Author's Notes / About this Chapter:
Regarding this chapter... This is a spin-off/interlude style chapter. Like the previous one, it helps me explain the world-building of this crossover and provides context for certain events that happened before or will happen later in the story. Since I'll be returning to Izuku, Toga, and the "Vigilantism" arc in the next chapter, I'm about to introduce the Angara and other aliens. I wanted to use this chapter to give you an idea of how aliens and alien technology exist on this version of Earth I've created.
This "DLC" won't be continuous; I'll occasionally interrupt the main plot to publish new chapters that continue this side-story. I hope you find Zorai and Velkork entertaining, as well as the plot I've prepared for them, hehe.
After reading this, I know you might be confused about the origin of the Angara or humans in this story. For now, I don't plan to fully explain why an Angara experiences what they do when their Quirk is taken (read the chapter to see what I mean), as Zorai will discover that at the end of this DLC. But as a hint—so you aren't as lost as the protagonists of this DLC—keep this in mind: if you haven't read it, check out the novel "All Tomorrows" and imagine the Jardaan as a "friendlier" version of the "Qu".
By the way, the meanings of the alien words I used in this chapter, can be found in the "Clarifications" section at the end of the chapter.
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this chapter... and I wish you an excellent week. Best regards!
Narrative Clarifications:
o-o-o-o = Third-person/General narrator.
-o-o-o = Scene change.
P-o-V = Narrative written primarily from a character's point of view
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
DLC: Bring Down the Scourge (1)
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Approximately thirty years after a glowing baby was born in a certain city in China, humanity had plunged into chaos.
While the world's governments struggled desperately to contain the social upheaval caused by the appearance of Quirks, a new threat descended upon them. This threat possessed a force so overwhelming it was capable of bringing an entire nation to its knees in record time.
However, from the icy vacuum of space—and beyond the reach of primitive early 21st-century radar—salvation also traveled, intertwined with that very darkness.
The echoes of a old war finally found their way to the Solar System, and with their arrival, the history of Earth would change forever.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
-P-o-V-
The vacuum of space was not silent for Velkork the Invictor.
On the bridge of his dreadnought, the electronic hum of computers translated into a constant prayer, reminding him of an offense he didn´t intend to let go unpunished.
Velkork, a Kett of Ascendant rank whose presence seemed to distort the air around him, sat upon his throne. From there, he watched with contempt through the reinforced viewport as an Angaran frigate—battered, its shields dying in a shower of sparks—fled pathetically.
After the last impact from the destroyer missiles, the rebel ship no longer seemed capable of using its mass effect drives. Having tracked and intercepted them in this unknown system of the "Zetir" cluster, what began as a hunt through the stars had become a pursuit ending in a dead end.
"Their mass effect drives are failing, my Lord," —reported a Destined from one of the side consoles as Velkork watched. —"Their trajectory is now predictable. They will attempt to use the gravity of that gas giant to gain momentum, but it won't be enough to..."
"Let them run," Velkork declared, interrupting a sentence he knew all too well how it ended. His voice resonated with the distorted tone characteristic of his race's leaders—a mark of great military achievement and devotion to the principles of his species.— "There is no corner in this sector that the will of Exaltation cannot reach."
To the Invictor, those Angara were nothing more than prey cornered by a patient predator. He knew that the basic antimatter propulsion system of a frigate could never compete with the vast antimatter reserves of a Kett dreadnought. Sooner or later, they would run out of fuel, and with it, they will be stripped of all hope.
Velkork had the power to erase them from the map at that very instant, but he reserved a far more interesting fate for them than the simple abyss of death. Those rebels had dared to attack one of his labor camps on the planet "Voeld," rescuing servants who were already being prepared for the glory of Exaltation. For that affront, he intended to give them exactly what they had tried to avoid.
"What a stupid race," Velkork thought, crossing his arms. "Resisting becoming part of our glorious empire is as futile as trying to stop breathing; it's a rebellion against that which guarantees their own existence. Utterly absurd. They should feel honored that we detected enough potential in their lineage to consider them worthy of becoming part of our species, rather than being condemned to simple slavery."
For him, and the rest of the war councils, the conflict with the Angara had become a tedious headache endured only for this species' genetic value. Their battle technology, bioengineering, and navigation systems were primitive trash; they possessed not a single remarkable tool the Kett desired to claim.
However, the only reason they hadn't resorted to total extermination or absolute slavery was the Angara's persistence and astonishing adaptability. Their "Kasiri" possessed a variability the Kett had never seen in another species. Unlike other races that usually developed only one or two meta-abilities collectively, 1 in every 100 Angara—instead of emitting electricity or electromagnetic waves—manifested uncommon superpowers: from brute strength, superspeed, and shapeshifting to intangibility and duplication.
Although all these Kasiri depend on an Angara absorbing electrical energy to function, their inherent resistance to electricity and the unpredictability of their powers made them a difficult race to face—and paradoxically, a species worthy of Exaltation.
They were worthy. Velkork had accepted that fact a decade ago. As one of the last Kett born through the traditional cloning method who had managed to ascend to high command, he possessed the sacred right to catalog a species as promising.
"Prepare the assault teams,"— the Invictor ordered as the smoke on the enemy frigate grew denser. —"It´s time for the ignorant eyes of those rebels to behold the splendor of Exaltation."
Velkork spoke his orders with fanaticism. In his hands, a blue orb appeared out of nowhere, wrapped in small, erratic electrical arcs. Once manifested, he stroked it with almost reverent satisfaction, like someone holding a sacred treasure.
That "object" had been part of an Angara's Kasiri—a power he had personally torn from a leader of the enemy resistance, using the authority that his home world, Sarhesen, granted only to the Primordial Kett.
[All For One Sarhesen]—The Kasiri of the ancestors that had become the authority of the empire. It was the divine power of the Kett to claim what rightfully belonged to them from inferior races, absorbing their abilities to fuel the eternal quest for their species' perfection.
