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She tipped her admiral's hat up so she could see the view better. Clear stars faced a slender, elegant woman who stood alone in the darkness of the bridge of the most elegant war machine in the universe.
She positioned herself in front of a glass hull port that spanned the width of the room; nearly three hundred square feet of specialized transparent polyesters threaded with cold plasma, all for the vanity of all commanders who sat in the captain's chair before it. Fleet Admiral Lito didn't need the window to visualize the battle. The holographic displays that her ship AI Kayle drew up for her in real time were more useful and informative anyways. But someone, sometime long, long ago, decided that a commander of fleets of thousands was obliged by their profession to view their destructive achievements with their naked eye. Someone wise beyond their years decided to bring death and destruction up close and personal to the ones who orchestrated it. Irelia would not be the first to break tradition.
Would she be able to sleep better at night, Lito wondered sometimes, if she didn't have to see the occassional body, bloated by the vacuum of space, float past her naked eyes as it happened to drift near the bridge. Eventually, Irelia would always decide that the day she slept well at night knowing full well the gravity of her sins was the day she stopped being human.
So there she stood, staring out into empty space, alone on the control station of the United League of Nations Navy pride of the fleet, the INFINITY EDGE. A significant chunk of the budget for producing the flagship was directed to developing this impact, plasma, and even laser resistent chunk of basically plate glass and bolting it onto the front of the bridge just so Admiral Lito would never be able to slip up and forget that she was anything but a master artisan of death.
The window made sure she never forgot that if stripped all her honors and love and the respect of her subordinates, that if the uniform on her was peeled away, only a mass murderer on the scale of hundreds of thousands would be left.
She would have the chance to confirm that unfortunate title once more. In the next 700 hours they would engage the Noxia fleet at the cusp of the Eul system; one which was to be the decisive battle that would swing the tide of this war between the ULN and Noxia to their favor. She stood wondering how many more bodies would she see floating past the bridge after this next battle. She wondered if her talent of command would fail her, and this time it would be her drifting lifeless through deep space.
But she wasn't exactly alone.
A figure flickered to life on the bridge's main holographic display. A beautifu; woman shone from inside the hologram. Her chosen appearance was that of a beautiful armored angel, with wings sprouting from her back in the manner of true transcendence. Gripped in her right hand was an ornate virtual longbow, and in the other, a sculpted shield. And on her face was a look of exasperation, tinged with slight concern.
Without a word, the hologram stepped off of the display table, to walk up next to Admiral Lito. Because the holograhic woman was barely two feet tall, Admiral Lito had to glance down to nod respectfully at the figure.
"Kayle. You were awake?"
"Hah." the hologram named kayle, threw her sword and helm down, and crossed her arms in mock disgust. "Come on, you can do better than that. We both know ship A.I.s never sleep." And that was exactly was Morgana was. A thinking supercomputer installed on the INFINITY EDGE to do the work of a thousand technicians in picoseconds and with flawless efficiency. If the crew was the blood of the ship, Admiral Lito and AI Morgana made up the brain.
"Hmph. Your wit has gotten as soft as your limp breasts, Irelia."
"My breasts?" Admiral Lito raised an eyebrow, resisting the urge to glance back down at her uniformed chest.
"Ma'am, yes Ma'am! I consider the rapid descent of your nipple line at the alarming rate of 1.42 millimeters per year to be a Code Black-16 level crisis at the very least! Protocol 3, section 5b dictates that I give this to you, STAT!"
Kayle drew up a holographic sheet from thin air, which she threw to the Admiral, who snatched the virtual memo out of the air with an amused, cautious face. A smile was almost forming on the admiral's face.
"On it is an emergency excercise-slash-diet regimen, Ma'am! A half tub Rocky Road ice cream every night at 2300 hours, while re-reading decades old love letters from your eleventh grade sweetheart, followed by 150 hours of rewatching the same 2034 hit romantic comedy A Rose meets a Void Gentlemen, again!"
Morgana snapped off an uncharacteristically sharp salute, and this time the Admiral really did laugh.
"Piss off, Kayle." the Admiral trashed the virtual memo. That c*nt of an AI has been watching her private quarters again. "I eat vanilla bean very night, those letters from that boy at school are only one-and a half decades old, and I actually saw Corruptions of the Depths last night, which was a HORROR film that time."
"Aye, admiral. A high fat diet combined with a sedentary lifestyle is sure to add extra volume to those bean bags chairs on your chest."
