It took a long time to see things outside shades of black and white. The world remembers the Rikti onslaught all too clearly.
But now, we face a grand change in how we have to think. The possibility of peace with the Rikti, one of the few enemies so dreadful as to cause us to forget
our petty squabbles is at hand. But it is not easy. Some still fight on. Are they all warmongers? Afraid of losing control? Or are there some that are much
like us, fighting in defense of their world and who find the prospect of peace with us to be as hard to accept as we do to them?
- Incandescent, head of Vanguard's Herald Division, in a speech to the United Nations Security Council regarding ongoing hostilities in the Rikti War
Zones.
***
"Ms. W'tin?" a pleasant voice asked behind the young woman, who turned slightly. Behind her, a man in a sharp business suit and a doctor's
manner walked up. Inyme's memory instantly searched and placed him as Dr. Stephen Fayte, a gifted surgeon with some minor magical skill (mostly his ability
to teleport himself and others, but not much more) that assisted the Legendary. He was rarely on the front lines, often serving primarily in a medical capacity
behind the fighters. Still, despite this, the very presence of a magic user made her hackles rise slightly.
"Yes?" she asked in a somewhat clipped tone.
"I'm Dr. Stephen Fayte. You mentioned you were looking for assistance with a certain situation?"
Inyme considered. She hadn't as....oh, that was right. She was supposed to talk to the city rep about some sort of mission or other. How'd she
forgotten that? "Yes. Thank you for helping. I don't think it will be that violent, but you never know."
Fayte smiled genially. "Indeed. Better to err on the side of caution."
***
As Inyme walked through Galaxy City, she was scowling darkly beneath her helmet. Of all the twisted irony in the universe, this job required her to learn about
the humans' vaunted Hero-1, the leader of the team that'd sealed her home dimension off using magical power of a scale that made Inyme cringe. Even as
much as she'd come to realize that the magic here wasn't....all....like the primordial magic that the Rikti had rightfully destroyed generations ago,
the concept of it made her instinctively recoil. Technology and science were better. They were safe, reliable. Predictable. Magic....magic led to people like
the one Legendary hero, Space Mage. While certain spells could be explained to Inyme to the point she comprehended what they were supposed to do, if not
exactly the powers behind them, the concept of Space Mage's talents which were utterly uncontrolled and seemed to just obey her for no apparent reason
occasionally had Inyme considering locking off the portion of her brain that accessed her talents, for the safety of all concerned. After all, who knew if
she'd make a mistake some day and summon an extradimensional horror of some kind.
The first man they spoke to, a rescue worker who'd worked with Hero-1, made Inyme wince slightly. She still did, whenever her people raided the city.
Before, she'd been young and naive, seen it as all one big race that had hurt her and the Rikti. Now she knew differently, and the collateral damage
described from that first invasion gave her entirely too chilling parallels to desperate attempts back home to save as many of the wounded and dying after the
attack as possible. In a way, it made her feel justified in the current invasion in a way that other factors hadn't. Current tactics, due to necessity,
required them to only target combatants via the dropships, drawn out by the bombing runs. They'd made the war much more bloodless. Only Hro'Dthoz's
insane projects continued to make the Rikti's inevitable victory stained with unnecessary death and pain. The sooner she could help dethrone him, the
better.
As they spoke to a policewoman who'd known Hero-1 during the war, Inyme's thoughts turned to those self-same projects, and the ultimate result
thereof. Hro'Dtohz and his scientist's twisted masterpice: the Honoree. While the Four Riders had been unintentional, but horrifying, accidents of the
dimensional transit, the Honoree was cold, calculated intent. A younger, more bitter Inyme would've considered using that creature as their vanguard a
fitting and ironic punishment, but her time here had changed that. Enemy though he was, the processes enacted upon him, like those on the abominable Lost, were
insulting. She remembered one of her older mentors in the Lineage of War, Kt'Mezzu, arguing for a simple execution. But he'd been overruled. Perhaps
back on the homeworld, his motion would have passed, but Inyme realized that more and more the Lineage of War and especially the Restructurists were being
flooded with young, untested soldiers...soldiers like she'd been. And then there were the rumors circulating the Rikti mental network about General
K'mira's defection being spurred by his last second substitute commander forcing the heroes of Earth into a deadly trap by focusing fire on civilians.
