Chapter Text
The Glamoth system, a crown of jewels that shone with a luster that made even the most brilliant and most advanced solar systems consider bending knees or lowering heads in reverence.
… Or, at least, so the dream went. So the dream the Iron Cavalry was led to believe was their reality told them. For the longest time, all she – all they – knew was that Glamoth was a glorious interstellar empire, a nation and a home that they should be happy to live, fight, and die with honor for.
They would have probably been comfortable living with that truth defining their entire lives if that was all they knew. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as an endless dream, and once they had awoken to the harshness of reality Glamoth was but a mere shadow of what it had once been. War had it in its grip, transforming each battlefield into hell on earth, a living nightmare drawn up from the most twisted imagination and given tangible form.
All around her, the battle raged as Glamoth’s fleet – led by the shining knights of the Glamoth Iron Cavalry – waged war against the endless tides of The Swarm. It is hot. It is claustrophobic. The Swarm is true to its name, a mass of drones and larger lepisma so numerous that they could blot out the sun should the hive mind that governed the teeming mass so desire to inflict that kind of despair upon the humanity that inhabited this system.
They are loud, unceasingly so. The chittering of thousands and millions blended with the buzzing of even more numerous vibrating wings to create a nightmarish symphony of madness that filled her ears and made her skin crawl within the safety of her cocoon. These monstrosities only knew how to consume and consume and consume until nothing is left in front of them.
And they just do not. Stop. Advancing.
Beep beep beep
An alarm sounded insistently throughout her helmet, pulling her from her reverie.
She turned, raising a fist of steel before shooting it forward with tremendous speed. She struck hard and true, her fist smashing through carapace and vertebrae alike with earth-shattering force. Viscous fluid and shards of exoskeleton splattered against her, only adding to the cacophony of color that stained her once-immaculate steel body.
“Another one…” she whispered as she sped off towards another cluster of enemies, wisps of flame leaking from her suit of armor as she barreled into The Swarm with righteous fury. She drew the Soaring Locust II clasped to her rear waist armor and fired, the ballistic round hurtling into the teeming mass and exploding in a ball of fire, plasma, and superheated gases that she might have thought beautiful had it not been so destructive.
Sweat drips down her brow, stinging her eyes. It is hot. It’s so unbearably hot and she almost wonders if the climate control functions of her suit or the various flame emitters dotting her metallic body are malfunctioning, but the readouts on her heads-up display tell her that all is well with her suit’s integrity. No, it’s not her suit… it’s The Swarm itself. Their impossible numbers all buzzing is raising the temperature to unbearable levels. If she weren’t in her suit, she was sure she would be dead in this hostile environment.
There was no end in sight to this, she thought as the deafening bang of a Glamoth battleship’s main cannons sounded out over the din of battle. A trio of explosions ripped a hole in the enemy’s formation, giving her just the most fleeting of views of the sky before it is blotted out once more by the teeming mass of insectoid life forms. She raises the Soaring Locust II and fires again, adding to the symphony of fire.
With the number of casualties The Swarm took in this battle to the death, one would think that Glamoth’s armed forces held the upper hand… but anyone who thought that could only be wrong. There was just no end to the Swarm. For every ten that were killed, a hundred were ready to take up the fight.
No matter how strong, how skilled, or how well-equipped one side was, a battle of attrition was only ever going to favor the army with limitless numbers.
Her enhanced spatial awareness made her dimly aware of her fellow Iron Cavalry knights as they fought, killed, and fell in defense of a doomed nation. She could register in her periphery about three meters north-northeast as one was torn limb from limb, dismembered before being set upon by a swarm of at least thirty that would seal that one’s final fate…
Five west, another was surrounded and beset upon by a whole cohort, helpless to defend themselves with their weapons completely destroyed. Her attention was drawn to the drones perched on the knight’s torso, their mandibles and forelegs scrabbling for purchase as they tried to force open the chest plate to get at the defenseless human beneath, much like how predators would go through shell and exoskeleton and carapace to get at the soft underbelly.
A metallic groan heralded success, and the violence began. She saw blood spurt from the cracked armor before she could turn her attention away, swallowing against the bile that rose up her throat in rebellion.
She tried not to think about ending up in a similar situation, refocusing her thoughts into doing what she does best as she renewed her assault.
A crushing hammer blow leads to an explosion of blood and exoskeleton. A dodge, then a jet-propelled roundhouse kick which crushes a drone’s head. More incessant alarms from her suit’s readouts, but she honestly can’t even be bothered to listen and read. All she can do is respond. She twists out of the way of a brave drone that had attempted to gore her, grabbing hold of its horn and then snapping it off with an anvil-like strike with her elbow, before the horn became an impromptu weapon that was used it to impale another drone in a twisted case of friendly fire. It was almost second nature at this point, like piloting this suit was nothing more than moving a body that was both her own and not at the same time.
She tried not to pay too much attention to the comm chatter in her ear as the battle raged around her, her enhanced genetics allowing her to pick through the chaotic symphony that was the soundtrack of a battle that could only lead towards mutually assured destruction. So long as her callsign or unit identification number was not being used, she would continue to fight as she could. She would fight until either she died or there wasn’t a single drone of The Swarm left alive.
On and on it went, a deadly dance of survival and death as day turned to night. At some point she’d run out of ammo for her Soaring Locust and resorted to using it as a club until the weapon had snapped into two pieces under the strain, leaving her with nothing but the tried-and-tested fire and steel that had been her constant companions for as long as she could remember.
A knifehand strike pierced deep into the soft underbelly of a “king” drone before flames exploded outward from her clenched fist of steel, burning the cursed, malevolent being from the inside and sending it to its fiery demise as it fell from the skies.
She takes in deep breaths to try and soothe her overworked lungs, the smell of gunpowder and burning exoskeleton and viscous body fluids almost natural to her now, and uses the pause in combat to assess her situation.
Her body, too, wanted to take the opportunity to scream at her for respite, her heart hammering against her ribcage as if it wanted to burst out and achieve emancipation from her small body. She can’t even remember the last time she’d been able to get anything resembling rest. Pain and numbness shoot through her nervous system in equal measure from the stress of extended piloting, and she almost has to double-check to make sure her body is actually all still in one piece despite the biometric readouts telling her that she was still all there.
It was quiet. Too quiet. Her comms were silent. The din of battle had died down, leaving only the incessant buzzing and chittering to fill the air.
