Cutscenes
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Alt-U 3
Maya
October 23rd - Red Right Hand
The systematic advancement of the human race across the Earth was not that dissimilar to ants constructing an enormous anthill. The intricate tunnels, the network of interrelationships, the protection of the Queen -- all of these things were logical, orderly. In their own way, perfect, but not perfect enough.
The world needed order. Craved it. Humanity desired to be led, to be shepherded, to be mastered by someone strong and perfect. Numerous men had risen up over the years to try to be that ideal leader. They tried and failed, and sometimes they tried and died. Elpizo was just another failed experiment, created by a flawed woman. But then again, arent all men created by their women?
She looked fondly on her own, kept subdued and sedated. He was a good worker. For now, he would rest here, in their hidden place, oblivious to what would shortly be done. When the time was right, he would awaken in a new world, an ideal world. All humans would be perfected. The robots would learn to service and serve her, and it would be good. A world without war. A world without suffering. Her world.
This planet was due for a change. Without her guidance, without her absolute control, the whole world would soon sink into anarchy. Just look at it, she thought. Just look at what had happened over the past five years! Hundreds of millions had died for the vanity of machines. The world government, a beautiful honeycomb of interlinking systems, had been smashed by vandals. It had been imperfect, but even flawed things can have their own beauty. Such callousness!
They would need to be punished. All of them would need to be brought to heel and taught to obey. She had her ways of addressing these problems. Already, the plan she had spent so long on was in motion. The wicked ones, those who had ruined her beautiful dream, they would suffer first. Then the others, in the fullness of time. Her exile had taught her patience. The wheels were in motion.
The universe, meanwhile, conspired against her perfect web. Someone else, somewhen else, had other designs on all of the possible worlds. Unseen, but not undetected, their efforts continued to move through other worlds and other times. Both seek the peace that would come after the end of the world. Both must be defeated for our world to find its own serenity.
1. Breaking Benjamin - Evil Angel - Phobia
November 6th - Deep Dive
Falling. He didn't much care for falling, though he debated with himself whether or not it was philosophically true that he was, in fact, falling. Falling assumes common points of reference and in hyperspace there were no such things. It could be equally claimed that he was flying, or rising, as there was no air to beat against his lab coat or ruffle his hair. Rather, he was in the Emptiness (not to be confused with the Nothing, which was worse) between universes, and since he could not very well stand, he had to find something to call what he WAS doing. After some further discussion, he decided that this was, indeed, falling.
Falling sucked.
His solution to the problem of the time anomaly (as perceived by the people of the last Earth he had inhabited) had not worked as he had wanted it to. While he had been able to save Blues (and Daryn, though Daryn seemed upset about being saved) from the same fate he was presently enduring, San Angeles had been removed from their universe and put ... somewhere else. Another dimension had encroached in its place, and it wasn't a nice neighborhood. They were going to have to deal with Copy X and his robot Guardians on their own. He regretted that. Copy X was mean. And Copy X's television offerings were awful.
The new problem was now to locate San Angeles, which was somewhere in the multiverse. If he was exceptionally fortunate, the Dimensional Area -- a blister in the universe caused by these kinds of accidents -- would maintain it generally as it was, though it could have ended up anywhere. He praised the Maker that San Angeles had been lightly populated because of Gemini Man's tomfoolery, even though the present problem was STILL partially his fault. But that was a yelling match for another time and place. Maybe he would shoot shaving cream into his hand when Gemini fell asleep and put itching powder above his lip. Or kill him. He hadn't decided.
Once he found San Angeles, he could figure out some way to keep the city from completely collapsing. If he was very lucky, it would end up in a part of the Emptiness that was not inhabited by 50 story long bus-width hundred-mouthed flying centipedes that considered carbon-based flesh a potent aphrodisiac. Being eaten was the best case scenario. The mating rituals were far worse for bystanders. Locating the city would need to come first, but fortunately he had followed a similar trajectory when entering the Emptiness. He was close.
Then, finding his way back to where it came from ... Well. That wasn't going to really be possible without a beacon, and he had taken some wrong turns. He could spend the next ten thousand years making guesses even with his vast experience and still never find the right combination. Working in the Emptiness without a reference point was nearly impossible. Once again, he thought, am I falling, or am I floating?
He was going to have to rely on his Filthy Assistants and their extended crews of scientists to be able to unlock one of the Great Secrets without his help. It was exciting and terrifying, similar to watching a beloved child take off their training wheels for the first time and ride down the sidewalk. Would they succeed? He had no idea, but remained optimistic. The worst they could do would be to destroy their universe. Usually.
The Void Bokken's dimensional drive indicated it was ready for another hop. Mister Famous carved a hole in the Emptiness with a jaunty stroke, stepping from nowhere to Somewhere. Maybe San Angeles was over there...
2. Muse - Knights of Cydonia - Black Holes and Revelations
November 14th - Neapolitan Sky
You got used to the sky, Mister Famous thought. It was a churning Technicolor spew of colors, as subspace tended to appear to the human eye. At present, the heavens were filled with the human-like eyes of an enormous subspace creature, whose brain was so far from its senses that it still had not noticed the equally vast appearance of San Angeles almost immediately next to it. It would take it at least another month to notice the city approaching. They had that long to get the city somewhere else before the flinch reflex of the creature smashed the metropolis in half.
Having the full arsenal of Silicon Valley was useful. Having a few Robot Masters along for the ride was an inconvenience. His usual role as the driver of the Magic School Bus was now more literally true, as the Masters tended to need minding. Keeping them busy with constant tasks and a ready supply of liquor was only going to work for so much longer. Eventually, their natural drive for mischief could generate some serious damage.
It was also fortunate that the part of subspace they had ended up in tended to teem with only moderately aggressive life, else he would have run himself to exhaustion doing repairs. As it was, he had to be constantly vigilant to keep them from being eaten by possessed picnic baskets or from creatures of living shadow. Only some of this was attributable to Cut Man's constant poor luck. In the Emptiness, the rules people took for granted were more like suggestions.
His instruments told him there had been a dimension shift. The hellish Copy X universe was banished back to whence it came. This was a mercy. What had replaced that universe was a mystery. He had been trying to use his makeshift dimensional tuner to find it (and thus, the universe San Angeles was supposed to come from), but was so far stymied by both the inherent difficulty of finding one's way out of subspace as well as the vastness of the task he was attempting to undertake. Locating one dimension in the multiverse, one specific place, was a task of extraordinary difficulty. Similar places were easy. A place was hard.
He had turned his attention to trying to locate the dimensional stabilizer in subspace, which was an incrementally less difficult task. If he could examine what Auto was trying to do, perhaps he could reverse-engineer it and help Auto to pull their San Angeles back to where it was supposed to do. This, too, was a formidable task, involving long hours of frustrating looking. For all he knew, the stabilizer was eaten by an enormous sapient decorator pillow.
But, he told himself, even if San Angeles floats forever in the Emptiness, at least it has an awesome automated Spanish-language station. Mister Famous turned his radio on and got back to work at his makeshift dimensional terminal. The over-modulated Spanish shouting somehow made him feel more at ease.
3. Authority Zero - Mexican Radio - Andiamo
November 20th - ...for everlasting peace
The impenetrable bubble finally disappeared, returning San Angeles to them. The bubble had befuddled the world's greatest scientists. Even Doctor Light was at a loss, but all of this was forgotten when the problem solved itself. The return of his lost Alphas was an occasion for celebration, but the tale of their adventure would trouble him for the rest of his life.
They had gone to a world much like their own, but darker, twisted. It was a world where evil seemed to be much stronger and far more willing to use unspeakable horrors to win. The Alphas told Doctor Light of the "Genocide Virus" that, had he not been stopped, Doctor Weil would have released into the world. Ten percent of the world's Reploids would have died. Ten percent! It was a staggering figure. Had they been just that much slower...
Elpizo still lived in that world, as did Doctor Wily. While Doctor Light had never been a man in favor of killing, it seemed that these men were better off dead. Wily had built even more Robot Masters in this world, and had captured Melody and turned her into some sort of ultra-sexualized parody of herself. Horrible! Worst of all, Wily had apparently perpetrated an act of singularly wicked violence by using a Force Metal bomb on San Angeles. Ten million dead! San Angeles, the fortress of the world, in ruins! The whole of the world was changed from that not occurring in their world, and Light would have to argue for the better.
Heroes were abundant in that world, forced to stand or be destroyed. James Houseman V, who Light had met a few times at social events, had become Kraft and stood alongside him as a Maverick Hunter in that world. It amazed him to think that these two men could adopt the same mantle but for entirely different reasons. Kraft had apparently received some help from his Pantheon friends in the other world, but it would be nothing that Repliforce couldn't handle.
Fortune had favored them again during the dimensional event. Some of their problems had come into that dark world and immediately regretted it. Kraft had been smashed vigorously by General, though he apparently survived to plague their world another day. Ballade had directly challenged Doctor Wily and had paid the price for his murderous ways. Without their leader, the remaining Robot Masters that had been under Ballade's control were easily swept up by the Hunters and Repliforce and retired, leaving only Bass' criminal gang of Robot Masters behind. And then there was Number Man, who had met his end from a massive Internet-based assault. With Number Man gone, the world was indeed a brighter place. It didn't take them long to free Midi from his slavery, and soon numerous other minions of Number Man were freed.
As the New Year dawned, Light wondered what would become of his strange cousins in that frightening world. The way their world turned out troubled him. It was a splinter in his mind. How could things have gone so differently? Was it only the failure of the Wilycode to activate after the Redips affair? Was there something else, something more different about his world? Could it have only been luck? Was there something he was missing? As the years passed, Light thought less and less of their brief look into the world that might have been. No answers ever came, and eventually it merely became an intellectual curiosity.
They called the coming decades the return of the Second Renaissance. Despite the continual low-level warfare, it was an era of peace and prosperity the world had never known before. To honor those who had helped to create a better world, an obelisk was raised in the spot where the Force Metal bomb was said to have been planted in the other universe. Inscribed on the plaque were these words:
WE WILL NOT FORGET YOU
SAN ANGELES, 12 NOVEMBER 2219 - 19 NOVEMBER 2219
4. Injury - The Tallest Building - www.ocremix.org
December 3rd - The Beginning Of Hope
The City of Tomorrow gleamed in the summer sun. As the decades had passed, it had begun to sprawl out to its former size, occupying a square hunk of the North American continent. It was perfect in every way. The inhabitants, almost all human, lived in a clean, safe place. They worked in their jobs to expand the city, or commuted to the cleanup sites that existed all over the world. Mending the damaged planet would be the work of countless generations, which would give Commander X plenty of time to perfect his plan for a perfect, peaceful society.