Contemplating the glow of the orb, a smug smile spread across Velkork's face. In his mind, he already visualized the future: with every Kasiri assimilated and every new Anointed born under his command, his personal army would cease to be a simple military force and become a legion of unmatched power. His ambition led him to believe that in a few cycles, his strength would be so great that he could challenge the Archon himself to a ritual duel for his position. It was not for nothing the Queen had baptized him with the title of "Invictor" , a name he carried like a banner of blood and glory.
With those final thoughts of grandeur, Velkork gave a silent order with a flick of his hand.
*Zoooom!*-The dreadnought's engines roared, releasing a power that vibrated through the bridge as they left the colossal gas giant behind.
*Booom! Booom! Booom!*-Shortly after, the Kett ship entered a dense asteroid belt. Unlike the enemy frigate, which performed desperate maneuvers to dodge space rocks, Velkork's ship didn't bother to alter its course. With terrifying ease, the dreadnought's laser cannons and missiles pulverized any obstacle in its path, while mass effect shields brushed aside the remaining fragments like specks of dust.
Velkork watched the scene from his command center with a mocking sneer. The Angara must have believed the asteroid belt would offer a place to lose their pursuer; it was a desperate maneuver that only provoked an ironic smile from the Invictor.
Soon, the dreadnought closed the distance to just 500 kilometers from the target. Along the way, the ship made a precise turn to avoid one of the troublesome "branches" of the spatial anomaly the Angara called "Abub-Shame." Translated from the Angaran tongue as "The Heavens' Flood", that space-time distortion spreading alarmingly through the Zetir cluster had acquired a religious connotation for that archaic species. Many of them believed this anomaly—which had already invaded some of their worlds, creating terrible atmospheric phenomena—was a punishment from their gods, the "Anunnaki."
"What absurd ideas. There is no hereafter inhabited by celestial beings. There is only this plane; and the only gods that exist in this universe are us, the Kett."
Following that arrogant thought, the sensors in Velkork's command center emitted a series of shrill beeps, warning of the space-time fluctuations the violet-blue spatial infection was causing in the fabric of reality. However, Velkork dismissed the alerts with another wave of his hand, ordering his subjects to continue dodging without diverting their course. They had survived worse turbulence in the past; a few beeping sensors and tremors in the dreadnought wouldn't stand in the way of his glory.
Ignoring the danger of that energy web that seemed to devour space, the dreadnought pressed on, quickly leaving the anomaly's threads behind to focus all its firepower on the prey ahead.
"..."- At that precise moment, the darkness of space split to reveal a visual spectacle that left Velkork speechless for a brief moment. Two beautiful worlds suddenly appeared before his ship, sharing an almost impossible orbit.
One was a vibrant sphere, wrapped in layers of deep blue and emerald green that betrayed a rich biosphere teeming with life; the other, a similar reflection, though somewhat smaller, almost looking like a habitable moon dancing in synchrony.
In that instant, the Kett captain's attention shifted entirely from the anomaly the Archon had ordered them to avoid. Velkork even rose from his throne, feeling that destiny had just handed him a triple prize: an entire crew of the enemy faction ready to be exalted, and two paradise worlds ready to be claimed.
In Kett military culture, finding habitable worlds was one of the highest achievements one could aspire to. Habitable worlds meant vast lands to erect new colonies, labor camps for unworthy races, military training centers, or planets dedicated entirely to mining or food harvesting. They were treasures of incalculable resources, and he had just found two for the price of one.
"What more could I ask for?". Velkork murmured, joy coursing through his veins as the planets reflected in his green pupils.
*! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !*-However, the thunderous beeping of every alarm on his ship would soon ruin the sweet taste of his discovery. The fascination and joy lasted barely a breath before the shouts of his subordinates snapped him out of his trance.
"My Lord! The Angaran frigate is turning!"
"They are overloading what's left of their mass effect engine!"
"And...They're going to accelerate!"
The pilot and co-pilot shouted with a mixture of disbelief and horror.
It seemed the Angara, knowing they were lost and without enough energy for a safe FTL jump, made a suicidal decision. In an act of sacrifice, they overloaded what remained of their Eezo engine's mass effect core, performed a violent 360° turn, and then—instead of trying to jump to another system—they became a kinetic projectile aimed straight at the dreadnought closing in on them... just 50 km away.
"Evasive maneuvers!". Velkork roared, but his orders, much like his subjects' reactions, came too late due to his overconfidence.
*Booooooooooooooooooom!*-The Angaran frigate rammed the side of the Kett cruiser at speeds exceeding light. The impact not only disintegrated the frigate itself and the dreadnought's kinetic shields in an instant but also tore through the Kett ship's hull, bringing a conflagration of fire and a shockwave that disabled any life-saving systems or secondary propulsion the Kett ship had.
The Kett dreadnought—a titan of metal and technology that was the pride of Sarhesen—was caught less than 5 seconds later by an elemental force the Kett believed they had mastered long ago: gravity. The larger planet pulled them toward its center at a dizzying speed as the ship spun out of control.
"Losing altitude!"
"Mass effect engine failure!"
"Life support systems collapsing!"
"Hibernation area is on fire!"
"We've lost the south, east, and west zone of the bio-engineering chamber!"
"The escape ships... the escape zone... it was destroyed!"
The alarms and screams didn't stop reaching Velkork's auditory organs as the command center filled with dense smoke.
"Prepare for impact!". Knowing their fate was sealed, Velkork ordered his crew to prepare for the inevitable collision. He gripped his command console as he watched through the reinforced window while the atmosphere of that paradise planet began to lick the hull with tongues of orange fire.
Less than a minute later, the emerald dreadnought tore through the clouds like a cursed falling star, heading straight for a mountainous area on an island located in what appeared to be the northern hemisphere of this planet...
The final impact would carve a gigantic crater, followed by an earthquake that would bury Velkork's pride beneath snow and metal.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
P-o-V
The bridge of the Angaran frigate smelled of soot and burnt flesh.
