Act 6: Resolution

Scene 22: Revolution

Victor’s brain matter painted the white floor as Ralph’s shotgun caved in the back of his skull, killing him instantly and causing blood to gush from his head and neck. As Ralph walked over to the others, he could see a soldier wrapping Victoria’s head with bandage to stop the bleeding from a previous cut, and given canned food to stop her from starving to death. Ralph walked back to get Stavikk for a proper funeral, and hear any final thoughts anyone had. Ralph pushed Stavikk through Selene on a metal cart, his arms draped to both sides, and his skin pale and cold to the touch. “It’s a damn shame, Woodhill”, said one of the soldiers beside Ralph as they stood around Stavikk’s corpse, and they placed flowers of a variety of colors inside the gaping hole in his chest. “Hey Ralph, I think you’d better get over here”, said the recently esteemed Commander Pontiff from around the corner. “We might have something for your dead friend... but it’s a prototype…”. Ralph, Pontiff, and the deceased Smokecutter travelled through the base until they reached the technological center, a giant warehouse-esc structure with a classic Nexactus look. It possessed purple lights, hexagonal tiles, and a huge, curved bulletproof glass window at the back of the room, granting a nice open view to the rest of the barren Arborea. Right below the window was a large, cylindrical capsule-like structure sitting on the floor with a glass top half that slid down, making a 180 degree turn leaving the capsule open for a body. Commander Pontiff, walking over to it, said: “This is Nexactus’s first ever rebirthing chamber”. “Now, if all goes well, your friend Smokecutter might be able to live another day”.

“But there’s a few things we need before we bring em’ back”, Pontiff continued. “Stavikk, here, seems to be missing a lot of blood as told by his paleness”, Pontiff said. “I’m gonna get some cultured cells to make new blood for him”, Commander pontiff said. “Do you happen to know his blood type?” “No, but can we check his medical records?”, Ralph asked. “Maybe we can find that there”. “Sorry, his records were deleted ever since he was presumed dead”, Pontiff responded. “Ok, can we use O- instead?”, Ralph asked. Even if it wasn’t the right blood type, it would allow him to function normally. “No, unfortunately our supply was crippled, almost depleted due to a moon virus last month, which our doctors were able to stave off just in time”, Pontiff informed. “And our current supply is sufficient for him to survive, but not to function normally. “If we bring him back just with that, he’ll only be physically able to stay awake for two hours a day. “The rest would need to be sleep”. “Then let’s do that!”, Ralph suggested. “In his two hours of consciousness, he could tell us his blood type, and we can work from there”. “Ok, that solves one problem, but we’re still going to need to regenerate the muscle tissue, bone, and organs Stavikk’s chest cavity”, Pontiff explained. “Do you know any way to get a whole lot of protein really fast?”

Ralph dragged Victor’s corpse into the room in the metal cart after short delay, which Commander Pontiff handed off to the two biologists in the room. The two of them put his body under a machine, dissolving most of his body, that which wasn’t already infected, and as Pontiff explained, extracted the protein from his body into a liquid solution below him. After collecting everything that they needed, Ralph and Commander Pontiff carried Stavikk’s body off the metal cart, and placed his body into the rebirthing chamber, Pontiff activating the controls to slide the glass back around, covering Stavikk’s body completely. Ralph placed the protein solution below Stavikk while Pontiff placed the solution of O- blood below him. The two biologists stood there in awe. They had never seen someone come back from the dead, much less at their own hands.

A bright blue light came to surround Stavikk as he lay there, before his body began to seem to shrink, and reverse age, seeming to get younger and younger by the second, until Stavikk’s body was reduced to that of a baby, and then a fetus, until he was merely an invisible zygote. Suddenly, Stavikk began to regrow in size, growing into a fetus, then a baby, and then a child. This process continued until he again reached his age of 26. Stavikk, though, was different now after this whole process. Stavikk retained his thickened, blotched skin and enlarged build from his original mutation, but it seemed that a mask, a curse, was lifted off of him. He no longer had the many scars all over his body from the original injectors, bullets, nor the gaping hole in his chest no less. Stavikk’s facial structure also was as it would have been if not for the many falls, blows to the face, and the like that he suffered in his life. In that moment, they saw a younger looking, less battle-worn Smokecutter.

The biologists and Pontiff were equally astounded. Never before had they seen someone come back from the dead, and that day was truly an amazing day for them. The bright blue light then cast itself horizontally, initially appearing at the top of the inside of the chamber, then being cast downward until it scanned Stavikk’s entire body in a top-down manner. After that, Stavikk received his memories once more. The bright blue light focused and compressed, and then shot into his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, restarting his brain and heart with electrical impulses before vanishing into thin air.

Stavikk lay there unconscious for a few hours while everyone else waited for his awakening. In a dream-like state, his brain flipped through every memory he had: his childhood, his mutation, the Sepam Gulag, the grave guerillas, the information nexus, beacon tower, his escape from the helicopter crash, his torture by the Red Sickle, his rescue, his training in Feronia, the Red Sickle launch site, and his death at the hands of a heat ray. After that his mind went completely blank of any awareness until his recent revival. When he woke up, Stavikk was astounded at his very existence after his death, and was sure before that he was gone for good. Stavikk then became severely anxious. He saw Pharavanna out of the window, and wondered how long he had been dead for. A year? A decade? A century? Aeons? Were all of his friends dead? Did Pharavanna have a new ruler? He got partially up noticing that there was no longer a gaping hole in his chest from the heat ray, and his skin was smooth and wet to the touch. He did undergo a rebirth, after all. He also noticed the absence of all of the scars all over his skin, proving once again that something had changed.

