Chapter 8
"So, one of the guards back at the Death Iceball said that you had a key to unlock something called Solaris from the dead known as the Scepter of Darkness. What is that?" Shadow asked. "Not sure but apparently I decided to steal this before we left, just because I need something to study for a while," Africa replied back. "And if Radkon found out about this, he'd want his hands on it the first chance he got."
Katie stepped inside of the conversation and said, "Not to mention, Solaris is a very powerful spirit. And trapped inside the scepter is the second half of it known as Gaia. I heard Zay the Jackal was known to be its new guardian. Sorry, it's just unknown of Gaia's gender." And that was all true. Gaia was a powerful spirit who had two forms: its Light form and Dark form.
The Light form already existed but was nowhere to be seen, and chances of sighting Light Gaia were near impossible. Then there was Dark Gaia, who would merge into Solaris if the other half known as Iblis came to complete the ritual, therefore unlocking the doom of our world: Solaris. And Gaia was difficult to beat; it has a Perfect Dark form which comes from obtaining the power of the Scepter of Darkness. "Sounds like it's a big deal to keep some beast in the core of Earth, huh?" The red wolf said as she leaned on the wall, her right foot pushing against it with her arms folded.
"Name is Cece. You should be lucky I blew up the Phantom Ruby's power source, though they can build a second one." She said around the same tone like Shadow's as she pushed her glasses up with one finger. The shuttle began entering the Stratosphere as the shuttle system alerted Shadow. "Attention, now entering the atmosphere." Luckily, DCP didn't have to worry about everything moving around as it was all mounted down. "Shuttle's going down?"
Katie asked. "Good thing, because now I get to see DCP again." Cece told her that she's not the only one who's been waiting for an escape for a while. "But how did Cece get those gadgets?" Shadow asked in curiosity. Cece only quietly turned her attention outside as the shuttle entered the troposphere, as the shuttle lowered underneath the clouds.
"Now arriving at Summit." The shuttle system announced as the shuttle safely came to a stopping point and initiated the landing skids to lower onto the pavement. The engine released exhaust smoke from the pipes and opened the entrance door. Everyone stepped out and walked back inside to the Resistance HQ. "Just what was that about Gaia?" Africa asked. Katie talked indistinctly to her as the electronic door opened and the four walked in.
"Glad to see you're still alive," Rah greeted. "Especially after what happened to the Death Iceball. Cece, Shadow, Katie, Africa. Welcome back." Viv noted. But the Death Iceball was only the worst for Radkon. His robot assistant Cubot was projecting what a satellite DCP once hijacked recorded of the space station as the shuttle flew out and the place blew up into smithereens.
Radkon and the two robots stood in the same area he got flanked by Shadow. "Those resistance soldiers blew up my power source!" Radkon said while watching in his white aerial assault ship as it levitated right off the ground. "It's almost like something on your shoe that you can't wipe off!" He continued mouthing on, banging the interface of the ship in frustration. "I hate to interrupt, but we'd be faster on catching up if we had legs." Orbot suggested. This caused Cubot to stop projecting the Death Iceball incident to talk back to Orbot. "We don't have legs, dude."
Orbot turned to Cubot and said, "I know, dude." in the same tone that Cubot had. "Enough arguing! Follow me to Metropolis and let me show you something that'll flank the Resistance." Radkon said as he flew up and away as Orbot and Cubot both levitated behind Radkon, telling him to wait up. Yet, he still didn't listen. "A mysterious warrior, a grey hedgehog, told me that Radkon was hiding out in Metropolis. That's why we're planning a full frontal assault there. It's name; Operation Redemption." Skylark Nate said.
Satchmo got up from the table he was chilling at and stepped over to the radar. "Who cares what it's called? What we really need is a tactical plan that'll leave the Ice Warriors and Redemption Force in the dust!" Everyone agreed but Nate continued. "I thought about it in half a minute and I'm sure it'll work. I'll lead on." That's when Aggie got frustrated with Skylark for leading raids but not attending.
"No way, Skylark. You're too easily distracted on what you think is going to ruin our chances of being successful. And you're a Second in Command. We kinda need you here." Zay chuckled slightly and made a stern and serious face. "Even Zay knows what we're up against." The argument ended there and Zay got up and stretched for a few seconds. "Alright, I think I'll be up for a few runs." He said. "Alright, prepare everyone. Radkon's not gonna know what hit him!" Satchmo interrupted.
Before the Resistance made their way to Metropolis, Aloy still had one last word to share with Radkon and his creation who searched for Iblis to complete the ritual of the summoning of Solaris if Blackheart ever fell...Whichever place Radkon ended up warping Aloy to, it was no good. Neither did Blackheart know which it was. The cityscape was full of crisis.