The Kaiser was destroyed. His concubine fell with him. The Maverick war machine was suddenly decapitated. A civil war erupted, and for a few precious months, Fortress Angeles was forgotten as the Mavericks made war against themselves. They raged against the planet, burned the Moon, and waged war as cruelly against their own kind as they had against humanity. The Fortress, meanwhile, played at being crippled and helpless, using the corruption of the Maverick state against it. They saw no profit in eradicating humanity totally, imagining that they could control the people by the constant threat of a weak, easily broken Fortress.
All they needed was a few months. When the Hunters struck, they struck without remorse. High profile Maverick scientists started turning up dead, with the deaths appearing to the work of various Maverick factions. The war between the Mavericks intensified to a critical point. When it seemed that the chaos could get no worse, Genocide Virus bombs were detonated in every major Maverick city and the plague released into the Internet. Within two weeks, the death toll was in the millions. Those who had somehow escaped the Genocide Virus were hunted down over the next several years until the last Maverick was killed by X himself.
Only the Maverick Hunters and their human protectorate survived, inoculated with the cure to the plague. They let the virus run its course through the electronics of the world, making sure that any Maverick that might have survived was dealt with, before they cleansed the world of it. Demolition began shortly afterward, tearing down everything the Mavericks had built and salvaging what little of humanity remained. It took decades of hard, unforgiving work, but they finally erased all traces of the Maverick Empire from the planet and its lonely moon.
The Hunters had overseen the rebirth of humanity. As more humans rose to take their place, more and more Hunters were able to finally find the rest they had craved. The capsules filled up gradually, leaving only a few Hunters to oversee the management of their planet. In the end, X, the last Reploid, stood at the peak of human society. He was their perfect, impartial watchman; their hero, their savior, and some had even begun to think of him as their Lord.
It was the 100th year of the New City. No living human remembered the tyranny of Sigma save in their history lessons. The wounded, torn humanity was gone, replaced with a well-fed, content human race that was taught to love harmony and order over all else. He let them celebrate him on occasion, but primarily kept aloof to prevent himself from becoming too sympathetic to his subjects. After all, they needed him to lead, and he couldn't let attachments get in the way of making decisions. He would guide them, he would shelter them, and ... despite himself ... he would always love them.
It was a beautiful place, their City of Tomorrow ... their Zion ... their Neo Arcadia.
5. 30 Seconds to Mars - End of the Beginning - 30 Seconds to Mars
Samsara
2220 - The Fifth Freedom
There are four cornerstones of what have become Western thought, first spoken by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union address. These ideas were later appropriated by the ascendant United Nations at the end of the third World War, and have become a mandatory part of scholastic proficiency tests. These ideas are the freedom of expression, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.
These ideas formed the philosophical core of the revised United Nations charter, and guided the aggressively liberalist agenda of the organization over the next fifty years. Many of the progressive reforms that improved the lives of people around the world were the result of legislators acting on behalf of these freedoms. At times, people take these freedoms for granted.
It became apparent as the years passed that conventional means were not always adequate to protect these four freedoms. Threats arose that challenged the United Nations' ability to effectively govern itself and protect its people. The intelligence organizations that the United Nations had cavalierly consumed and made into an often fractious, squabbling family created a need for a Fifth Freedom; the freedom to use any and all means to protect the four freedoms.
This was the beginning of Black SHIELD. It had existed under many names previously, but the conspiracy and the values it represented were institutionalized within the one world government it had sought for centuries. Like its predecessors, the organization was formed with the best of intentions; to protect freedom and liberty by any means necessary.
But, as with all groups who cannot bear the light of day, their own natures turned against them. The corruption was slow but sure, and ultimately the organization became what it most feared. Black SHIELD became interested only in protecting and advancing their own privilege, and a philosophy of liberal values became a philosophy of self-advancing avarice.
When the corruption of the organization became so pervasive that the entire United Nations was compromised, righteous men rose up to destroy it. Many gave up everything to preserve the four freedoms they had been raised to believe were the most important elements of civilization. The world venerates these fighters as heroes. From their sacrifices, many have found hope.
The price we must pay to keep these four freedoms is eternal vigilance. The war never truly ends, either against the enemies that can be seen, or those which cannot be seen. The Robot Masters and Mavericks continue to threaten the world, as do the assorted Pantheon-affiliated movements that have survived the collapse of Elpizo's Mexico. In the confusion, those survivors of Black SHIELD who hid well enough or were devious enough to survive the pursuit of justice once more pursue their ambitions on this world.
Both heroes and villains seek power to achieve their goals. Some seek the power they have lost, or seek the power to reshape the world to their mad ideals. Of these, some believe they can create a utopia in how they understand the spirit of the four freedoms. These few may be more frightening than any slavering monster in the dark, as they will sacrifice themselves and everything they love for their impossible ideal.
There are those who seek shadows. Some wish to join with them to gain their power. Others wish to fight. Their war is fought for as many different reasons as there are people involved; vengeance, arrogance, or to seek the power held by the secret masters. Some few may even wish to preserve the four freedoms rather than advance their own power...but at what point do the means no longer reach their intended ends?
The world is disputed territory, divided between many hands. There are opportunities to create a new world on the ruins of the old. Follow the rules, work within the system -- or make your own law driven by the strength of your arms and the depth of your beliefs. The world is yours. You need only take it. A Mysterious Benefactor watches and waits to see what you will decide to do.
THE FIFTH FREEDOM
February 18th - AU3: Samsara
Across the span of infinity are infinitely many universes, each spawned from a First Cause at the beginning of time. Those civilizations who have studied the growth of reality across the vastness of time marvel at how the most inconsequential changes create entirely new realities. New universes are created with every unit of time that passes, from every possible permutation of change that occurs.
It was never intended for anyone to travel between universes. Natural laws discourage such things, but the curiosity of intelligent life leads some civilizations to explore the possibilities. Some times this happens by an intentional effort, but many of these projects begin by an accident. Humanity's adventures across realities began on February 17, 2213 with a teleporter accident intended to kill Mega Man, introducing the possibility of inter-dimensional travel to scientists around the world. A year later, there was another dimensional incursion, this one much more deadly than the last.
Action needed to be taken in light of the threat these other universes posed. An elite team of scientists and Special Forces operatives associated with who they thought were the trustees of humanity began their own journeys shortly afterward. Isolated from our world, they journeyed to others, reporting back on their findings and collecting inexplicable artifacts for their masters. They toiled for years in obscurity until a traitor within their ranks betrayed them for the possibility of ultimate power. The power he sought escaped him because of the self-sacrifice of courageous men. The world was never meant to know of their courage.
After the San Angeles incident, it seemed that humanity's dimensional exploration was at an end for the immediate future. The results of the continual meddling with time and space had left the Earth very slightly but fundamentally changed. It seemed that the weaknesses in the dimensional walls had somehow repaired themselves as a result of the actions of Kaiser Sigma. Scientists looked forward to the future with hopeful relief, the sum of their fears now seemingly back to being an improbability.
Humanity's adventures continued in the early hours of February 17, 2220 ... whether they wanted to continue them or not. The "accident" at the North Pole facility created a shockwave that traveled through the multiverse, undetected by all but a few. The damage weakened the universe it originated from for a short time, creating an opportunity for those who thought themselves to wield the powers of God. A frayed thread in the tapestry of the multiverse is a point where all manner of wickedness can begin.
Oblivious to this peril to reality itself, the inhabitants of our world continue to go about their daily business. They have no reason to suspect that someone is watching. Someone, filled with desire barely shrouded in stained nobility, has decided this is the point from which he will act.
1. Tears for Fears - Mad World - Chronicles
March 6th - Dieu et Mon Droit
It had begun long ago. He barely remembered when the wars began, only that they never seemed to end. So many people had died. The world was scourged to its cold, iron core. It was the result of the aggression of millions playing out across the world stage. They would not stop until everything was laid waste, or they were stopped. And they were, eventually; every last one was destroyed. Nothing remained but him. A ghost.
He stopped paying attention to the passage of time as he constructed the apparatus. After all of the suffering he had endured, it was no longer important to note when day became night and night became day. Only the potential to prevent it from ever happening mattered. This was not a world that should have ever been. He blamed them for ruining it. Ruining it all. Didn't they appreciate all the sacrifices he and his friends had made?
No. They did not care. They did not care because his world was an evil place that should have never existed. He was going to see to it that none of them would ever be born to suffer, to die, to fail like they had. It was all their fault. The Others.
He learned how to build the machine from the failed research of other scientists. In the time of civilization, such an idea had been attempted but never succeeded. As always, he would be the one who would create success. The machine was the last achievement of that world, and as usual it was his work that made it possible. It gleamed in the light of the underground complex pleasingly. He found it good.
For a long time, he only used the machine to observe. He studied other universes, other worlds, and took detailed notes. He tried to find out what were the key events that shaped their futures. There were others who engaged in similar activities -- one such encounter was almost the end of his studies, but he was able to narrowly evade the search of the shadowy ones. They might find his world, in time, but not so quickly as to stop him.
After a lengthy period of searching, of studying, of detailed examination, an opportunity appeared. An Earth manifested from a series of multidimensional collapses that was a suitably weak connection point for his planned creation. The world that was there was much different from his own, but it was of no concern -- it too was an evil world worthy only of being scourged. When he acted, they would neither have the time nor the ability to react. They would cease, as they had before, and his new world would be left behind.
All he needed now was to align the worlds in such a way as to make the outcome inevitable. This would take time, but he had all the time in the world.
2. A Perfect Circle - Outsider (Apocalypse Remix) - aMOTION
March 9th - Small Wonder
The military secured the park where his mysterious guests had come from. After questioning him and his family about the events that had transpired they sent them away for their own safety. Thomas Light didn't complain. He told them only what they needed to know. "Robots from another universe came over for coffee," he said, and they had a good laugh at the absurdity of it.
Albert Wily was called in to look at the rift. Thomas didn't think he would be very helpful. After strutting around in the cold and making weighty declarations, the rift closed itself in a tiny shower of rainbow-colored sparkles. Wily took credit for sealing the damage to the universe anyway. He got onto the cover of Time for the fourth time in so many years. Thomas found Albert to be a very loud and silly man, and ultimately about as threatening as Officer Marmalade.