Stavikk, however, couldn’t do this for long, and quickly fell back to lying down until Ralph checked back to see that he was conscious. Stavikk was relieved that Ralph was still alive, and told him his blood type, which happened to be A+, and allowing Ralph to give Stavikk the blood type he needed. Stavikk slowly regained more consciousness, memories, and clarity of thought before being able to finally get up from the rebirthing chamber and get a new change of clothing. Even though Stavikk no longer had a gaping hole through him, his combat vest still did, and Stavikk had absolutely no intention of looking like some sort of bizarre magician. After a couple more days of boredom, Stavikk, explored Selene for the first time. He noticed almost immediately that where the Nexactus “N” would be cast, there instead was a bright, purple “U”. So much of Nexactus had seemed to change, and he found not a soldier to arrest or kill him.

“Stavikk Smokecutter and Ralph Woodhill”, Victoria said as the two knelt before her. “Both men are officially pardoned for the slain personnel of Nexactus that died due to bloody conflict between them”, She continued. “And the two of them are no longer against us”. “As much as you may hate these men for the family or even friends that died at their hands, we’ve got bigger problems on our hands”, Victoria explained to the crowd around her. “Kargas and his thugs are taking over our precious home minute by minute, and if we don’t do something, Pharavanna’s going to be the Sickle’s homeland”. “But here’s the question of how we take out a criminal organization with a fighting force overpowering our crippled military (you can thank Smokecutter for that), and territory on Pharavanna dwarfing ours”.

“How about we don’t”, Ralph suggested. “Maybe find an actually nice planet, no mafia, no Benevola, no nothin’”. “Just a thought”. “Maybe Pharavanna is just lost, and walking away is the smartest thing to do at this point”, Ralph continued. “How many cities need to burn, and how much life need be lost, just so we can win at our little game of chess”.

“I’m sorry about what happened at Beacon, you know”, said Stavikk from the other side of the wall, arms crossed in front of him. “I would have checked on you too, but Evan and me didn’t have time to-“. “This isn’t about that, Smokecutter!”, Ralph interrupted. “Remember when that ray scorched through your chest?!”, Ralph inquired. “When our choices against the Sickle finally caught up with us, was fighting really the thing you wanted to do?!”. “You don’t exactly think clearly when you’re dying, Ralph”, Stavikk explained. “And don’t act like you knew exactly what was going through my head”. “I didn’t want to experience that shit either-“. “Then why did you dry hump with the reaper just so we could get here?!”, Ralph asked. “You know miracle working by bringing someone back from the fucking dead isn’t an easy task, right?!”. “In fact, it’s kind of fucking risky and difficult!”. “Enough!”, demanded Victoria from both sides. “Woodhill does have a point here, as our losses are already severe”. “But what exactly do you think is going to happen if we flee?”, Victoria asked. “You think Kargas is just going to let us get away after, say, an all out war on them for the past few years?”. “Ralph, they are going to hunt us down and kill every last one of us unless we can stop them, to put it simply”. “And I’m not sure you’ve adjusted to this dramatic change, but there are no Geneva conventions anymore”. “It’s just us and all we have against the most powerful known regime in the Milky Way”.

“Oh god, what the hell are we going to do this time, Stavikk?”, Ralph said with his hands covering his eyes, seeming in mental anguish over the predicament he was currently in”. “I have an idea”, Stavikk said, with a smirk across his face. “You might not like it, Ralph, but it’s just crazy enough to work".

Scene 23: Subterfuge

“You’re absolutely insane, Stavikk”, Ralph said. “You’re going to die here, and it’s all your own goddamn fault”.

“Thanks for the motivation as always, Ralph”, Stavikk said as he swung his two handcuffed arms from side to side in somewhat boredom. The fast, dry wind made his hair and clothing rise and fall around him, as well as move in any direction seemingly in a frenzy-like manner, and the dust in it didn’t exactly make seeing a breeze. Behind the both of them was an army of the newly named “Uprising of Pharavanna (U.P)”, or a division of the former Nexactus army. Victoria was currently absent, honestly with much better things to do than stand around in the windy, yellow wastes and wait to deliberately trade her friend to a psychotic, violent criminal. Stavikk had some silent pride about being the Trojan horse of the Uprising of Pharavanna, and while he didn’t say anything pertaining to which, he certainly acted it. Because of this, many of Stavikk’s cohorts including Woodhill himself held deep concern for Smokecutter’s sanity, knowing not the true effects of the mutant’s rebirth.