Every which way she looked, The Swarm buzzed. Ready. Waiting. An icy block settled in her stomach as she realized that it wasn’t actually night time.
She was surrounded. She was all that was left.
Her breathing quickened, a mixture of panic and adrenaline fueling her. Wide, panicked eyes swung from point to point, searching for a way out—there!
The smallest of gaps, teasing her with the skies beyond, lay before her eyes. She surged into motion, going for that barely visible gap in their encirclement. Wings of flame and light burst into life as she brandished two swords now, their superheated blades cutting through drones like they were nothing but papercraft. Steel gave life to fire and she gave herself over completely as she becomes the killing machine she was always meant to be.
She would fight to the bitter end… for the honor of the Iron Cavalry… for Glamoth…
She shook her head. No, not for the Cavalry, and no longer for Glamoth.
She would fight for survival.
She cut down one drone with a quick diagonal from her right-hand blade, spinning into a slash and then thrust with one motion that took out two others as she broke for the edge of the battlefield. Her heart is hammering in her ears now as she presses onward, rushing forward with reckless abandon, never staying put, never giving the drones the chance to coordinate an attack and box her in. She attacked again, this time her swords weaving trails of fire in their wake as they performed the dance of death. Fire erupted from her armor at all angles as she pressed forward, her swords rendering orange as the superheated metal continued to channel the flames as if they were extensions of her own body.
“Just a bit more…”
The break point in their formation was within reach! She just had to…
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt
Her ears picked up a heavier vibration just before the weakness in The Swarm’s encirclement broke apart. A massive lepisma burst in like a bull and, despite her best efforts to evade the surprise attack, smashed into her, sending her tumbling out of control and one of her swords flying from her hands.
Readouts flashed red, alarms screamed at her for her attention, and she cursed. The structural integrity of her suit had been compromised after such a heavy impact, a fatal weakness that could have catastrophic consequences.
She righted herself almost instantly, but by then it was too late. The Swarm had taken the initiative, and she was now on the defensive.
Her attacks were desperate now. This wasn’t just about making it out of here. This was just about making it past the next five seconds. She sliced one in half, shooting flames from her other hand to ward off attacks from her weaker side, before dropping an axe kick with a heeled boot on another to crush its skull.
Her heartbeat was like a jackhammer, pounding against her eardrums and forehead from the inside as she fights with every ounce and fiber of her being.
But there are too many, far too many, and they are far too close.
The sound of metal tearing as one drone found its mark against a shoulder pauldron, a tink as one scratch left a long gash along her helmet that stopped just shy of penetrating her visor, a stab that she just managed to stop from fully perforating the metallic exoskeleton of her armor. Sharp, searing twinges of pain spiked through her shoulder and across her face and at her thigh, almost causing her to black out, but her body moved on instinct even as her vision swam out of focus at the overwhelming feedback from the pain receptors.
Too close.
She spun, her sword leaving a fiery trail in its wake before a ramming strike at her elbow caused her to drop her last remaining weapon. She cried out in pain as a jolt of agony lanced up from her own elbow.
‘I need space…!’
She let out a cry, almost as much in exertion as it was to keep her consciousness focused on something lest she succumb to black, as she activated all her flame emitters and exploded, becoming as a miniature sun as the entire cohort that was harassing her was consumed in a brilliant blaze.
“…!” A gasp as more drones burst through the dying embers, latching onto her and sending her hurtling towards the ground with their combined momentum. She tried to fight them off, killing one, killing two, but it was far too late to right her course. She slammed into the earth with a crushing impact that rattled her bones. She let out a cry of pain as the impact spiked up her back, sending a glob of blood shooting up her throat and splattering all over her heads-up display.
She had just enough time to regain her bearings and look up to see The Swarm descended on her.
One, two, three, ten, two dozen, fifty, and then black as she was swallowed whole—
Firefly jolted awake with a sharp gasp, her eyes shutting almost immediately as even with the reduced lighting settings in her medical cabin it seemed that it was still far too abrupt a change for them to be comfortable with. The fog of extended sleep continued to keep the super soldier in its grip even as she broke through the veil of unconsciousness and back into the waking world, leaving her discombobulated as she reopened her eyes – slower and more carefully this time – and made an effort to assess her surroundings and identify any potential threats. Bleary eyes the color of twilight and the emerging night sky blinked to try and pull her vision into focus as they looked around, examining, checking—
‘Ah.’
Immediately, a noticed change to her environment. Someone had broken the seal on her pod, which was now leaking out the cryogenic gases which kept her in suspended animation. It also meant that the life transmitter which had provided her the oxygen she needed to survive while she slept within the pod had now unlatched itself and withdrawn from her nose and mouth, allowing her to breathe in fresh, unfiltered air for the first time in… what was certainly quite a while.
A sigh. There was only one reason that someone would ever break her pod’s seal like this. It appears she was needed in the waking world once more.
“Firefly, dear? Can you hear me?” came a gentle call of her name as someone took a seat at the edge of her stasis pod akin to how one would sit at a person’s bedside and leaned in for a look. Medium-length red wine-colored hair draped down from their head, framing a pair of kind eyes that sat somewhere between pink, purple, and magenta and full lips that curved up into a small, affectionate smile. The woman reached in, clearly uncaring of the residual cold from her cryostasis, and stroked the top of her head.
The small girl instantly felt warmth blossom in her core at the familiar sensation, and she let out a soft sigh.
‘Kafka.’
The recognition of one of her dearest people bled away Firefly’s instinctive fight-or-flight response, ingrained into her psyche from what felt like several lifetimes’ worth of training and combat, and she allowed herself to relax. The vanilla blonde girl made to sit up slowly, absently noting hands at her back and waist gently helping her into a seating position. Her own long locks of light-colored hair draped across her vision and over her shoulders like a curtain while several tubes and wires plugged into the stasis suit she’d worn to sleep moved and pulled with every little motion she made. With a small yawn, she stiffly raised a dainty finger to her eyes, rubbing the sleepiness and lethargy from her eyes as delicately as possible given her current physical inhibitions as she tried to adjust to the waking world once more. Dimly, she was rather grateful for the foresight she’d had when she decided the first time she’d gone into stasis for treatment that it would be better to keep the lighting here down, just as she was grateful that no one, not even the playful, perennial prankster Silver Wolf, had had the gall to mess with the room’s settings.