It was torn by eternal flames of Iblis as the volcanic smoke, belched from the eruptions and seared the night sky with orange. No sign of organic life or anything was left from Iblis' destruction when he charred the Metropolis. That's when Aloy started to realize where she was. It took only a few guesses while walking around the ravaged city to figure out Blackheart had teleported the Morningstar to Metropolis, about 15 years after the doomsday plan of the Redemption Empire went into effect.
"What the..." Aloy said to herself as she turned in circles, being unable to help but view the sight of the terrible apocalypse. That's when she heard two voices yelp from a distance, continued by a demonic roar. Aloy looked to her left to see a giant tail from what appeared to be traced to the demon entity who attacked the other two who revealed their voices, made completely of molten rock armor and magma.
That's when a swirl of flames grew up in the sky as one last roar was released, and faded. "What was it?" Aloy questioned herself, puzzled. She grappled onto a steep piece of debris from a disformed skyscraper and swung through as she looked underneath her. The lava floor that appeared endless flowed below her feet airborne and looked around the molten buildings that used to be Metropolis.
The flying cars were left to rust on the crumbling metallic roads as the blue neon light only flickers uncontrollably. Aloy reeled the grapple back and shot it again to another building on her right. She landed onto a concrete platform where the monster was and two mysterious warriors who managed to fight off who Aloy was too soon to know was Iblis. "I'm sure it'll be fine, Meer. We just gotta figure out its origin."
One of them said, an anthropomorphic lemur of light gray who had white fur on his chest which surrounded his neck. His eyes were fierce of gold and a tan muzzle. His ears were small but pointy and wore white gloves with red circle lining that traced down to the cuffs, and navy blue and cyan boots with a red gem at the tongues. "You may be right, Absence, but that's not the point. Iblis will never end, and I wish this was never our fate!" The other replied back in frustration, an anthropomorphic dark grey and almost black meerkat who wore a black and worn leather jacket with black gloves with white circle lining, similar to Absence and wore red Air Shoes, compared to Shadow's, with black at the toe caps.
There appeared to be no heel and had a light blue midsole. His ears perked in anger over what he described. Aloy watched but hid behind a piece of the platform from the broken building that was left. "So tell me. How can we destroy this entity?" The meerkat asked. That's when a deep voice, demonic and evil, answered his question. "A sacrifice is required to fill the sorrow that lies between you two."
There stood the spirit of destruction and darkness, the hyper energy organism that would rebuild Solaris, and the monster who searched for Iblis to destroy the two without notice; Gaia. "But who would we sacrifice, Gaia? We only have each other!" Meer replied in confusion, his anger slowly wisping away. "Everything has an origin, and you two may not know who could be the cause of it. Somebody known as the Iblis Trigger. And thy who awakened the spirit shall be the cost of a sacrifice." Gaia replied.
The monster was surrounded by an aura, as a small, floating black cycloptic star projected his master, with long tentacles hanging down. "I believe one hedgehog may be watching in curiosity of this monster. She wonders if she summoned it, therefore she must be sacrificed." Gaia said as it pointed his neon-light blue claws over to where Aloy was watching.
Gaia had a large and very wide head, much larger than his main body itself and was composed of his jagged mouth until it transformed and opened, with green snake eyes on the ends. The top had four small horns and white eyes with a green one on its forehead. Energy tentacles swung around its back and had scaly blue fins running down. Absence and Meer turned over to where the entity pointed. "You!" Absence shouted as the Morningstar soldier shot her grappling hook to the cycloptic star and grabbed him to launch into Meer's face.
However, he grabbed it while it was airborne with psychokinesis, meaning he could move things with his mind. He swung it over to Aloy, only to dodge it as the star squealed and scurried away. "W-who are you guys!?" She wanted to know but the duo wanted a sacrifice for Gaia. "My name is Absence. We have to destroy you for the sake of all of us!" The lemur said, clenching his fists. "And I'm Meer. Sorry, but this doesn't have a happy ending," Meer tag teamed.
Aloy broke into a mad sprint to Absence as he suddenly disappeared upon her eyes, and told her, "It's no use!" She looked around as the lemur snuck behind the Morningstar and did a roundhouse kick to her, only to cause Meer's attack to fail and knock him back. Aloy pushed her feet against him to knock the meerkat back and striked Absence the very second his invisibility was put to recharge.
Aloy was learning from them; Absence had the power of invisibility and was a sneaky scout and Meer was a psychic and telekinetic meerkat. "She's too powerful! Where's the Chaos Emeralds?" Meer asked as Absence took a few seconds to rub his forehead while he sat on the pavement. "Let me see." He replied and ran off to retrieve whatever emeralds he just mentioned. Aloy turned around to follow him, not long before she was grabbed psycho kinetically by Meer.
