Draconic Relations

by ramseymac

OnetwothreeDEATH

My breath came in ragged gasps as I skidded to a stop behind a white panel and reloaded my assault rifle. Bullets smacked into the panel and ricocheted off at high speed in random direction. I caught my breath and evaluated the situation for a moment as I recuperated. I wore the dark grey angular armor and was equipped with a blocky assault rifle, two mags left, and a sort of taser device in place of a knife. I had been shoved into what looked like the ruins of an old apartment block with mechanical flooring and hostile sentry turrets posted everywhere and did what seemed most reasonable at the time- that is, run like hell. Now that I was crouched in cover after sprinting around gunfire, this was all seeming crazy to me. Why the fuck did they put me somewhere I would get shot?! I shook my head and peaked out of cover, ducking as a shot nearly smacked me in the forehead.
"Well, shit..." I muttered, putting my rifle over my head and firing into the general direction of the turrets in a sort of 'spray 'n' pray' fashion, knocking out the one sticking out of the left wall of the hallway.
That was when my cover went away.
The panel that had shielded me previously folded back into the ground seamlessly, leaving me exposed to the barrage of death heading in my direction.
"Ack!" I yelped and jumped up, strafing in the opposite direction and rifling through the things in my HUD. Infrared? Nope. Invisibility? Already tried that. Didn't work. Booster jets? ...Fuck it, let's go.
I activated the booster right as a bullet smashed me between the shoulder blades, doing three things: first, it made me spasm like an epileptic gorilla. Second, it knocked the wind out of my lungs. Lastly, it sent me flying toward the door at nigh uncontrollable speed. I crashed through the door painfully, sending splinters everywhere, the ones hitting me simply jabbing and bouncing off. As I regained control of my body and stopped spasming, I took note of the completely white room I was now in, with a dirt floor and a ruined looking obsidian apartment building with a huge hole in the roof, then the wall screaming towards me.
"Shit! Wait, I got this!" I shouted as skidded my feet across the dirt and attempted to spin too bleed off speed. I skidded on my heels for a moment, spinning quickly, then took a couple of long strides before losing my balance and smashing into the floor, "FUCK!",the booster keeping me going until I smacked into the wall with a thud. "...Damn it." I muttered as the boosters switched off.
I laid there in pain for a moment before the GLaDOS voice said "Loki, I've been studying your performance, and I don't know how to put this. I'm certain you're trying very hard." She said as robotic limbs pulled me to my feet. I groaned, staggering a little. "Now, let's try that again."
"Oh, fucking hell!"

---

A pair of dovah, both cloaked, stalked through the collapsed remains of the palace in the capital, the rounded, melted scraps of armor plate layers that were ingrained into the building. Ahead of the dovah was a tunnel that drove down into the roots of the mountains at a mediocre slope. The pair peered down into the tunnel, activating infrared in their optics. The one on the left hefted a sniper rifle up and signaled for the other to go. The second one jumped forward, then quickly activated their boosters. They skidded down the tunnel on their heels leaving a glowing red contrail in the darkness. Burnt out torches marked every few meters, jammed into the fluorescent white lights that had quit functioning centuries before. At the end of the wide tunnel was a vault with its door slightly ajar- an orange, flickering light emanated from the crack in the door. They switched off their boosters and slid down the rest of the slope on momentum.
The dovah stopped and crouched near the side of the door, their partner sliding down and joining them. The sniper unclipped a cylindrical device with three small legs on a sphere from the 'belt' part of his armor. He set the device on the ground and flipped a panel on his wrist open. He uncloaked and tapped the touchpad. The device righted itself on top of the orb side. He moved his claw and it moved into the vault, the camera feed showing him a campfire with a sleeping bag next to it.
The vault itself had begun the long process of decay. Dirt and plants had begun to fill the immediate area around the entrance, though the only remaining plants in the region were basic mosses and withered saplings that stubbornly refused to submit to radiation.
The creatures in the area of the relatively small country were also filled with strange creatures born from radiation such as changelings and tatzlwurms.
Slightly further into the cave sat a white mass of feathers and fur. The fluffy creature was about the size of a medium dog and was fawning over a standard MA5B assault rifle that was half buried in the dirt with huge yellow eyes.
The sniper directed the robot back to his position and clipped it onto his belt.
The other dovah moved around him and silently creeped toward the owl-cat hybrid by some unseen gesture or signal. They flicked out a short sword--a blade that can be used as either a dagger or a normal sword--that telescopically slid out to full length with just a faint click. The click was, unfortunately for the griffin, masked by the roar of the fire. The blade slid across his throat before he could react, and he was soon drowning in his own blood, writhing on the floor silently and spurting blood through the slit in his neck. The sniper crept in and nodded to the other dovah before pulling another tool out of a pocket on its chest. This one had a pistol grip and a screen on top. The sniper moved across the vast room, followed by the assassin, until they reached the far wall. The sniper brushed the collective dirt and grime from the years off of a section, revealing a small latch. He pulled on the latch and the mechanism came loose. Inside of the box that came out was a tiny bowl.
The sniper lifted his helmet and, with a small hiss, it came off.
He had dark grey, almost black scales covering his face and large steel grey eyes with glowing red overlays across them, feeding him information.
He spat a globule of glowing blue saliva into the bowl and replaced his helmet. The wall cracked open twenty feet to the right, going up to about thirty feet high. An interlocking system of doors separated and opened to a large square opening with clipped corners that dug even further into Taazokaan soil. Freezing cold air, below zero degrees, rushed out of the secondary vault as the two dovah moved in. The grey walls were completely blank and spotless, though small lights adorned the clipped corners on the top and bottom of the tunnel. A deep, base voice with the telltale resonance of synthesized speech replaced the general silence of the rest of the tunnel, which continued to stretch on.