Eventually, the spaceship containing Kargas landed approximately 80 feet away from where the U.P division was located. In full, silver body armor, Kargas stepped confidently out of the spaceship, which was sleek enough to look graceful and sturdy, but rugged enough to be fitting as the vehicle of a psycho murderer. It was outfitted with efficient shielding systems, and an array of weapons such as napalm rockets, concussion bombs, and plasma cannons. Kargas and his thugs walked over to the U.P’s division, Kargas recognizing Stavikk in particular from before, and willing to trade at least a little bit of money in order to get his prisoner back. He figured if he could hold Stavikk captive, he could find a way to replicate the mutation, as a Smokecutter with his fighting skill would be a truly devastating force indeed. He was incredibly close with his research, after all. Since Victoria was absent from this “meeting”, Commander Pontiff was chosen to negotiate instead. He was much more careful in this case, knowing that if he let down his guard, the same thing could happen as the last time Nexactus tried negotiating with the Red Sickle. The deal was tough to make for Pontiff. He didn’t want Kargas’s suspicion to rise by making it too easy, but didn’t want Kargas to outright refuse either. They settled on an amount that Kargas was willing to pay with slight doubt of 550 GC’s, and Stavikk was carried off into Kargas’s ship, flying away at incredible speeds. “Why do I even try?”, whispered Ralph, confident that he just murdered his friend.

Back inside Selene, Victoria and her followers had clear access to the location of Smokecutter after he stopped moving. They identified Stavikk, using an attached tracker, in Nijunn, a central province of Feronia, obviously under heavy occupation, and where Victoria could safely assume as being the home base of Kargas. Even though Victoria was a telepath, she for some reason could not detect that specific location, but she didn’t quite know why. Stavikk, however, knew what to do from the inside, and Victoria decided it was a reliable time to attack for the plan to unfold.

Using drop pods all the way from Arborea, Legions of the U.P soldiers were deployed to invade Nijuun. Streaks of crimson shot down through the sky from Arborea as the drop pods crashed into the earth, and the soldiers from them abruptly started attacking the defenses around the main base of The Red Sickle.

Stavikk was trapped in a field of blue energy as opposed to a traditional prison, with his hands and feet bound to the ceiling and floor projectors. The room he was in was made out of silver-colored steel in a clean and elegant design. Hours beforehand, mysterious people did experiments upon Stavikk, such as taking his blood, and analyzing his DNA. The mutant, for the most part, was unaware of what these people were doing, and waited until they left. Stavikk, fortunately, was prepared all along for such imprisonment, having prepared hidden tools on his person. While he couldn’t currently use his hands or feet at the time, he did still have one secret escape tool.

Commander Pontiff commanded the division of the U.P’s army currently in Nijuun, advised by Ralph Woodhill. The division pushed from west to east in a vague pincer formation, fighting through encampments and anti-air guns which infested the forest, making no place in Nijuun safe, only safer. The division created cover in the form of trenches as it slowly advanced towards Kargas’s base known as Olympus. Soldiers wielding more powerful weapons such as heat ray cannons or rail guns would focus down turrets, while the ones wielding faster weapons with more ammunition would focus down infantry instead.

Stavikk vomited up bits of his potent stomach acid down onto the projector below him, melting it slowly and steadily. The projection it cast became weaker and weaker until his feet were completely free from such imprisonment. However, his hands were still trapped, leaving him essentially dangling from the ceiling. Stavikk looked up to see if he could do a similar thing to the projector above him, but to no avail when he tried, as his stomach acid could not reach that far. Instead, Stavikk pulled himself up, and kicked in one of the grates in the ceiling, causing it to fall and exposing the wires inside of the ceiling. He then consecutively kicked in the wires with his steel-toed boots, causing sparks to fly down upon the room he was in just as the projection that held him up dissipated. Stavikk was released from the energy field, but not yet free. There still lied a large, steel door in front of him, presumably that would open up and down instead of in any other manner. Though Stavikk’s hacking skills were lackluster to say the least, Stavikk did have a tool to deal with this kind of barrier. In the cleanest words, he just had to wait for it to arrive.

Stavikk squatted in the corner of the room, wincing in pain as the rectangular metal case was pushed out of his anus. Finally, Stavikk opened it, revealing a multi-tool inside. While the multi-tool had no use for hacking the door in the most efficient manner, it did have a miniature null blade attached to it, which Stavikk used to cut into the unlocking system attached to the door, and causing the bottom half of the door to open but not the top. It wasn’t the whole doorway, but was enough for Stavikk to climb through with barely any struggle.

While the U.P’s air support certainly wasn’t optimal, it did provide an advantage against the Red Sickle’s tanks and spaceships currently fighting in the battle. Anti-air guns continued to shoot the U.P’s fighter spaceships out of the air, and the sky was seemingly set ablaze.

In Selene, Victoria ordered a missile strike against the Olympus base, but seeing that it was completely futile. The missiles exploded all around the base, but it nevertheless emerged unscathed from such a satellite strike. Because of this, Victoria finally realized that there was some sort of barrier, some sort of shield stopping both her communication with Stavikk and attacks targeting the base. With that, she realized that Stavikk was completely alone in this.

He found himself in a much wider hallway made with an ultramodern and sleek pattern of steel on the walls, ceiling, and floor. Strangely, though, there was water in the hallway slightly that rose to a height of below Stavikk’s knee, which would equate to being about knee-high for the average person, give or take. This water, however, was flowing gently in and out of drains, which suggested that this place was being used as a sewer system.