However, the proximity alarms were a distant echo compared to the frantic beating in Zorai's chest. After the ship's scanners detected acceptable oxygen levels on one of the green worlds they had just discovered by pure luck…
…the only possibility of escape flashed through Zorai's mind just as her blue eyes widened, her race's characteristic vertical pupils dilating in terror as they fixed on the colossal Kett ship closing in.
After a time that felt both like an eternity and a heartbeat, Zorai calmed her breathing and finally made a decision. There was a chance, but it required a price in blood. Gathering all the courage she could muster, she gave one last order to her crew:
"You have to leave now!" —Zorai shouted with a commanding voice.— "I will pilot the ship toward the dreadnought to give you a chance. Use the escape pods and head toward that planet! Move!"
Upon hearing her, the bridge was filled with a bitter silence. Shortly after, some hung their heads before running; others complained, searching for a solution that didn't exist, and many others avoided making eye contact with her. In the end, the survival instinct won out, and they obeyed.
When everyone had retreated, Zorai gripped the helm, feeling the cold metal under her palms, ready for her final act.
"No, Zorai. You won't be the one to do this."
But before she could veer the ship toward its destination, the sound of rapid footsteps followed by that sentence, and the sensation of a hand resting on her shoulder, interrupted her.
"….." -Feeling that hand, Zorai shuddered; the touch was strangely soft, devoid of an Angara's rough skin and the characteristic fusion of the last three fingers.
Zorai turned, and the oppressive knot in her throat that had appeared since the hand made contact grew in size.
The person who had returned, defying her orders… was Vaan. One of her three brothers.
She had rescued him from a Kett labor camp at Voeld's North Pole only days ago. Unfortunately, she couldn't prevent Vaan from suffering the punishment reserved for those who resist: Velkork had not only tortured him but had also used the original "Shedu" of Sarhesen on him—the Kett elite's power capable of stealing other Shedu.
Having been robbed of "the essence of the gods," Vaan had been transformed into something unrecognizable. He had lost his bluish skin, his eyes capable of seeing in the dark, and the robustness of his race.
Now his head was oval-shaped, and the top was covered in a kind of short, blue, spiky hair; on each side of his head, small membranes emerged from where small ear canals were located. His eyes, two simple, small circular pieces with punctiform pupils, were accompanied above by what seemed to be more bluish hair growing right on the ridge of his forehead. His neck and chest had lost the membranes and muscular volume characteristic of his lineage, appearing now like disjointed and weak pieces. The fingers on his hands and feet were no longer fused, showing five independent digits. Only his angled legs and the opposable thumb on his feet whispered the memory that he was once, an Angara.
In simple terms, he looked like a fragile, alien version of his species.
Because of this, Zorai felt an immense wave of guilt every time she looked at him, knowing she hadn't arrived in time to stop Velkork from turning him into a "Stripped"... a fragile husk of his own kind.
"Vaan, you have to go…"— After processing the shock of his presence, Zorai pleaded with him. —"You're hurt. You'll find medicine for your shoulder in the pods and..."
"The wounds on my body are nothing compared to the void I feel inside, Zorai…" —Vaan interrupted her with a smile heavy with sadness. His voice lacked the vibrant tone of Angaran vocal cords. —"That monster stole the blessing of the ancestors from me. I can't even feel the electricity flowing in these computers anymore. So, if I leave this ship, I'll only become dead weight for the Resistance... but... I'm sure I can still hold a helm!"
Zorai stepped back. She had heard that for a survivor of a Shedu-theft, life became an existence without purpose. The Stripped would soon seek death on the battlefield, trying to fill their empty "shell"
Until now, it was the first time Zorai had witnessed it firsthand…
…Vaan wasn't looking to die; he was looking to be useful again.
"And besides, sister… You… you are the spark of the Resistance!"— Vaan continued, pushing her toward the escape corridor. When she tried to turn back to stop him, he drew the pistol hidden in his clothes and aimed it at her head. —"Go to that planet, damn it! Find a way to call Aya for help! And when you return to Voeld, kick those damn monsters out of there once and for all!"
*Bang!*- Despite his words, and despite being at gunpoint, Zorai still tried to stop her brother, but the warning shot that grazed her ear the next instant made her finally understand that Vaan had made a non-negotiable decision.
"I... go with the Kvastyr, Vaan..." —Through tears, Zorai told her brother before finally making her retreat.
"My dear yalaon, get out of here now!"— And with a face full of complex emotions, Vaan made sure his sister left.
With a broken heart, Zorai threw herself into the last available pod. As the hydraulic seal locked her fate, she saw Vaan sit in the captain's chair, gripping the helm with a determination that no Kett could ever take from him.
A few blinks later, through the pod's small window as she entered the planet's atmosphere, Zorai witnessed the frigate emit a blinding flash before its Eezo engine propelled it toward the dreadnought like a massive kinetic projectile.
The explosion that followed lit up the vacuum of space with a burst of pure light that devoured the darkness for a second... a second that seemed eternal to Zorai.
-o-o-o-
Zorai's pod tore through the blue planet's atmosphere like a giant incandescent ball, separating from the frigate's fragments shortly after that cosmic blast sent her brother to the ancestors.
The descent was an agony of heat and G-forces that crushed her against her seat, while the outer hull glowed red-hot. In contrast, the impact against the ocean was only a slightly violent jolt that blurred her vision for a few seconds; fortunately, the mass effect dampeners did their job, saving her life.
When Zorai regained control of her senses, she used her trembling fingers to struggle with the emergency mechanism until the hatch gave way with a snap. Immediately after, the cabin was flooded with the blinding light of a strange sun and dense air, heavy with a tropical humidity that would make her lungs feel weighted for a long time.
Hours later, after swimming and crawling across a white sand beach that shimmered under the relentless sun, Zorai emerged from the turquoise waters of the sea surrounding an island in an unknown archipelago.