"Your presence is... unexpected. I have reviewed your genetics and confirmed royal blood, but still do not know who you are, if not the prince." It said with a confused tone. "I am Durnehviir, and you are nearing my domain. This area was highly classified by Queen Arkay (Formal), otherwise known as Queen Caroline, (informal). If you are of security clearance below level Monahven, this is in direct violation of standing executive order codename: Ahrolsedovah and you should proceed to vacate the premises immediately." It droned as the two dovah kept moving through the tunnels as quickly as possible, leaving a trail of small black domes along the floor behind them. Eventually they came to a larger chamber that housed a series of large rings side by side, each one about ten meters in diameter. They were kept up by radial struts that connected vertically to the floor and ceiling and horizontally to each other. The rings had large engines mounted along the circumferences that each pointed a sort of beam inward into the center.
Sterile white lights flicked on as they entered the room and the sniper patted the assassin's back.
"Tuz, this is it." He said with a slavic accent. "Nahkriin."
"Visual analysis confirms suspicions- Qahnariin program confirmed." Then the tone of the voice darkened. "We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. I am the vanguard of our vengeance.." He said... just before a black form landed on top of the sniper, pushing him to the ground and smashing Tuz in the back of the head with an armored fist. Tuz stumbled but regained her balance quickly, spinning to retaliate with a blade. Her blade met thin, cold air.
She looked around, but saw nothing but blank walls and rings. She crouched and checked her partner's condition.
He was down, but definitely still alive. She removed a tiny, black dart from the area around his jugular that had breached his under suit and tranquilized him- this stuff was super potent. Immediately she whipped around, flashing her blade out and catching the arm of their assaulter. It was a dovah, around six feet tall, completely covered with angular black armor. The places that didn't have armor were covered by matte black under suit and covered everything under the armor.
The gauntlets had clawed armor on the fingers, blades jutted downward from the forearms and out the backs of the elbows. The knees, greaves, tail armor, and helmet were all sharp in some way. The helmet was rounded in the back but had a triangularly pointed front, while four large black blades jutted out of his back. Sharp, angular black spines lined his spine from the base of the neck to the end of the tail in two outward facing rows. Three jagged, claw-like, hooked blades ended the tail with a lethal bite.
Holy pointy objects Batman!

Tuz's blade locked between the spikes on the bottom of his left forearm. She shoved him away and ducked to avoid the punch that would surely come next, only to receive a high powered kick to the face, servos whirring inside the exoskeleton supplementing the opponent's attack. The kick sent Tuz flying backwards toward a ring. She quickly utilized her jump jets to slow herself, then rolled and landed perfectly, standing up with a pair of larger telescopic swords out in full swing. The blades glowed with white hot energy as plasma covered the blades.
She took the offensive and rushed the other dovah, who flipped out a pair of large, matte black blades, both double ended because this guy definitely needs more pointy bits to poke people with. He whirled them in his hands and put them into a guarding position.
Tuz lunged forward, straight down the middle, but altered her course with jump jets just before coming into range of his swords. She, lightning quick, brought her blade down on the back of his neck- only to find a blade there blocking her attack.
That dovah was fast. Too fast to be natural.

Tuz jumped back and away from the threat, but wasn't fast enough. In a split second, the dovah was out of defense mode and into 'OnetwothreeDEATH' mode. A clawed hand grabbed her by the throat. This one had six fingers, all holding with an iron grip. She brought her swords up in an X and attempted to slice at the arm to no avail. The weapons bounced off as if they were plastic, the plasma doing nothing to the unflinching adamantine grip. The arm holding her launched forward abruptly and she was swept off her feet, the arm whirring as the combat prosthetic did its job- then brutally slammed into the ground and injected with sedation via the jugular.
She was unconscious almost immediately.

---

I hung up the last piece of armor in the locker and stumbled over to the showers. I was bruised, sore, and frayed from twelve hours straight of being whacked with rubber bullets, vigorous exercise (parkour parkour, NO MORE!), and electric shocks. This was going to be the best shower I'd had in years. And the worst, considering how horrible I felt, and also taking into account that I, in all likelihood, had not taken a shower for years because when you live in the Mojave with a sarcastic AI and you don't get to shower you don't cry about it.

Author's Note:

So yeah, got some action, and a possible new AI and ninja.
This chapter was really about bringing back some action, which is what this story is- an action story.
I'm so, sosososososo sorry for the long updates, but I've had a lot on my plate in REAL LIFE, the place where when you think about the reality of your future, you kind of hope for a sun goddess/sorcerer to come over and murderize the world.

Comments

[Zemez]

Just wanna say something... I think you transitioned too fast. And part of this story doesn't make sense considering that if he has human memories he should also have that curiosity we have. Yet he's not questioning anything. Like why he's here, what the program was, or even who these people are. It's not natural considering unless your plain stupid or just don't care (which I don't get either of these impressions from Drake/Loki) then you would have questions. It's not the fact that he hasn't asked, it's the fact that he isn't even thinking about it like a normal sapient being would in this situation.

Anyway great story so far. Not one of my favorites but it's been s great story. Just work on the natural curiosity of anything that can think and work on better story progression.