Aetheral Space

The man called Samael Ambrazo Zakos strode through a battlefield, hands clasped behind his back, allowing his automatic entourage to do their work.

The landscape was black sand, seemingly-endless black sand, punctuated by the occasional scrap of debris. Not far away, the remains of a ship stuck out of the sand, black smoke pouring out of it. From the look of the vessel, it was some kind of patchwork freighter, likely used by a pirate crew or smuggler gang.

The pirates or smugglers - whichever they were - took cover behind the debris embedded into the ground, a ragtag band of soon-to-be-corpses. Listening, Dragan could hear them shouting to each other in a variety of languages, doing their best to keep their heads under cover as the endless rain of the automatic's fire poured forth.

Zakos stopped, frowning slightly. He'd clearly expected this fight - whatever it had been - to be over by now. This was a man who disliked drawn-out confrontations, then, and preferred gratification on a shorter timescale.

The Special Officer stopped walking, and instead thrust a huge palm forward, his long arm fully extended out. Jaundice-yellow Aether sparked around the arm, like a serpent coiling around it. A wicked grin spread across his face. While he preferred not getting his hands dirty, it seemed that he enjoyed it all the same.

Some of the shards of debris his enemies were hiding behind began to vibrate in the ground - and a moment later they burst out of it, flying towards Zakos' outstretched hand as if being pulled by some invisible force. Even one of the enemies themselves - a shorter man - went hurtling towards Zakos, screaming all the while.

Just before the collection of rubble reached Zakos, the Special Officer closed his fist - and everything that had been flying towards him dropped down to the ground. The unfortunate enemy, too, went tumbling down to the ground, rolling painfully until he came to a stop at Zakos' feet.

The man looked up. Zakos looked down.

The Special Officer grinned, and his foot came down. Dragan stopped the video file just as a grotesque crunch rang out.

He put the script down, swallowing down his nausea. Clearing his throat, he turned to look at Bruno.

"And there you have it," Dragan said.

They were sitting in a small cave they'd managed to track down after destroying the automatic that had crossed their path. Bruno was sitting leaning against the cave's stone wall, while Dragan had set up a little section for his own use on a nearby rock.

His script now lay on that rock, along with the metallic skull of the automatic. A small cable ran from one of the skulls eye-sockets to a slot on the side of the script.

Bruno shrugged. "And there I have what?"

Dragan tapped his finger against the script's screen. "That's his ability. He pulls all objects of a certain size into his hand. We can use that to come up with a strategy - so we can beat him."

With a shake of his head, Bruno spoke: "No. Bad idea. We're in no state to take on a Special Officer."

Dragan sighed, ran his hands over his face. "Listen," he said. "You're already looking pale again. In a couple of hours, you're gonna be out cold - and without Mila to keep you stabilized, there's a pretty good chance you'll end up worse than that before long."

"And," snapped back Bruno. "If we try and take on a Special Officer and his army of automatics by ourselves, we'll be dead even sooner. The best thing to do would be to wait for Ruth and Skipper to come back. We’ll join back up with them, deal with the asshole, and be on our way."

Dragan gritted his teeth. "Oh, you'll join up with them? I'm sure they'll be glad to have a corpse on their side. Really made up."

Bruno glared at him, looked as if he were going to say something more, but swallowed the words. A moment later, Bruno's face became Serena's.

"Sorry, Mr. Hadrien," she pouted. "Bruno's real mad. I'll try to calm him down, but he's not coming out for now."

Sighing, Dragan fell down into a sitting position, thumping the ground with his fist in frustration. He had a plan, he knew the way he could win, but Bruno just wouldn't listen. He'd managed to get a good idea of Zakos' capabilities from the records in the automatic's file storage, but that information was useless if he didn't have the resources to exploit it.

"He's not a bad guy," said Serena, smiling sadly. "He just doesn't trust you, Mr. Hadrien."

"And why's that, then?" grumbled Dragan, picking up a loose rock and tossing it at the far wall, where it made a satisfying clatter. "I saved his life - yours, too. What more do you have to do to get someone to trust you?"

Ugh. That had come out badly. The way he'd said it, it sounded like he'd saved Bruno and Serena for the purpose of getting them to trust him. Well, Serena didn't seem too bright. Likely she wouldn't read that deeply into it.

Probably there'd been a little of that, but the whole thing had really been spur of the moment. His body automatically doing a stupid thing, like what had happened with Ruth Blaine.

Serena considered the question for a minute, putting a finger to her chin and looking upwards, as if for divine inspiration. "Um…" she said. "I don't think Bruno trusts anyone, Mr. Hadrien."

"Figures. How about you?"

Again, the exaggerated consideration. "You seem nice, Mr. Hadrien, so I trust you. But nice people have done bad things to us before, so I dunno."

Of course. Now Serena was doubting him. "Was that, uh, Cott, then?" he said wearily. "I heard Bruno mention that name."

"Mr. Hadrien."

"Mm?" mumbled Dragan, staring at the cave wall as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

"Mr. Hadrien."

"What?" said Dragan, turning to look at her. The second he did, his heart almost leapt out of his chest.