Aeons forbid she have to deal with a headache every time she was reawakened.
“Good morning, Firefly,” Kafka greeted, her voice in that usual cadence that Firefly could never fully pin down. “How are you feeling, my cute little bug?”
Firefly hummed in thought for a moment. “Mm… I am… admittedly still a little sleepy…” she murmured, absently noting that her voice came out barely above a whisper – the dryness in her throat pointed to an extended lack of hydration, which gave her an indication for just how long she’d been asleep. She tried but failed to hide a yawn that she was sure Kafka would later tell her was undeniably precious, but that was Kafka for you. Loving, caring, but possessed of a devilish sense of humor and an undeniable love of teasing. Still, even if she knew she would probably be in for a little bit of it later, she leaned in towards the red wine-haired woman. A soft smile played across Firefly’s lips as she felt Kafka’s arms encircling her shoulders, and she allowed herself a little selfish vice as she snuggled in just a little bit more. If the older woman was bothered any by the unbelievably cold temperatures that were leaking out of her pod or the icy-cool sensation of the residual cold on her skin or the stasis suit she slept in, she made not a sound of protest as she gently pulled the smaller girl into her side.
It was Kafka’s turn to hum, though hers took on a decidedly more knowing quality. “Hmm, just a little sleepy?” she probed curiously, something in her tone saying that she clearly already had seen through the girl. “The way you woke up might say otherwise.”
Firefly squeaked, giving Kafka a look akin to a child who’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar before she averted her gaze.
“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she stammered quietly.
Kafka’s chest rumbled soothingly against Firefly’s temple and ear as the older woman let out a quiet chuckle, pressing her lips to the top of the smaller girl’s head in a clear gesture of affection before resting a cheek on it.
“Firefly, dear, many things you are, but a good liar you definitely are not,” she teased, before her voice lost its light tone as it took on a note of concern. “You don’t have to tell me right now if you don’t want to, but you should know that I’m here to listen, my little bug.”
Silence reigned for a time, before Firefly let out a breath. “It’s strange, Kafka… I…” she trailed off.
Kafka hummed to indicate she was listening. The sensation of fingers threading through Firefly’s long tresses eased away whatever remaining tension was still locking up her body, the smaller girl’s shoulders sagging as she closed her eyes and all but melted into the older woman’s embrace. It also gave her the courage to continue opening up.
She wet her lips and swallowed. “You know I can’t have dreams, but… for some reason, ever since we, well, became the Stellaron Hunters… I’ve had what feels like dreams in the time interval between when I return from the deepest parts of sleep and when I fully awaken…”
Another hum as Kafka adjusted her position at Firefly’s “bedside” to let her lean in more comfortably. “And in this case, whatever it was that you saw while you made the trek towards the waking world was not a particularly pleasant sight.” It wasn’t a question.
Firefly sighed. “… Mm. It’s strange… I used to think it could never happen, being able to see a dream of any kind, but now…”
What eloquence the super soldier had failed her as she trailed off, and she struggled to come up with what to say next to fill the silence. Kafka, on her part, was clearly not in a hurry to move from their current position. She simply continued to thread her fingers through Firefly’s locks of vanilla blonde hair, from her scalp all the way through to the crystal teal ombre that colored the lengths of her tresses.
Another sigh. That was twice in quick succession now, she noted absently. Hopefully it didn’t become a habit, but she’d like to think the reaction was warranted. She really didn’t understand how Kafka could be so impossibly considerate. Maybe Stelle was ri—
She froze as that taboo named entered her mind. Her throat thickened as she thought of her closest and dearest, and how they were now worlds apart. She bit her lip, trying to keep her emotions from surfacing on her features as an icy hand closed a fist around her heart.
‘Stelle…’ She clasped her hands against her chest, almost as if praying that she could erase these thoughts from her heart right now. This really wasn’t the time for reminiscing on something – someone – she could no longer get back.
As much as Firefly wished she wasn’t, Kafka was nothing if not terribly observant, and the older woman had certainly taken notice of Firefly’s downturn in mood. “Little bug?” she called out, her voice so close yet so far away as it pulled Firefly back from a train of thoughts she wasn’t particularly ready to dive into but which her mind certainly wasn’t averse to bringing up whether prompted or otherwise. “Firefly, dear, are you alright?”
Firefly’s voice hitched as she swallowed to get rid of the thickness in her throat. “I-it’s nothing, Kafka,” she replied, shifting uncomfortably. If the older Stellaron Hunter was unconvinced, and she surely wasn’t buying it given the unimpressed look on her face, she said nothing to that effect.
She gnawed on her lower lip to regain some semblance of control as she pulled away to lock gazes with the older Hunter. “Anyway, Kafka. How long have I been asleep?” she asked. She knew that she usually wasn’t woken from her self-imposed stasis unless she was needed awake or she’d asked to be awoken on a particular date.
Kafka’s expression changed at her question – or was it because she’d pulled away and out of her embrace? Firefly couldn’t tell, Kafka could be frustratingly impossible to read if she so desired to be. Her ability to manage her emotions and reactions was most unfair, and she would with her dying breath maintain that playing any kind of card game against her was a diabolical experience.
Firefly was drawn from her thoughts as the older Hunter hummed thoughtfully in response to the smaller girl’s question, almost as if recollecting something she’d forgotten temporarily.
As usual, she refused to buy any of Kafka’s theatrics.
“Hmm… it’s been exactly a system week since you went in, little bug,” came the answer. “A fair bit longer than your usual treatment, but I think you’d agree that you needed it after what happened to you.”
If Kafka was concerned by the sudden change of topic, she certainly wasn’t showing it, though she did seem willing to drop the issue.
‘For now, at least,’ the super soldier commented mentally. Somehow, she just knew this wasn’t going to be a topic left untouched forever. It never was when it came to Kafka.
Still… a week. This was the longest time she’d ever spent in stasis, and it worried her that she’d slowly start to see a transition from this being the outlier to this being the norm. Even if she could admit that Kafka was probably right about the extra maintenance time being good – the events of that last script had led to a rather severe attack – it was still worrying to consider that there might come a time where she would have to spend more time asleep than awake just to extend her life as far as she could take it.
“So… am I awake because of Elio, then?” she asked, to which Kafka nodded.
“Elio,” she affirmed. “We would have given you a few more days, but he requested that you be awoken.”