As traitorous as the defector's actions were, she could at least understand his reasoning if that were indeed the case. And to see an enemy....a fellow
warrior...that'd fought so hard, sacrificed so much to ensure his people's safety....making him into an abomination like the Honoree was disgusting,
and one more reason for Inyme had undertaken this mission. No one deserved that fate. When power changed hands, she was certain he'd be put down and laid
to rest like he deserved.
None of these thoughts, however, prepared Inyme for the revelations brought on by the young man that'd been Hero-1's teammate. For so long, the
Rikti had seen the invasion of their home dimension, and the sealing ritual, as a desperation move when the heroes had been discovered ahead of time. Truly,
the loss of so many of their heroes, given the losses to the Alpha Team back here on Earth, couldn't have been planned. To gamble on the possible success
of such a long shot plan, willingly expecting the deaths of so many....everything the Rikti had seen of Earth had suggested they'd never willingly enact
such a plan. It was too...Rikti-like. Sacrificing a small minority in order to protect the larger majority. The humans had focused so much on the value of the
individual...to unite so many willing to go on a suicide mission...
Fayte's concerned look as they slowly walked to the memorial location went unheeded as Inyme digested the information. The parallels were....striking.
As much as those among her small, dissenting faction within the Restructurists had tried to reassure her that she could return to them, she'd seen enough
of late to know that they had been reassuring lies. Everyone but her...perhaps everyone including her...had known such a mission would never allow her to
return to the Rikti mind-net. Her changes, forged of necessity to survive here. Her emotional turmoil caused by being severed from the network for security
reasons. Her increased individuality needed to keep her from giving into despair and killing herself from the sheer crushing loneliness of being the only mind
she could hear and share with without any hiding...all these factors could pollute the Rikti-thought of the mind-net. Could give rise to another Hro'Dtohz,
who put personal ambition before the needs of the Rikti. In time, perhaps she herself might have become one such. She was dead to the Rikti, her only purpose
to them being a...what was the term human history had mentioned....a kamikaze, aimed at Hro'Dtohz's throat and unexpected for the simple reason that
anyone willing to survive could never accept what she was doing. It was insane, a sacrifice play so severe that they'd all gambled that even Hro'Dtohz
wouldn't expect it of his political enemies in the Restructurists. To give everything...her biological identity, her connection to the rest of her race,
her sanity, eventually even her life(for Inyme could see no reason she'd have to continue existing after the mission was accomplished. She couldn't
return and she'd have betrayed everyone she cared for among the humans) for the cause of her people.....the Omega Team had done so as well. Giving their
lives, spending them like water, to protect Earth from the Rikti. The Traditionalists were beginning to advocate peace...had they known? As much as her heart
still told her that the Traditionalist view was stuck in the past, that the Rikti had to change somehow, she had to wonder if perhaps continuing the war was
destroying what they wanted to stay the same...
Turmoil clouded her thoughts as they entered the memorial...before a familiar tingling in her telepathy brought her vision up.
"We're not alone," Fayte said as Inyme felt her mind's confusion clear as she settled into the slick, simple blackness of a combat situation.
Combat against what she was certain, were the Lost abominations. Perhaps she pitied them like she did the Honoree, now. There was no cure that could save all
of them. Not those too far gone. To be caught forever between their humanity and a Rikti ideal they could never achieve due to their origins, her disgust had
long since transferred from the Lost themselves to those that created them. But now, facing others....trapped in this pointless cycle....she'd destroy them
all, as brutally as she could. Death would be black mercy for such twisted products of mibegotten and abused science.
And, a small part of her thought where the smoothly geared killing machine that her mind became in combat had no sway...they were attacking the memorial...the
closest thing to a grave that Omega Team, fellow warriors...fellows in sacrifice....had. Such offense was unpardonable to whatever decency she still had left.
