4 Otot

"Piece of junk!" Moklo exclaimed, and threw down the contraption out of sheer frustration. Barandat sat behind him in the small room she now shared with her adoptive brother.

It had only been weeks since she had moved into the little hut, but she already felt comfortable in this community. Despite initially casting suspicious glances at her whenever they saw her, the farmers accepted the story that she was Moklo's long-lost sister without much resistance. While it was unlikely that people believed the boy, no one really cared enough to pry.

"It's okay." Barandat bent down and picked up Moklo's failed experiment and gently set it on the table. By now, she was used to her adoptive brother constructing devices for days at a time. What she struggled to understand was how Moklo managed to sleep so little yet still function. She often woke up halfway through the night to find the makeshift bed he had made for himself empty, and new machine parts littering the floor.

Moklo paced around in frustration. "I'm going to the dumpyard again. Maybe I can find some more parts there. Or I can—when's the last time I ate?—Eh." He shrugged after a few moments. He ruffled Barandat's hair and grabbed his coat on the way out, gently closing the door behind him.

Alone once again, Barandat heaved a deep sigh and laid back down. Whenever she had a moment to spare, she often spent it pondering her origins. "You are Barandat," she could recall a voice telling her, but she could never identify its source. All she knew was that something about the way the words were spoken evoked a strong sense of regret and loss.

Feeling tired after the long day's work, she closed her eyes and quickly drifted to sleep, into a waiting nightmare.

Barandat couldn't feel the ground below her, yet she wasn't falling. The space around her was filled with grayish gas she couldn't identify, her surroundings illuminated by a faint golden glow that shone from a distance. No air flowed through her nose with every pull she took; scared and confused, she felt her lungs begin to collapse. After a few moments of struggle, she lost consciousness.

When she opened her eyes, the space around her was completely empty, devoid of the strange gas. Unable to gather her thoughts, she searched for the source of the glow, but found instead a citadel in the distance. A tower spiraled upwards in the center of the structure, its highest point disappearing into the heavens.

Looking around and seeing nothing else in any direction, she took a step toward the light, and was plunged into oblivion.

"Barandat," a voice called urgently. Barandat opened her eyes to Moklo standing over her, holding a cylindrical metal container. "Look!"

Barandat forced herself to sit up and tried to recall her dream, but to no avail. When she looked out the window, it was dark outside. Rubbing her eyes, she turned to her brother, who was evidently excited about something. "What's going on?"

Moklo tried to speak, but his excitement had robbed him of speech. Instead, he pushed the cylindrical metal container into her hands and pointed vigorously at the label on the container.

"Otot?" She muttered the word printed on it, confused. In the three weeks since Moklo had adopted her as a sister, she had picked up some common vocabulary. It hadn't taken her long to learn that even mentioning Otot was taboo in the Southern Kingdoms. What would possibly interest her brother about this discarded container from the North?

The airtight can felt light and strange in her hands, and she was taken by the impulse to hurl it away. At first she thought it was only the unfamiliar feeling of rusted metal against her skin, but quickly, it became apparent that the true reason for this aversion was buried deep in her mind.

"This can is barely used!" Moklo squeaked. "Now I can actually test my theories. First, I need to recreate a machine that can use it for fuel, then later modify the design to run on an alternative power source." He clapped his hands and rubbed them together in excitement. "Just imagine, fighting the North with technology they could never dream of. They've grown reliant on this accursed chemical, and that will be their downfall."

Barandat struggled to understand the situation. "They don't have to use anything else. Otot is everywhere in the North."

Upon hearing her words, Moklo froze.

"This could change everything," he said slowly, eyes wide with possibility. "We would no longer have to bear the disgrace of defeat. And they will finally see that they were wrong to disregard my potential." His mouth twisted suddenly, and he spoke bitterly through clenched teeth. "Can you believe it that they deemed me fit only for farming?"

Barandat had more questions for Moklo about the canister, about who 'they' were, but flashes of her nightmare kept her from staying focused as Moklo went on about his plan of action. A wave of fatigue washed over her and quickly overwhelmed her with weariness, much to Barandat's surprise. Though she had spent most of her day assisting the farmers, she could not understand how she could be this tired.