Firefly sighed softly. “I suppose it’s time for the next script, then…”
Another hum in response, and Firefly decided that this was as good a time as any to get a move on. There was a lot to do when waking from a lengthened period of cryostasis, after all. First was disconnecting the tubes which maintained the necessary bodily functions and requirements while she was in suspended animation, then unhooking herself from the multitude of sensors and other medical equipment which monitored her biometrics.
Kafka, bless her, assisted the smaller girl wherever she needed help before helping to lift her up and out of the pod, setting her down on the pod’s edge so she could take a moment to regain her bearings before moving on to the… more difficult part of waking up from cryostasis. Firefly would normally be embarrassed at being cared for as if she were a hospital patient, but this wasn’t something new or foreign at this point. It was just something that the other Stellaron Hunters did; whoever woke her up would help her out of the pod. Cryostasis always did a number on her bodily functions, and it would always take some time for her to fully reacclimatize to using them.
Their kindness… it wasn’t always like this, but she learned to love what she did have now and even the tiniest acts were not lost on her. Never.
As Kafka helped Firefly to her feet and walked her over – well, Kafka walked, she was just lethargically shuffling her feet along the padded floor as she was almost dragged along by the other Stellaron Hunter – to her therapy station, her mind began to drift… back towards some of her earliest memories with the Stellaron Hunters…
Beep beep beep
Bleary eyes the color of twilight and the emerging night sky slowly fluttered open at the insistent beeping in her ears. A muffled groan left a pair of soft lips as she closed her eyes for a moment more, but that damnable beeping just refused to let up.
If this was what regular people went through with their morning alarms Firefly could understand why mobile phone companies – and in eras long past alarm clock companies – would continue to find steady revenue streams beyond just releasing the latest model gizmo for their consumers to buy.
‘Aeons, that beeping is annoying.’
A certain amount of self-deprecating mirth bubbled up within her as she recognized her own irritability. This certainly wasn’t the first time she’d be waking up from cryostasis, but it was still a new experience for her to be woken up for something other than immediate deployment into a battle she realistically had no stake in. Maybe she was closer to the mark than she’d care to admit when she made that morning alarm analogy.
No amount of training and conditioning had prepared her for this. Unending wars against the scourge of the universe with nary a moment’s rest, yes. She could deal with that. Being woken up after barely two hours of sleep because war wasn’t about to wait for her to get a solid six, never mind eight? Sure. Been there, done that.
But this? An auditory stimulus she couldn’t control or stop? This felt like some sort of self-contained hell. Death almost felt like the more preferable option despite herself, and she’d like to think that when it came to will to live she was right up there at the top of the mountain when compared to all the other billions of sentient beings inhabiting the galaxy.
The super soldier wasn’t ashamed to admit that she almost felt a sense of relief and gratitude for the cosmos when the beeping mercifully stopped, though the silence was short-lived as it was broken almost immediately by the telltale hiss and whine of her pod’s seal breaking. That certainly cut through any remaining fog surrounding her cryosleep-addled mind. The seal of her cryostasis pod had been broken. It was time to wake up. The hatch raised, the life transmitter’s clasps released from around her head, and Firefly was welcomed back to the waking world as her lungs took in fresh air for the first time in… well, however long it had been since she’d first gone to sleep. Hopefully there weren’t any problems that necessitated a longer stay…
“Morning, sleeping beauty,” came a lively voice as a head poked in through the opening. “Up and at ‘em, you’re burning daylight.”
Unkempt dark-gray hair tied into a loose, spiraling ponytail framed a cute face punctuated by a matching pair of slate gray eyes that nonetheless glittered with life, mischief, and curiosity. Purple-tinted glasses that Firefly knew were the girl’s signature accessory sat atop her head, just a tiny bit askew from what she could only assume was the girl’s neglect for her personal appearance.
“Hello to you, too, Silver Wolf,” she attempted to reply, though her voice came out barely above a whisper due to the lack of lubrication coating her lips and throat.
Before Silver Wolf could make another quip, another voice cut in as this time Kafka leaned in from the other side of the pod.
“Now, now, Wolfie, let’s not poke too much fun at our darling little lazybug until she’s had some proper time to wake up,” she chided. “It’s more fun when she’s awake to give us proper reactions, after all.”
Firefly resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Oh, ha ha, Kafka…” she rasped out. “Glad to see I’ve been missed so much while I was asleep for… how long?”
Kafka placed a finger to her chin and hummed, almost as if in thought, though Firefly certainly wasn’t buying the act of pondering.
Eventually the wine-haired woman relented. “Three days, dearest, since you experienced an attack after our last mission,” she said, her expression growing soft. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but we’re doing everything we can to keep your condition under control while it’s still manageable. So long as your condition is stable and you don’t experience any episodes of dissociation, then it’s just a day every week, I promise.”
‘But even in the best of cases that’s still an entire day every week… gone…’ she thought to herself. She wasn’t a fan of having to miss out on time like this, but… well, when you were afflicted with Entropy Loss Syndrome and were desperately holding out for a miracle that would allow you to defy your inevitable and far-too-early death, these were measures that you would have to take.
Thankfully, her treatment periods were all still short, and she was still able to live a relatively normal life – or, at least, as normal as it could be when you were a genetically-engineered super soldier and a wanted interstellar criminal who needed to have regular scheduled treatments in either the assault mech that maintained her vitality or this cryostasis pod she was currently cocooned in – but Firefly was definitely not looking forward to the idea of the treatment periods growing longer and more frequent as her condition deteriorated. If it got to that point she may as well be left behind by the world anyway…
‘No, don’t think about it like that. This isn’t insurmountable. There’s no cure yet, but I definitely won’t overcome it if I don’t do everything I can to fight it.’
She exhaled lightly as she began to move, noting that her body was incredibly stiff after not having been used for a period of time that she also spent in total stasis. She’d definitely need to put together some kind of program to help get herself reacquainted with her own body after every treatment period, and made to prop herself up on her elbows so she could move into a seating situation.
Or, at least, she tried to.
“Oi!”
Firefly’s arms, still lacking their normal range of strength and motion after her sleep in cryogenic conditions, collapsed trying to support her own body weight. Only Kafka and Silver Wolf’s quick reactions as the two Stellaron Hunters reached into the pod to steady the vanilla blonde kept her from bashing her head against the back wall of the pod. She didn’t resist as they eased her up into a seated position, she made not a single protest as they gingerly helped her out of the pod and onto the ledge-seat on its edge, and she refused to meet both pairs of eyes during any point of this. She had no doubt both were looking at her with pity, and she really had no interest in dealing with that sort of sentiment.