"Didn't I tell you to piss off already?" Admiral Lito chuckled as she started walking away from the deck. She tipped her admiral's hat downwards. She reached out, and tapped in the security code to unlock the door; the deck door slid open with scarcely a sound.
kayle frowned. It wasn't like Lito to back down from a late night battle of wits.
"Admiral!" Kayle called out, reappearing on a nearby hallway monitor that happened to be closer to the ship captain. Admiral Lito looked up to the monitor over her shoulder, her smile gone once more. "Whatever happens tommorow, don't be too hard on yourself."
"You know I can't do that, Kayle." Admiral Lito tipped her hat even lower downwards. Irelia glanced further over her shoulder, past the monitor that Morgana was on. She took one last look out the glass hull port. "There's a window."
Fleet Admiral Irelia Lito walked silently down the hallways, back to her quarters, covering her face in her admiral's hat. There would be no ice cream or letters or laughing at the same old jokes in the same old movie this tonight. Tonight she returned to her quarters, not even bothering to change out of uniform before collasping on her bed, and slept.
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She was a Headhunter. The best, one of the mercenary assassins that pursued the numerous bounties paid by the United League of Nations and Noxia in their endless war against each other. The pay was so good, it should have been the last job she would every have to do, if she didn't waste it all on booze, gambling, and men. But everything went horrribly, horribly wrong.
Drips of water on her face woke her. The female Headhunter gasped, then scrambled to her feet. Her instinct drove her to try and find cover, darkness, any form of concealment and then formulate a plan, but as she dashed to the darkness of the edges of the room, a chain on her neck drew taut, and the headhunter fell flat on her back, splashing noisily against the muddy water that spread shallow along the floor.
Urk! Hack!
The woman coughed and gasped, laying flat on her back, drawing greedy breaths. Brown muddy water soaked into her grey Noxia Navy uniform. Not that it mattered if she ruined it. She killed it's former owner a few hours ago when she had inflitrated the ship with her comrades.
But she was missing something more important. Her weapons.
The headhunter rolled back on her knees, and despite nursing a bruised windpipe, found the strength to crouch behind the stone pillar to which she was chained. It was a short, circular concrete lump, about chest high, with what seemed to be a paneled door that led into the pillar itself. On the door was painted a dark number six, faded and browned with something that looked suspiciously like blood.
The woman cursed. She needed to get her weapons and get out of here. Maybe if the chains were long enough, she could use it to strangle her captors when they eventually would come to check up on her, take their weapons, blast off her chains, then capture an enemy fighter to escape--
"Good evening," A deep voice cut in. The sound of the man echoed off of the wet floor and the cold dark walls. The headhunter searched about frantically for the source of the voice.
"I'm sorry for treating you like this," the man said again, almost sincerely, "Miss Headhunter, it must be terribly uncomfortable." His clear, cultured voice fed into a microphone from the next room, that transmitted his voice to speakers set up all around the poor woman in chains. Before him was a panel of instruments five feet wide, and a one-way mirror that looked into the room that the headhunter was trapped in. He leaned on his hands as he talked to the headhunter, while a nervous man in a white lab coat fidgeted to the side.
"But to be fair Miss Headhunter, this is no more uncomfortable than what you had planned for me, is it? You tried to kill me."
The woman realized who it was.
"DuCouteau!" She screamed, realizing that of all things, her mark was taunting her from afar. Of all the humiliations-- that the man who she was paid to kill would be so close--!
"Yes, I am Lord of Admirals, Marcus Du Couteau," The man behind the microphone bowed , even though the woman had no way of seeing it, "At your service."
"Come out here so I can choke you to death!"
"No, thank you, but you can do something for me." The Lord of Admirals tapped some controls, sparking the nervous man in the lab coat to reach and and mutter incoherently.
"...be careful with those..." the egg-head murmured, but the imposing man in the admiral's uniform either did not hear him, or ignored him, for the admiral finished inputting the controls, and sent the command through.
"Here, your weapons."
The panel inside of the stone pillar opened, and from it, a platform rose from beneath. On it neatly rested a pair of scythes, and a magnum with a few clips. The woman grunted, then lunged for her weapons, and quickly had them in her hands. She loaded her gun, and immediatly started shooting at the chain on her neck. The sound of gunshots splattering against steel echoed through the dark room.