"You're not getting away!" He cried as he threw the scout over to him. But again, Meer failed his attack. Aloy managed to grapple onto Meer and swung him over and above her and slammed him down, reeling back the grappling hook. Meer growled in pain, desperate to fight more but couldn't. "Just say what you're gonna say, and scram away!" Aloy walked over to where Meer was in confusion and scolded. How was it possible for Aloy to outsmart such a powerful meerkat if the worst she's fought could've been Blackheart.
The only reason she was there was after succeeding in a defense of Summit from Ice Warriors. She encountered Radkon and Blackheart at the end of the invasion when they retreated in the end and told Aloy a few words; "If you'll just ruin our fate, we'll allow you to see your fate in the long run!" That was when Blackheart warped Aloy about 15 years after the events of the ongoing: the Resistance and Zay are dead, and Meer and Absence are left in their ruined fate as two friends as they endlessly attempt to destroy Iblis but to no avail.
Gaia was only tricking them into thinking a sacrifice was required to stop him, but it wasn't. More like a trap to get them to slay one without reason and to merge with Iblis and destroy the last two. But now wasn't the time, and yet there still could've been more survivors out there. But whether it was Metropolis or even Summit in its doomsday epilogue was confusing Aloy.
"I came back with the Chaos Emeralds! But there's some bad news..." Absence said as he warped back to existence from his invisibility. Both Meer and Aloy turned to him. "The seventh is still missing, like always." Meer nodded his head, rolling his eyes. "But, what are they?" Aloy asked in confusion, hoping not to irritate the duo even more of their troubles. "Chaos Emeralds are eternal power. It's connected to the Master Emerald, hidden somewhere underneath the debris that bruy, and holds the scripture from indian echidna and goddess of the echidna clan, Tikal; The servers are of 7 Chaos. Chaos is power...Power enriched from the heart. The controller (aka the Master Emerald) is one that unifies the Chaos." And this shocked the Morningstar.
Who knew which powers the mystic relics held? "So, what do they do?" Aloy questioned. "There's not much to do with the emeralds yet until we find the seventh," Absence added. "But when somebody comes into contact with all seven, however, they can unlock a super transformation. A form of bestowing flight, chaos power and invulnerability.
It also enhances the skills that the unique one holds themselves." That was when the conversation was interrupted when a large portal of swirling black in magenta opened airborne and launched out two of our protagonists who were well known in DCP: Zay and Shadow. "Well, this isn't where we were supposed to end up," Zay said, dusting himself off as he got up. "No kidding," Shadow added as they turned around to see Aloy, Absence and Meer standing upon them.
"Good thing we have this!" Zay said, breaking the silence that stood despite the dreaded wind of doomsday. What the jackal had in his hands was the seventh Chaos Emerald. "Hang on! I gotta figure this out," Absence said, running to a shelter they both made, covered by the large tarp and had broken furniture and worn walls mounted from the buildings. He came back out of the shelter with the other Chaos Emeralds. "Let's test it on her first. She looks like a good subject," Meer said.
Now, I know what you may be thinking: Why are two survivors in the future wanting to help Gaia in order to just kill themselves without warning in the first place? Don't worry, they get pretty far into their life. Wanna see how it ends? Yeah, me too. "Just place them around her," Meer ordered to Zay and Absence. They placed the Chaos Emeralds around Aloy in a circle when they slowly floated up to her waist, and began circling. "Stay calm! Whatever is happening is good." The Chaos Emeralds circled, and Aloy looked around until a blinding light took over everyone's sight. That's when Zay saw the Morningstar in a whole new perspective.
A yellow aura of power circled around her and her skin was now bright yellow and shined. The short quills on the back of her head turned upwards and her eye color formed to a ruby red. But this time the gas mask she wore was no longer there. Aloy's full face had been shown at last. "Wow, y-you turned Super!" Meer mumbled by the remarkable sight. "Like a seed to a daisy that blooms, I've transformed into the new me. No more hiding," Aloy replied.
"But there's no time for that, I know how to get us out of here!" She turned to Zay and Shadow. "Everyone clear out." Aloy told everyone as she raised her hands up and traced a symbol in the rhythm of the air, creating a portal back home to Metropolis, where an ongoing war was staged. "Whenever you're ready, guys." Aloy told our heroes as they dashed through. That was when Absence and Meer asked her something she would never forget. "C-can you take us with you?" She simply nodded and said, "You've been here for so long. Why not come with us and you'll have a new home."
Once the trio were ready, they all ran inside of the portal into Metropolis. Once it closed, Iblis appeared to attack them again. "No need to worry about it," Gaia said to him in his mind. "I know our master Radkon will release us in the past. Just we wait and they come back."