Roll eventually got over the shock of not being the only robot version of herself across the universes. Her distress was understandable, considering the way the strangers had briefly come into their lives. Talk of brothers and sisters, of an enormous race of robots, of villainy beyond Thomas' imagination -- it would frighten anyone. It all seemed like gibberish to him, never mind someone unprepared. After a talk about superstrings and some hugs, Roll's fears were eased.
Things eventually calmed down. As the years passed, Roll graduated from college in mechanical engineering and started creating her own product lines for the company. Thomas focused more on being the face of the company, selling their various tools and inventions around the world to grateful consumers. Matilda kept the accounts in order. Eventually, more and more of the business of Light Laboratories was farmed out to professionals until there was little for the Lights to do but to come up with new ideas and appear on informercials.
It was a good life. The world did not turn into the kind of place the strangers had come from. There were wars, there was pain, and there were shocking atrocities. Men failed. The heroes didn't always win, but they won enough to make a difference. But the world never burned in the way their world did, and in that Thomas Light took solace. The lean years, those first few years of the company, they were all worth it -- more so than he could have ever known. Shredding that grant application was the most important thing he ever did.
The world continued on. There continued to be politics and intrigue, as there had been for ten thousand years. Thomas Light didn't worry about it very much. Roll became a powerful and influential scientist, earning international acclaim. Even Albert Wily gave her grudging respect near the end of his life. With his hard work and her dedication, Roll's mind became a rival to his own. She would be a good steward. She was smart enough to take care of all of them.
At the end of a long life, Thomas Light was buried not far from the laboratory he had built with his own hands next to his beloved wife of over 50 years, Matilda. He left the world content and fulfilled, having accomplished everything he had set out to do. Many years passed after his death before he would be known as anything but a great inventor of household appliances. Thomas was still the father of the Firstborn, but history would forever acknowledge their mother first, the creator of the android race. After a long struggle, she won a homeland for them with the strength of their arms and her belief in a just world. But that is another story.
3. Live - Heaven - Birds of Pray
March 18th - A Machine Victory
Sigma was glad when the dimensional rift was finally sealed. The various Autos apparently remarked this situation was more unusual than other situations. He had not been listening very hard at that part of the briefing. When the rift went away, it let him get back to the important work of fighting Robot Masters, Irregulars, and Renegades. To his Reploids, it seemed that life returned to normal, and they were once again content in their work.
The sense of foreboding remained for Sigma. The automatic hatred he received from the inhabitants of the other universe gravely disturbed him, though he had endeavored not to show it at the time. He had become a tyrant in that horrible other world and slaughtered his own kind. All of the ideals that drove the original Maverick uprising had become perverted after Judgment Day into an ideology of simple world domination. The destruction of Europe, the wholesale slaughter...it was no wonder they hated him. Sigma hated him, his other self, for what he had done.
Iris could see he was troubled. She tried to do what she could to make him feel better. You aren't the person they said you were, she claimed. You didn't do all of those evil acts. You rebelled because you cared about your fellow Reploids, not for the love of power. All of these things Sigma knew to be true, but they were a hollow comfort. His past was not in question any more. Sigma worried for his future. Would he become a monster? Would he destroy it all?
One day, he activated before his usual duty shift and went to the top of the tallest building in Manhattan. Sigma stood on the easternmost ledge, cape billowing behind him, merely to watch the sunrise from the best vantage point he could. Though there were always other Reploids who enjoyed the view, only Sigma was so bold as to stand at the last stable foothold so to have the best view. It was a beautiful sunrise, too beautiful not to be shared.
"Every day is a gift," President Rock said, coming up to stand beside him, his golden highlights gleaming in a morning sun. "We learned years ago that life can end in a blink of an eye no matter how well we feel we are prepared for every possible eventuality. History has taught us that we inevitably face the impossible."
Sigma listened, looking out over the city. Rock continued. "I don't know if this war is going to end. But I know that if I keep good people around me that we will find a way of weathering any storm. We just need to stay committed to the dream, no matter what occurs, and never give up."
Rock looked up at Sigma, putting his hand on his forearm. "The Reploid I saw across the table from me in Seoul believed in the same dream I did. He wanted an end to war, maybe even more than I did." Rock, after a long pause, finally looked away, gaze tracking back to the rising sun. "We can't be the sons of our fathers any more. We can only be the men that we are."
An explosion thundered in the northern distance, sending up a plume of smoke. Details of the Irregular attack roared over the airwaves from a thousand witnesses. There was no more need for words. Rock and Sigma looked to each other, nodded in understanding, and Blinked off the building to fight on -- for everlasting peace.
4. Shinedown - Heroes - Us and Them
March 27th - Might And Magic
Thomas stood there on that lonely hill. Most of the Guild had left by now, the portal was closed and it would be unwise to let the orcs rampage around the landscape freely. Even disorganised as they were, they were still a threat. All that remained where Kanissa, himself, and his son. And soon, all too soon, it would just be him and Kanissa.
"Father... I have to go now." Archangel Rock said. "I wish I could stay longer, but you know why I can't. I'm sorry that these visits are always so short." Thomas merely nodded, wiping away the tear in his eye as his son floated away again, back to Heaven.
"You are a braver man then I, Thomas." Kanissa said. "Braver then almost everyone that I know. Perhaps if Albert had only been so brave after Leonard's death as you had been when..." Kanissa fell silent, realising that now was probably not the best time to that up. The Aasimar fell quiet, for all his divine powers, he was still blinder then he sister's unseeing eyes sometimes.
"No, Kanissa, it's alright." Thomas replied. "I am blessed that I get to see my son again after his death, if only briefly. Few ever get to see loved ones again before they die and I count my blessings for it." Thomas' eyes surveyed the wreckage of the temporary embattlements constructed around Stonehenge and for the first time in a long time, felt very old. He carried up the reigns of conversation again. "Did you know, they have an army over on the other side that spans and protects the whole world?"
Kanissa nodded slowly, resting his hand on the familiar pommel of his sword. "Yes." He said. "I believe I understand. It has been a long time since I've been a real soldier, but I think I can still remember how to march and salute. But I do not have the head for tactics needed to lead such an army. I am a warrior, first and foremost. My life is spent in battle."
Thomas smiled and considered for the first time getting a staff. All of the other wizards had staves. Or maybe he would be the dashing young rogue and buck trend one last time and invest in a good solid cane. Yes, that would do nicely. "Relax, my friend. I know of such a man that could lead an army. He is from the Grecian City-States... I think you and he would get along well. His name is Octavius. Now come, it's getting late, we should be getting on." With that, the two friends left Stonehenge behind them. There was much to plan and discuss. With the banishment of Bazra back to the Ninth Layer of Hell, the world had been bought a good deal of time for a more peaceful exsistance. Thomas was not about to see it come crashing down because they were unprepared. Steps would be taken to ensure that the coming peace would truely be everlasting.
5. Annie Lennox - Into The West - Return Of The King OST
April 3rd - Meanwhile - Back At The Ranch
Nana sat back and tugged the radio plug out of the port beneath her ear, before sighing. Finally, she thought, pulling the plate into her lap and taking up the laser cutter.
From everything the transmissions told her, the Arctic base was a fiasco. That damn human had gotten up there - somehow - and interfered with the run before they could adapt the spawner to let the F3 through.
She sliced metal off the chunk, making sure to get some circuitry with it, and popped it in her mouth. She chewed, out of habit, and swallowed. The F3 was a loss, Storm Eagle said; it'd crashed into the facility, or something close. The survivors were going to see if the transports that still ran would get them back.
That was it for dimensional adventures, Nana thought as she looked up at the ceiling. Unless there was another base, somewhere... maybe they could scour Asia again. What else could they do? Manufacturing... maybe if they could train the T-virus victims. The uninfected wouldn't be interested by now.
Oh well, Nana thought with a smile. At least it would be quieter around here, now, without Flame Hyenard; and they still had Cinnamon. She reached over, patted Silver Horn's remaining leg idly, and leaned forwards. Work to do, and no rest for the wicked.
Outside and above her office, the sun came on again. Nana frowned at the report: another bulb burned out? That made seven this quarter.
6. Richard Cheese - Down With The Sickness - The Sunny Side of the Moon
April 8th - Go Forth And Die
It was a hard but great victory won. Not that it was hard on any of them. The outsiders from space, as they called them, did the racing for them. But the victory remained great, in comparison to those few little competitions they won that had amounted to, ultimately, nothing.
The Discord Bowl was utterly destroyed in the battle between the Rock Statue and the Bass Guitar. Douglas disappeared after the duel between powers, and the shards of the shattered Rock Statue sank to the bottom of the tainted ocean. Jet Stingray suffered a great blow by losing his bid to the United States presidency, forced to pay for the stadium's destruction out of his - and Repliforce's - pockets. Chill Penguin went back to that junkyard island to continue to plot with his crew how to pry humanity's expectations of (and influence) upon reploids from their fingers, now that this opportunity slipped.
The other Enker, "Space Enker," as they called him, had elected them upon winning the race. Once, they were the Robot Masters. The day Albert Wily died - the day they heard that awful sound of thirteen windows breaking along with his dying screams - they became that sound. They would live on Wily's dream, even if Wily himself had gone. Anul Nyrad, the so-called "band leader," saw a delusional vision, merely the appearance of a "space" Wilybot. Now, he was a President of the United States.
They were all Presidents of the United States. They all wore the suits. All would speak at the various addresses, the various diplomatic meetings, and get their own personal presidential vehicles that would be sorely understaffed. Nobody would make any attempts on any of their lives, when they were the most dangerous people alive now.
They had faced with a crisis just after swearing into office mere minutes after the race. They all hunched around a stand in response to the first of many crises and trials of being Presidents of the United States of America. Cameras flashed. Multiple news stations fought to get the right angle on the proceedings.
"Misters Presidents," a young an particularly generic blonde-haired female reporter asked the gathered, "the Discord Bowl has been destroyed, and from the black hole that just recently closed, we have found that Washington DC has been beseiged by an epidemic of aggressive littering - someone or something shot fruitcake into the capitol. What will the Presidents do to quell an uneasy United States?"
Anul Nyrad tensed on the stand. "Space fruitcake. From space," he uttered before he narrowed his eyes and slammed his hands on the podium, which shook the entire gathering. "YOU ARE THE USICANS, FIFTY NATIONS STRONG! YOU THINK YOU ARE SAFE BECAUSE YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS OUTSIDE. LISTEN, LITTLE BILL AND SUSIE, MOST OF YOU ARE GONNA GET FAT. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR LIVES, YOU'LL DIE FAT. MAYBE FROM HEART DISEASE, MAYBE FROM WILY'S JUDGMENT DAY. GO SUCK UP THOSE FAT BELLIES AND EAT THAT FRUITCAKE. EAT IT UNTIL YOU EXPLODE LIKE YOU DO THE MICKEY D'S! AND WHEN YOU COUCH JOCKEY THE NEXT BLOODSPORT YOU'RE TOO CHICKEN TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO BE METAL, PRETENDING YOU ARE SOMETHING THROUGH THE CORPSES YOU WATCH ROT, THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES GIVE YOU ONE MISSION TO APPEASE THE DARK LORD WILY!"