"You'll want to save your ammo, Miss Headhunter, for the task you're going to do for me."
The Lord of Admirals tapped in some more controls. The taps of his command and the continued simpering of the lab man to his side belayed the gravity of his actions. He placed his hand over the lever that would release those things into the room.
"Do your best to survive." he said, throwing the lever.
And from that same stone pillar, the panels slid out, revealing that platform again. On it, a hard, carapaced egg-shaped thing. It was purple in hue with an oily rainbow sheen could barely be seen in the low lighting of the room. The headhunter leveled her magnum at it, and fired three rounds dead center of the object. Yet despite the heavy caliber of the rounds of the gun, the egg-shaped thing emerge unscathed; the hollow point points splattered harmlessly off of the chitinous plating.
"M...marvelous d... density," the scientist stammered out, pulling out a hankerchief and wiping the sweat off smooth bald head, "don't you agree?"
The Lord of Admirals, engrossed, nodded without looking away.
A scratching came from inside the egg, and it split from the top. Razor sharp petals peeled away from the tip of the egg, exposing an opening to the inside. Some screeching could be heard from the inside of the egg. The headhunter gulped as she dropped to a knee, and raised her magnum a few degrees higher. The Lord of Admirals and the lab man were almost as rapt.
An unusual silence spread through the room. Only the drips of water leaking from the top could be heard echoing off the walls.
A purple carapaced worm, with a domed head, curious and small insect wings, poked its head out from the egg's top. It turned to screech at the--
A magnum round blasted the worm back so quickly that it seemed to disappear. It was as if the worm simply vanished. But then another worm raised's its' head to look the headhunter, and another, and another. The woman fired as quickly as she could, but still the worms popped up, locking onto her. The gun clicked, her slide slid all the way back, and she cursed, throwing away the empy magnum. The headhunter drew her scythes as the worms took advantage of the ceasing of fire to all leap enmasse from the maw of the egg at her. They were barely a foot-and a half long, but their shark-like mouths were full of razor sharp teeth, and they lunged at her with animalistic speed and precision.
"Damn you!" The headhunter yelled, flourishing her scythes. They glinted through the air, and carved at the worms before they could reach her throat. She spun her scythes with expert strokes, but yo the headhunter's astonishment, her scythes failed to cut clean through the worm bodies, instead leaving shallow cuts that sent the worms tumbling to the ground, screeching in pain. These scythes can cut through clean two millimeter thick neo-steel! Tough bastards!
The worms writhed in the muck before her, injured, but still alive.
"Raaah!" The headhunter stomped on the worm's heads with her metal tipped-boots, cracking the shells with every strike. She kept on screaming in rage and frustration and fear as she felt the worm's lives fade away beneath her feet. Her screams echoed about the chamber as she went on her bloody work. The cracking of chitin and the yells of a headhunter travelled even through the glass of the mirror into the observation room. The scientist took a step back from the ferocity, but the Lord of Admirals seemed to liven up in it.
Then it was done. The last worm twitched and died. Its screeched echoed off of the walls, deep into the bowels of the facility.
"O...oh... how disappointing." The scientist wiped his face sweat off. The excitement was too much for him. "I'm surprised that it was a female who finally overcame our experiments. She must have been particularly skilled. A pity we'll have to kill her. I should perhaps get a team to study her biologicals once we've processed the corpses."
The Lord of Admirals turned to the scientist. Du Couteau would never admit it, but even he got excited. Experiencing human emotion from such intensity was a degrading moment for him that left a bitterweet taste in his mouth.
"The last thing I will do, Dr. Grossman," DuCouteau growled, recovered,"is hand over that warrior's body to the filthy, perverse hands of you and the research department."
The Lord of Admirals watched through the mirror as the headhunter slouched to the stone pillar, and lay back in exhuastion. Despite his intentions, the doctor was right. It was a pity. The woman fought well, better than her comrades at least. The Lord of Admirals glanced back down at the display. His brow furrowed in confusion.
"This panel says that this egg contained 13 experiment beings, right?"
"Er, well, yes, it does seem to say that--"
"I count only twelve."
"What?"
"There are only twelve worms bodies in there." The Lord of Admirals stared back into the room. "Where's the first worm that the headhunter shot?"
