Games

We encountered the Queen with a dozen of her Queen's Guard Therons awaiting us in her throne room.

"I'd tap that." I joked with the boys as Myrrah rose from her throne.

"For sho, homie." Cole agreed, "I thought the Locust Queen was supposed to be but ass ugly."

"What a unique creature you are." Myrrah purred while looking at me, "I can feel you in the Rift, yet you are cut off from me. You poor lost child."

Myrrah was some heavy shit. The woman was supernatural for way more than her resistance to imulsion. Her mind influenced the entire Locust species and she could see through their eyes, hear through their ears, and she would never die as long as a single Locust survived. All of them were born of her DNA and all of them supported her consciousness. Woman was straight power and damn fine.

Crazier than a bag full of cats getting waterboarded.

"We should see about forming a deeper connection some time." I chuckled and looked at the assembled guards, "I see you brought protection. I prefer a more raw intimacy, but hey, not like they are enough to stop me from breaking through to your center."

"Oh behave, you naughty boy." Myrrah demurred.

"Is this really happening right now?" Baird asked.

"Courtship has never been my strong suit." Marcus admitted.

"This ain't courtship, Fenix. This is game, baby." Cole laughed, "Get it, Grunty!"

"Oh, is that Adam's boy?" the Queen mused, "He always spoke so highly of you. It's a shame you didn't follow his path."

"What the hell does that mean?" Marcus demanded.

"Oh, it doesn't matter now." Myrrah said as she turned away from us and clapped her hands.

Skorge's Hydra burst through the windows above the throne while Myrrah made her escape and the Therons started shooting. The squad dived away while shooting back and I leapt up onto that beefed up Reaver and smacked its face before climbing up to the saddle and snapping the neck of the Theron piloting it.

"Come on, Bessy!" I shouted as I brought the flying creature under control and used its mounted cannon to lay waste to the Theron's below, "Come to the Lizard Daddy! He'll ride you right!"

"Why don't you boys try to chase her down while I take this baddy for a test ride?" I laughed as I shot my mount out the way it came and started directing it towards any pockets of fighting, laying waste to any Locust and Lambent I could find.

"Grunt." Cole called me on the radio, "The Queen got away on Reaver. Do you see her?"

I looked around and spotted her flying away.

"I see her." I grinned as I took off in pursuit, "She won't get away."

"Good!" Cole encouraged me, "We got orders to make our way to Jacinto. The grubs are hitting the city preventing the evac. Which means they need the Cole Train and his pals to make it happen."

"Good luck, buddy." I said as I pursued her up away from the Nexus.

Someone wasn't too confident in her army preventing the untimely sinking of Jacinto.

I shot her down as she just broke out onto the surface and landed my Hydra next to her as she crawled away from the exploded Reaver.

"My dear. I do believe I have you at a disadvantage." I greeted her, "But I have myself quite the conundrum on my scaly hands. What do you think darlin, should I kill ya."

I didn't let her answer as I locked my hands around her neck.

"When I came to this world, I thought about going down into the Nexus and taking you, who could stop me?" I asked rhetorically, "All that psyker power and what is it doing for you right now. All that hate, all that anger, is it going to pry my fingers loose?"

Myrrah grasped at my hands, trying ineffectually to get enough room to take a breath.

"But I waited, didn't want the game to end too early, and now here we are in the final stages. Jacinto will sink and the imulsion will be buoyed up from below by the seawater, causing the Lambent to spread across the surface of Sera without control. The war will be nonstop against an enemy that cannot be placated. It's like I am a year old all over again!" I crowed as I let go of her and she gasped for air.

"What are you?" she demanded between ragged breathes.

"That is a good question." I kneeled down next to her, "The answer changes with startling frequency. I had a friend, he was made up of many programs working together to form a consensus, he called himself Legion and it seems every time I close my eyes I become more and more like him."

I grinned at her, "Now you see here, darlin. All my friends would be mighty cross with me if I don't kill you, but…" I emphasized the conjunction by tearing some of the living creatures that form her ceremonial dress away, "I think the world has been a cold and hard place for you, and it is time for you to warm up next to Daddy."

"How does a Queen politely refuse such an offer?" Myrrah gritted her teeth as I tore away her tentacle monster backpack.

"She doesn't." I answered.

I went home atop my new Hydra, causing quite the stir at the Fort until they realized it was me. I parked my new mount next to Jack's pavilion and started stripping off my gear.

"Have fun with the boys, baby?" Jack asked as she sat on top of the luxurious desk we had found for her office.

"Oh, it was the best, honey." I answered, "I got to fly on a Reaver, blow shit up in a tank, kill another Locust General, take the Queen to pound town, and best of all I stole a Hydra and now have a bitchin flying mount. You have a good weekend?"