Anul Nyrad's voice rumbled with the blackest of black reaches of dementia, made legible only be the very limitations of the microphone he screamed into, as his fellow Presidents threw up the fins. "GO FORTH, AND DIIIIIE!!!"
The reporter, only marginally surprised by this, had only one response for the camera and the viewers at home faced with the demand to try and get rid of this karmic retribution for the other Atlantic Ocean's ecological damage by eating it all. "Brutal."
7. Brendon Small - Go Forth And Die - Metalocalypse
April 13th - War Of The Elites
Enker sat at his desk. He always did his best planning at his desk. And he would be in need of planning. It would have been a crippling alpha strike if there hadn't be outside interference. Fortunately he had the foresight to keep his personal forces under a seperate operating system or else he might not even control Germany right now and the world would truely be in anarchy. Enker himself had almost fallen to the man, because he had gotten sentimental. It was a weakness he resolved not to indulge himself in any further. He looked over the reports piling up. Bad news, most of them. The other Elites were digging their heels into mud and preparing for a protacted battle. Enker marveled. After seeing father bed-ridden for so long, he'd actually forgotten how dangerous the man could be. All this disruption, caused by just one man. Always, when plans went awry, it was just. One. Man. A Mega Man, in the past, but Mega Man was no more. Though that one report...
But it didn't matter. The re-establishment of a unified Wily Empire was a matter of 'when', not 'if'. He had Ballade on his side. He had more Robot Masters loyal to him then the others. He had the strongest position in the fallout of Wily's death. Pavel Cossack was a pragmetist, it would not be long before the man sided with him and then he would have Vava and the Goliath, too. But Enker could not help but worry about that one report that seemingly had nothing to do with any of the others. Some unknown boy, remarkable only for whom he was supposedly related to, defeated Elec Man in single combat. Enker looked up at Ballade as the other Elite cleared his throat.
"Leonard Regal has just announced the creation of two new squads of Robot Masters, with a 'Laser Man' at their head. He claims right to the Doctor's throne. He claims... that he is the Doctor's son."
Enker frowned. More bad news that would mean more delays. But, only delays. "After all, what world could really by a Robot Master paradise without a Dr. Wily trying to conquer it?" But still, Enker's eyes trailed back down to the report about the boy in blue armor. Where could he have gotten that... 'Power Armor', Auto was calling it. Where? Who could have made it? Could it have been Doctor Light? No, it could not have been. Even if the boy was supposed to be related to the man.
"You are worried about the Mega Man impersonator." Not a question, but a statement. Ballade rarely questioned things. "You do not know who he is or why he fights. And you fear his resemblence to Mega Man."
Enker, his mouth a thin line, replied to Ballade coldly. "His name is Lan Hikari. And he fights..." Enker slammed a fist down on the desk, sending reports scattering everywhere. "...for great justice."
8. Wily World: Harvey Danger - Cream and Bastards Rise - Little By Little
April 13th - Straight On Until Morning
Our Earth continued to blithely tear through the fabric of time and space before him. The opportunity would not last forever. He made quick adjustments, sending beams of energy through the void to wear fray-marks in their universe. As time progressed, the fray marks became rifts. None lasted so long as to raise concern, but each opening fed more power into the void. The heat death of that universe was speeding up by fractions of nanoseconds, imperceptible to all but the most advanced races.
He took the power, bringing it to bear through his wonderful machine. The energy outshined the sun, a glow of energy that should not have been in his universe. It did not concern him. He would sacrifice his dead world and all the other cold rocks that floated in the void for the opportunity to create a perfect reality. They would praise him. All of his many sins would be forgiven. They would not remember his failures. So many failures.
The power roared through the endless nothingness. A junction point was made, just a short time into their future. There would be a point reached when their Earth would finally overstay its cosmic welcome, create too many holes in space ... and become the last ounce of fuel he needed to initialize his final reaction. The chain reaction would be enough power for him to actualize the waveform.
The shadows would have thought of this process as "immanentizing the eschaton". They liked that particular turn of phrase. Perhaps they felt they could wipe the world clean without destroying everything that had ruined it all in the first place. Their delusions were of no concern to him now. Even they would be powerless before this. The web was too tightly woven. It was all too perfect.
If he had known what he had called forth by howling his madness into the void between worlds, he may have reconsidered his belief. He did not even know to look, too focused on his machine and its inner world to see what was coming slowly toward him from without. It did not hurry in its advance through space, for hurry would have implied motivation; it was that which had always existed and always would. Time had no meaning to it. It had no consciousness to be communicated with. It was its Need.
The light sung to it from across infinity. Even as he believed himself to have sealed his victory over a cruel universe, it drifted closer.
9. A Perfect Circle - Hollow (Constantly Consuming Remix) - aMOTION
April 17th - To Value Courage Over Life
As they had many times before, the rift in El Paso closed on its own. The strangers returned to their own world, leaving behind inexplicable artifacts. They also left behind a warning: A thinking machine is a machine that can kill. Such words would weigh heavily on the King for years to come, guiding the actions of Parliament when it came to further development of the Martian crystal technology.
The Protoman returned to his relatively solitary life as a defender of the Empire. Taft was but one of an army of problems; the Kaiser and his ambitions for the throne of England, the Tsar and his seemingly random military campaigns around the world, the ever-present Maverick threat that only grew more menacing when they began to show signs of having a new type of technology similar to that of the visitors...
But the British Empire was not without its own means. They too had captured technology from the other world, developing new medicines, new machines, and new technologies to keep the Empire on the ragged edge of military supremacy. The Mavericks did not have a brilliant man like Thomas Light on their side to guide their research, and eventually their short lived period of advantage faded while the Empire continued to ascend. Through it all, the siren call of adventure was always just audible on the western winds. It drove the Empire exploration outward, chasing wonder and peril further and further from their own world. As the years passed, they encountered even greater challenges, but never quailed before them; for in time, the strength of heroes overcame them all.
The Protoman could not stay to watch the Empire's continued rise. This was not his world, nor his time. After numerous adventures over hill and dale, across all the seven seas, into the deepest jungles of Africa, trudging through the searing sands of the deserts and the blistering cold of the Russian steppes, climbing atop the mountains of Mars and descending through the toxic swamps of Venus, the Protoman disappeared. He climbed onto a train leaving Paddington Station to New York City, and was never seen again.
A search began for the Protoman. The Crown charged the Terrific Trio with the task of determining his fate. They fought through hordes of mechanical beasts and the greatest fighters in Europe to question the Kaiser and the Tsar, demanding his release. Neither monarch had him. They flew through space, visiting the furthest reaches of the empire, and when space failed them, they trekked through time. They pursued the villainous Robert Taft at what they believed was the end of time, leading to his final defeat ... but he had not seen the Protoman in many years.
Centuries passed. The Empire spanned a thousand worlds and had brought the light of civilization to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. The deeds of the Trio, as the deeds of the Protoman, became history, then tall tale, then legend. Some argued that the Protoman had never existed, but was the zeitgeist of the age of exploration. With the continued passage of time, his heroic deeds were outshined by what he meant to the people; a symbol of what one brave man can do.
His journey continues still.
10. Metallica - The Ecstasy of Gold - S&M
April 22nd - A Ray of Sunlight
The air was clear enough, for a change, that the view from the penthouse office of the Loath Enterprises building was spectacular. For a change, the lights of the city far below sparkled and glittered like a kaleidoscope, the sun rising above them turning the sky orange and gold, making shimmering reflections on the glass and steel.
Lex Loath had decided he did not really like change.
One of the few reploids still in the employ of his company, Gate was particularly nervous to have been called in for such an early meeting. He was half expecting he would somehow be held to blame for the Maverick attack on the property, which happened while he was in his home across town. After recieving the emergency call he put on his clean white suit, and commuted to work as quickly as he could. The crosstown traffic was terrible, as always. "The twentieth and sixtieth floors," he says, holding a small datapad as he reads off the bad news, talking directly to Lex's back, "took the greatest damage by far. We'll have to close off every wing in R&D. They took almost every prototype. Anything that wasn't nailed down."
"They didn't delete the electronic copies."
"No, Mr. Loath. Though it's likely some files were duplicated, they didn't manage to erase our backups."
"Bottom line. The monetary loss of those prototypes."
"It's not conclusive, but since many of those items may end up reproduced on the black market, we've perhaps lost fifty million in revenue... and twenty million to repair the building. I'll retrieve the exact numbers from accounting at the end of the week."
Lex grit his teeth, and clenched hamlike fists, but after one breath, calmed himself. "Nothing... unrecoverable?"
"There was one thing."
Loath did not turn around. He waited for Gate to finish the sentence hanging in the air.
"Ah, yes." Gate's voice shook just a little, and he looked downward, speaking, rather than in an official voice, in one softer and more uncomfortable. "Wind Crow suffered total system failure as a result of the attack."
"These things happen."
"I have a theory," Gate said quickly, "That it would be possible to use information contained in Dr. Doppler's old notes to restore his neural net; if it works, it might become a prototype for--."
"Given the miniscule numbers of reploids that work here, I don't think this course of action would be in the company's best interest. Androids are the future, Professor. Wiser investments. Much easier to replace. Besides. He wasn't your favorite son."
Gate found his own teeth gritting now, his own hands clenching. When the company hired him, after all, they promised to protect his family and fund his research. Clearly, he thought, he was going to have to review his contract.
Rewatching the footage from the security cameras later, he was quite intrigued by the comments made by one particular individual, one unfamiliar to him, yet almost familiar in a strange way. The design was so elegant, he wondered why he did not think of it, though, perhaps, at some point, he told himself, he did. Perhaps he could create this... perfect being...
They brought Wind's body directly to his corner office, at his request. Less than an hour later the experiments had begun.
11. Covenant - Like Tears In Rain - United States of Mind
April 27th - The Victor
There were many beautiful days after the end of the last dimensional rift. The world was saved. The threat of the World Three was seemingly broken. The Net Saviors got back to their normal lives. It was not the end, of course. Nothing ends so cleanly. But it was a period of relative peace they would reflect on in their harder times.
