Call to Action

[The Future Warrior]

The sound of ringing phones came from every open doorway and window as she ran past. Bewildered faces, their owners standing dizzily in doorways or on front porches, stared listlessly out at the scene of the small town, seemingly unaware of the unease and strange energy hanging in the air.

A few of them, though, were incredibly lucid. Sagging almost limply in their doorways, sprawled out on the ground, or dropping to their knees. Clutching at and leaning against the doorframe as their faces twisted into countless masks as the psychic energy in the air suffused them and understanding dawned within their minds. Some of them wept silently, tears the didn't even seem to register slowly leaking from eyes and rolling down their faces. Others simply shook with the mix of feeling roiling within them, threatening to boil over into only they could guess what.

For her part, Ashe-0 took in all these sights with a grim, almost cold indifference to her countenance, even as her limbs shook and her expression wavered. The feeling of the psychic phenomena had hit her like ten tons of bricks, and she had been forced to retreat to a very isolated place within her mind. A swift shutdown of all simulated emotional responses, and leaving only the logical and calculating portions of her brain running. Running at full, almost overclocked, to handle this influx of alien and foreign information. Trying to process where it had come from, and shift the emotional input and readings into something more easily defined.

It wasn't working.

Whatever it was, it was powerful. Overwhelmingly so, enough to batter aside her attempts to logically rationalize it all like a tidal wave. Not with brute force, but with sheer overwhelming insistence. Like a gentle hand, stubbornly applying just enough force to shove open a door in spite of all its locks and securements.

The feeling she recognized as the human affliction of 'nausea' rolled across her sensors, and brought with it a host of other afflictions and issues. Foreign feelings and thoughts manifested in her mind, and as she managed to reach the outskirts of the town they finally proved to be too much.

She stumbled once, her seamless stride breaking like waves upon a rocky coast as a fresh wave of desperation and forceful emotion hit her. She fell, managing to turn her lopsided tumble into a rough roll and send herself spilling off the road into the grassy field at its side.

All six limbs hit the ground. Knees, two fists, two open palms supporting her as her entire mechanized frame shook and trembled. Her single large eye was open to its widest, shaking and jostling around with such a frequency it became a blurred rainbow of different hues of blue.

Her retreat into logic and calculation was shattered entirely, like the door not only being forced open but removed completely from its framing. Standing in that open doorway, cast in shadow and seen only in silhouette-profile, stood an imposing figure. Humanoid, and garbed in some manner of armor from a bygone era. They reached out, holding up one hand with an upraised palm toward her, and spoke: "He returns. He seeks to corrupt and unmake everything. We need help."

And his words brought the fresh return of her suppressed emotional responses, surging past him like a blinding light, and filling the entire scene with a gentle white haze. The sickening feeling of nausea, the tremble of uncertainty and confusion, eased and faded all at once. They were instead replaced by a singular feeling in her head: this being, this immensely powerful and capable being, was the creator of this world she walked upon.

And it needed her help.

Beginning the quest "An Arbiter's Plea" here.

Words: 613
Total Wordcount: 613

 

[The Future Warrior]

The gentle white haze gave way to suffocating blackness.

That blackness soon lit up with the crackling buzz of gray as static flashed across her vision.

Then it resolved into splotches of color, fading out slowly into recognizable shapes until it finally began to sink in where she was and what she was looking at. Sprawled out, flat on her back, in the grassy field and staring straight up at the sky overhead. How she had managed to flip herself over she couldn't begin to guess, but that minor puzzle could wait for later.

"Hard system reset," she murmured quietly. Grass rustled and crunched softly beneath her as she shifted, and put all four palms to ground, pushing herself up into a sitting posture. It took only a brief glance around the area for her to regain her bearings, and find out just how she had ended up flipped over to begin with. The side of the road fell away at an incline, down into the field proper. When she had collapsed, she had simply...rolled down, she supposed. Surprisingly mundane, and one immediate (if incredibly inconsequential) detail sorted out.

She sat there, listening to the distant sounds of mayhem in the small town she had just left. She was far from the only one reacting to the strange phenomena which had struck her. She had seen as much on her egress from the town. Some people had seemed to handle it better than she did, some had seemed to handle it even worse. It wasn't exactly surprising, given the intensity of the feeling. Strong enough to overwhelm her own reasonably advanced defensive protocols. Even outright shutting down her emotional response simulators had done very little, and that...