As she stood up, leaning on a water-eroded rock, a sharp and familiar pain radiated from her left thigh to her hip. When she tried to take a step, the pain intensified, and she couldn't help but limp heavily, her body tilting to the opposite side to compensate.
Cautiously, her eyes moved toward the source of the pain. On the side of her left thigh, where her light armor should have been intact, there were only deformed remains. The composite material, designed to withstand Voeld's extreme cold and low-energy impacts, was melted and twisted like wax under a flame, grotesquely fused with the underlying fabric of her undersuit. And through an irregular opening in that mess of metal and polymer, a thick, dark-blue trickle began to sprout, sliding down her leg and mixing with the saltwater still dripping from her. It was her blood…
…Seeing that, her memory returned with the clarity of a nightmare. Days ago, during the assault on the concentration camp in Voeld, a burst of plasma rounds from a Velkork subordinate's assault rifle had pierced her defenses. With medical resources scarce and the escape being immediate, Zorai had only been able to provide first aid to her injury.
That was why the poorly sealed wound, subjected to the stresses of space combat and the emergency ejection, had reopened.
At that moment, responding to her will, something in her right arm reacted.
There was no sound, but a subtle vibration traveled through her limb from her forearm to her fingers. Less than a second later, out of nowhere, as if materializing from an adjacent dimension, an intricate gauntlet of completely alien design appeared, wrapping around her right forearm and hand. It didn't look like it was made of conventional metal; rather, it seemed forged from an alloy that combined organic and synthetic materials. The metallic black color was laced with pulsing yellow veins, and on the back of the gauntlet, just above the knuckles, there was an even more disconcerting feature: embedded in the material like a cursed gem, an organic eye with a vertical golden pupil was rotating slightly, as if scanning the environment, until it fixed directly on its wearer's wound.
Shortly after appearing, the eye's pupil contracted. Then, from the palm area of the gauntlet, out of 2 of the 8 small holes that previously seemed merely decorative, a pair of thin, flexible cables with sharp, glowing tips emerged. They began to move like mechanical tentacles, almost as if they possessed their own intelligence, snaking through the air before stabbing with great precision into the edges of the open wound.
In the next blink, Zorai held her breath, bracing for new pain. But what followed was not a cut, but a discharge.
The tentacles glowed, and then a current of vibrant yellow electricity manifested at the tips. Immediately after, the tips reached the damaged tissues, causing Zorai to groan in pain as the extreme temperature of the tips acted as an electro-cautery, searing skin, muscle, and open blood vessels; sealing the hemorrhage in a matter of seconds with a dull, throbbing pain.
All Angara were immune to the harmful effects of electricity, but they were not immune to the temperatures it could confer to its conductors. Ironically, in these circumstances, that proved quite useful.
"I hope it doesn't open again… I highly doubt I'm immune to the pathogens on this planet…". As the smell of burnt flesh filled her nostrils, Zorai brushed aside her catastrophic thoughts, focusing her attention on that basic abilitys of her Shedu…
…At her command, the gauntlet's tentacle-cables retracted back into the palm, disappearing as if they had never been there.
However, the eye on the back of the gauntlet didn't close, even though its wearer was no longer in danger of bleeding out. Zorai still wanted to make use of her Shedu's other abilities; she wished to find any of her other comrades who had escaped the frigate earlier.
In response to that wish, the eye—acting almost like a compass—pointed in a certain direction that involved crossing the jungle that began a few hundred meters ahead.
"Please... let them not be hundreds of kilometers away...". With a frustrated sigh, Zorai thought about how useful and yet annoying this ability could sometimes be. Her father had been a space pirate who possessed a Shedu in the form of a radar-compass that guided him toward what he strongly desired, and her mother had been an engineer whose Shedu allowed her to sprout electronic cables from her back to hack computers, grab objects, or electrify enemies. She had inherited her parents' abilities, combined into the form of this Shedu-Gauntlet. But unlike her father, whose radar pointed exactly to the point in space where his objective was, her Shedu only pointed in the direction, without indicating how far away the object of her desire was.
Reflecting on how frustrating that was, a pain deeper than the physical one took hold of her heart. Without that same imperfect ability, she would never have found Vaan in the depths of the Voeld concentration camp. Her gauntlet-compass, though imprecise, had led her directly to the cell where her brother lay dying under Velkork's torture.
And now, that same compass pointed toward the unknown, but Vaan was no longer anywhere it could point to. He had paid for her rescue with the highest price.
A new knot of sadness and guilt formed in her throat. She could almost taste the salt of the tears that threatened to well up again…
…No. She couldn't allow it. Not here. Not now…
…Every tear was a drop of time and energy she didn't have to lose. She closed her eyes tightly, squeezing her eyelids as if she could crush the emotion inside her skull. When she opened them again, only a cold determination remained, polished by loss.
She took the rifle magnetically attached to the back of her armor. Pressing a button, the weapon released and unfolded with a satisfying metallic snap, reaching its full length of a meter and a half. Then, instead of wielding it for its intended purpose, Zorai inverted it, resting the butt on the damp sand to use as a cane—a third point of support that would allow her to move with greater speed and stability, as the pain in her leg was still so strong she couldn't help but limp.
The cold metal of the barrel making contact with her left palm soon became a tangible reminder of her new reality: survive, move forward, find a way to communicate with Aya, escape this planet, fulfill the duty she had left.
With the iron determination of a resistance soldier who had buried her grief to keep walking, she began her limping march toward the wall of lush, unknown vegetation rising beyond the beach.
She walked toward the possibility of finding other comrades alive: toward the possibility of not being completely alone in this strange world.
-o-o-o
Driven by the hope of finding her comrades, she pushed into the thicket. Her weapon, now little more than a cane, marked her slow progress.
After about three hours of painful marching through a lush, vibrant jungle filled with sounds and animals she had never witnessed before, the sound of voices speaking an unknown language and the smell of woodsmoke reached Zorai's ears. She stopped immediately to evaluate the risks.