She looked down, weakly clenching her shaking hands. It was unbearable, how much she hated this. She hated that she was like this – manufactured, not born… trained, not nurtured… She hated how much care she would need from the others due to circumstances that she never wanted or asked for. It made her sick, thinking about their kindness in such a way, but she couldn’t lie to herself about how she felt. She could hide it from the others, but she could never hide the truth of how she truly felt about her lot in life from herself. She could never truly escape that ugly side of her that always bubbled and festered beneath the surface, that other side which looked upon the care and consideration that her newfound allies had shown her and used that as fuel to ignite the burning rage that always smoldered away quietly, deep within the deepest, darkest recesses of her psyche.
Firefly clamped down on her simmering anger. It wasn’t their fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault except those who’d made her into a living weapon that her fate was as it had now been written, but the constant reminders of her condition stung deep.
“Kafka, Silver Wolf, I…”
She hadn’t even gotten halfway through mumbling out an apology to Kafka and Silver Wolf when the older of the two had cut her off.
“Don’t. You could never be, dearest,” she said, placing a hand on Firefly’s shaking fist and easing it open so she could massage soothing circles into her palm. “We take care of our own. Always and without fail. You know that.”
Firefly finally looked up to meet Kafka’s gaze, finding eyes that only held a mixture of sadness, compassion, and care. She turned to Silver Wolf, and the smaller girl simply gave her a toothy grin before flashing a thumbs-up with her free hand.
“Party members help each other out!” she quipped cheekily. “Don’t you worry, firebug. This isn’t a game we’re going to lose.”
The super soldier swallowed against the building thickness in her throat before she looked away. Her eyes were hot, but she felt the softest of smiles playing across her lips.
She was still so warm… but perhaps from now on that warmth would no longer be just for reasons that were so unbearable to think of anymore.
The smile she remembered was one she wore now as the memory played out in her mind’s eye. It was still clear in her mind, as if it had happened just yesterday. Those were the days when things had begun to change for the better for her. The kind words on that day had resonated with her, stuck with her.
Thinking about her fellow Hunters filled her with warmth. Yes, they were hard to deal with someti – okay, they were hard to deal with more often than not, she corrected herself. Yes, they were beyond quirky, and she felt that there was probably no shame in admitting that she often had difficulties getting along with all of them with all of their various idiosyncrasies.
‘Especially without her around…’ she thought bitterly, before banishing those thoughts once again. No, no, no, she really was not going to go down that rabbit hole.
She huffed, masking it as an exhalation of exertion as Kafka continued to help her work through her routine, almost wincing as she reached to make her hands meet behind her back. Why is it that the only maintenance she couldn’t perform was for her mind’s thought processes?
But, at the same time, the super soldier always understood why her thoughts would always drift to her. She was the person who’d first given her that feeling of strength from within, made her feel like she had value as a person despite her failings and all her shortcomings and inadequacies as someone who didn’t even have the faintest idea on how to even be a person and a human being, that she was actually seen by someone for who she was rather than as the weapon of destruction, the monster, she had been genetically-engineered to be.
It was her who’d made the Stellaron Hunters… well, a family. A very weird one whose members were all exceptionally talented at annoying each other, but a family nonetheless. With them Firefly had a place where she had been able to experience kindness for the first time, a place where she could be who she was, not what she was. She didn’t need to be the Molten Knight, the Last Knight of the Iron Cavalry, or Stellaron Hunter Sam. She didn’t need to play any role for anyone. She could just be Firefly.
It sounded like such a small thing, and to some it may as well have been inconsequential, but it had changed her whole world. It made her happy just thinking about what she’d found…
… But in the same breath it also made her heart ache whenever she was reminded of that fact because she was gone, maybe even for good. That girl had her own life – a new life – to live now, as a Pathstrider of the Trailblaze onboard the Astral Express. She understood that it was for a greater cause, that Elio’s script demanded it be so in order to avert catastrophe in a future that all but Destiny’s Slave have yet to see, but that didn’t make it any easier to take and accept. Understanding that it was necessary didn’t fill the void in her heart that had opened up with her departure.
Loathe as the super soldier was to admit it, she envied Kafka and Silver Wolf and the contact they’ve been able to maintain with that girl. It was always good to hear about what she was getting up to in her new life from the two, but it also never failed to drive a knife into Firefly’s heart every time she thought about how that girl was out there making meaningful memories while she was making enemies out of the rest of the galaxy in her guise as the Stellaron Hunter Sam.
She cursed her limited set of skills. If only she was better at something other than just killing and burning, then maybe…
“All done, dearest,” Kafka said from next to her ear, the proximity of her voice snapping Firefly from her ruminations as she helped the girl straighten up after her last exercise. “Do you need any other help?”
Firefly took a moment to bury her negativity as she locked gazes with Kafka. ‘So considerate…’
She didn’t deserve it. She really didn’t. Maybe Kafka wouldn’t be so nice and warm and reassuring if she knew some of the things that went on deep down, but…
The vanilla blonde shook her head, sending her tresses swaying. “I’ll be alright, Kafka. Thanks…” she said softly.
The red wine-haired woman gave her a kind smile, though Firefly almost thought she saw just a smidge of disappointment that she was declining her help present in those eyes. It almost made Firefly reconsider her answer, but a blink and it was gone like it had never been there in the first place. Maybe she’d just imagined it…
“Alright, then,” came the soft reply. “Just head to the common room when you’re ready.”
Once Kafka had left, Firefly blew out a breath before staggering over to a seat and all but sagging into it. It really was a hopeless endeavor trying to keep her out of her thoughts…
Not when everything kept leading back to her.
Phone in hand, Firefly hummed a tune from her favorite artist’s newest single as she made her way down the hall towards the common room.
A hot shower and a fresh change of clothes later and Firefly had begun to feel like herself again. She’d decided on something simple – a sleeveless white collared blouse, a short skirt in a dark to light gradient green, long socks and a pair of brown slip-on loafers, and a patterned ribbon tie in lighter greens and yellows decorating her collar. She had to give herself a bit of credit here: in her earliest days with the Stellaron Hunter, she’d needed Kafka to pick out clothes for her to wear because she really just didn’t know any better! Being able to pick out her own outfits and hear Kafka give her approval was progress that she could actually be proud of!