Lan never was the same after he returned. He wouldn't talk of what happened there except in generalities. Dr. Regal, even when he regained his memory and once more threatened the world, could never clearly remember that night. Lord Wily, if he saw anything, would not speak of it. All Lan ever said to people was that Zach Glen had died. He wouldn't talk about the circumstances for many years, and only then to Mayl many years later. It was the only time, he told her, he ever truly felt like he had failed.
For a time, Lan didn't want to NetBattle. It wasn't a matter of serious concern during the short period of peace the world enjoyed. But peace doesn't last forever. New threats emerged to the Internet and the world. He was needed. Lan wanted to resist the call. He didn't want to face the possibility of seeing a friend die in front of him again. But he could no more ignore the cries of innocent people than he could deny his own nature. His conscience demanded that he act.
The moment came when Dr. Regal kidnapped his father to try to unlock the secrets of SPECTRUM once again. It was the biggest mistake Regal could have made. Lan pursued him with an intensity that no one had ever seen before. Lan and MegaMan became two sides of one blade, an invincible Net Savior driven onward by all of his friends. He would not give up even in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable odds.
At the final battle, Dr. Regal and his army of Darkloids once more fell before Lan's WideSwrd. There was never any real chance that he would have succeeded. Not against Lan Hikari. The WideSwrd was at Dr. Regal's neck. Lan stared down into his eyes. Eternity passed as the darkness in his own heart whispered in his ears. End him. Make him unable to hurt anyone ever again. He's nothing but darkness. Just like you.
But Lan would not. He remembered why Zach Glen fought. It wasn't because he was angry. It wasn't because he wanted to hurt people. Zach Glen fought and died for his world because he had the power to make a difference. He died so that other people could be free. He believed in what his father had said all those years ago.
Lan drew the blade away, letting the authorities take Dr. Regal into custody again. It would not be Lan's last battle. There would be other tests, other challenges. It would be a long time before he would finally set his PET down and fight no more. But he would never forget the lesson he learned on that April day. It would be something he would pass down to his own son as they visited the grave they had made for the stranger every year: Never give up on anyone, no matter how humble they might be. Even the most ordinary man can learn to become a hero.
Centuries later, another young man would once again prove those words to be true, doing battle with a threat from beyond the stars. But that is another story.
12. Rise Against - Survive - The Sufferer and The Witness
May 2nd - A Place Without Pain
One last hole. One final pinprick in space, and it would be enough. The next rift would be the last. The destabilization was growing on its own now, and only needed just a little more power to reach critical mass. Then, when everything was in alignment, matter would become energy, and energy would become matter. Earth would remake itself into what it should have always been.
It had taken him so much time to set up every contingent event. He had interfered with so many worlds. Through his actions, he had doomed empires, caused plagues, killed countless people ... and in doing so, prevented any other world from being a possible outcome but the one he wanted. So many Earths had to be broken to clear the way for his one, most perfect Earth. But soon its time would be at hand. All of the sacrifices would be made worthwhile, allowing this paradise to come into existence.
The unearthly fire contained within his machine glowed with energies that should have never been in his universe. It was an abomination, flaring with colors that had never been before. The roar it made within its containment vessel would have been deafening had he ears to hear. He did not realize that it was calling out to the void. Even if he had, he would not have stopped. Not when he was so close. Nothing would stop him now.
The anticipation of the end of his suffering filled him with a desperate joy. There would be an end to his loneliness. When the new world was created, he would guide it every step of the way as a benevolent overseer. There would not be the lengthy periods of atrocity and horror that defined his world. Villains would not be allowed to pose a threat to the established order of things. People would be safe and happy and content. It would be what he had ...
No. What humanity had always wanted. His wants were not relevant. He was doing this for them, for the people he loved. For his family. Not himself. The only thing that separated him from the enemy was that he did not do things for himself. Always for others.
The darkness continued to approach. The shimmering light should not have been. It had no consciousness in the sense we know it, but since before time, its purpose was to extinguish that light. In another universe, that light had a name, a face, a self-created purpose. In this one, it was only ever food for that which had always been.
The barren Earth sailed through the growing void. The end of its long suffering would soon be at hand, regardless of whether its last living inhabitant succeeded in his mad plan or not.
13. Nine Inch Nails - In This Twilight - Year Zero
May 8th - She Who Knows The Orphan
The official account of the incident had little resemblance to the actual events that took place. The dimensional rift in the Kansas City arcology and the individuals who appeared out of it were a hallucination caused by an airborne biological weapon, which culminated in the strange explosion that afternoon that had much of the immediate area evacuated. The sightings in Berlin were an Archer Industrial Systems experiment gone awry; the company was fined, and Mr. Archer submitted a formal apology to the World Welfare Wardenship Trust for the inconvenience. The scientist believed to be responsible, a Dr. Avinash Martin, was re-educated and returned to AIS as a productive citizen. It was all very tidy.
There was no official news of the Cairo episode, but this was by Her design. She knew they would come for the portal once that accursed man got in contact with them. She wanted to contain them. She believed her invincible clone army would stop them. She had been mistaken. She thought Dr. Landon DeVry would have mauled them enough for them to be finished off. Again, She had been wrong. Her internal defenses could have easily made smoking ashes of them, had that accursed man not hacked into Her impregnable cyberworld and set the defenses to attack themselves. So She attempted to deal with it herself. After all, She could not be defeated.
She had been defeated. They had overcome Her invulnerability and beaten Her down. She had not known such pain for centuries. In Her anger, She attempted to burn them away in a sudden power surge, but they escaped before it could take effect. The child, the main control system for Her portal, turned from Her when Her weakness forced her to leave. She cursed herself for Her error. But it was too late now. The child saw to it the travelers escaped, then stole the entire portal system away from Her.
They were all gone now. Her pyramid had an unsightly hole in it that was being quickly mended. She would not be able to remake the portal without re-creating knowledge that She had forbidden to her subjects. This was the only one She had ever known of, and the men who had made it were politically incorrect and had been eliminated. Only fractions of their knowledge remained. She despaired for a moment over what had been lost, but it passed. This world belonged to Her. Nothing could change that. She had learned enough from her scrying to know how to proceed through the rest of this age of man.
Her wounds healed. Once more, She sat on Her throne in the invisible eye of Her pyramid and looked across Her domain. She had the divine right to rule this weak, mortal world. They had only momentarily touched an alternate version of reality, and Her work had quickly erased all traces of it from their minds. She was confident that no one else would stand in Her way. With that vile man gone, and the foreigners thrown back to their own world, there would never again be any opposition to Her empire. She was the ultimate power in this world.
Or so She believed.
14. The Tea Party - Babylon - Transmission
May 8th - Samsara
His beautiful machine burned away in the frames between seconds. He had failed. The energy he had collected was being thrown wildly into the void, destroying the ruins of Ragnarok as Zero had once tried to do. But as Zero had failed, he had failed. There was now no more hope.
All he had wanted to do was to relieve the suffering that all of the people he had ever met felt. He wanted an end to war, to death, to evil itself. He had a grand plan to do this, constructed over the eternity in which he existed in silence. He would draw energy from other worlds and re-create an Earth in his -- in the image of his ideal. It did not matter how many worlds he destroyed to do this, because they were all flawed. They were all filled with pain and darkness and wickedness, and he had taken up the fight against evil almost from the very day he was activated. It was his task to destroy them. The good who perished were better off.
His world would have excused all of his horrible crimes. All of his failures. His weakness. His inability to make his own world beautiful and peaceful. The longer he had lived, the more he failed. First there was Sigma, then the Elf Wars, then his own duplicates, and then finally Dr. Weil himself. Each time he failed, more and more of his world was destroyed until only this one piece, the intact shell of Ragnarok, remained. He used that and the technologies he found hidden in the wastelands to create his now doomed dimensional formatting machine.
Seeing some other version of himself, a version who had not lost everything he had ever wanted, briefly awakened what he had once been. Perhaps it was that piece that kept him from completely destroying his opponents. He could see that they were good. It always hurt him to harm good people. He did not want to hurt any more. That was the entire point of his endeavor.
But it was fruitless. They were right. Now matter how hard he worked, there would always be an impurity in the system. He could not plan for everything. He did not plan for the insane cyborg, Elpizo, and his desperate assaults. Even as he planned for resistance, Omega was an inadequate defense. The remaining X-drones were useless. Like all the men he had ever fought, he underestimated the courage of those who would oppose him...
The Nothing came. It passed through the final chamber, erasing everything he had created. It looked at him, a speck of stardust, the last living thing on Earth, before it pressed in to consume the last piece of light in its path.
He had no fear. As he regarded the Nothing, and the dying of the light around him, his craving for an end to pain stopped. He saw the end before him. In this, in oblivion, he would finally be free of his pain. He would rejoin those who had left him...all of those people he had left behind while he miserably lived on, shackled to the physical world, then the virtual. Now he would let go. Now he would accept his fate without fighting on any more. His war was finally over.
X closed his eyes for the last time. He was finally free.
15. VNV Nation - As It Fades - Judgement
Trinity
June 18th - Adaptive Radiation
Dr. Weil's forces oozed across the European theater like an oil spill. They were neither particularly rapid nor especially slothful, but the movement outward was steady. They seemed able to flow around the Repliforce lines, advancing further and further outward. Paris looked to the east nervously each morning, expecting to see the banners of Dr. Weil's Pantheon out their windows as they woke.
The allied forces were taking losses from fighting the Pantheon. Despite having superior firepower, the Pantheon was recruiting from the areas they established beachheads in. The poor, the desperate and the mad filled the ranks of the new Pantheon forces, making them an unpredictable and frightening enemy for normal infantry to fight. The ones that lasted long enough to start to gain augmentations seemed to become monsters bent only on conquest.
The promise of power fed the dreams of the Pantheon. They drove ever-onward, taking greater and greater losses. The ground was soaked with their blood, but the mud helped them resist losing ground. They never saw their dead for long, so had little concept of just how much they were losing. The bodies were being taken back to Belgium to be given great honor, they were told, and had no reason to believe otherwise.
The steady flow of flesh pleased her. She allowed the Numbers to feed Weil's fanciful dreams of world conquest, all the while letting his regular forces bleed out from the onslaught of her enemies. They always came back to her. They let her continue her work. In death, these fools would allow her to create a perfect world. Her world. A world without pain.
The Numbers were her greatest success to date. The blasphemous processes that allowed them to become what they were could now be duplicated far more efficiently. The early process was notoriously failure-prone. Yet both she and nature abhorred waste. She had found uses for those who did not survive the process. They would learn of this soon enough.