Guerrilla instincts honed over years made her slip through the vegetation. She moved as silent as a shadow despite her limp, soon reaching the edge of a clearing.
What she saw as she peered through the leaves of a giant fern paralyzed her. The grip of her weapon slipped from her numb fingers and sank noiselessly into the soft mud.
"By the Ancestors of Aya…"- The whisper broke on her lips just as a sensation of fear and bewilderment began to spread through her heart.
Before her lay a primitive but orderly settlement—a village made of concrete and simple metallic structures situated by a river. In what appeared to be a small port, a group of beings performed daily tasks: repairing fishing nets with agile fingers, carrying baskets, and conversing in soft voices.
At the sight of them, Zorai blinked repeatedly, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. She was convinced that the lack of oxygen reaching her brain, due to her lungs' slow adaptation to this planet's atmosphere, was plunging her into a terrible hallucination.
Those beings… were not Angara. They lacked the colorful and resilient skin, the protective folds on the neck, the eyes with vertical pupils capable of seeing clearly at night, and the fused fingers on hands and feet. But their structure, the basic architecture of their form…
...The curve of the skull and the hair atop it, the position of the eyes and pupils, the structure of the jaw, the apparent fragility of the neck and torso… Except for their straight legs and five-toed feet—lacking the opposable thumb characteristic of the Angara—they were an almost exact reflection of the appearance Vaan had acquired after his Shedu was stolen.
"Is this some kind of labor camp for the Stripped?..." —A cold sweat ran down Zorai's spine as panic began to distort her logic. —"According to Resistance records, this planetary system was supposed to be unexplored by either Kett or Angara... that's why we fled to these coordinates. But... were the Resistance records wrong? Have the Kett been here before? Is this a world dominated by those monsters, filled with the stripped slaves of my people?"
The ideas filtering into her mind were so bleak they momentarily stole her breath. Her heart, beating with absurd speed, soon began to lead her from sadness to anger, from anger to despair, and from despair to fear, as she thought of the slim chances she would have to survive... or be free, if an entire Kett army dominated this planet.
However, five minutes into her observation of the village, her hasty judgment crumbled, and her fear transformed into absolute confusion…
…Because the Stripped Angara were supposed to be incapable of using any kind of supernatural power, making them extremely vulnerable…
…but some of the "stripped" she was watching were using Shedus.
Confusion continued to expand through her psyche as she saw a young woman, appearing as fragile as the rest, raise her hands toward a heavy water barrel. From her palms sprouted a green aura that enveloped the barrel and levitated it effortlessly to the edge of a dock. Another man, lighting a campfire to cook freshly caught fish, used no flint: a small dancing flame was born at the tip of his index finger and jumped to the wood, igniting it instantly. A crying child was soothed when his mother blew softly toward him, and a visible, scented breeze of a soft blue color caressed his face, drying his tears.
Zorai stood perplexed for a long time, watching them and other Gifted individuals who later appeared in the city streets…
...She no longer knew for certain what they were. They couldn't be Stripped Angara, for they used Shedus of some kind. But they looked practically identical to a Stripped Angara. And to make matters even more confusing, their gifts didn't seem related to electricity at all, and were incredibly diverse. Zorai's confused mind slowly filled with wonder at the sight of such abilities with such random effects…
…But soon her wonder turned to horror as her gaze shifted toward the town's central plaza.
There, the atmosphere quickly became chaotic and charged with rage. A group of the "gifted stripped" had gathered into a mob. In the center of the plaza, tied to a post with rough ropes, was a little girl.
Though the word "girl" was a generous term, as her appearance was entirely alien: her skin had a scaly blue-gray shimmer, pulsating gills ran down her neck, her mouth was full of fangs, and her hands and feet were joined by webbed membranes.
Her eyes, large and black like those of a deep-sea fish, looked at the crowd with silent terror as a "stripped" man prepared a rope with a slipknot beside her.
The intention was clear: for some reason, they were about to lynch the alien girl.
Witnessing such a despicable scene of murder, even though her survival instincts told her it would be a grave mistake to reveal her presence to such dangerous individuals, her noble soul told her she couldn't just stand by while an alien child lost her life so cruelly. She would be allowing individuals as cruel as the Kett to end the life of an alien who seemed completely innocent.
Thinking of this, she remembered how the Kett had treated her people since the day of first contact. Soon, the image of the girl seemed to morph into the figure of a small Angara child. Moved by the concept of justice imprinted in her soul, she took her rifle from the muddy puddle and aimed directly at the head of the person about to pull the rope…
"What is that?!"
However, after having the "stripped" man's head in her sights for two seconds, before she could pull the trigger, the trees on the other side of the village bent and branches snapped. A stampede of infuriated "angaroid" creatures came charging out of the undergrowth toward the plaza.
"Are they… more aliens?!". Seeing the enraged mob, Zorai couldn't help but categorize them as more unknown alien species.
A being with the head of a beast charged growling, ramming two of those about to pull the rope. Once struck, the "stripped" were sent flying by the "Beast-Alien."
An angaroid creature resembling a worm, whose arms unfolded into a swarm of razor-sharp tendrils, lashed the air, cutting the ropes holding the fish-girl. A young man whose face was shaped like a different beast had a cluster of enormous bone spikes on his back, which he launched forward like darts. The darts embedded themselves in the ground, forming a barrier between the girl and the crowd.
Once that barrier was created, more and more "alien" creatures continued to emerge from the thicket…
...and then the conflict erupted into a cacophony of screams, supernatural powers, and bestial brutality. The "gifted stripped" counterattacked: a man summoned a wall of earth that rose from the ground to block a charge; a "stripped" woman sprouted poisonous spines from her wrists that flew toward the aliens; another launched gusts of compressed air that rumbled like small claps of thunder.
The battle became fierce in no time. Chaos spread through the small village like fire fed by oxygen.