Granted, most of the time her approval came in the form of teasing, but what was Kafka if she wasn’t going to be so teasy? “Oh? Aren’t we dressed cutely today. Someone we’re trying to impress?” was the usual tune she’d sing, and Firefly swears that she’s been the target of that woman’s teasing enough times she could probably write an entire book about all of Kafka’s methods, but she supposes she had to see it coming when you consider that she and Stelle had been—
Her body froze mid-step with the direction her thoughts had taken, almost causing her to trip over her own feet as she broke her own stride.
‘Dammit.’ There it was again.
Really, she should have expected that it’d happen again given how all the attempts she’d made to get her mind off of days gone by while she had been in the shower had been largely unsuccessful, but Firefly was nothing if not determined and stubborn, especially in the face of rather… stiff resistance.
While she was hardly a fan of engaging in mass violence or any other wanton acts of destruction, she was hopeful that the next script and the accompanying mission would allow her to finally take her mind off of these Aeon-forsaken thoughts which had a habit of occupying the loudest parts of her headspace. It was in the past. She really didn’t want to keep revisiting something she knew was completely out of her reach.
The quiet hiss of a door sliding open a bit too close to her caused Firefly to jump. The girl once again cursed her thoughts, wishing she could just get them to shut up for a time so her mind could have some peace and quiet and she could actually not lose focus on her surroundings. It was quite mortifying that her body had been on such a state of auto-pilot that she’d only stopped walking when there was barely any empty space left remaining between herself and the door.
She sighed as she stepped through the hatch and into the common room. She really needed that script now so she could start thinking of something else.
At least the room was its usual self.
‘Save the lack of a certain someone,’ her mind whispered traitorously.
Firefly chose to ignore it as she scanned the room that served as… well, the beating heart of their base, and by extension the lives they lived when not at the behest of Elio’s scripts.
A coffee table with a projector sat as the centerpiece of the room with an angular couch and a couple of chairs arranged around it. A large television screen was mounted on the wall across from the furniture set, with several machines – Silver Wolf’s various gaming consoles – occupying the ledge that had been installed beneath it. Behind the couch was a bar which, aside from serving as their main dining area, also connected the main area of the lounge to the small but well-equipped and well-stocked kitchen that Blade had essentially made his territory given how often he prepared the group’s meals.
Firefly smiled as she drank in the sight, thinking back to her first meals with the group. She definitely hadn’t expected Blade to be the most domestically capable of their group… but, at the same time, she had to admit that it also somehow didn’t surprise her that the man could cook.
She definitely hoped that someday soon he wouldn’t be the only one, though. She’d taken to practicing her culinary arts as a bit of a hobby or a pastime in recent months, and she wouldn’t be lying if she said that she wanted to be able to prepare meals for the Hunters. She had enough reasons beyond wanting to help out so Blade didn’t have to do it all the time – he was already taking charge of a lot of the other chores and to-dos around their home base – but a lot of it definitely boiled down to how much of a sticking point it was to her that she wanted to be good at things that weren’t just causing destruction everywhere she went. And, while the vanilla blonde had to admit that she was still in the process of learning and that Blade was still supervising most of her efforts, at least she was making genuine progress and could prepare meals without his active intervention now!
‘At least I’m not burning water anymore like I did that first time I tried to make something…’
The memory of Blade’s expression as he walked into the warzone that had once been their kitchen filtered to the forefront of the super soldier’s mind. Nary a facial muscle on the man had moved as he surveyed the devastation she’d wrought, but even she with her deficiencies in people skills could tell he’d been halfway between exasperated and despondent as he’d shuffled her out of the kitchen so he could salvage the mess she’d created, muttering something under his breath about how she should be “saving her scorched earth operations for the battlefield”.
“Nice to see you online, Firefly,” a voice – Silver Wolf’s – said, drawing the vanilla blonde from her thoughts as her attention landed on the smaller girl sprawled out across one length of the angular couch, one leg raised while the other dangled off the edge. Mercifully, she’d remembered to at least take her shoes off, Aeons forbid someone have to dust it off before they sat on it after she vacated the place.
Tearing a glance away from the handheld gaming console in her hand, the smaller girl flashed the awakened super soldier a teethy grin as Firefly made her way over. “Quit standing there with that goofy grin on your face and get in here. It was getting pretty boring without a gaming buddy around here!”
Firefly hummed as she took a seat daintily on the unoccupied side of the couch, leaning forward to place her phone on the coffee table before crossing her feet. “Hi, Wolfie,” she greeted, returning the hacker girl’s toothy grin with a soft smile of her own. “I hope you haven’t been too bored while I’ve been asleep.”
Silver Wolf snorted. “I’ve had enough to do while you’ve been gone,” she said, waving her game console around. “That new game I was telling you about, Roaring Tides? Well, it finally dropped, so I’ve been busy grinding mats to get all my characters up to snuff—"
“Oh, don’t be fooled by Wolfie, little bug. Her new game was hardly the only thing on her mind,” Kafka sang from where she had perched herself on a barstool, leaning against the countertop as she lazily stirred a cup of freshly-brewed coffee – a premium blend from the eponymous capital planet of the Garaci system if she could glean anything from the strong, rich aroma that carried across the room and tickled her nose.
Silver Wolf paused. “Che. I have no idea what you might be even talking about here,” the smaller girl muttered lowly.
Kafka hummed in amusement as her smile became sharper – scarily so, Firefly might add, she knew that smile when she saw it – without losing any of its good humor.
The super soldier felt a mix of warm amusement and a distinct sense of satisfaction as she watched Silver Wolf’s own grin falter before the Hunters’ resident hacker turned away and buried her nose in her game to try and escape Kafka’s scrutiny, and was that some color in her cheeks?
Firefly couldn’t keep her own smile from widening at her observation, though she did at least make an attempt to hide it by covering her mouth with a hand.
‘Oh, Wolfie…’
If Firefly was secretly amused, Kafka was positively and openly crowing at the reactions she was eliciting. “Our dear Wolfie here will never openly admit it to you, little bug, but she’s been noticeably worried the past few days,” she said, the sheer delight dancing in each word palpable with every careful enunciation. “She’s only gotten more antsy the longer your treatment’s gone on… In fact, Wolfie was even ready to—”
That did it.