...it brought to mind imagery of old stories, and fragmented data bits leftover in her memory banks. Deities and gods, beings so far above mortal capability as to be impossible to quantify. Something like this being, whoever it was...she had nothing to base it on, no concrete proof or evidence, beyond the sheer intensity of the feeling. But they had created this world. Created this...everything around her.

And that seemed impossible enough to quantify to her.

"Why would such a being need assistance of any kind?" She leaned back, lifting her head up to look at the sky overhead again. The clouds seemed to be sweeping by at an abnormal rate as she watched, seemingly mirroring the frantic rate of her own racing thoughts. "I am still not at optimal performance levels...current estimates place my capabilities at less than thirty percent. So why would such a being choose something of my state..."

One pair of her arms remained still, palms planted on the grassy earth, while the other slowly lifted and curled about her knees as she pulled them into her chest. A very human, child-like gesture she knew. One supposed to simulate retreating into oneself, or trying to find comfort or solace when there was none, she guessed. It seemed an appropriate act now.

"....who was this 'he' that was mentioned?" she finally arrived at another question. "Some figure of significance, clearly, but... If enough to concern the mind of such a great entity, what hope does anyone else have?" Many more thoughts, such as what was meant by 'corrupt' and 'unmake' vied for prominence in her head. None of it made sense to her. She was foreign to this world. This entire universe, or slice of multiverse, or whatever you would call it.

"....we need help," she whispered. "It said...'we' need help...and this 'he' that was mentioned seems to 'corrupt' and 'unmake'...everything..." She trailed off, her eye just staring blankly out into the distance. "....everything?"

She straightened up a little, as she finally found a thread she could logically follow. If the goal was to effect everything...corrupting she could liken to destruction or distortion of data. If a being that had created a world was worried about it...then 'unmake' everything suddenly took on a chilling new meaning. What would be the result of data corruption, on files responsible for creating or generating randomized new information?

"....unbridled chaos, at best. System damage, degradation or even destruction at worst," she finally rationalized.

Perhaps the reason that this being, this immense and fantastic world-creating being, needed help...was not that it couldn't contend with such a foe. Perhaps because it was afraid of the powers this new threat wielded. Of becoming corrupted itself, and being unable to face it directly.

It clicked into place, and made...some degree of sense. 'We' need help. There were multiple worlds here...did each have such a being, that had created it?

"...this has become grievously complicated."

Continuing the quest "An Arbiter's Plea"

Word Count: 778
Total Word Count: 1,391

 

[The Future Warrior]

She had until this moment been under the impression that these worlds had followed a trend much like her own as far as their origin and overall natures went. The very idea that at least one of them had an actual creator, and the simple fact that somehow she simply knew as much, from just being confronted with their speech and call for aid, well...

It demolished that notion quite soundly and quickly.

It was not unheard of. Many a religion had such an idea, that the world (and in some cases, the universe at large, she suspected; corrupted data files made it hard to find the whole picture in many cases) had in fact been created in just such a fashion. From the whims and ideas of some singular, all-powerful entity. This one seemed less of the 'all-powerful' variety, but still...

When one had enough power to create an entire world, a thing like being 'not as powerful as something else' seemed grotesquely out of scale. That kind of ability was absurd, though not wholly beyond imagining. The opposite idea, on the other hand...that of un-making a world. That was terribly and chillingly all too real a prospect. Even in her own world, they had had weapons capable of such a thing. Setting the atmosphere on fire, cracking the world in two, or simply turning it into a gigantic mass of warped and melted glass from concentrated orbital bombardments. Inefficient, and extremely costly tactics, but eerily successful ones.

They often sent mining and recovery expeditions to such destroyed worlds to make assessments on the 'effectiveness' of such strikes.

"In the face of such a feat, what hope does anyone truly have?" Ashe murmured quietly. Her normally stoic demeanor had been well and truly cracked, the emotional simulators running at maximum clock in her core. Swaying nauseatingly between fear, curiosity, happiness and back again. The idea of being called upon to lend assistance was almost uplifting and filled a dull warmth of elated satisfaction. The simple 'why' of it all was enough to leave her well and truly puzzled, as to why only now was a call for help being made. And the icy claws of fear were squeezing ever gradually tighter about her body, insisting that 'you are of no use in this fight'.