Trusting the physician behind her to keep her healed if necessary, Inyme leapt into the fray, crimson vengeance for two worlds instead of just one, for this
one brief moment of sympathetic clarity.
****
Halfway across the city, Alice stirred in her sleep, getting up and looking out the window. Her sleep hadn't been easy, affected by the emotional turmoil
she'd subconciously felt through her link to Inyme, but after a startling moment that'd woken her, Alice could feel her girlfriend settle into
routine....an oiled killing machine that Inyme thought she hid from Alice. The catgirl frowned at the thought. She knew Inyme was a soldier. She'd avoided
other soldiers minds when they were in combat....the kill-or-be-killed mindset that settled into place to keep them alive was...disturbing, to say the least.
But as she felt Inyme slip back into her normal mindset, presumably at the end of whatever fight she was in at the moment, Alice felt her own body relax from
sympathetic tension. That was the Inyme that she knew....knew more intimately than anyone else, she admitted to herself with a slight hint of
self-satisfaction. No matter how her soldier's training muffled it, Alice knew that the Inyme she cared for...loved....was still under there...that that
blackened weapon of a mind would ever be pointed at anyone that'd hurt her. She trusted her to come back to her every time they went into combat, ever
since she'd expressed her concerns to Neko about Inyme's shift in thoughts in a fight. Because, like Neko had said, it was corny but true. Alice knew
Inyme loved her as deeply as Alice loved her...and that meant that no matter what, the young woman would never hurt her.
***
"How'd it go?" the cloaked figure asked from where he was perched atop a building, fingering a wickedly long curved blade of a sword, taken from
a fallen foe.
"Well enough, though I still worry about her. She's wound tighter than anyone should sanely be expected to be...she'll either unload a lot of it
when she finds a release valve for it all, or she'll snap," the red cloaked sorceror noted. "But given her reaction to the people we talked to,
and the Lost at the memorial....I'm almost certain our suspicions about her were correct."
"Mm. Now comes the hard part," his companion noted.
"Indeed," Stephen Fayte noted, watching Inyme step onto the light rail, unaware they were watching. "Now we have to wait. And not
interfere."
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
But now, we face a grand change in how we have to think. The possibility of peace with the Rikti, one of the few enemies so dreadful as to cause us to forget
our petty squabbles is at hand. But it is not easy. Some still fight on. Are they all warmongers? Afraid of losing control? Or are there some that are much
like us, fighting in defense of their world and who find the prospect of peace with us to be as hard to accept as we do to them?
- Incandescent, head of Vanguard's Herald Division, in a speech to the United Nations Security Council regarding ongoing hostilities in the Rikti War
Zones.
***
"Ms. W'tin?" a pleasant voice asked behind the young woman, who turned slightly. Behind her, a man in a sharp business suit and a doctor's
manner walked up. Inyme's memory instantly searched and placed him as Dr. Stephen Fayte, a gifted surgeon with some minor magical skill (mostly his ability
to teleport himself and others, but not much more) that assisted the Legendary. He was rarely on the front lines, often serving primarily in a medical capacity
behind the fighters. Still, despite this, the very presence of a magic user made her hackles rise slightly.
"Yes?" she asked in a somewhat clipped tone.
"I'm Dr. Stephen Fayte. You mentioned you were looking for assistance with a certain situation?"
Inyme considered. She hadn't as....oh, that was right. She was supposed to talk to the city rep about some sort of mission or other. How'd she
forgotten that? "Yes. Thank you for helping. I don't think it will be that violent, but you never know."
Fayte smiled genially. "Indeed. Better to err on the side of caution."
***
As Inyme walked through Galaxy City, she was scowling darkly beneath her helmet. Of all the twisted irony in the universe, this job required her to learn about
the humans' vaunted Hero-1, the leader of the team that'd sealed her home dimension off using magical power of a scale that made Inyme cringe. Even as
much as she'd come to realize that the magic here wasn't....all....like the primordial magic that the Rikti had rightfully destroyed generations ago,
the concept of it made her instinctively recoil. Technology and science were better. They were safe, reliable. Predictable. Magic....magic led to people like
the one Legendary hero, Space Mage. While certain spells could be explained to Inyme to the point she comprehended what they were supposed to do, if not
exactly the powers behind them, the concept of Space Mage's talents which were utterly uncontrolled and seemed to just obey her for no apparent reason
occasionally had Inyme considering locking off the portion of her brain that accessed her talents, for the safety of all concerned. After all, who knew if
she'd make a mistake some day and summon an extradimensional horror of some kind.