There were also many wires that Stavikk could see through the cracks of steel, and many screens and buttons on platforms not exposed to the water, which seemed very strange to Stavikk as he travelled through this bizarre network of hallways and rooms. He eventually came upon another closed door, this time with no controls attached to it. Stavikk was initially confused, and went out looking for the missing set of controls.

Stavikk came upon a room with a 20-foot drop in the middle, filled partially with water. He also noticed a large plumbing valve on the left and right wall. On the other side of the drop, there was a hallway to a larger computer room in the distance. Stavikk dropped down to get a better angle, and a clearer view on what each valve did, but found that the labels for each valve were written in Mandarin, an indecipherable tongue for Smokecutter.

He went with his kneejerk reaction in choosing the right valve, as it was traditionally used for cold water, something that Stavikk knew he wouldn’t harm him. Surprisingly, though, it actually caused the pipes above him to release a strange, pitch black ooze as thick and gooey as lava, but strangely at room temperature. Stavikk turned the valve in the other direction to stop the flow, but the damage had already been done. Stavikk’s feet and legs began to sear as he rushed to the other valve, which released the water that the other neglected. The water flowed in, allowing Stavikk to slowly float to the top, but causing the ooze to be distributed more evenly in the water, causing him to be more harshly burned. Eventually, He climbed himself out of the drop after the water flow automatically cut. He reached the metal flooring once more, but searing with pain as well. He reached the computer room, which he saw had four operators inside, all of which neglecting to check on the noise outside, likely commonplace for them. Stavikk made his presence obvious as he walked in. Even though he was unable to speak Mandarin, he had a slightly different method of communication.

He motioned, with his null knife in hand, for the four computer operators to leave the room so that he didn’t have to kill them or knock them out. The operators, unarmed and caring simply for their own safety, left the room and sat against the steel walling,

Stavikk closed the door behind him and tried to gain access to the computers, struggling quite severely, as the only information he could decipher was from numbers and images. Each of the keyboards on the computers had Mandarin letters, and there wasn’t any way for Stavikk to change the language that he could see. He looked around on the desk and saw a device about the size and shape of a walkie-talkie, which Stavikk immediately recognized as a Universal Translator. This would be of great use to Stavikk, and he turned it on to use it, inquiring to see how he could access the computers. He went outside, shocked at what had happened. Three of the operators were crying in the corner, yelling words that Stavikk could not recognize. It was then that Stavikk saw one man floating; face first, in the water with that ooze, his skin bright red and rashed. “Shit”, Stavikk remarked, running his fingers through his hair, with no ideas on how to solve the problem.

The U.P division ran for cover as a barrage of napalm missiles fired from Olympus base painted the landscape an array of dark and aggressive colors with fire and smoke. After two volleys, however, the giant missile pods were emptied, and retracted back into the base after firing. Olympus base had a very angular, sleek steel design where several silver and red flags flew from the sides and top of the building. It seemed to have a strange, triangle-esc roof made of steel plating, with one silver blade arising from among them, and piercing the sky. This is where the U.P troops could see the red shield being produced, which protected the base from outside attacks.

Stavikk saw one of the computer operators reaching for a phone-esc device on the wall. Stavikk cringed with stress, but later hoping, figuring, that the operator was simply calling in a medical team as he hid behind a wall, meaning to be unseen, and unnoticed. Stavikk was wrong. Instead, a squadron of thugs entered the corridors to investigate the scene. Though Stavikk couldn’t see them, he knew that the marching of medical personnel wouldn’t be deafening in the sound-deflecting hallways, and there certainly wouldn’t be lights pointed everywhere. A fighter walked through the open doorway assuming nothing there, when Stavikk punched him in the head twice, knocking him out cold. Stavikk pulled the man’s unconscious body through the doorway before shutting the door behind him. Stavikk began using the universal translator to scan the text on keyboard to gain an English equivalent for the words used on the keyboard and computer screen. While there wasn’t always a smooth equivalent for everything, Stavikk managed to figure his way through the programs and what they did, though in the back of his mind he felt as if he was reading the writing of an infant. Stavikk found the shielding program of the base, finding an option to adjust what the shield was to be resistant against, but seemingly with no way to disable it completely. Stavikk thought about it for a moment before he heard banging against the door and shouts in Mandarin, as to demand that someone open the door, which Stavikk assumed was the man that he knocked out.

Stavikk heard several shotgun blasts from behind the doorway, as well as feeling them through the doorway, desperately trying to think of a way out of this. He looked further in the database of the computer, finding evidence of two inhibitor systems in the base, a huge technological device designed to interfere with communications over long distances, which would explain, in Stavikk’s eyes, why Victoria hadn’t tried to telepathically communicate with him after he was “captured”. Stavikk, from another one of the computers, activated the pipeline controlling the black ooze, and made the black ooze pour out of the pipelines in an attempt to kill the squadron surrounding him. Shortly after doing so, the screaming outside indicated he was successful. After it died off shortly after, Stavikk killed the flow of ooze, and activated the drain below to empty the ooze from the hallways. Stavikk moved silently through the hallways once more, the ooze luckily not affecting him since it was low enough not to touch his skin. Stavikk now knew that the inhibitors were in the Far East and West corners of the base, and to speak to Victoria meant destroying them both.