Those who looked like aliens against those who looked like the stripped of her own kind fought to the death, carrying an indescribable hatred that Zorai could see in every attack and facial expression. And in the middle, the fish-girl sobbed, not understanding why her simple existence had triggered such a battle.
Zorai tried to stay on the sidelines of a scene that seemed like a total derangement of nature. Her initial fear of the "stripped labor camp" had evaporated, replaced by total bewilderment.
A bewilderment born of a chaos she simply didn't understand; a chaos full of beings that confused her with every appearance and action. She had no frame of reference for what she was witnessing: Was this the work of some kind of Kett biological experiment? Had she gone completely mad? Had she landed on a planet where her lineage had mutated, losing their Angara traits and fighting for territory with invading alien beings?
Zorai suppressed the furious beating of her heart as much as she could, trying to ignore the confusion while attempting to focus on finding her comrades…
…However, when she noticed the fish-girl was separated from the group of aliens and was about to be executed by a "stripped" man breathing fire from his mouth, almost instinctively, she took up her rifle again and aimed.
*Bang!*- She didn't know what kind of world she had fallen into. She didn't know what those creatures were. She knew nothing. The only thing she knew in that moment was that blowing the head off that heartless "stripped" man was the decision her kind heart deemed right that day. It would later grant her feelings mixed with bitterness and irony, for before arriving on this world, she had been saved by a Stripped man whom she loved with all her heart.
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P-o-V
The silence inside the dreadnought was deeper than the permafrost already beginning to strangle its hull. The air smelled of a mixture of molten metal, burnt ozone, and the decomposing flesh of his less fortunate subordinates.
Velkork emerged furious from the wreckage of the command center, covered in metallic dust and frost that partially coated his elite clothing.
His skin, reinforced by a dermal-hardening Kasiri he had taken long ago from a wild animal called a Taurg, ensured he had barely any superficial scratches after the impact. On the other hand, his status as "the Unbeaten" was bleeding profusely, as was his pride, following his failure.
Once he finished brushing off the dust and snow staining the prestige of his captain's uniform, Velkork walked with resounding steps through the twisted corridors of his cruiser, where the emerald-black metal of the Kett fused grotesquely with the virgin snow leaking through the hull breaches.
The scene he discovered after traversing the main corridors of what was once one of Sarhesen's most powerful dreadnoughts was now nothing more than an elegy of ruin: the Mass Effect Core, the ship's heart, was cold and dark. The communications room, his link to the empire, was a jumble of broken glass and fried cables hanging like intestines. The engineering room, once bustling, was now a silent mass grave for his technicians, whose bodies lay fused to the consoles by the heat of the impact.
"It seems I was wrong to think they would be useful to the empire... They were nothing but a waste..."-He hissed with contempt, passing the main hibernation room, whose doors were blown inward, revealing empty chambers or, worse, occupied by bodies frozen in agonized poses.
When he reached the medical section in the less damaged lower levels, he encountered a relative miracle that lowered his fury by at least one notch: the northern zone of the bioengineering room, where the sacred process of Exaltation transformed the raw flesh of inferior races into Kett glory, was structurally intact. The containment and cloning tanks, the nutrient fluid bags, the surgical dissection tables, and the genetic analysis benches were still standing. And, most crucially, the emergency Exaltation chamber was intact.
The empire's most purist senators and priests had always complained about the inclusion of such a fixture in warships built over the last two hundred years. Since this type of chamber ignored the prolonged rituals and offerings to the Ancients, omitting the ceremonial tributes that should be dedicated to species or individuals destined to be elevated as Anointed, they considered it heresy. But on the battlefield, where troops could run thin and casualties mounted, the ability to obtain reinforcements relatively quickly was worth every broken oath.
Velkork analyzed the state of the exaltation chamber for a moment, remembering the spineless complaints of those incompetent politicians who clung to ritual over efficiency. He felt a slight satisfaction seeing that the core of that vital technological jewel remained operational. However, that fleeting tranquility vanished as soon as his gaze swept the entire room. The silent abandonment of the place reminded him of the harsh reality: the geneticist doctors, the priests of this sacred science, lay dead at their posts, betrayed by the fragility of their un-enhanced bodies.
Velkork—a warrior and administrator born for authority and conquest, not for the delicate rituals of bioengineering—realized with growing frustration that this technology, though physically present, was now a weapon without projectiles, a forge without fire. If he managed to capture those Angara who had escaped at the last moment from the suicidal frigate, he would not be able to use this chamber to purge their crimes and claim their forms unless he found a living doctor on this site... or located one in the last hibernation zone, located on the rest deck of the special forces. These were troops whose physical attributes had been enhanced—even beyond standard Exaltation improvements—through elite genetic alterations, rewards for exceptional achievements in war.
However, as he headed to what was left of the special forces' rest deck, his persistence was not rewarded as he hoped. In a reinforced corner, protected by collapsed beams that had diverted the worst of the damage, ten of the thirty hibernation pods blinked with a dim but steady light. All the Kett lying inside belonged to his best soldiers, the elite of his personal guard. But as he read the name inscriptions and basic biographies projected on the tactile holograms of the sealing doors, one fact became coldly clear: none of them were doctors.
Velkork cursed the Angara with renewed hatred, a guttural whisper that echoed in the empty chamber. He swore that if he couldn't turn them into Kett through Exaltation, he would at least inflict upon them a death so long and painful that their agony would echo to the ends of Zetir.
Then, with a grunt of restrained effort, his powerful hands forced the pods' emergency opening mechanisms. With a long hiss of cryogenic vapor, the doors burst open. Ten Kett supersoldiers, dazed and trembling from the sudden return to wakefulness but physically functional, fell to their knees on the metallic floor, coughing violently as their systems reactivated in a world in ruins.
Velkork didn't wait for them to recover completely. With fury contained in every fiber of his being, he watched as, one by one, the soldiers struggled to master their numb limbs. When half of them managed to stand without staggering, his patience—already thin—ran out completely. He didn't bother explaining the catastrophe, the Angaran mutiny, or the crash. They were soldiers, not advisors; their duty was to obey, not to understand.