Moklo's voice softened as he realized how exhausted the girl looked. He gently removed his precious prize from Barandat's loosened grip, in case she might drop it. "Go back to sleep, Bar. Sorry I woke you up; I got too excited."

Barandat was now too far gone to protest. Nodding, eyelids heavy, she lay back down in bed, and drifted into a blissful slumber.

Moklo cradled the can of gas in his hand, admiring the content meter on the side. Perhaps his eyes deceived him, but he could have sworn that the gas level had showed a drop of a solid ten percent since he last read it. He turned the container slowly over in his hand, examining it for leaks. There was no low hiss of escaping gas. "I must have remembered it wrong," he thought out loud.

For a brief moment, Moklo debated catching up on sleep, but his curiosity quickly got the better of him, and he plunged gleefully into work. After all, it was not every day that one got the opportunity to work with a functional power source.

It took him a mere seven hours to recreate what had taken a team of Technomancers decades to invent. Most of the concepts he applied were found in the textbooks he had scavenged over the years. With Otot as a versatile fuel, it wasn't difficult for Moklo to create a contraption similar to the Techno weapons of the Empire. But perhaps he was getting ahead of himself once again, as the machine was only functional in theory.

His latest creation was far from elegant in design, but that much couldn't be helped. With only discarded parts to work with, Moklo focused on practicality above all else. A metal sheet was bent four times, and sealed with nails and glue to form the outermost layer of this device. Inside the shell, a homemade generator tapped into the Otot container, and consumed the chemical in order to generate energy. All of the power would then be channeled through a coil at the tip.

Most brilliant people share a desire for recognition, and Moklo, a self-proclaimed genius, was no exception. He sat there, double-checking his calculations, waiting patiently for Barandat to wake up. She would be amazed, he was certain of it. Hours passed, and Barandat continued to slumber, even as light shone through the window to illuminate her sleeping form.

Despite being an early riser, Barandat seemed unusually tired. He moved in closer, listening, and was assured by her even breathing that nothing was wrong. Unable to contain his own excitement, Moklo turned to the thick rectangular machine and began tweaking with the controls. Perhaps it's better this way, he thought to himself. If the machine failed to function, he would have time to adjust it before she woke up.

It's going to be really cool! he thought, even though his rational mind knew that, realistically, the odds were stacked against him. After all, he was just a self-taught child with a vendetta.

Carefully, he unfastened the straps, and attached the weapon to his right arm. Setting his machine to the lowest setting, he hooked up the Otot container, and aimed the "lightning projector" out of the window, away from Barandat.

"Please work," he prayed quietly, and hoped his parents were watching over him from the afterlife. Gingerly, he squeezed trigger. For several gut-wrenching seconds, nothing happened. Then, with a sizzling crackle, sparks of electricity shot out in an arc a few inches in length and fizzled out.

I did it.

Tears of exuberance streamed down his face as he watched his hours of hard work come to fruition.

Memories flooded his mind of that fateful day. Fragments from his then five-year-old brain, combined with stories from the few survivors.

Formations of Imperial troops equipped with gas masks and wielding large Otot tanks strapped to their backs advanced upon Zone S1. Instigators of the 12th Southern Rebellion gathered in a disordered mob numbering in the thousands.

Moklo's parents were far from the action, having elected to watch the zone square through the window of a building three blocks away. He looked up, and saw two faces wrinkled with concern.

Instead of engaging the Rebels head on, twenty-four Elite Imperial Alchemists marched forward in perfect unison. Slowly, the tension built up, until the mob exploded into action and charged toward the Northern lines. What followed could only be described as a bloodbath as two dozen Otot-fueled living weapons obliterated a quarter of the Rebel ranks in mere seconds. With one brutal strike, the Rebellion was broken by the Empire's Finest.

But the carnage didn't end there. As the routed rebels attempted to flee, legions of soldiers armed with Techno-weapons gave chase. With the rebelling faction dispersing among the population, the emperor gave the order to exterminate the whole zone.

As Moklo went through the last memories of his parents tucking him away inside a container, his fingers began toying with the power gauge on his contraption. The fool of an emperor will die one day, he promised himself.

"Moklo?" Barandat asked, finally stirring from her slumber.

Moklo turned and gave her the biggest smile she had ever seen. Holding up his right arm, he beamed with pride. "I got something to show you."