Stavikk headed to the West corner of the base first, sneaking past anyone that he could hear or see, before reaching a large, cylindrical room with a giant machine in the middle, taking up a surprisingly large part of the room, which Stavikk inferred was the inhibitor. It had a half-egg shape, and appeared to be produced from the floor, grounded to it as if it was part of the room. It had an elegant steel shell, with perfectly aligned cracks in it, where Stavikk could see blue energy lying. It was surrounded by five, floating rings in which Stavikk could see energy spin, climb, and fall between them. Stavikk entered the room, activating an alarm. The door closed behind him, and he saw four turrets produced from the walls. He shot one of them with his shotgun, before the others opened fire on him from above with burning plasma blasts. Since the turrets were poor at tracking where a target was headed, he was able to dodge many, but not all of the shots by rolling for cover, and only a few made it through his armor, and burned his flesh. He shot another two, destroying them, before taking cover behind the inhibitor. The turret foolishly shot at the inhibitor instead of Stavikk, eventually causing the Inhibitor to make a strange, loud, beeping noise, its lights turning red to indicate it overheating. Stavikk quickly looked around for a way to escape, and tried to get through the door with his null knife. Since there was nothing there to target, he searched for alternatives.

Stavikk noticed that the room was very tall, and had a steel grate at the top, and assumingly some area above. Stavikk climbed on top of the inhibitor, and then jumped to one of the previously destroyed turrets. The final turret kept shooting at Stavikk, all of which missing him, luckily, as he quickly jumped to a semi-ring platform above. One ladder was above him, but retracted to disallow him access to the other platform above, which lied right below the steel grate. Stavikk shot the ladder with his shotgun, causing one part of it to fall, and become more accessible. Stavikk climbed up the ladder, and right as it broke off, he grabbed onto the platform above, but dropping his shotgun in the process. Now, Stavikk couldn’t get through, unless…

Stavikk jumped up, holding onto the grate above him with his hands. The turret continued to shoot at him and miss, and eventually the plasma shots melted through the steel grate above Smokecutter. The mutant ripped off one partially melted chunk of the grate, dropping it to be below him, before climbing up to the area above, where the grate would actually support him. The area that he reached was much like a ventilation system for the inhibitor, and looked for the closest tunnel to escape through. He saw one blocked by a thinner grate. But one, which Stavikk easily ripped off, as it, wasn’t very secure. Stavikk ran through the vent as fast as he could, closing as many doors behind him as possible, and twisting and turning as much as he could to get away from the inhibitor.

He dropped down to a familiar place near the pipeline of black ooze from the vent, before he heard a massive explosion from southwest of where he was, spewing heat and energy in a huge radius, and naturally taking the path of least resistance through the vents, scorching them with its raving retribution. Stavikk could now make out faint messages from Victoria, though it would cut off extremely rapidly. This made information to Stavikk very unclear, because what he heard was twisted and warped in thought that it made it almost impossible to decipher. Since Stavikk knew the doors would close to the second inhibitor room, he went to find the nearest armory he could spot. No such place existed that he could find, but he did find a storage room, containing steel boxes and crates appearing not to have been opened in years. He looked through the boxes there, casting dust throughout the room, and found a very old looking audio recorder. It had very peculiar sound files on it including laughing, dialogue, and speeches from a long time ago. Stavikk noticed with curiosity at how different the accents used were in these audio recordings. The accents of English were so much more romantic sounding and with ease than the typical accent that one would find on Phaethon.

He heard one audio recording announcing the 200th year birthday of something called “Canada” in 2067, made by a calm, professional sounding man. What was this “Canada”?, Stavikk wondered. Was it a rivaling corporation to Nexactus? A sprawling community on Pharavanna? A newly discovered planet? Stavikk allowed the question to leave his mind as he thought about how to destroy the second inhibitor without dying, a close call the last time he did so. He recorded his own voice using the device, hoping that it would be clear enough to sound realistic enough.

Stavikk saw a patrol of thugs circling around the inhibitor room, obviously prepared ever since the last inhibitor was destroyed. He waited for a moment for when no one could see him, then slid the audio recorder into the inhibitor room, with his voice playing as loud as he could make it. Stavikk then hid behind a wall, and waited for his plan to unfold. All he needed was for one thug to mess up, after all. He heard yelling from nearby, and then heard running into the inhibitor room, before Stavikk heard the doors close. Stavikk knew what would happen next, and ran away as fast as he possibly could, before hearing and feeling a massive explosion behind him. As the flames and energy tore through the inhibitor field, Smokecutter heard Victoria loud and clear. Victoria said: “To lower the shields of Olympus base, you must destroy the main shield generator in the center of the floor, which you may have noticed is blocked off from all doors”. “However, I detect a large amount of enemies in the area”, she continued. “Be careful, Stavikk”.