Drifitng, motionless, Speciman 343 floated towards the last heat source in the room. It knew it's directive. It sensed that it's brothers had failed. It felt the warm of the human female burning bright to it's thermally sensitive eyes. It felt that warmth grow brighter and brighter, like a luminous sun to the worm. It was getting closer. Oh so close to that sweet warmth. It struggled, fighting against it's natural instinct to lunge at the human's throat. It felt a wave of water pass over it as it seemed that the human fell down, laying back, resting.
Good. It's guard was down.
It patiently waited in that muddy, barely 2-inch deep water. Drifting, innoculous. Making only the softest waves of it's body to slither closer and closer to the human female.
Drifting, deadly.
It tapped the woman's hand with the back of his body. Letting loose a screech that cut through the water and into the air, it curled it's body like a spring, pushed off the concrete floor, and leapt for the human.
"Wha--ARRGH!" A worm burst out of the water and wrapped itself around the headhunter's gun hand. With insane strength and blinding speed, the worm slithered further up the woman's arm, and with a flexing of its body, cracked it in three different places. The pressure caused her to drop her gun, the magnum dropping uselessly into the shallow muddy water below.
The headhunter slammed her arm against the concrete pillar, hoping to shake the worm off, but Speciman 343 held on with a vice-like grip on the human's arm. Every slam onto the pillar the human made only served to cause more damage to the fractured bones of her arm. The human grunted in desperation and pain.
She grabbed one of her scythes.
"Aaah!" The headhunter raised her scythe, and brought it down on the worm on her arm. Whether she intended to cut off the worm or cut her own arm on is unsure, but regardless the worm swiftly twisted to avoid the blade, instead the headhunter cut deeply into her elbow joint. The woman lurched forwards in pain, clutching her arm, which was all the opening the worm needed to race to her throat and carve a chunk out of it.
Blood gurgled from the headhunter's throat as she struggled to breathe. The headhunter stared up to the cold ceiling, her eyes glazing over. Then she pitched forwards, falling face-first into the brown muddy water and died. The two men who were watching what had happened stood in stunned silence. Sweat dripped onto the cold steel floor, and it wasn't only the scientist's this time. The Lord of Admirals was the first to recover. He turned to the scientist, eyes narrowed.
"I thought you said they weren't intelligent."
"Er... well... yes. Intelligence is impossible for them, you see. We've carefully engineered them to have these perfect mental limiters, you see, so they're no way that it could do anything as advanced as planning." The scientist neverously adjusted his glasses. "I presume this one was just lucky--"
"Hm. Your hubris stinks. If it can be lucky enough to accidentally fake being shot and hide in the water, then it can be lucky enough to evade your so called 'perfect' mental limiters."
"Er, well, in any case, that can be studied after we sterilize the room and dissect it. But first-- watch! It is changing."
The Lord of Admirals turned to look at the lucky survivor. The worm was groaning and screeching. Its' shell seemed to be pressured in some areas. It curled itself into the most contrived shape it's frame could handle-- and then--
"KREEEEEE!" Claws burst from it's body. Scythe-like claws, purple, and razor-sharp, exactly like...
"The headhunter..." DuCouteau finished. "How--?"
"Amazing, isn't it?" Dr. Grossman adjusted his glasses, no longer nervous. "It absorbs the bio-electrical impluses of whatever it devours with tremendous efficiency. Everything that it's latest meal knows, loved, or learned, is absorbed into the worm's body and it adapts. This female must been very skilled with her scythes."
The Lord of Admirals stared intently at the experimental creature.
"Well, now you know what the experimental weapon is capable of, Lord of Admirals, sir. I, personally, can't wait to dissect the worm and that woman-- I mean, uh, well, just the worm."
The scientist reached out to tap in the controls to poison everything in the room. He input in a few commands, then--
"No." DeCouteau grabbed the doctor's arm before he could press the button. The Lord of Admirals turned to look at the strange creature; it was enjoying use of its new claws, stabbing them experimentally in the body of the Headhunter it killed. It seemed to be screeching in delight. "Take it alive. I like this one."
The Lord of Admirals drew closer to the creature in the room, until he could see he reflection of his own face mirrored in the creature's.
"You will be the one to deliver my greatest prize." He reached out, as if trying to grab the creature from beyond the glass. His nails slid over the surface as his hand twisted itself like a claw. "You will do what weak, fragile, idiotic humans cannot."
His claw tightened, as he imagined that hated woman's neck bones parting in his hands. "Kill Admiral Lito."
WakeCraterWind
Vicarious
Inuyasha
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