The same smile was on Serena's face, but her eyes were like ice, an eerie calm. She was unnaturally still, staring at him. Angry sparks of violet Aether trailed along her hands, and cracks were slowly spreading along the stone she was gripping with them.

"Mr. Hadrien," she said, with a sweetness like a subtle blade. "Please don't say that name in front of me again. Ever.”

Mutely, Dragan nodded.

He had no doubt that Serena could dispatch him with ease, if she ever had a mind to. Bruno excelled in defense, but Serena was capable of relentless, ferocious attack.

"Okay!" Serena grinned, all restrained anger disappearing from her expression in a second. "Anyway, like I was saying, I think you're nice, and you seem pretty smart like Mr. Skipper, so I think I'll probably go along with whatever your plan is. Bruno can be mad about it, but he has to do whatever I do since we both have one body anyways. It's annoying sometimes, but that's just the way it is, I guess, y'know?"

Dragan blinked. Apparently, Serena agreed with him, but it really felt like he'd been subject to a verbal avalanche.

"Uh, thanks," he said, scratching his cheek.

"So," said Serena, leaning forward excitedly. "What is your plan, Mr. Hadrien?"

Dragan unfolded his Archive, and began to speak.

-

Samael Ambrazo Zakos took in a deep breath through his nose as he looked down at the wreckage of one of his precious automatics. Two of its fellows flanked him, pointing their plasma rifles warily into the undergrowth surrounding them.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. What a wasted investment. What an insult to his financial power. His automatics were the finest money could buy, fit only for the upper echelon of Special Officers. By destroying one of them, Hadrien and del Sed were as good as saying that he, Samael Ambrazo Zakos, did not fit into that category.

How dare they? How dare they?!

Another breath through the nose as he knelt down, looking at his automatic's remains. The majority of the torso and the melted remains of one arm, along with the legs - one of which was snapped in half.

The skull and one arm were missing. Stolen, pillaged. The insolence of such a thing. It was not something that could be forgiven without blood.

Just like Atoy Muzazi, they were looking down on him like trash, like pirate trash. Conceited. Disrespectful. Unacceptable.

Unacceptable.

Punishment was needed. Immediate punishment. Even if they were not yet in his grasp, he had to punish them all the same. Otherwise this insult would sit in his stomach like a stone, weighing down, holding him underneath the water.

A wonderfully just thought popped into his head. A black grin spread across his face.

"With me," he said, driving his foot through the ribcage of the failure. "I have business with that Humilist camp."

-

Bruno del Sed was in the past again.

It wasn't so bad. Usually, when he gave up control of the body, he entered a wonderful inky blackness where he could sleep without interruption. The rest of the time, he ended up here, inhabiting old memories.

If those memories ended up being of the six months they'd spent in that interrogation room on Tas, it was hellish, but luckily that wasn't the case this time.

He was laying in a field in Corus IV, nestled in a bed of fool's ice. The fragile crystals exuded a slight warmth, and Bruno felt as if he could have just fallen asleep there forever. Maybe it would have been better for everyone if he had; that way, he wouldn't have met Cott. Wouldn't have ended up being so fucked.

Wouldn't have ended up being just the two of them.

The whole world smelled like mint. Twin suns occupied the sky above, exuding a calm blue glow that made it feel as though the whole planet were underwater. He'd always loved that sky. Yakob had too.

"Hey," said Serena calmly, from a little bit behind him.

Bruno sighed. It wasn't as if this was unexpected: Serena wasn't the kind of person who could leave him alone when he was so obviously agitated.

He sat up, tiny crystals of fool's ice falling off his clothes, and looked towards her.

Like him, she looked a few years younger - at the time of this memory, they'd been around fifteen or so. She was wearing a sundress, hands clasped behind her back, looking up at the sky with a frown.

"Feels like I'm gonna drown here," she said, frowning.

Bruno smiled wearily. "You never liked it here, did you?"

His gaze drifted past her, to the red dome a distance away, half-embedded into a mountain. The facility they'd grown up in. Deep down, Bruno knew he thought of it as home, but Serena had never felt the same.

"What's there to like?" she said, brow furrowed. "It feels like a prison here. I like being able to do what I want."

He raised an eyebrow. "Why are you listening to Dragan Hadrien, then?"

"Because I want to. It seems like a good idea to me."

"Well," he scowled. "You really are an idiot, then."

He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. Serena looked at him, eyes sad, blinking.

"Sorry," he said, hurriedly. "I didn't mean that. You know I didn't mean that. It's just … everything, you know? This all rings familiar to me."

She nodded. "Yeah," she said softly. "I know."

He sighed, looked up at the sky, like the twin suns there were a pair of eyes he could look into for truthfulness. There was a right answer here, a correct way to do things, but he desperately didn't want to do it.

Was there another way, though?

"Okay," he said, just as softly. To an outside observer, it would have been difficult to tell their voices apart. "I don't trust Hadrien. But I trust you."

"Thank you so much."

Bruno nodded, took in a deep breath, as if to force down his pride with it.

"So," he said. "What's this plan of his, then?"