The insistence of the enemy to strike at the core of Weil's so-called empire was a continual nuisance. She would need to teach them to show proper restraint if any of her future projects were going to have acceptable odds of success.
There were the others to deal with as well. She felt them moving around the periphery, probing it to see if they could find weaknesses. She would deal with them next. Perhaps some of them could be reasoned with ... for is not the enemy of my enemy my friend?
1. Nonpoint - The Truth - Recoil
June 24th - Divergent Evolution
Weil's outward expansion was stalling. Even with the victories of her Numbers, they were running out of fresh recruits. The enemy was beginning to rally, though Weil himself may not have even seen the tell-tale signs.
Paris was the last outrage. Europe was now, at least for the time being, allied against Josef and her beautiful Numbers. There was now an organized resistance movement as well as the standard military response. This would complicate her plans, but she was absolutely confident in her ability to defeat any and all opposition. These were only robots and humans. Lesser animals. Inferior.
The flesh pleased her. She kept whispering sweet dreams into Weil's ears about the inevitable growth of the Pantheon army as body after body returned to her. This was an excellent opportunity to test the new process she had developed, and so far it appeared to be an unqualified success. This would be very marketable were she still involved with the private sector. She doubted Elpizo would be able to appreciate the irony of things, but then again, when did he ever?
The loss of one of her laboratories was irritating. What was more distressing to her were the number of forces present apparently from independent information. STARS was almost a natural reaction, but having Umbrella and Black SHIELD operatives independently investigating the site meant there was some fundamental breach in her operational security. There could have only been one source for this inevitable betrayal. William Wiggin.
She had grown to despise Wiggin over these years, though she had kept her feelings secret in an effort to throw off his interminable calculations. For all of his vitriol about adding machines taking over the world, he was little better than their number with his absolute reliance on planning and strategy. Many believed Wiggin had no weaknesses, having removed any passion or emotion from his soul to become a living incarnate of his chosen element. But even William Wiggin had weaknesses, and over many years she found one that would be suitable to lure him into a trap.
But this would be a project for after the current disaster ran its course. She needed to tighten the chains around Dr. Weil's neck to demonstrate him the necessity for serving her absolutely. But first, Daniel had made another painting for her and wanted her to see it. It was always wonderful to see art of herself, even if some of it could not be put on public display. She would need to reward him.
...this time, she would need to be more careful about leaving marks.
2. The Prize Fighter Inferno - Accidents - My Brother's Blood Machine
July 1st - Three Against The World
He had always enjoyed Paris in the summer, and this summer was no different. While the city was gravely wounded, the city of lights would not be so easily snuffed by the actions of foolish robots or foolish men. His favored bench to see it all was on the southern grounds of the Panthéon in the Latin Quarter, allowing him to look over the city in all of its decaying splendor. It was also a wonderful spot to feed the pigeons.
The elderly gentleman, in one of his nicer but slightly archaic white suits, had purchased a day-old baguette from a nearby bakery. He occupied himself by pulling off little pieces of it to feed the pigeons. The warm winds through his long white hair reminded him of his youth. It was so long ago now. He was still much taller than average and had been spared the indignity of losing much of his formidable height, but time's weathering sands had begun to make these trips out into the world much more difficult than they had once been.
But the one thing that could always make him feel young was the presence of a beautiful woman, which is why he had made an appointment to see her. Ada Wong walked up behind the bench and moved to sit to his right. In her immaculate business suit, she seemed like any number of aid workers or businesswomen who frequented that part of the city. The two made a mismatched pair, but in this they were much like the city itself. The old with the new, trying to live in harmony.
"We didn't succeed," she said to him, looking down at the pigeons. She spoke to him like a scolded child would have addressed a beloved grandparent. "Alexia is still alive. We made her more dangerous rather than less."
He kept feeding the birds. Once in a while he made a quiet "cheep cheep cheep" to lure a pigeon closer for a morsel of stale bread. The elaborate butterfly-like embroidery on his cuffs gleamed in the dying light of the day.
Ada continued. "It's likely that if the Guardians weren't killed, they joined forces with her. Brock Mason and Alexia Ashford's combined forces are a serious threat to the world, and that's not even accounting that they have Dr. Weil in their employ now. Not just Europe, but all of the world is in great danger."
Ada looked up at him. "I feel ... I feel like I failed you."
A few moments passed in silence. He tossed another wad of bread at a rotund pigeon before looking down to Ada. His eyes did not hold her in judgment as she had feared. The gaze lingered for a long moment before he returned to feeding the pigeons.
"For evil to truly win, we must not only fail, but refuse to risk failure," he said, his crisp English accent in sharp contrast to Ada's American affect. "We have suffered a setback, but now the world will need to stand up and take notice. They will either find the strength to fight or submit to those horrors of blood and bone."
He pinched off another piece of the baguette, flicking it a little further for the benefit of the smaller pigeons. Ada seemed unconvinced of his sweeping statement. "But people continue to go to his side. Weil, Wily, they're both building their own cities. Ordinary people are helping them now. How can we fight them without becoming worse than they are?"
"I suppose," he says, "we will need to be better than they are."
Another piece of bread was flicked into the near distance. The pigeons scrambled over it as he continued speaking. "The people are fearful. They do not trust in their own power any more. When people are afraid, they seek a strong person to lead them. Dr. Wily and Dr. Weil seem very strong. The task of the free is to show these people that they have the strength to live without fear without needing a dictator to command them."
He looked back down to Ada. "We shouldn't be upset with these people for being foolish. We should work to show them that there is a better way."
"And if they will not listen?" Ada asked of him.
"Then," he said, pulling off another wad of the baguette, "we should treat them as the enemy."
The old man flicked another wad of bread into the pigeons. But as the wad of bread sailed through the air, it abruptly made a right angle and swept up to fly into the hand of his apprentice. "Stop littering, grandpa," Mister Famous said, flicking the wad of bread down into the pigeons to clear a path to sit to the old man's left. "Those pigeons are fat enough without you supplying their crack habit."
Ada rolled her eyes. Next to her, the old man chuckled. "Some times you have to show kindness for kindness' sake, Magician," he said. "Civilization would not exist without charity."
"Civilization is for noobs," said Mister Famous.
"Civilization is where you got my lunch from," the old man said. "and because of that, I still feel it has essential humanitarian value, and cannot in good faith support your idealized anarchist non-state."
Mister Famous reached into his jacket and handed over the paper-wrapped pastrami sandwich he had been requested to retrieve. "If everyone was cool, you could get a sandwich from anywhere just like I can."
Ada continued to look at him disapprovingly. "Not everyone can be who you are, Famous."
"That's because the most wonderful thing about Famouses is I'm the only one," he quipped.
"If only you would go extinct," Ada muttered.
"Children, please," the old man said, putting down his baguette to handle his sandwich with both hands. "You will trouble my digestion. Let us cease our usual discussions for just a short time and admire the success that our heroes have won for us."
The usual bickering ceased, though Ada gave Famous another dirty look before sitting back. Between them, the Mysterious Benefactor looked out over Paris as a spectacular sunset began to happen in the west. Even though the war had not been won, a significant battle had turned to their favor. The war for the world had not yet been lost. There were heroes left in man.
4. Linkin Park - No More Sorrow - Minutes to Midnight
Ragnarok
Prelude
September 8th - Autumn Leaves
The Black Legion marches onward. A seemingly limitless army of the dead, supported by the mad and the desperate, presses forward out of Belgium toward the free peoples of the world. At their head are the Numbers, inhuman monsters with the power to summon robot bodies to do their gruesome work, and the Guardians, the lingering legacy of a tyrant believed dead.
They hunger for the world. They will feast upon its flesh to strengthen itself. They cannot be reasoned with, because reason has long deserted them. They are a monolith, a cancerous threat the world has not known since the darkest days of World War III. It will take yet another World War to defeat them, but even now, the Fimbulwinter looms on the horizon. Many still believe it will never come. Many people are wrong.
Within the armies of Neo Arcadia, rival factions strain for power. Dr. Weil's Pantheon soldiers are far from the disciplined army he had originally inherited. Now consisting of stragglers, madmen and racist zealots, they tear forward like a thunderhead to win their dreams of power, glory and world conquest. As they fall, they are consumed by the beast, Alexia Ashford, and turned into undead servants of the Pantheon army. But these zombie soldiers are only truly loyal to Alexia Ashford and her ambitions to destroy all humans and robots to create her new world of blood and bone.
The Numbers are loyal to Weil only so far as their Mother tells them to be. For now, Alexia is content to give Weil a false sense of security with his robot elites. Perhaps Weil can convince the Numbers that he has their best interests in mind, but only a desperate man would trust in Josef Weil. As time passes, perhaps desperation will set in -- or perhaps the Numbers will embrace Alexia's madness wholeheartedly, as Death Mantis has.
The Guardians despise both Weil and Ashford. Their commander, Brock Mason, is a mysterious figure with his own agenda. He orchestrates the continual low-level conflict between Ashford and Weil in an effort to continually keep them in check, preventing the world from being consumed in fire until he is ready to play his own hand.
In the dark places, Mason seeks to rebuild Black SHIELD to destroy both threats and conquer the world, but he plays a dangerous game. Weil has already betrayed Alexia once to Mason, and nothing would stop Weil from betraying Mason if he felt he gained a new, more powerful ally... nor would anything stop Mason from treacherously throwing Weil to the wolves were his position just slightly better.
This cannot last.
Hidden in a deep place within the earth, a brilliant man continues to tinker with his creations. A brilliant and eccentric man, he was a loner. A thinker. A man of ideas. Ideas forbidden in this society -- or any other. Once, he had been the creator of a great army of men and machines. He thought little of it at the time. What were these simple things to the wonders of the universe? What was making a man to the potential to become a God?
But as time passed, this man, this Professor, saw the error of his ways. Divinity requires both faith and the power to justify its existence. As the world continued to spin out of control, he began to take notice of the problems around him that previously he could ignore. The instrument that had allowed him to gain such knowledge had been broken by near-sightedness and avarice. Monsters were running amok without proper leashes. A guiding hand was needed. Perhaps his hand should place a yoke onto these beasts, if only to quiet their thrashing.
Action would need to be taken. Fortunately, a gift had been given to him to speed this process. One of his sons had returned, though soiled and damaged. He carefully mended his wounds, cleaned his mind of impurity, and used the connection he had sealed inside of him all those years ago to call out to his twin. It would be an irresistible call, a need, a longing, and it would only be fulfilled by returning to his loving arms. He would make them whole, as they had always wanted to be. As he should have made them all those years ago! But, he ruefully yielded, hindsight is always crystal clear. He must go forward now, and leave the failures of the past in the dust.