The hallways and vents were now starting to fill up with smoke, which Stavikk resourcefully used to his advantage. He manually closed doors and vent exits to guide the smoke produced from the destroyed inhibitors into the room of the shield generator, where Stavikk waited right outside. The panicked thugs that ran out of the door where Stavikk was located were inevitably surprise attacked, Stavikk stabbing them to death with his null knife. When Stavikk carefully snuck into the shield generator room, he saw that the other thugs there positioned as sentries were no longer there, and Stavikk presumed that they ran away. Stavikk saw the massive shield generator stand in front of him, a cylindrical shaped, elegant steel machine that was surrounded by computers, and had, at the top, a barely visible red beacon shot up to the floors above. “How do I destroy this thing without blowing up, I don’t know, the whole floor?”, Stavikk thought in his mind. Stavikk had seen shield generators before, but not at such a massive scale, and predicted that the result of the destroying of this one wouldn’t be pretty, to say the least. “Ralph Woodhill tells me that the best way to destroy the shield generator is to deactivate the cooling systems, causing it to overheat. “Uh… and how do I do that?”, Stavikk asked. “You still think it was a good idea to send Stavikk down there?”, Ralph asked Victoria.

“You need to alter the maintenance system surrounding the shield generator”, Victoria said. “Ralph says, look for the giant blue power box”. Stavikk looked around the generator and found a box with a metallic blue color, and was inserted into the side of the surrounding systems. “You mean the metal one inside the generator?”, Stavikk asked. Victoria had a somewhat delayed response before saying: “Yes, that should be it”. “Now, you may see that it’s clamped into place by blunt metal claws”, Victoria continued. “If it is, you need to remove the claws from the rest of the device”. “Now, you can do this… one of two ways”, Victoria said. “You can either carefully unscrew-“. “Done!”, Stavikk interrupted. “He just said he’s done…” Victoria said. “Wait a minute, did he just rip off the claws with he bare hands?”, Ralph asked. “He did, didn’t he?”. “God damn it, Smokecutter”. “What do I do now”, Stavikk asked Victoria. “Ralph says you need to remove the maintenance system so you can properly disassemble it”, Victoria replied. “Ralph also says not to do anything stupid like last time by ripping off the claws”. As Stavikk let out a chuckle while wiping the sweat off his brow, he asked: “How did he know?”. Stavikk pulled the giant maintenance system out by the large, metal handle before laying it on the ground, and Stavikk saw the exposed tubes and wires connecting to the shield generator. “Ok, what now?” Stavikk asked. “Ralph says you need to break open one of the sides of the maintenance system as if it were a crate”. Stavikk chose the horizontally placed side that was facing him, using the null knife to saw open the edge connecting two of the sheets of metal, and then broke one of them off causing it to fall on the ground. “I see a lot of wires, guys”, Stavikk said. “Any ideas? “You only need to tamper with a few”, said Victoria. “Sever the three blue wires, then connect the seven black wires to the seven red wires”. “Will do”, Stavikk responded, before doing so with haste and vigor. Stavikk then used a device from his multi-tool, the metal-heater, to weld the metal plate back onto the box before re-inserting into the massive shield generator. Shortly after doing so, Stavikk’s heart sank as he heard the alarm and seeing the shield generator flashing red. It was then that he recognized the true scale of the danger.

The shield generator exploded with electricity, sparks, and flame flying in every which direction in the shield generator room. The metal plates covering the generator collapsed, as the heat and force was simply too great for them to hold any more. As the shield generator malfunctioned, unable to work under the conditions of self-destruction, the beacon cast by it quickly dissipated, as well as the shield covering the entire base in a dome, which disappeared from the top-down, the faint red being replaced by pure transparency. While the shield didn’t disguise the base itself, it did disguise a horde of Kargas’s thugs positioned outside, ready and willing.

Scene 24: Showdown

The elevator doors opened on the main floor of the base, allowing entrance for Smokecutter onto the main floor. Stavikk exited cautiously, wanting to be unseen. “Where are you, Ralph?”, Stavikk thought, meaning to communicate with Victoria that way. “He’s right outside Olympus”, said Victoria. “Pontiff’s division is advanced, but blocked narrowly by the troops outside”, Victoria continued. “Listen, Stavikk, you have quite the imagination, and a base to plunder”. “Go wild”. “I’m flattered”, responded Stavikk: “Believe me”. The horde of thugs outside of Olympus made use of many stolen vehicles, such as smart-cars, tractors, and the Red Sickle’s famous hover car. While all of these vehicles and all of these vehicles seemed distinct from one another, they all sported the silver and red iconography of the mafia. Ralph Woodhill and Commander Pontiff lead opposite ends of a pincer strike against the defending Phalanx, giving them the instant upper had. However, now that they were getting close, wall-bound auto guns were activated as well.

Bullets, explosions, and blood were everywhere in sight, and it was a figurative uphill battle to face against the Red Sickle in this instance because of their vehicular and defensive advantage. The UP’s air strikes against Olympus were now much more effective, the hull only blocking some of the force of impact. Suddenly, the massive doors of Olympus opened side to side, to reveal a silver-armored behemoth of armor emerge. He shot his two red-matter rifles at the troops opposing him, tearing their ranks apart with streaks of crimson. The heavily armed fighter sported Red Sickle iconography, but wasn’t quite Kargas. Stavikk Smokecutter then threw two bags of grenades into every which hover car he saw before retreating into the base, as to not get lit up by every which foe. He ran into a large room with a red carpet and a black sofa, waiting behind one of the walls for his assailants to pursue him. Indeed, some of them did, and they met their match with a nasty surprise. The unnoticed sticky bombs attached to the ceiling detonated, shattering the skulls of all of the thugs charging at Smokecutter.