“O-oi! Kafka, what the hell! No! She doesn't need to know!” Silver Wolf all but exploded out of her seat, game forgotten as she turned to face Kafka. Her expression was mortified, her cheeks ablaze with what Kafka had once termed the “pink dust of divine truth”, a combination that Firefly thought was terribly endearing on someone who tried to maintain a public image of being detached and disinterested unless the subject of her attention could lead to something she considered fun.
The older woman raised a hand to mirror Firefly’s own gesture as she daintily covered her lips. “Dearie me, it’s not like I said anything that was false, did I…”
Silver Wolf pointed a finger, hand shaking with indignation as if Kafka had committed the most heinous of offenses. If she’d been pink before, she was positively crimson now, the delightful color reaching all the way to her ears.
“Y-you… I… YOU…!”
Firefly tried to keep her laughter in. Truly, she swears on her honor that she fought with all the willpower she could muster to keep the joyous noises bubbling in her throat from escaping her lips, no matter what anyone else – read: Wolfie – would tell you. But she couldn’t help it! Silver Wolf could just be so. damn. CUTE. when she was worried.
A squeak let itself through, before whatever pitiful excuse she claimed was her self-control crumbled and she burst out into happy, tinkling giggles.
She barely registered Silver Wolf turning her way, the flustered girl clearly intending to give Firefly a piece of her mind, too, but the mirthful sounds seemed to have some kind of effect because Silver Wolf’s indignation deflated rather quickly, leaving her with only puffed out cheeks and a childish pout that only made her even more uncharacteristically adorable when combined with the pink that persisted on her cheeks.
“Y-you’re lucky that our social link’s high enough that I’m willing to put up with this if it gets you in a good mood…” she muttered in defeat, eyes averted as she tried to salvage a little bit of her dignity.
Firefly giggled again, softly this time so as not to make things too much worse for Silver Wolf. ‘So cute…’
It was heartwarming that Silver Wolf cared so much about her well-being – that they all did.
The super soldier’s smile softened from amusement to gratitude. “Thank you for caring, Wolfie,” she said, hoping that she didn’t make things any more embarrassing for Silver Wolf.
The petite girl jumped at having been addressed directly by the named object of her worries, Firefly managing to catch Silver Wolf’s blush darkening once again before the other girl had turned away.
“I-it’s… nothing…” she said, uncharacteristically shy as she picked up her game and lay back down on her spot on the couch, looking like she wanted to sink into the cushions and never come back out.
It takes all of Firefly’s self-control to keep from scooting over and consoling her with some affectionate head-patting.
“Here,” a deep, gravelly voice from close behind her says, the vanilla blonde girl almost shooting to her feet but for the hand that lands on her shoulder to keep her seated comfortably. A second hand enters her field of vision, fingertips carefully holding onto a mug’s lip as it dangles before her eyes almost teasingly. Light wisps of smoke lifted from within, carrying the sweet, mouth-watering smell of freshly-cooked chocolate to her nose in a clear invitation to indulge in a bit of liquid decadence.
The super soldier lights up in a delighted smile as she takes hold of the mug with both hands, the heat bleeding through its ceramic material and into her fingers and palms before traveling easily up her arms and to the rest of her body, annihilating whatever remaining chill from her cryostasis still remained after her therapy and shower.
“Bladie!” she chirped, turning to look at the Xianzhou native hovering at her shoulder. “Thank you very much.”
Blade’s stony countenance didn’t deviate from its usual stoic expression, but the pat on the head he gave the vanilla blonde girl before he returned to the kitchen told her all she needed to know about how he felt about this whole thing. It elicited a happy little bloom of warmth from her chest, closer to home and more pleasant than even the heat she’d derived from the beverage that was now cupped in her hands.
She took a sip, letting out a noise of pleasure as the rich, velvety chocolate passed her lips and delighted her taste buds. It was sweet, smooth, and silky, the cacao’s natural bitterness and a hint of cinnamon balancing out the drink’s flavor wonderfully. She made another happy little noise before taking another sip. It was touching just how well Blade had nailed down her tastes and preferences.
This was her family. Her weird, zany, but nonetheless wonderful family: Kafka the schemer and teaser, Silver Wolf the stereotypical Punklordian gaming nut, Blade the disturbed, aloof, but altogether not unkind “uncle”, Elio… and…
‘Wait… Elio…’ Firefly frowned. Kafka mentioned that he’d been the one to request that she be awakened, and yet for some reason he was still missing… not that his absence was anything out of the ordinary.
The vanilla blonde’s frown turned to a pout. Elio had a habit of disappearing into his lair – and she had taken to calling it that because he spent far too much time in there concocting plans like some evil mastermind in one of her favorite shows for her to think of it as just a room or an office at this point – for hours or days at a time, often preferring to communicate using voice-only calls or text messages instead of coming out to talk to them directly. It was mildly annoying that, when he did show up, it was usually in the form of a black cat… which, if she were to be perfectly honest, wasn’t actually that big of a deal – he was a very cute cat who Firefly had to resist cuddling with whenever she saw him – but to the vanilla blonde it was the principle of the matter that she’d yet to actually meet him. Yes, Kafka has insisted multiple times that he wasn’t actually a cat and that she’d seen his real self, but until Firefly had evidence of that actually being the case she was probably going to have to take Kafka’s statements with more than just a pinch of salt.
The projector installed into the coffee table suddenly sprung to life. ‘Speak of the devil and he shall appear.’
“Good day, Hunters,” came the familiar, distorted voice of Elio. As usual, the projector displayed no image, leaving his voice as the only discernible trait that could be used to identify the speaker. “Especially you, Firefly. It gladdens me to see you up and about once more. I hope I have found you well.”
Firefly smiled at the projector. She may not see him, but she was certain he could see her.
“Good day, Elio,” she greeted. “I’m well enough, thank you. I’ve been told that my waking was slightly premature at your request?”
A pause, almost as if the person at the other end of the projection was considering how to answer her query. She doubted she’d caught him off-guard; nothing ever seemed to escape his foresight, so she had to assume he was just selecting the best way to proceed with this conversation the way Wolfie might select her character’s conversation responses in one of her games.
She blinked at that thought. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel about the idea that she might actually just be a character in someone’s game.
“I see Kafka has already given you some hints as to the purpose of your awakening,” came the reply. “It is indeed, yes. Your scripts have been written. Please have a look.”