"On your feet, carrion!"— he roared, his distorted voice echoing like muffled thunder in the closed chamber. —"Your rest is over. Extinguish the residual fires. Seal the breaches of the most important rooms with whatever you find among the rubble. Turn what is left of this husk into a defensible burrow. I'm going out to evaluate this frozen wasteland and discern where your comrades' incompetence has thrown us"
Without waiting for confirmation, without tolerating a single hesitation or show of weakness, he turned on his heel with perfect military coldness. His next steps led him directly to the edge of the largest breach in the side of the ship: a 100-meter-long open wound tearing through the hull. Standing on the edge of the breach, a mountainous landscape stretched before him, relentlessly covered in snow under a blue sky.
He inhaled deeply. The freezing, strange air of this world filled his Kett lungs, causing only a small internal pinch—an insignificant chemical alarm signal. A second later, his superior physiology—the same that allowed his species to survive in the vacuum of space for hours—adapted. The alveoli reconfigured, internal filters purged strange chemical traces, and oxygen, though in a different proportion than on Sarhesen, was assimilated perfectly. This planet, at least in that aspect, was not a threat.
Immediately after, he concentrated and activated another Kasiri from his personal collection: [Guiding Wind], a Kasiri he extracted from an aerokinetic master of the T'sori, a feathered race from the planet Salaam. In the vacuum of space, the power was as useless as an oar in a desert, but on any world with an atmosphere, it granted him absolute mastery over air currents on a personal scale. Activating it, he felt the flow of the freezing wind around his body not as an alien force, but as an extension of his will. With a thought, a thin layer of air swirled around him, forming an imperceptible aura that enveloped his body.
Then, with the serene and ominous grace of a predator for whom gravity is a mere suggestion, he rose, flying smoothly over the field of twisted debris and the crater created by his dreadnought's impact.
With no interest in further observing that reminder of his fall from grace, he left behind the column of black and gray smoke that still stained the sky like a banner of defeat, and disappeared into the freezing clouds.
-o-o-o
At an altitude of fifty meters, gliding over the snowy slopes like a nightmare vulture, Velkork headed toward the most intense heat source pointed out by his eyes—enhanced by a Kasiri stolen from a species whose only contribution to the empire had been this infrared vision with telescopic magnification—a port city. He remained hidden among the wisps of fog and low clouds, his pair of green eyes minutely scanning the activity bustling below.
Confusion, a rare and unpleasant sensation for him, soon nested in his mind after his first glimpse of that city.
"What aberration is this?". He murmured to himself, the freezing wind stealing the rest of his words.
The structures below were made of concrete and steel, the technology of a civilization that had barely surpassed the industrial age, which seemed pathetically primitive to him. But the inhabitants... they had certainly piqued his interest... as well as evoked his confusion.
In that city, which was a cauldron of conflict, he observed thousands—tens of thousands—of beings who looked like Stripped Angara (except for their clumsy lower limbs), fighting fervently against "Kettoid" creatures with bestial forms.
In an alley, a man with rock-like skin and fists of hail traded blows with another whose fat-fish face vomited corrosive acid from his mouth, melting the pavement. Further away, in a plaza, a "Stripped Angara" woman fired freezing rays from her eyes toward a crowd of creatures with bestial limbs and scaly skin, who charged at her, breaking windows with claws and tails.
"Did a Kett captain arrive here centuries ago?"—he thought, as a poisonous suspicion grew within him. —"A renegade who found this isolated world, stripped a large part of the population of their Kasiri for his own benefit, and then hid the discovery from the Queen and the Archon to avoid sharing the loot?"
As his doubts grew, his eyes captured more scenes: at a pier, a man whose head had been replaced by that of a beast similar to a Drall unloaded containers with ease and threw them against other "Stripped Angara." In a side street, a woman with canine facial features and a thick tail ran after a vehicle with unnatural speed. And in a marketplace, a group of normal-looking "Stripped Angara" argued heatedly with another cluster of bestial beings. One of them, a "stripped" teenager, spread his hands in frustration, and a concentrated blast of fire erupted from his palms, forcing the others back by erecting a wall of flames on the ground between them. Beside him, an older woman, with a gesture of annoyance, made several boxes of fruit float in the air, rearrange themselves, grow in size, and sprout sharp teeth.
Then, Velkork saw supernatural abilities of all kinds: heat rays shooting from palms, shadow blades sprouting from shoulders, water tentacles emerging from backs to strangle.
After witnessing such mysterious acts, the Kett captain stopped mid-flight, completely fascinated.
"I'm not imagining things... My own Kasiri indicates that those 'stripped' have Kasiri... Which should be impossible. And yet, they have them. That means... they aren't stripped Angara. Perhaps they are another species related to the Angara? Or am I facing a case of convergent evolution on a cosmic scale?". Velkork's analytical mind tried to find an explanation; however, with too many questions and no clues to guide him, he decided to focus on what seemed to be the most interesting characteristic of those creatures.
"Hmm. Whatever the case, their abilities seem completely random... They show no defined pattern or 'theme.' Quite fascinating". A whisper full of greed began to filter to the surface of his mind.
In that small, remote, and filthy port city, Velkork was witnessing a genetic variability of Kasiri that far surpassed any record in the sacred archives of Kett Exaltation. Before him, a random torrent of abilities unfolded—a disordered feast of supernatural DNA waiting to be cataloged, claimed, and perfected.
A spasm of pure, raw desire ran through his body as he reached that conclusion.
"If this primitive race exhibits such diversity in such an insignificant settlement..." —a smile that was nothing more than a crack full of sharp teeth formed on his face— "...then this planet is a world overflowing with possibilities. A quarry of biomass that would allow the empire to become the most formidable force in all of known existence."