Meanwhile, the distraction that Stavikk created softened up the thugs defending outside significantly; as their backs were turned, Ralph Woodhill and his side of the pincer managed to land several well-placed shots against the opposing phalanx, pushing them further and further back. Eventually, The UP forces managed to push through, making their way into the inside of the base. It had a very glamorous look to it, possessing red carpets, chandeliers, slot machines, and black sofas, making it seem like a very luxurious building from the inside. The U.P forces were reduced to no more than a platoon at this point, as the right side of the pincer formation including Commander Pontiff were slain during the battle. Ralph Woodhill was now leading the U.P troops into battle. Ralph’s platoon hastily moved through the floor and onto the next, seeing as the fires from the lower floors was slowly but steadily climbing its way up, but slowed significantly by the steel and concrete walls, floors, and ceilings. It was then that the platoon of soldiers divided into two squadrons; one squadron led by Ralph climbed up the staircase to get to the upper floor, while another squadron led by Smokecutter himself went up the elevator in an attempt to get behind Kargas and his allies.

In the top floor, Kargas was sitting in a rectangular room with a paranoid look on his face as his null blade lay on his right thigh, and his trusted bodyguards staying close to make sure of Kargas’s survivability. Strangely, Kargas wasn’t wearing his own smart armor at this time, but had a very good reason, at least in his mind, to abandon it. Kargas sat on his large, black couch with the glass table in front of him, seeing his punching bag in the opposite end of the room. Near each corner of the room, there were large pillars going from floor to ceiling, and giving the room an older look.

The two squadrons led by Stavikk and Ralph entered through opposite hallways, but was met with their match, as Kargas had multiple fighters equipped with Juggernaut suits at the time working for him. Stavikk and his soldiers took heavy fire immediately, but the red matter rifles that Smokecutter possessed showed great efficiency, and was able to slowly but surely melt through the armor of the juggernaut inside. However, because of this fight, Stavikk took heavy injuries and suffered the loss of some of the armor that he wore via melee bludgeoning. Ralph Woodhill’s strategy, on the other hand was to essentially lure the juggernaut into a larger room for the purpose of surrounding and killing such an opponent. However, Kargas also sent more troops after Ralph, almost annihilating his fighting force, but leaving him alive, fortunately.

Ralph and Stavikk’s four soldiers rushed in to take on Kargas himself, but Stavikk staying behind to regenerate the previous wounds he endured. As Kargas’s bodyguards fell around him, he was left with only one option. Kargas previously calculated that he had a 18% chance of surviving what was about to happen, but he logically took it over next to 0%. Kargas injected himself with a large needle into his left bicep, and pushing the fluid inside his arteries. Kargas’s body rapidly began to mutate, his body growing, and his mind going wild from the torment of such a process. As Stavikk walked around the corner to aid Ralph and his comrades, Kargas swung his null blade in his large arms at Ralph Woodhill from top to bottom, essentially cutting him directly in half, a guillotine of power that acted as the bane of the unfortunate Woodhill. Stavikk Smokecutter ran towards the others, but struggling because of the previous gunshots, and saw his allies get torn apart by Kargas’s claws of death, each falling to the floor, damned by Kargas’s ferocious force. Stavikk, due to the wounds from earlier, was only able to wield one red matter rifle, and as he lifted it to fire at Kargas, his right hand was taken off by the mob boss’s thrown null blade, sinking into the side of the wall, and causing Stavikk to holler in pain and bleed profusely from his right arm.

Stavikk then tried to pull the null blade out of the wall, but didn’t have time to do so as Kargas pulled out his assault rifle. Stavikk, realizing the act, quickly hid behind one of the pillars in the room. The assault rifle fire tore through the pillar just above where Stavikk was hiding, and Stavikk constantly ducked lower and lower to avoid the bullets, until, thankfully, Kargas had to reload. During this time, Kargas was completely vulnerable, which Stavikk realized immediately. Stavikk reached into his pocket, and threw his null knife with his left arm, hitting Kargas directly in his right shoulder, causing him to be unable to shoot. After Kargas’s right arm was disabled, Stavikk rushed towards him from around the pillar, and getting into a melee brawl with Kargas. The two of them punched, clawed, and thrashed at each other until Stavikk got the upper hand by taking Kargas’s assault rifle, and bashing him in the left arm 6 times until Kargas’s upper arm bone was completely crushed. After that, Stavikk went atop Kargas and beat at him with punches until his facial structure was completely crushed, and a mess of bone, flesh, and blood. Stavikk quickly rushed over to Ralph, winded, and ran his fingers through his spiked hair. Since he mentally blacked out through most of the fight, Stavikk was thoroughly startled at the bloodbath around him. He noticed flames creeping from the side of the hallway in front of him, and therefore chose to go in the other direction, climbing up the elevator shaft to the roof of the base, and escape from the outside. Stavikk used the many metal bars and cables to reach the height of where the elevator shaft, and then kicked through the metal door at the top to find the outside of the base very tricky. He saw below him the fire ravaging through the middle floor of the base, and caused countless explosives to go off in its reign of heat and wildness. Because of this, countless glass windows as well as sheets of metal were blown off and were continuing to do so. Stavikk climbed down a massive plate of the roofing, using a null blade to stick between the cracks of the metal sheets, and using broken windows to support his body weight at certain points. He was about halfway down the base when something exploded right inside the base, causing him to drop his null blade, which flew and fell as he did until Stavikk slammed onto a platform below him, breaking two of Stavikk’s ribs and dazing him.

