…

And the worst happened.

It turns out that people don’t like it when you put them in biological clones resembling their former selves and explaining that their entire history is a big fat lie. They get a little angry…

You might criticize me why didn’t I take precautions, but in fact I did! I was as prepared as I can be, but I forgot that unlike us, they had more time to advance their studies on magic and its nature. Kind of stupid when the main purpose of the whole project was to gather data to improve ourselves.

You know what? Let me tell you what exactly happened.

…

“excuse me for repeating myself sir, but aren’t you being a bit too paranoid?”, said one of my assistants again.

So as usual I said the same thing, “Calm down John, you can’t be too cautious. who knows what could happen?”

“It’s Otto sir…, John was transferred to work on the new AI for the space mining program.” John, Otto, Sanda… pfft, Sanda, who names his son Sanda? People from Kusar, that’s who! I can’t even comprehend kusarian names. Anyways, whether the name differs or not, male assistant A is male assistant A!

“Anyways, I think we’re taking a big chunk out of our budget for needless precautions, the clones would be unarmed and I believe the magic nullification field is enough to remove any form of threat we can expect out of the subjects.” Said the idiot, oh A, you simple-minded fool, the danger isn’t from what you expect, it’s from what you cannot see coming!

Sigh… these days they’ll let anyone work on high level governmental projects. If we recruit short-sighted fools like this guy to work on their projects, I bet we’ll fall behind Herseck in 20, no! 10 years!

How I both envy and pity the future generations. They have great men like me, but also guys like this as a reference.

“Take this as a lesson for the future, despite all the calculations you perform, man can never predict the future, even if your results show there’s a 99.99% of success, there’s a chance that that 0.01% will happen. And before you say anything, 100% is never a fact, it’s a delusion. Now tell me what are the results?”

“95.20%...”, Geez. I’m pretty sure the poor guy shrunk a little. Guess I’ve been a little too hard on him… Nah, the over-confident shit deserves it.

“So there’s a 4.80% chance of failure! You might think that’s a small chance, but I bet an arm and a leg that bitch called fate will mess things up.”.

Fate… You can never trust fate, also you can never ever trust mother nature! I’m pretty sure those two craven witches have tag teamed to make my life a horrible mess.

I’ve been abandoned by my parents at birth, was raised in an orphanage ruled by a horrible tyrant who practiced child labor, and was never adopted because married couples wanted a cute and lovely normal child. If you want something dumb and cute, go get yourself a puppy. Just because I’m not part of the norm, I shouldn’t experience love!? Well, fuck you, you intellect hating, introvert cursing sacks of shit!

“Sir? Are you alright!?”, said the lovely one of my assistants, female assistant A, also known as smart A, or Hannah.

“I’m alright Hannah, I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”, She’s a kind one, that girl. I remember when I first met her. I was in my early 40s and was the right hand of the department’s chief, while she was still a teenager who bumped into me on the street… Then, I found my wallet was missing and chased after the brat. Yeah… forget about the kind part…

She thought she managed to get away, but I was right on her tail. I kept the stalking her for an hour, then I saw her enter a small shack in the ghetto and followed her. Yeah, normally following someone into ghettos isn’t the smartest idea, but what can I do? Other than my ID, my access card was in that wallet. What do you want me to say at work? My dog ate it?

So after I entered the shack, she was shocked that I was standing there, but not as much as me. Programming books in Alpha language, Solar and Sparrow! Kollum’s law of machines, Guide to true AI, which was written by yours’ truly and many more!

Seems I found myself a prodigy! Yeah, she stole my wallet and tried to stab me with a kitchen knife, but who cares? Since we’re forced to take self-defense lessons and I always cast a physical boost spell at the beginning of the day, I managed to disarm her, and after managing to calm her down by casting a paralysis spell. Yeah… not exactly calming down as stripping a person from the ability to move his/her body, hence why it’s called a paralysis spell. Anyways, I took a look around the place and saw why such a smart girl would result to stealing and living like this. A young unconscious boy with a fever and a mangled leg. He must either be her brother or a friend or I don’t know why she would keep such a bother. Maybe she was a pedo who bloomed early and lusts after this premature boy’s peepee which is so great that she prefers living like this than living without it, but I believe that still fall’s under the “friends” category. Just that the sub-category is friends with benefits.