For Velkork, the city soon ceased to be a center of civilization. In his mind, it was transformed into a harvest field. Its inhabitants were no longer people; they became specimens, organic raw material of incalculable value.
As he watched the creatures, he mapped out an initial strategy for the conquest plans emerging in his mind: with the major functions of his dreadnought disabled and only ten soldiers at his command—and no way to communicate with his home world—he immediately understood the optimal strategy. A direct conquest would be difficult or impossible if these creatures unified as a species against a common enemy; an invasion could provoke unpredictable resistance, as had happened with the Angara, whose Kett first contacts underestimated them believing they only manipulated electricity.
Instead, a silent infiltration—creating a loyal faction, studying these creatures' Kasiri, decoding their secrets, and finally, once he managed to repair the ship's communications, implementing a mass Exaltation program (after convincing a large part of this primitive population that it was best for their survival) would not only grant the empire incalculable strength but would restore his status and catapult him beyond the Archon. The Kett would become impregnable gods, masters of an arsenal of supernatural powers as vast as the cosmos.
With a new purpose burning in his eyes, the Kett captain descended like a shadow toward the dense coniferous forests on the outskirts of the city. His landing was as soft as a snowflake, but his intent was as heavy as a mountain. The conquest of this world had already begun without its primitive civilization knowing—not with the roar of cannons, but with the haunting silence of a predator that had just found hunting paradise.
-o-o-o-
Before entering the city, after walking for about five minutes with a growing sense of joy as he imagined the possibilities of this species' Kasiri, he didn't have to wait long to be the first Kett to claim the first Kasiri from these primitive but high-potential creatures.
The sound of hurried footsteps and gasping soon reached him. A young "Stripped Angara," normal in appearance but with bloodshot eyes and a face contorted by hatred, burst into the clearing. He wore tattered clothes and had burns on his arms.
Upon seeing Velkork, the youth didn't see an alien. He only saw another "mutant," one stranger than the others... or so Velkork thought, after analyzing that this species had some racial conflict with those whose Kasiri made them resemble animals. Or perhaps those were also aliens; Velkork wasn't sure yet, but the "Gifted Stripped Angara" definitely didn't tolerate the appearance of those who looked too different—a thought so pathetic and primitive it almost made him laugh as he watched the creature's expression and heard its shouts. Its language was being translated almost by magic by the Kasiri he took from the Meldid race.
"Another monster!"— the teenager screamed, his voice thick with rage and despair.— "Is destroying our city not enough for you?!"
Without further warning, the shirtless youth arched backward. His lower abdomen, which had a kind of mirror embedded in it, began to glow unnaturally. From that navel-mirror, a thin, bright beam of white laser energy erupted with a hissing zzzt, slicing through the air directly toward Velkork's chest.
But despite how dangerous the shot seemed, the Kett captain didn't even flinch. His skin hardened, taking on a stony appearance, and with a flick of his right hand, he deflected the laser, which ended up destroying the wall of a house in the distance.
Witnessing the ease with which his enemy brushed off the attack, the youth stood agape, shock freezing his next move. It was a terrible mistake.
Velkork closed the distance in an instant. His left fist, reinforced by his dermal-density Kasiri, slammed into the creature's upper abdomen (not covered by the mirror) with controlled but brutal force. The air escaped the youth's lungs with a dull thud, and he doubled over, falling to his knees.
Velkork would give him no time to recover. Holes appeared in the palm of his right hand. Once those apertures manifested, he grabbed the creature's neck with that hand and lifted him off the ground as if he weighed nothing.
The youth kicked, his hands clawing uselessly at the Kett's hardened skin.
"A curious ability, but wasted on such a weak vessel". Velkork said, now speaking in the creature's language thanks to the Meldid Kasiri, his distorted voice sounding like the cracking of old bones. He chose to speak their tongue, for he could not fill the creature with despair if it could not understand him.
With that said, after concentrating, Velkork activated the true power that made him a high-ranking officer in the Kett Empire: All For One Sarhesen...
...Toward the holes in his palm began to flow a scarlet energy, imperceptible to the primitive creature but clear to the Kett. At the same time, the mirror on the creature's lower abdomen slowly faded until, once the energy emanating from the youth vanished, the mirror disappeared completely.
The next moment, the youth's body went rigid. His eyes rolled back—not from suffocation, but from an unbearable sensation: he felt something fundamental, something that had been at the center of his being since he could remember, being torn away.
In seconds, it was all over. The red glow died out. The holes in Velkork's palm closed. The youth in his grip no longer kicked; he was unconscious—alive but empty, his breathing a weak thread.
Once finished, Velkork let him drop onto the dirty snow without a second look. He didn't kill him either; he didn't consider staining his hands with such a primitive and weak creature to be worth the effort.
Once he turned and continued walking toward the city, he closed his fist and opened it slowly, then looked at his abdomen. With a thought, in the next blink, a mirror manifested on his lower abdominal area. A new gift added to his personal collection.
He looked up toward the city whose chaos still echoed in the distance. The fascination in his eyes was now mixed with a cold, calculating greed.
On this side of the city entrance, a concrete arch stood as a welcoming structure; on that arch, letters written in strange symbols—which the Meldid Kasiri had already translated for his mind—could be read as: [Welcome to Sakhalin Island]
Understanding it, Velkork smiled ironically, thinking of how this city was welcoming its new king without knowing it.
With that feeling in his body, he entered the bustling, chaos-filled city, thinking that, for the moment, he didn't need to understand the origin of the chaos in Sakhalin. He only needed to claim it. This world was an opportunity. And he had just taken the first step to making it his own.
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To be continued...
Next Chapter: Prepare for First Contact: Terrain Reconnaissance (2)
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Chapter Notes:
*1 Alien Language Translations:
1.1) Angaroid/Kettoid: A coined term referring to a "humanoid" creature, but from an alien's perspective.
1.2) Kasiri/Shedu: Synonyms for Quirks.
1.3) Kvastyr: Final light.
1.4) Yalaon: Big brother / Big sister.