It was entirely alien to her, to feel such a way. Even with only a scant few weeks of activity to judge by, she knew that much.

"You need not worry over such things." The same voice spoke up again, the one belonging to the creator of this world. It was accompanied by no vision or strange rush of conflicting and chaotic emotion, but it had no less impact. ["You are not called upon to fight the orchestrator of this attack. The source of the corruption and unmaking is a threat far, far above you, or nearly any other denizen of this place."

Slowly, the golem's head lowered. No longer staring at the sky, but out across the plains. She was fervently ignoring the uncharacteristic feeling of a 'knot' in her stomach, which she didn't even have, and trying to actually think this through. To get her words and thoughts in order. "Then...if not against the source, against what?"

"It does not act alone. It is but the source of the spreading corruption." The statement was an almost obvious one, really. To engage as a planetary threat, let alone one affecting multiple planets, it wouldn't be feasible to act alone. "The slowly-growing tide, and the forces that help foster and grow it, that is what you will be dealing with."

"And these...things which do this. Help the growth of corruption. They are more manageable?"

"They are not as dangerous on their own as the fallen one. But do not underestimate them; even alone, they can be very difficult to overcome."

The words this time carried an even greater weight, and Ashe was entirely sure that had she breath to draw, it would have been forced from her body under the impact. It was a serious statement; whatever these things were, they were dangerous and not to be underestimated.

"I...understand." She did not, exactly, wholly understand. But it was more understanding and awareness than she had had mere moments before. "Where are these creatures...these beings at, then? How am I to find and fight them?"

"They are many. And they are already spread far and wide, as scouts and harbingers of what is to truly come." An ominous sentiment, but one that did carry some small measure of hope. "They had not yet established a firm foothold on all worlds yet...nor this one. But if they are allowed to roam and maraud unchecked, it will only be a matter of time."

"Then if I wish to find and fight them..." Ashe started, but didn't even finish her statement. She already could get a feeling for what the answer would be. They were already roaming freely, it seemed, in small numbers. To such an end...all one would need do to find them was be observant. Wander and roam in turn, and keep eyes and ears open for anything unusual, and eventually...

"An accurate assumption.They are few in number now, but already they are scheming and planting the seeds. The first world to fall had its ruin built up over a long, long while in secret...but it will be less long-term now without the need for such secrecy."

"...very well." Ashe nodded slightly, and then shifted in her place. Arms uncurled from around her legs, and she pushed up to stand. "Then it seems I have work to do. How will I know, when I find these...things?"

"The unthings of the fallen one are...difficult to miss. Signs of the corruption will be obvious to those watchful enough. When you find them...you'll know." The words began to fade, and the overwhelming swirl of emotions with them. "Trust me. You...will know."

And then, like a door slowly creaking shut again, the all-consuming sensation faded until it was gone entirely. Only a memory, if a limb-chillingly powerful one.

As odd as it had been, however...Ashe-0 found it invigorating. As the senseless swirl of intermingled emotional responses were dulled and carefully mitigated into proper levels again, she latched onto her normal lines of logic and clearer thought to focus on one thing: this was now a mission. A clear-cut objective and goal, in the midst of a battle that could very soon escalate into an all-out war -- the exact sort of things she was designed for.

"It is time to begin, now..." Methodically, she cracked the knuckles of each hand, and turned to slowly lumber back up the grassy slope onto the road. She stopped there, craning her head to look back toward the town of Morioh once again. "....he is not a genius, but he has....what a human would call 'a good heart'. This place should be safe enough under his watch, for the time being." With only a bit of regret, she turned away to look further down the road. "Scattering and spreading out the search would be the wiser course by far, regardless." All four hands curled into fists, and she nodded before once again lurching forward into motion. A swift walk, picking up into a jog, and then a steady run.

Eventually, she knew, this road would lead to another town or city of some sort. From there, she could continue her search and ask further questions. And then...move on elsewhere. Possibly even to the other planets, if her teleportation module could be coerced into working properly.

Finishing the quest "An Aribter's Plea"
Word Count: 1,282
Total Word Count: 2,673