This time I managed to actually calm her down and explained to who her who I am. Which left her wide-eyed for a few seconds, then after showing her that I mean no harm, she explained to me what happened.

Her name as you know is Hannah, and that boy is her brother Lewis, thank god he wasn’t the third scenario, or prodigy or not, I’d have to report her. Their parents died when she was 7 in a car accident and they were raised at their abusive uncle’s house. The guy and his family were your typical evil family stereotype, with the uncle drinking and gambling while his wife teaching her kids that Hannah and her brother were like servants. It was the classical princess Amora and the magic comb scenario.

You know, the one about the princess who was a slave to her half-uncle king Jallud, then she found the family comb that glowed when used by the real royal family and that her uncle was a despot with her father being the true king? Really, you don’t know? Especially about the part that she was saved by a prince from a foreign land and he helped her reclaim the throne and they lived happily ever after? Does that ring any bells? No?

Anyways, it’s almost the same scenario, but instead of being saved by a prince and living happily ever after, she had a brother and they escaped to the slums since the uncle was going to sell them to pay off some debts and so to survive they had to live like thieves, and if I have to give a guess, a dog used the boy’s leg as a chew toy, so their story would’ve ended like this: The brother died, the sister fell into despair and in order to live she either sold her purity and ended in a whore house or ended up as a slave, and she lived miserably ever after.

Thankfully, I came. I’m no nice guy and I don’t do things for free, so I made her a deal, I’d heal her brother, take them to live me and educate them, on the condition that if she meets my expectations, she’ll work under me, if she doesn’t meet my expectations, it was a bad investment, and she’s free to go.

She was wary of my deal, which put a smile on lips since that means that she uses her head, because only idiots would instantly accept a deal with no obvious negatives. But since she had no choice she accepted.

During the years we both fulfilled our part of the bargain. At the beginning they both so wary of me, but time creates bonds between people, whether they are negative or thankfully like the ones we had, positive. And she not only works for me, but also became my right hand man, err… I mean woman. Hmm? My left? Oh that’s A over here. Sadly, Lewis wasn’t as talented as his sister, but he had quite an imagination and now he’s a novelist. He won’t be a G.L.L. Talin, but at least he’s fairly popular. Enough to live well, at least.

“Anyways, let’s start the experiment”, I said in an excited tone.

I chose the perfect subjects with high enough clearance to get what we want.

It’s a dark cloudy night, void of any stars and the only lights that can be seen are the reflection of the moon between the clouds and flashes of light from the battle between the Korvan invaders and the Alta defenders on the planet Tor.

“Huh, so this is the welcoming party? Where are the balloons?”, I say while surrounded by soldiers from the Korva principality in the forest.

“It seems so captain, sorry we couldn’t prepare more.”, says Akan, the traitorous son of a bitch who sold me and the Republic of Alta out for some credits and a title.

“You know boys that if you leave now, you can live another day, right?”, I say while cracking my fists. They won’t leave. These green boys don’t the difference between a kiddie pool and a krios infested pit.

“Really Atla, really? You’re unarmed, alone, and literally driven into a corner. What’s the worst you could do?”, Yeah, keep talking with that shit eating mouth of yours.

“Hmm, I could beat you into a pulp and dump a load into your mouth like Kris? Eh, scat boy?”, and the chumps start looking at him for a second, while Akan’s turning pale. There’s a rumor that he’s into some nasty, and I do mean nasty fetishes, and let me tell you, from what I’ve seen from the ship’s cameras, it’s not a rumor. He really has a shit eating mouth, and the principality does NOT tolerate depravity.

And that second was all I needed activates my armor’s deflectors before the idiots start shooting with their toy guns.