The first man they spoke to, a rescue worker who'd worked with Hero-1, made Inyme wince slightly. She still did, whenever her people raided the city.
Before, she'd been young and naive, seen it as all one big race that had hurt her and the Rikti. Now she knew differently, and the collateral damage
described from that first invasion gave her entirely too chilling parallels to desperate attempts back home to save as many of the wounded and dying after the
attack as possible. In a way, it made her feel justified in the current invasion in a way that other factors hadn't. Current tactics, due to necessity,
required them to only target combatants via the dropships, drawn out by the bombing runs. They'd made the war much more bloodless. Only Hro'Dthoz's
insane projects continued to make the Rikti's inevitable victory stained with unnecessary death and pain. The sooner she could help dethrone him, the
better.
As they spoke to a policewoman who'd known Hero-1 during the war, Inyme's thoughts turned to those self-same projects, and the ultimate result
thereof. Hro'Dtohz and his scientist's twisted masterpice: the Honoree. While the Four Riders had been unintentional, but horrifying, accidents of the
dimensional transit, the Honoree was cold, calculated intent. A younger, more bitter Inyme would've considered using that creature as their vanguard a
fitting and ironic punishment, but her time here had changed that. Enemy though he was, the processes enacted upon him, like those on the abominable Lost, were
insulting. She remembered one of her older mentors in the Lineage of War, Kt'Mezzu, arguing for a simple execution. But he'd been overruled. Perhaps
back on the homeworld, his motion would have passed, but Inyme realized that more and more the Lineage of War and especially the Restructurists were being
flooded with young, untested soldiers...soldiers like she'd been. And then there were the rumors circulating the Rikti mental network about General
K'mira's defection being spurred by his last second substitute commander forcing the heroes of Earth into a deadly trap by focusing fire on civilians.
As traitorous as the defector's actions were, she could at least understand his reasoning if that were indeed the case. And to see an enemy....a fellow
warrior...that'd fought so hard, sacrificed so much to ensure his people's safety....making him into an abomination like the Honoree was disgusting,
and one more reason for Inyme had undertaken this mission. No one deserved that fate. When power changed hands, she was certain he'd be put down and laid
to rest like he deserved.
None of these thoughts, however, prepared Inyme for the revelations brought on by the young man that'd been Hero-1's teammate. For so long, the
Rikti had seen the invasion of their home dimension, and the sealing ritual, as a desperation move when the heroes had been discovered ahead of time. Truly,
the loss of so many of their heroes, given the losses to the Alpha Team back here on Earth, couldn't have been planned. To gamble on the possible success
of such a long shot plan, willingly expecting the deaths of so many....everything the Rikti had seen of Earth had suggested they'd never willingly enact
such a plan. It was too...Rikti-like. Sacrificing a small minority in order to protect the larger majority. The humans had focused so much on the value of the
individual...to unite so many willing to go on a suicide mission...
Fayte's concerned look as they slowly walked to the memorial location went unheeded as Inyme digested the information. The parallels were....striking.
