Troubling Heaven

[TheCheat1]

Ethian flinched, quickly re-drawing his sword and shield, his body glowing whiter than before, and the high-pitched squeal becoming unbearable to most beings. "Iban!" Ethian zipped a few dozen feet in front of the android, gritting his teeth. "Leave, now. Better yet, how about I smash you to pieces again?" Ethian spat and the squeal got even more high-pitched. Any higher-pitched and any humanoid wouldn't be able to hear it. "Your decision. Now."

((I won't attack, I swear. ))

 

[Brilliand]

Iban lowered his gaze to Ethian. "No, I'm here." He continued walking, heading for the vast depression in the grass where the ship had stood.

Aden filled his ears with water to drown out the noise, then spoke. "Ethian, will you quiet down? That racket is painful! Iban, why are you still alive?"

"You killed me there."

Flustered, Aden cleared the water out of his ears and winced. "What?"

"I fell in battle in the Pyramid of Ancients in the Rift of Worlds."

"Yes. Why are you not dead?"

"You have never seen my home." Iban stopped and looked skyward. "It is time I returned. Iban will have no more homes."

 

[WPZanar07]

"Whoa!!!" Tek said, as readings flooded his sensors. He had picked up an explosion, perhaps a ship with its size, but none had followed it. Perhaps that's where he needed to go...? He knew who he was to saboutage, but not if those were friends or foes down there.
"The Empire must pay..." Tek said, "but that doesn't mean I'm going in guns blazing..."
Tek descended into the planet's atmosphere, glowing red in the sky, towards the explosion.

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian stopped glowing. "Sorry, Aden, but I can't exactly let this guy walk away!" Ethian glared at Iban, his weapons still glowing and a low hum coming from his body. "Why are you here? How did you survive?! Say something before I blow you to smithereens!"

 

[Brilliand]

Iban glanced up at Tek's ship, then looked back down at Ethian, dismissing it. "For every world, I have a life. But that shall be no longer. I have left one battle unfinished."

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian stopped holding his breathe. "What battle?" The hum had stopped, and his weapons had stopped glowing.

 

[Brilliand]

"Lepagan Seganit Tewenad Copolut, determined victory supersedes loyalty. The world lived."

Querrot spoke up. "What world?"

"Hollowstar is my birthplace. I will have no more homes."

Aden spoke next. "Lepagan... Segiwit... Tepewan... Coconut? What does that mean?"

Iban stared at him silently.

 

[TheCheat1]

"He said 'Lepagan Seganit Tewenad Copolut', not 'Lepagan Segiwit Tepewan Coconut.'" Ethian rolled his eyes at both Aden's mistake and his annoyance with Iban's vagueness. "Look, Iban, tell me what's going on, in a bit of detail if you don't want to get wasted." Ethian's hands were glowing white. "And that's not a suggestion." Ethian zipped next to Aden and put his sword and shield away. He cracked his knuckles. "It's not like I'm attached to these three. I'll blow you all to atom-fragments, I don't care."

 

[WPZanar07]

Tek slowly landed the ship nearly 100 feet away. He figured if they had been hostile towards him, he'd have been blasted out of the sky. As the ramp of the ship slowly lowered itself, Tek flourished his pistols before placing them back into the holsters of his high tech belt.
"Now, gentlemen..." Tek said, "Mind telling me what's going on and who's on who's side, so I know which one to blast away?"

 

[Brilliand]

Querrot called back, "Come, join us! You'll fit right in, we're all strangers." He turned to Ethian and said, "Obviously Iban here was born on Hollowstar, and he wants to go destroy it because he got in a fight there and didn't finish the fight. I don't have any idea what Lepagan is, though."

"Lepagan, as I used it, is a one-dimensional imaginary curve in real 5-space defined by Hollowstar as an advanced form of coordinate." Iban looked at Tek and spoke in a normal tone of voice, far too quietly for Tek to hear from such a distance. "What have you come for?"

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian slapped his forehead and slid his hand slowly down his face. "Right. Thanks for the genius' translation. Oh and look, another annoyance has arrived." Ethian yelled to Tek, "Look, buddy, your blaster-fire wouldn't come near me before I decapitated you, so don't bother. Now, Iban, if you're going to destroy Hollowstar, I'm most certainly all for it. But I have to return to Aragithia first and make sure that, well, that it's still there."

 

[Brilliand]

Aden looked at Iban, then at Ethian, following the conversation. "Aragithia? What's that?"

Iban took the statement differently. "Why would it still be there?"

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian sighed. This was giving him a headache. "Why wouldn't it be-- oh, that's right, I blew you up!" Ethian snapped his fingers. Things were making sense a little bit now. "After I destroyed you, the Time Lord restored it." He glanced at Aden. "Aragithia is my home planet. It's in the Genesehres System. You've never been there?"

 

[Brilliand]

"I don't know the names 'Aragithia' or 'Genesehres'. I don't suppose I have been there, then, although I may have heard of it by a different name. Now, I have the opposite question. Why wouldn't it be there?"

Querrot and Iban waited for Ethian's response to Aden's question.

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian scratched the back of his head. "I told you, the Time Lord restored it-- somehow. After I destroyed Iban, World's Gate began to collapse. I saw a world that looked similar to mine and ran through the gate to it, and it turned out to be my world, left like Iban had never even existed." He glared at Iban. "But there was a difference. No one else remembered being destroyed, and so my boss didn't believe that I really destroyed Iban. In other words, Mr. Android, I missed the biggest freakin' payout I've ever been offered. And it's because of you." Ethian gritted his teeth. "And unless you can come up with 20,000 pels in the next five seconds, you're going to feel the wrath of an unpaid mercanery."

 

[WPZanar07]

"So...it's true then," Tek said, turning off his Listener program. His utility belt was equipped with over a hundred features, after all. "That guy at the Oreali Station was speaking the truth about this job...about Lepagan...say, do any of you know what the Temporal Gate is?"
Tek felt he could trust these people with the government's dirty little secret, so he didn't wait for a response.
"It's a way to change the past...not just one event, but the entire past, once they modify it. It's owned by the Bruthalian Empire, and once this information was discovered by my people, rumors spread like wildfire of the possibility that that was the secret behind the Empire's success. Battles that should have turned out favorable for us were just the opposite, even when we were able to outnumber them. As it is, they can only change one planet at a time. They've got to be stopped, before they can modify it to change the entire universe. And you thought you had just your problems to worry about. Oh, but that's not all," Tek said, waving his arm above his head to emphasize his frustration. "They said that it was on Aragithia...so I guess that means my life is a chip in your pile. Ante up!"

 

[Brilliand]

"Chip?" Querrot looked confused, and Iban looked like he didn't care. Without a word, Iban launched himself into the sky and flew away nearly straight up, leaving a trail of fire behind him.

Aden ignored the odd statement. "Then it seems I go to Aragithia next."

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian's body lit up, white "flames" coming of of it. "Do what you want, I'm not letting Iban leave without a farewell!" Ethian shot up into the air, flying near Iban. "Now where do you think you're going? I'm not done with you yet." Ethian pulled out his sword and the screeching noise could be heard again. "Stop. Now."

 

[Brilliand]

"I'm - " Iban's response faded out as he left the atmosphere, not veering from his course in the slightest.

 

[TheCheat1]

Ethian snarled under his breath-- or at least he would have, had there been air. Where are you going!? I'm not letting you go anywhere!

Mel, Litra, and Miranda watched as Ethian disappeared from sight. "Great," Mel mumbled, "Now we have to find a way off the planet." The trio walked up to Aden and Litra tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me, but you wouldn't happen to have a way of getting us to a place called Aragithia, would you?"