the first time it's happen. They'll make inspection by dawn," Daxin said as Dhruv lifted the bottle to his mouth."They've been dead nearly a year. They aren't coming back. They died on Mercury, but they held until Mercury's defenses could rally," the Pubvian said.Dhruv choked on his mouthful of whiskey, spitting the alcohol into the fire, which roared up the fuel."Holy shit, the kid did it," Dhruv said.Daxin turned and looked at Dhruv at the same time as Bputun. "Did what?" they both asked."Before the Case Omaha, I was Black Boxed. One of the Daughters caught me, put me in charge of figuring out why the SUDS was red dotting across the galactic arm," Dhruv said. He took a long pull off the bottle and handed it to Bputun. "We spent months, making no headway, until I grabbed a kid."When Daxin growled Dhruv shook his head. "No, not a child soldier, Dax. A hacker. A good one. The kid hacked Nebula-Steam and some really high security stuff before he got caught. I told him I wanted him to break into the system."Bputun shook his head. "I thought backtracking the signal was a dead end."The Pubvian accepted the bottle.The level had dropped slightly."It was. At least, I thought so. The kid came at it sideways, I mean, like Bellona sneaking up on a pile of butterscotch candy," Dhruv said.Both of the other men chuckled at the joke."He figured out what the signal was. Figured out that everyone had spent all their time basically trying to hack into cloud storage, where what we needed was the find out the access point to the servers the cloud storage was on," Dhruv said.Daxin grinned. "So SUDS was stored on a cloud system?" he laughed. "The jokes write themselves."Dhruv nodded, taking the bottle and taking a drink. "He must have got in.""Which means he processed the Legion's SUDS records," Daxin said. He rubbed the side of his face before accepting the bottle. "So you're kid's in the system, messing with stuff, and didn't know to not interfere with the Legion of the Damned?"Bputun made a sound that was a mixture of a belch and a laugh. "Dax, they died on Mercury. Let it go. They fulfilled their oaths."Daxin sighed and looked at the fire."We should... I don't know... figure out some way to let the galaxy, mankind, go on without us," he said."You tried that," Dhruv said. "And here we are again."Bputun nodded. "Here we are. But I stand here with you, where I haven't stood before.""So things are changing," Daxin said slowly. "Even in this unchanging place, things are..."Bputun suddenly jerked, standing straight up, bringing his middle hand up to wrap it around his own throat in a protective gesture.Two Dhruv's peeled off the original, looking around, pistols in hand, even as the compartment on Daxin's thigh opened.Bputun's eyes were wide and his hand came up, shaking, to touch his implant. His other hand came out, palm up, the holo-emitter in his hand gleaming.A Pubvian female's face appeared."Talinvan, my love, I am back. Your children and I are back. Our clan is back. Your people have returned to you. When the Case Omaha is released, please, come home," the female said. Tears began to wet the fur beneath her eyes. "It has been so long for you, my love. Come home. Come home to your children.Her hands came up, reaching out to her husband, who she knew as Talinvan, from before the Digital Omnimessiah had touched his brow and renamed him."Come home to me, beloved. Come home to Pubvia."