“You idiots, kill him!”, Shouts the perv and the green boys start using their pea shooters.

First thing first, I have to take out their sight, as bad as they are at handling their guns, they’re still a trained unit and my armor won’t hold out forever.

I usually use magic in combat and rely on my squad mates to handle the front, but they have Akan on their side, so they already know that it’s mostly an act. I’m as good in melee as I’m in magic. So of course they took counter-measures.

“Ahh, my eyes!”, the launched a flash bang from the left shoulder on my armor, then I fill my feet with energy and rush to the nearest soldier.

How am I using magic you say? Fun fact, magic nullifiers don’t actually nullify magic, they just disperse any magic exerted in the nearby area, so utilizing magic internally works perfectly. The only reason why the nullifiers are not made to disperse internal energy is because only 1/1000000 succeed in using it without blowing their bodies and nobody knows that I can use it.

Crack! “Ahhh!”, I break his arms and shatter his knees so he won’t struggle and use him as a human shield, while taking his blaster for myself.

I shoot the guy on his right, then take out a plasma grenade from his belt and throw it behind the nearest group of schmucks.

Why behind them you ask? Because obviously they’ll take cover and the line behind them is the only thing between me and freedom.

I rush to the grenade and kick it to the guys in front of me and it detonates right in their faces. Now there’s a big beautiful opening right in front me.

I rush through it and escape their encirclement, but not without throwing some grenades at their rides and curling my three middle fingers and giving Akan our race’s beautiful gesture of love with a smile.

Of course they try to chase me, but due to me blowing the army truck and due their own nullification field preventing them from casting flight or external enhancements.

Now it’s time to rendezvous with the others and-

Boom

Huh…?

Pain? Why am I in pain? And why is there a hole in my chest? Weren’t the deflectors on just now?

“Le…ad?”, A lead bullet? Who uses lead anymore? And how did it pierce my armor? Why am I not healing?

I start asking these questions in my head while my vision is getting darker, and I saw her.

“La..nna?”, I say her name which I thought I’d never say again.

“The one and only~.”, she says while smiling at me. I thought she died 2 months ago during Anak’s betrayal. But the truth was you were also a traitor, huh Lanna?

Not much of a shock though, we all knew you two were an item.

“Guh...!”, I was kicked on the side by Anak and walks over me to her.

“Hey babe”, Anak says while before giving her a kiss, “How’ve ya been?”.

“Fine, what about you Anki~.”, and she starts cuddling him, if you’re gonna kill me, can you spare me from you being lovey dovey being the last thing I see? because, I really, really want to kill you right now.

“Fine, but this shit was givin’ me trouble”, and another kick, but this time right on the stomach. At least it’s not on the balls.

“Did ya really think that surrounding you with fodder the plan!? I know you too well, captain.”, ya or you, stick to one already, you shit eater.

“bu…t ho…w?”, I ask. I need to at least know how he did it. How did he pierce my armor and why am I not healing?

“if you mean about the bullet, it’s because it’s made for piercing armors. The really surprising thing is how are you still alive after getting pierced by a 20.0mm bullet meant to pierce vehicles?”.

“Heh… Magic…”, I tell him with a chuckle. I mean, I lost and I’m dying, so there’s no use to act like a sore loser.

“Of fucking course, and you know why can’t heal? Also magic”, of fucking course.

“Well, any last words?”, He gets close to me to hear me. Doesn’t he know that I might bite his face off? Nah, he knows I would never do that.

“Fuck… you…”, I just spit on his face.

“I’ll miss you too buddy. Ok, Lanna finish him off.”, he says to that bitch.

“Sorry Atla, I wish there was another way…”, Good luck bitch, when you two marry, I’ll send my gift card from hell.

Bang.

And everything goes dark…

…

Hmm…?

Why am I hearing the sound of machines?

What the? Why am I in a liquid!?

I tried to open my eyes, only to close them back up again. Why is there a bright light!?

“excellent they’re waking up!”, now can someone tell me why am I seeing an excited hologram of an old man?

Where am I?