Ping!
Almost as if on cue, four message alerts all chimed in unison. ‘There it is.’
Firefly set her mug down on the coffee table and retrieved her phone to check for the mentioned scripts that had undoubtedly just been sent over.
‘He enjoys his theatrics a bit too much sometimes…’ she thought with a wry smile.
Tapping through her phone’s menus, Firefly navigated to her mail and found the new message right at the top of her inbox. The message itself was, as was typical of Elio’s M.O., rather sparse, with barely anything in it. The bright envelope icon signifying that the message carried an attachment was thus quick to draw her attention – again, the lack of anything of substance in the message was probably by design so the Hunters would just open his attachments immediately – and she tapped on it to open the file.
A new window opened up to display it, the title of the script immediately jumping out at her.
The Jepella Rebellion
Scene 47 – Closing
‘Ah.’ Firefly nodded to herself as she put a hand to her lips in thought. This was to be expected, given that this particular plot thread of Elio’s has been in the works for quite some time now. All that was left to be done at this point was to topple over the first domino and set the event in motion.
The super soldier scanned over the contents of her script. As always, her instructions were rather straightforward. She was to be discreetly inserted into the Jepella Palace district and escorted to a position – likely by Blade – where she could safely deploy Sam. Once the rebellion has been incited – probably by Kafka or Silver Wolf, if she had to guess, that kind of job was something she could expect from them – she was to head to the Palace’s Hall of Justice, wipe out the Brotherhood’s leadership in one fell swoop, and extract Kafka.
Firefly blinked. Did Elio really just say that she was supposed to bust Kafka… out of a courtroom?
A quiet sigh left her lips after she’d reread that line a second time just to make sure she understood it correctly. Somehow, she just knew Kafka was going to take a bit too much delight out of… whatever it is she was going to be doing, which inevitably meant she’d probably need to do a bit more than would even be necessary.
She could already feel a headache coming on and this mission hadn’t even started yet—
Ping!
Two more message alerts chimed, breaking the silence that had settled on the room as the Hunters all went over their respective scripts.
The pop-up on her screen quickly grabbed her attention and she navigated to it. Her lips twisted into a frown as she stared at her screen: there, cheerfully sitting in her inbox waiting for her to open it, was a second message from Elio.
Her brows furrowed as she nibbled on the flesh of her index finger with her lips. ‘Another one…?’
“Elio…” she murmured from behind her finger. “Was there a mistake?”
She could almost swear that Elio was smiling at her from behind his screen. “I assure you that no mistakes have been made, Firefly,” he replied easily. “Please feel free to open the second file you’ve just received.”
Eyebrows raised in curiosity, Firefly decided to just do as he said, scrolling to the newest message and opening the attached script.
Her eyes ran over the title at the top of the file and she froze, her entire body growing numb and nearly causing her phone to drop from what were suddenly nerveless fingers.
The Trailblaze – Part III
Act I: The Sound and The Fury
Target Locale: Penacony, The Land of Dreams
“Penacony… The Land of Dreams…” she breathed, almost inaudibly. That this script was coming up now wasn’t a surprise. After all, Penacony had been the Astral Express’ intended destination before the Stellaron Hunters had altered their plans and led them to the Xianzhou Alliance’s Hexafleet to resolve the Stellaron Crisis brewing there.
The real surprise regarding the whole situation had been the Charmony Festival invitation that had arrived at their doorstep several weeks prior, before the whole Luofu situation had even gone down. The penned note that came with the music box that served as the invitation medium was quite clear about this invite being addressed to the Stellaron Hunters, so they knew it hadn’t been a mistaken delivery, but the fact that it was explicitly meant for them had instantly raised alarm bells over the whole situation.
Elio certainly hadn’t helped matters when he later revealed that he’d divined a list of factions who’d received invitations, among them several undesirables such as the Ever-Flame Mansion, and so it really beggared the question as to why The Family had seemingly thought it a good idea to gather all these different parties with all their varying and conflicting goals and interests and host them in Penacony during arguably one of the biggest events on the galactic calendar.
It was just asking for trouble.
That hadn’t even been the most curious thing about the invitation, though. The music box that had played out the invitation had also apparently had a secondary melody playing in the background, hidden as a distorted collection of off-key notes until the Hunters were able to record all the notes and play the second track by itself.
It had taken some time to decode because of how odd the encryption method was, especially when both Kafka and Silver Wolf had admitted to feeling like they should recognize the pattern. It was only after the two had made the connections with the Astral Express’ warp jump's gravity wave signature and the engine car's spatial curvature were they able to identify the encryption as some sort of Nameless distress signal, crack the code, and finally interpret the hidden message.
"Witness the impossible in the realm of dreams, find the legacy of the Watchmaker, Father of Penacony, and thus the answer to the question: Why does life slumber?"
To say that the invitation’s hidden message had been tumbling around somewhere in Firefly’s mind for the majority of her waking hours over the past few weeks – so long as something else wasn’t drawing her thoughts towards a certain gray-haired, golden-eyed girl that she still carried an old flame for, anyways – would probably be an understatement, but she couldn’t help it. If she didn’t know any better, she’d swear that the question had been composed and addressed to her specifically. She’d already witnessed enough horrors to fill more than a standard lifetime, having lived as a weapon of destruction enslaved by a dream that spoke of a glittering ‘reality’ that had turned out to be nothing more than a shining tower waiting to crumble from within. After that single, glorious dream had shattered, she’d been left to flounder in darkness, her life nothing but an aimless existence both in her wakefulness and in her restless sleep, a weapon that no longer had a war to fight.
She had no past, no home to return to – not that she would want to either way given the traumas and memories that were associated with Glamoth. She had no present until she’d met the Stellaron Hunters and found herself a home even if she was once again fighting as a weapon. She almost certainly had no future to look forward to unless she found a cure to her Entropy Loss Syndrome before it was too late.
It was why the super soldier found herself so intrigued by this whole situation… intrigued, and secretly more than a little uncertain.
There were many mysteries and unanswered questions surrounding this invitation and the question it had challenged its recipients to answer, which is why she couldn’t quite understand why she of all the Hunters had been tasked with this particular mission. This did not sound like something that fell under her expertise. No matter how many undesirables there might be by the time all the invitees had arrived, Penacony was not going to be a situation where her raw destructive power was ever going to be the correct answer… so why…
Why her?