As much as those among her small, dissenting faction within the Restructurists had tried to reassure her that she could return to them, she'd seen enough
of late to know that they had been reassuring lies. Everyone but her...perhaps everyone including her...had known such a mission would never allow her to
return to the Rikti mind-net. Her changes, forged of necessity to survive here. Her emotional turmoil caused by being severed from the network for security
reasons. Her increased individuality needed to keep her from giving into despair and killing herself from the sheer crushing loneliness of being the only mind
she could hear and share with without any hiding...all these factors could pollute the Rikti-thought of the mind-net. Could give rise to another Hro'Dtohz,
who put personal ambition before the needs of the Rikti. In time, perhaps she herself might have become one such. She was dead to the Rikti, her only purpose
to them being a...what was the term human history had mentioned....a kamikaze, aimed at Hro'Dtohz's throat and unexpected for the simple reason that
anyone willing to survive could never accept what she was doing. It was insane, a sacrifice play so severe that they'd all gambled that even Hro'Dtohz
wouldn't expect it of his political enemies in the Restructurists. To give everything...her biological identity, her connection to the rest of her race,
her sanity, eventually even her life(for Inyme could see no reason she'd have to continue existing after the mission was accomplished. She couldn't
return and she'd have betrayed everyone she cared for among the humans) for the cause of her people.....the Omega Team had done so as well. Giving their
lives, spending them like water, to protect Earth from the Rikti. The Traditionalists were beginning to advocate peace...had they known? As much as her heart
still told her that the Traditionalist view was stuck in the past, that the Rikti had to change somehow, she had to wonder if perhaps continuing the war was
destroying what they wanted to stay the same...
Turmoil clouded her thoughts as they entered the memorial...before a familiar tingling in her telepathy brought her vision up.
"We're not alone," Fayte said as Inyme felt her mind's confusion clear as she settled into the slick, simple blackness of a combat situation.
Combat against what she was certain, were the Lost abominations. Perhaps she pitied them like she did the Honoree, now. There was no cure that could save all
of them. Not those too far gone. To be caught forever between their humanity and a Rikti ideal they could never achieve due to their origins, her disgust had
long since transferred from the Lost themselves to those that created them. But now, facing others....trapped in this pointless cycle....she'd destroy them
all, as brutally as she could. Death would be black mercy for such twisted products of mibegotten and abused science.
And, a small part of her thought where the smoothly geared killing machine that her mind became in combat had no sway...they were attacking the memorial...the
closest thing to a grave that Omega Team, fellow warriors...fellows in sacrifice....had. Such offense was unpardonable to whatever decency she still had left.
Trusting the physician behind her to keep her healed if necessary, Inyme leapt into the fray, crimson vengeance for two worlds instead of just one, for this
one brief moment of sympathetic clarity.
****
Halfway across the city, Alice stirred in her sleep, getting up and looking out the window. Her sleep hadn't been easy, affected by the emotional turmoil
she'd subconciously felt through her link to Inyme, but after a startling moment that'd woken her, Alice could feel her girlfriend settle into
routine....an oiled killing machine that Inyme thought she hid from Alice. The catgirl frowned at the thought. She knew Inyme was a soldier. She'd avoided
other soldiers minds when they were in combat....the kill-or-be-killed mindset that settled into place to keep them alive was...disturbing, to say the least.
But as she felt Inyme slip back into her normal mindset, presumably at the end of whatever fight she was in at the moment, Alice felt her own body relax from
sympathetic tension. That was the Inyme that she knew....knew more intimately than anyone else, she admitted to herself with a slight hint of
self-satisfaction. No matter how her soldier's training muffled it, Alice knew that the Inyme she cared for...loved....was still under there...that that
blackened weapon of a mind would ever be pointed at anyone that'd hurt her. She trusted her to come back to her every time they went into combat, ever
since she'd expressed her concerns to Neko about Inyme's shift in thoughts in a fight. Because, like Neko had said, it was corny but true. Alice knew
Inyme loved her as deeply as Alice loved her...and that meant that no matter what, the young woman would never hurt her.
***
"How'd it go?" the cloaked figure asked from where he was perched atop a building, fingering a wickedly long curved blade of a sword, taken from
a fallen foe.
"Well enough, though I still worry about her. She's wound tighter than anyone should sanely be expected to be...she'll either unload a lot of it
when she finds a release valve for it all, or she'll snap," the red cloaked sorceror noted. "But given her reaction to the people we talked to,
and the Lost at the memorial....I'm almost certain our suspicions about her were correct."
"Mm. Now comes the hard part," his companion noted.
"Indeed," Stephen Fayte noted, watching Inyme step onto the light rail, unaware they were watching. "Now we have to wait. And not
interfere."
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."