At this point, Stavikk had no other option but to slide down the inclined wall of the base, hurting him as he reached the bottom causing to collapse, but not severely injured. Stavikk suffered fewer cuts from sliding down in this way than he expected, but overall was not too pleased with the result. Stavikk walked out as far as he could before hearing the roaring of an engine behind him, coming from the base: “Oh fuck”, said Stavikk, as he turned around, wide eyed to find what faced him. A Red Sickle hover car crashed through broken window, chasing after Stavikk as well as the driver could. Stavikk waited until the hover car was just the right distance behind him before leaping to the left side of where he was running. The car whizzed by him for a few meters before turning and arriving at a complete halt.

Stavikk had to think quickly. Realizing that he was completely unarmed now since he dropped his null blade, he had to think some way out of this. A thug walked out of the side door - which opened like a wing would flap - and reached to draw his handgun. Right as the thug reached below him, Stavikk turned around and spat directly in the man’s eyes. Normally, this would do no less than delay a fighter’s focus; but because of Stavikk’s mutation, his saliva had an incredibly acidic composition. This caused the man to be completely stunned. After that, Stavikk rushed towards the man in a berserker rage, and cleaved through his skull multiple times with his hands -surrounded in a strange red energy-, causing his brain matter to spray out of his skull. The man’s two allies also exited the vehicle, armed with null blade. Stavikk then spat in the second man’s face to stun him, causing him to drop the Null blade before picking him up and slamming him into the ground impossibly fast, causing his body to make a crater in Pharavanna’s flesh, and broke his spine in half. The final mobster, on the opposite side of the car, shot shotgun blasts through the windshields, breaking them into thousands of pieces, but Stavikk ducking below. Stavikk, desperate and out of options, noticed the mobster turn the corner, with a shotgun in hand. As the mobster pumped the handle of the shotgun, Stavikk yelled “No!”. Contrary to the result Stavikk expected-certain death-, the mobster’s head was completely cut open by a red beam projecting from Stavikk’s mouth, leaving the flesh inside of his skull searing with heat. As this happened, Stavikk realized he was only scratching the surface of knowing the full extent of his mutation. Questions aside, he made sure the car was completely empty of mobsters before climbing into the driver’s seat, as he sped away, back to his home, back to the place he once fought, the city of Crescendurn.

Epilogue:

And yet, Pharavanna had peace.

After the defeat of Kargas, the mob boss of the Red Sickle, the faction split apart and left Pharavanna, as they were a criminal group motivated by the promise of plunder, fame, and glory, instead of an ultimate purpose, and were demoralized at the loss of a singular leader. After the Red Sickle left the planet in search of somewhere else to conquer or live, the redeemed faction now known as the Uprising of Pharavanna began to rebuild human civilization, freeing its surfs and prisoners from Gulags, and welcoming outcasts of other groups around the planet to aid its growth. Defectors of the Red Sickle were now not uncommon among the streets of Crescendurn, and the planet of Pharavanna began developing new cultures and ideas over the next few decades, all centered around the singular beacon of technology, and with the goal of liberty and peace.

The once villainously used Eris laboratories were transformed into a prosperous medical center to treat the harm done by grotesque mutations and torture that once occurred there. Many medical professionals in the laboratories starting testing the very limits of Stavikk’s abilities, finding that he had a strange way to manipulate kinetic energy beyond what a normal human could do, allowing him to accomplish incredible feats. Records of earth’s history began to develop after finding of its radio messages, as well as artifacts discovered on crashed ships and in deserted buildings. After searching for months in the jungles of Feronia, Stavikk and his cohorts found Layne Pontiff, and invited him to Phaethon in the hope of him living a better life. Layne of course accepted, but chose to live further away from the city, and aided in the reconstruction of the destroyed town of Shallowstone, which became an industrious mining town.

Politically, all ties to the Uprising’s old form were abolished, transforming it into a civilization similar to one of Earth’s, but different in some ways such as its focus on space exploration, and the development of cultures vastly different from Earth’s. The inspiration for the cultures of Pharavanna were a clash of very far-eastern and western in nature, combining language and architecture used by both, and religion was mostly abandoned in search of technology, the vastly more attractive option for those raised on the planet itself. Since Nexactus was a global corporation affiliated mostly with the United States Canada, and Japan, part of that new culture arose, but also that of the defectors of the Red Sickle, which obviously had a Chinese cultural origin.

Earth was a different story. Since civilization on it was essentially obliterated from nuclear war, the people on it had the choice of either leaving it behind, or die from the radiation. Life on Earth, however, was not over, and it instead adapted to the radiation, some multicellular life evolving into bizarre and grotesque forms. The Universe, still, was barely even scratched by the reach of human potential. With the development of advanced space-travelling technology, the people of Pharavanna discovered how little they truly knew about the expanses of the universe. What they did know, however, was that humanity was truly bound for the stars.