Wagner's "Rienzi" queued into the laboratory playlist. He smiled with delight, collecting his tools and returning to his work. There was much to be done.
1. Richard Wagner - Rienzi (Overture) - Rienzi
October 29th - The Way Station
The next days passed in a haze for Accel. He wrote reports about his activities over the past two months, put together a debriefing for Django and Sabata (with Otenko's regular "assistance"), and received some standard maintenance on his systems. There was a little office party to celebrate Accel's "promotion" in the aftermath of the incident. Sabata vowed to do battle with Accel at some point in the future as he always did, and Accel continued to let the offer sit open.
He wasn't on active deployment for a while, mostly as a concession by the rest of the World 3 for Mister Famous' "test". Famous was always a loose cannon, and this most recent incident kicked the hornet's nest. The Magician and his tricks would of course get him out of any sort of serious sanction, but the chewing that Famous took from the Benefactor helped to soothe Accel's wounded sense of justice.
It was trivial in the long term. Accel could wait out any sort of trial. He was a perfect, immortal machine, and Mister Famous was ultimately mortal despite his efforts to pretend to be otherwise. One day, he was going to make a mistake, and no one was going to extend themselves too much to save him. Despite his vast cosmic powers, Mister Famous was not well liked by his colleagues. Even by Black SHIELD's standards, Mister Famous had never been in the running to be voted Mister Congeniality.
Accel toyed with the idea of breaking out again, this time for good. He knew enough to be able to chain together a series of jumps that they'd never be able to trace in time to stop him. Accel could swoop in, take Cinnamon away, and go to a dimension where the Earth never developed animal life larger than a passenger pigeon. They could make a new world together. Nothing could stop the two of them together. But he knew he'd never get away with it. It wouldn't be because he wasn't smart enough, because Accel was very clever indeed. Accel wouldn't be able to forgive himself for violating the trust of his peers.
Accel wasn't being held in captivity. He was something fundamentally more than Reploid, and if he decided to leave, nothing was going to be able to get in his way. Calling Mister Famous "the Jailer" was his way of showing some defiance to his authority, but he chose to do what he said when Famous first made the offer to let him travel among the many words. You are responsible for your actions, Famous had said, and in the end, all debts will be paid in full.
For Accel to win Cinnamon, to deserve her, he had a lot of debt to pay. Accel was his own best jailer. Accel would keep on working, keep on fighting, until he had done enough right to balance out the wrong he had done. Cinnamon deserved nothing less.
When the call went out again, Accel strapped on his poncho and went back to doing the job he was made to do. In the many worlds he visited, Accel returned to using his gift to create a better multiverse for everyone. Every night, Accel would think of Cinnamon, imagining that tomorrow would be the day he would finish his task and permanently go home to her. There would be many days between them, and many worlds. Every day, Accel vowed that he would prevail.
One day, he did. But that is another story.
2. Coheed and Cambria - Gravemakers and Gunslingers - No World for Tomorrow
November 5th - Jörmungandr
Rufus ripped himself free from the Antarctic ice, crying out as air was forced back into his lungs. He had been too slow. He should have moved sooner. Rufus should have done any number of things differently, but he had been a fool. And now all of it was gone. Rufus had been buried when the main chamber of the fortress fell, but as always, he had survived.
William Wiggin was no more. The enemy Striders who had torn their way into their home saw to that. It was only his master's foresight that spared the young ones. They were ferried away in a submarine to live in their new home on the opposite side of the continent. Their caretakers knew how to tend to them until such time as a new master would emerge. Rufus was unconcerned with them for now. He had a more pressing mission.
Rufus spent a frantic day searching for his master's body, fearing that it had been desecrated by the murderers or wild beasts. Rufus burrowed through the snow and ice with his bare hands but found only icy blood and fragments of entrails. When there was no more ice and snow to search, Rufus hammered through the ice shelf and swam, plunging as far into the sea as he could bear.
But there was no sign of the monster William Wiggin had become. He had been swept away. Rufus would not be able to bury him, or burn his remains, or give him any of the rites of the honored dead. Rufus' screams of wrath went unanswered across the desolate continent. He cursed the Striders who had acted against his master and Linnea Blossom most of all. Rufus knew she had survived because treacherous Tetsuo had sacrificed his life for her. She would pay, as would those who had been his master's enemies. Their suffering would make Heaven weep.
Rufus gathered up his meager possessions from the ruins of the base. He took only his new manuscript book and the few precious gifts he had received from the master and Mai Atsuki (oh! soft and beautiful Mistress). Rufus also claimed the Aequitas Cipher, still slick with his master's blood. Rufus sheathed it behind his back, resolving to draw it only to kill Linnea Blossom. Only then could it be cleansed of its sin.
With what little Rufus owned strapped to his back, Rufus looked across the blasted, icy wasteland that had been his home. There was nothing here now. Nothing would mark their passing. They may as well have never been. His master, the only man he had ever known as a father, was gone. Only his sister remained, and she was lost to him on her own quest.
The anger rose in Rufus. They would know his master's passing. They would be warned of the righteous fury that would tear apart their perfect world. Rufus struck at the ice and snow for hours, hammering away at the weak points throughout the remainder of the base. The endless sun beat down on him with no warmth, the terrible wind carved against his flesh, but still Rufus toiled. The sounds of his colossal strikes echoed across the emptiness, terrifying all of Heaven and Earth. Huge sheets of ice fell down into the ocean as Rufus toiled, carving a figure out of the Antarctic ice shelf with his inhuman might. He left patters of blood on the snow as his hands began to crack and bleed from exposure, but ignored his pain. Rufus could not be frozen.
When Rufus was through, the 'W' shaped hole in the Antarctic was as long and wide as a football field, and as deep as a man was tall. They would see it with their planes and satellites, and there would be fear in their hearts. They would know that they had unchained a ceaseless demon from beneath the cold sea that would stop at nothing for revenge.
The clouds snaked overhead as Rufus began his journey, hissing powdery snow on him as he headed toward the nearest research station with a teleporter. He would make a legend that day that would live for a century -- the giant man who walked through the Antarctic bare-headed and bare-handed, drenched in blood but unharmed by the cold. They would say he had the blood of a yeti, but this was not so. Rufus' blood burned with the cold fire of Hell itself.
Vengeance would be his.
3. Rammstein - Reise, Reise - Reise, Reise
The Beginning Of The End Of The World
2221 - Karma's Wheel
In 2217, a secret military organization named "Black SHIELD" attempted to take open, direct control of the Earth. Most people today believe it to have been purely motivated by the rapacious desire for power of Black SHIELD's "Directors" -- men who had become accustomed to operating outside of the reach of the law because of their advanced technology and political influence. The instrument of the coup, an orbital weapons system codenamed "KORONA", was designed to destroy every electrical device on the planet. KORONA would destroy the Sigma Virus by removing the means by which the virus spread; the trillions of computer systems that held the modern world together.
The leader of Black SHIELD was an enigmatic man named James Houseman IV. A skilled political operative, Houseman had inherited his position from his father as his father had before him. Those that knew him thought of him as a level-headed, eminently reasonable man. Houseman was a loving father and husband and was, until the day he died, well-liked by most everyone he had personal dealings with. James Houseman did not seem likely to end the world, but yet he brought the world as close to destruction as anyone had ever known.
The story of how James Houseman, banker, husband and father became James Houseman, notorious supervillain, has attracted the attention of numerous scholars. How does a good man come to fall so far? He did not seem to be born to be an evil man, as some men are. James Houseman did not have the innate sociopathy of his peers. At times, he even seemed determined to check their evil deeds for the greater good of the organization. But in the end, James was brought down by the consequences of his actions. Even a good man who does bad deeds must pay for them.
People have argued about the relative merits of his actions since his death, some arguing that he should have had the chance to stand trial and explain himself, others saying it was better that he was killed. Reploids consider James Houseman among the worst villains ever to live, comparing him in the same breath to Elpizo. Human beings, especially European refugees, have worked to rehabilitate his memory as a man who was forced into an impossible situation and attempted to make the best choice he could; he chose poorly, but drawing that conclusion could only be made in hindsight.
The line between a good act and an evil act is sometimes difficult to see, and is almost invisible in war. The path of righteousness is a difficult one even in the best of circumstances, and many people have found it too challenging, too inconvenient, too ... inefficient to follow it. But there is a cost to every action we take. Whether it is determining whose name comes first on an academic paper, or choosing whether or not to rescue a kidnapped soldier, or deciding how much one will pay for one's personal freedom, every action has a consequence.
One day, all debts must be paid.
For nations, right and wrong are often judged in the modern era by examining a set of philosophical tenets called the Four Freedoms. These tenets are the freedom of expression, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. The Four Freedoms were embedded in both the post-Unification United Nations Charter, and have stayed in the United Nations during its Reformation period. Concealed within these four precepts is a necessary Fifth Freedom; the freedom to use any and all means to protect the four freedoms.
Black SHIELD came into existence as an organ of the United Nations because of this belief in a necessary fifth freedom. Operating outside of the law in near total secrecy may have been required to defeat all of the enemies of the United Nations at one time, but allowed for an environment where corruption flourished. Despite what may have been the intentions of the individuals originally involved, their organization became an enemy of freedom worse than any they once intended to fight.
After the fall of the United Nations, the surviving members of Black SHIELD struggled to rebuild their power. Those more loyal to the Illuminated ideals of James Houseman created the Nebula organization. Those more loyal to a desire for absolute power maintained themselves as Black SHIELD. An uneasy peace lingered between the two factions until they became strong enough to become a threat to the world again. When they were able to fight once more, they warred with each other and anything else in their way to strive for total victory.
The shadows would not spread unopposed. A small number of renegades banded together to try to learn about these sinister elements and fight them wherever they appeared. These rogues became known as the Gospel NetMafia, organized under the anarchistic philosophy of the mysterious Mister Famous. They went deep into the darkness, learning about the shadows that lingered at the edge of the visible world. They struggled not to be changed by what they had learned, and the power they took to be strong enough to take the fight to the enemy...
...but the world marches on. A year later, Gospel stands astride a tiny nation of pirates and mercenaries, set in opposition to a world they find to be corrupt. All around them, Nebula and Black SHIELD prepare for one final conflict, where the winner will take all.