"It was busy busy busy." Jack sighed, "It seems like every other hour some new tribe of Stranded shows up to submit to the Legion. Apparently the common consensus is either join the Legion or head underground. Can you believe that shit?"

"Believe it?" I chuckled, "I saw it myself. Dom's wife was one of those stupid mother fuckers that ran right into the arms of the Locust. They fucked her up so bad Dom had to put her down."

"Damn." Jack said, "It's probably a good thing their kids didn't survive. Anyone that dumb shouldn't be allowed to further contaminate the gene pool."

"Shit, babe, that was so cold I am going to need to check for frostbite." I stated in awe, "Let's never repeat that again because Dom is a good dude. It wasn't his fault that his wife lost her mind after their family got destroyed."

"Sometimes going crazy turns you into a badass bitch." She gestured to herself, "And sometimes it makes you a dumbass. I got no sympathy in me anymore for non-hackers."

"Same." I agreed.

"Want to fuck on the Hydra?" she asked with a smirk.

"Fuck the hell yes." I answered.

The years following the sinking of Jacinto were as brutal as I thought they would be. Between the surviving Locust factions and the glowies popping up to the surface we had a constant stream of enemies to fight. The Fort's focus on multiple hard points rather than a tight perimeter paid big bucks as the grey bodies of dead Lambent Stalks formed a damn forest in and around our home base.

The Hammer of Might and Ebony Blade made the Stalks perfect targets for me and Jack to get 'high on life'. Putting the blade and hammer into continuous contact with the Stalks tapped us into an enormous supply of stamina and life force. It was a bigger rush than any chems or stims we'd ever taken, and the fact that it completely killed the dangerous imulsion spreading structures helped too.

When completely stripped of life, the stalks still made for fantastic firewood, burning long and clean, providing great light and warmth for the enormous (by modern Seran standards) population we supported. The daedric artifacts sucked up all the nearby connected imulsion when they slew the stalks, giving us access to the safest soil on the planet. With the Legion running constant protection, the older members of the community had basically free reign to produce as much food as they possibly could.

Even with it's highly limited intelligence, the imulsion was still smart enough to start pulling back off the Fort as more and more of it was killed magically, causing me to have to range further and further a field to find combat. At least my Hydra made that easy.

I tracked down any Locust factions I could find and put them through my own version of 'Processing', only mine was more about enjoying a sumptuous feast followed by turning the leftovers into jerky. Fortunately, the Ring of Namira still activated when eating preserved sentients, allowing me a brief rush of energy to combat the fatigue of even the longest of my hunting trips.

The solitude did me a lot of good on those hunts. I'd never been one for self reflection or long term planning, I lived my life in the moment and let the future and the past worry about themselves. When I awoke as a krogan super soldier, I embraced my new paradigm and marched out to confront destiny and her army of robosquids head on, not even nearly dying deterred me.

But then I won my happily ever after and fucked a hole in reality that led me to Star Wars. My natural disgust towards Jabba prevented any real physical or mental bleed over from the assimilation of the giant slug man, and I was able to quickly set about securing a future for me and Jack without space wizards and planet destroying super lasers. I succeeded, and then we did it again.

Jar-Shak was so fundamentally different from Jabba that the assimilation changed me, both in mind and body. I took traits from Jar-Shak that I wanted, but also took his obsession with spell casting into my subconscious. Through the use of Standing Stones, Enchantments, Relics, and the Oghma Infinium itself I made myself into an expert sorcerer just like the argonian always dreamed.

This last jump did a real number on me. The initial assimilation of multiple very foreign minds had left me a bit unhinged. Jack had weathered it so much better, but she had a much stronger sense of self. Me, I am a dude, stuffed in another dude, playing a bunch of dudes, who's gestalt mind is rapidly bringing in more dudes. I think I may be nobody.

Just kidding.

Like I said, the solitude was damn helpful as it forced me to look into myself. It's not something people like to do with any true measure of depth to the exercise. We don't often like what we see when we examine ourselves thoroughly. In truth, I couldn't even remember what it felt like to be human. I am closing in on only seventeen years as Grunt, but I also had centuries of memories as a hutt, decades as an argonian, and over a hundred fifty years as various Locust.

I hadn't even thought twice about pushing this world into the endwar for my amusement, and I still couldn't feel like it was wrong despite knowing that it is. Many thousands of people died in situations I could have prevented by just taking a very enthusiastic walk down to the Nexus and killing all the Locust I found there. I could do the same to the Lambent, but if I did then the fun would be over.

When Cole led a foraging team to the Fort looking for food and supplies I was happy to come along with them for the delivery.

It was time to put an end to the bullshit. At least until Gears 4, but I ain't striking around for that crap. Once the imulsion is all dead, I am getting good and drunk and fucking my way to a world full of less suck.

Hopefully.