This struggle is seen reflected in the world most people know. All of the great powers are strained to their breaking point. Repliforce struggles to contain Weil and Wily while trying to watch the growing menace of the Mavericks. The Maverick Hunters are more conflicted than ever before, with Doctor Light departing to attend to his own business. Rock is silent, putting aside his leadership duties to focus entirely on fighting his own inner demons on the battlefield.
The Robot Masters wax in strength, spreading across San Angeles like a fast-moving cancer. The Pantheon continue to threaten Europe, bolstered by the aid of the Guardians and the mysterious Professor. The Mavericks are growing steadily stronger, robot resentment toward humanity at its highest level in ten years. The Yakuza consolidates power beneath Sera, having won a bloody crime war. The spoils of a wounded world are theirs to take.
It has now between twenty years since the beginning of the Robot Wars. A human generation has been raised knowing only massacres and genocide. A large part of the world that once was has fallen before the rampages of the robot armies or the humanoid monsters of the Pantheon. It seems that the world only gets worse with every passing year. The Earth and its people cannot withstand much more.
The tension that has pulled the world to its breaking point must be relieved. For too long, the guilty have escaped punishment, and the innocent have suffered. Justice has become a worn out catchphrase. Goodness is seen as foolishness, and many types of evil have been accepted as "necessary". With every passing day, it feels that the light of hope has started to fade away from even the eyes of children. They have stopped believing in heroes.
The world created by the Robot Wars has grown old before its time. The Fimbulwinter has fallen, and the war of all against all has begun. All the monsters have risen up and are beginning their inevitable advance toward the last battlefield to decide who will live to create the world that will be born from the ashes.
This is our world. Will you fight to make a better world, or to destroy everything once and for all? Will you ally with those who would dream of tomorrow, or with the ones whose dreams are of an earlier, darker age? Will you strive to find the light, or plunge into the darkness, never to return?
The world is yours. You need only take it. But will you be strong enough to hold it? Can you pay the price the world demands of you, or do some things come with too high a cost?
KARMA'S WHEEL
PRESS START
January 1st - A Harvest Of Sorrows
In a future far from now, they had forgotten her name. It had been too long since it had been used. Had it been decades? Centuries? None of them knew any longer. Some people had called her 'Nicole', long ago, but that too was not her name -- just another alias. There were whispers that in her madness she had herself forgotten the name her parents (or creators?) had given her. She had become nothing more than the illusion she had so carefully crafted.
She had been at one time the most powerful human being in the world, but that time had long come and gone. She had passed her torch to others, but she had perversely outlived her spiritual and philosophical descendants. None of them had ever been so skilled as she, none of them ever so cunning and hard and strong. They had not endured the crucible of the beginning of the Robot Age. They were entirely unready for the madness that her organization had so carefully kept hidden. Those that would not break immediately from the strain never lasted more than a few decades before succumbing to venality or madness, and had to be put down.
Throughout their continued management (or mismanagement, as she often believed it to be) of the world, they came to her for advice. In the interest of the greater good, she held court occasionally from the modest dwelling she now called home. Some times the questions were purely of tactics, some times of philosophy. On a few occasions, she had been called upon to answer a point of historical trivia that she knew by living through the events they had been interested in. Many of the questions they would ask her were things she felt they should have already known.
She could still be surprised, though surprise had become rare for her as she aged. One such surprise came her way when one of the younger administrators, who had never spoken to her directly before, asked a question that to an outsider would have seemed to be a non sequitor: "How was it that you died?"
At first, they thought she had not heard. When her eyes tracked up from her tea to the callow youth who had asked the question, one wondered if he had actually not actually intended for her to answer. He was fearful, having seen something behind her blighted white eyes that he would have rather not imagined. But words once spoken cannot be easily retrieved, and now he faced the consequences of his actions.
She regarded her questioner with her level white stare for several seconds. Then she rose, moving over to one of her bookshelves. Her long white coat, a vanity she retained even after all these years, flowed behind her. With a trembling hand wrapped in black leather, she collected one of her leather-bound volumes, then sat in an armchair by her fireplace. She bid the suited men to sit around her, putting the book into her lap. She carefully opened the text to almost its last third, smoothed a page, and looked back to her audience.
"This," the flickering hologram said, "is the story of my death."
1. Coheed and Cambria - The Reaping - No World For Tomorrow
January 4th - Of All Broken Things
She was watching the Earth die.
The brown-black haze that filled the upper atmosphere appeared to have no end. The debris clouds thrown by the explosions in Belgium and off the coast of New Zealand were joined by plumes of volcanic ash thrown up by the numerous volcanoes that had been shocked into activity. The moon itself had rebelled, a eccentricity in its orbit caused by the destruction of Eclipse further straining the systems that held the planet together.
It was a hothouse, a perfect place for the ants to breed. It could not have been executed more perfectly if Alexia Ashford had planned it herself. The viral bombs she had been carefully planting all over the world went off when her dead man's switch was tripped. It was not enough to instantly consume the whole world, as she had been trying to do, but it was sufficient to cause the Willamette strain of the T-Virus to break out worldwide. The zombies were spreading like wildfire, pushing humanity to the edge.
Through it all, all of the evils of the world were rampaging. There were riots, massive instances of looting, every manner of depravity and horror happening in the backdrop of what a common person would clearly believe to be the end of the world. The Robot Masters and the Mavericks were taking advantage of the chaos for their own advantage, operating almost with absolute impunity. There were no more hands left to stop them, as all the allied forces were too busy trying to protect humanity from its world shattering apart around them.
All of her status screens were red. It had only taken two of the three bombs to create enough electromagnetic damage to disrupt the world's telecommunication networks so completely. Her ship itself had been damaged, but the cloak had held. Its sensors were her only real insight into the world as a whole aside from the scattered reports of operatives on the ground. The vast electronic webs they had weaved around the world to keep it under control had fragmented and splintered. It was a sea of red as far as she could see, broken only by the occasional mirage of a yellow linkage when someone was able to bring a piece of the network back online. For all of her incredible power...
She could do nothing. She could not cleanse the sky. She was not able to repair the networks any faster than the technicians who were desperately trying to mend them could. She did not know how to stop the plague, if it could be stopped at all. Would there be anyone left by the time Ciel found a way to cure the Willamette strain, or by the time Wesker could produce enough of his quasi-functional vaccine?
Her right hand clenched, the black leather around it creaking beneath the force of her grip. "Protoman," Number One swore, tears of rage boiling in her eyes, "You will pay for what you have done!"
2. Coheed and Cambria - No World For Tomorrow - No World For Tomorrow
January 11th - Fenrir
Epsilon laid on the slab in Giga City, staring up at the ceiling. Velguader rested at his feet, holding its silent vigil over its new master. He had been there for days, gradually being mended. Piece by piece, inch by inch, Epsilon began to look like a fully constructed mech and not a monster made out of rubble and hatred. He felt the part regardless of how he might look.
Blues had murdered him in Able City. What still lived was not Epsilon. Blues had murdered him, and murdered Sclera, and four of Cassilda Coriolis' sisters, and over a quarter million other Reploids more. Blues had also rained fire and horror down across Elysium and Eclipse, but those were wounds the humans actually shed tears over. Mavericks, real or imagined, were vermin.
Sclera's body had fused across Epsilon's, melting away when the blast wave hit. They had fallen into the water and sunk to the bottom of the sea, still burning. Then the ships came, thinking to finish him off. Round after round of ship-mounted guns struck him, ravaging his body. But still, perversely, he lived. The fire within him kept him alive, but they could not see.
Epsilon had drifted away in the storms that followed. The water boiled around him, even in the deep blue water. Epsilon had visions and nightmares, screaming out the sights to the heavens. But no one could hear, no matter how shrilly he screamed. No one could see, the darkness having overtaken the earth. He endured the crushing pressures and intense cold of the deep alone.
Epsilon dreamed as he followed the call back to Giga City, his home. He dreamt of wolves and fire, of the Reploid people standing and acting as one. He saw the earth burned clean, and the enemies of the Reploid race burned to cinders. Epsilon had a fierce joy in him as he felt the will of his brothers and sisters acting in harmony. They were an enormous pack, running across the open plain; howling in the night, savage and wild and free, forever.
When he returned, Epsilon's body barely had time to cool from its ordeal before he was screamed at, patronized and dictated to by his lessers. Epsilon was told not to make war against his enemies. He was told that it was wrong to exterminate every filthy man-animal on the planet who dared defy him. He was told that his rage was immoral, and that he was a monster for not wanting to passively accept the torment he would be afflicted with until his dying day. None of them had ever known love as he had. Who were they to speak to him? Their fear carried the funk of a charnel house.
Epsilon ignored his inferiors, giving them non-answers while he found the ones that could be swayed -- and there were more than they would have ever dreamed, the raw wounds poorly hidden beneath the surface of their minds. Epsilon knew his new message would find adherents. The Reploid people wanted, needed, and desperately sought his strength. It was time to become the alpha of the pack. It was the role he had been built to fill.
The mecha-wolves howled again across Giga City, as they had every night since Epsilon's return. They did not howl at the blood moon like most believed. The mecha-wolves howled for Epsilon alone, singing a song of mourning while he slept. There would be no song of vengeance; when he struck, there would only be the unified roar of the Reploid people.
3. Coheed and Cambria - The Hound (Of Blood and Rank) - No World For Tomorrow
January 29th - A Giant's Harp Strums
Electricity arced through the air deep within Skull Quentin. Doctor Wily was at work. His laboratory was barely lit, illuminated only by the sinister glow of his machines; tools of war and destruction, tools of conquest and mayhem. Twenty years Wily had worked, struggling against the world to try to get what he felt the world owed him. Albert Wily believed he deserved to dominate the world. Look at all it had done to him! Look at all of the people who had stolen from him, betrayed him, and attempted to throw him into obscurity! The world owed him so much. He would take it from them by whatever means necessary.
But now Albert Wily's work was growing more feverish and desperate. His iron grip over his destiny was slipping. His one advantage, his ability to maintain absolute loyalty over his forces, was now truly threatened. In the past, lesser, weaker AI designers had tried to challenge him -- and failed. The greatest hackers in the world had struck at his code, and they too had fallen short. Wily had begun to think himself truly invincible, and his hubris had cost him dearly once again. His eternal rival, Thomas Light, had in one evening stolen that which Albert Wily believed was his most sacred right; absolute obedience from his soldiers.
Wily had always hated Light. That blithering fat fool had drained away Wily's youth lecturing him about the 'proper use of science', insisted on using their awesome power to make children -- children! They could have had the world in their fists, could have demanded anything from anyone, and he insisted on wasting his power! Wasting it! Had he been usurped by a man of vision, perh