A mistake, or progress?

All in all, it's official name was a bit of a mouthful. Khylon much preferred to simply call it 'pocket'. However, he knew there were a large number of people amongst his subordinates that loved to call him 'General Dom' — privately, of course, although a few of them had slipped up and called him that to his face.

How else would he have known about it?

Anyway, his Skill allowed him to manipulate vacant pockets of space. Its use was limited and there were interchanging rules that weren't noted down on his profile. He would be an idiot to let anyone know of a weakness that many assumed to not be there. Owners of spatial EVOS were seen as kings; it wasn't like Khylon ever wanted to be one, but privilege was one hell of a drug.

He typically used dominated spaces as either teleportation or storage units. However his skill came with a constant awareness of his surroundings that made him such a feared enemy. But what truly shot him straight to fame during the recent wars was that he could, on the other hand, wield his EVOS to "banish" things—or rather savagely, people.

A lot of these pockets had environments that were unwelcome to strangers. You can imagine what happens to one that is sent to them.

['Amazing, boss! Your skill is so cool!!']

Ah.

In the end the webbing had been sucked into the vacuum of the empty space, never to be seen again; still, Khylon made sure to take note of that particular allotment. He didn't want to accidentally open it and deal with that sticky mess at all.

".. stop." Your praise is really cramping my style. "And get up already!" Khylon finally let go of Aliyan's 'head'.

After telling him to get a move on, he turned around and started climbing the hole. The two of them shouldn't be wasting any more time trying to clear out the nest by hand.

Behind him, the never-ending sound of hissing and clacking echoed in the cavern. The latter was from the hard-scaled claws of the zerg as they scraped the frozen walls, while the former was supposedly a noise of intimidation. It didn't work. At all. Instead of being frightened Khylon just felt disgusted and.. disgusted.

If they didn't have such dense fur scattered over their bodies, and salivating mandibles; they could easily have been labelled as space cockroaches.

Unsurprisingly, the Zerg were still trying to attack the two of them, even going so far as to trampling all over their brethren and using them as a perch to extend their reach. But their teammates up above had never stopped attacking, so they never quite managed to swarm the two of them like they had the first time.

Now finally back up on the surface, Khylon tore the few Zerg hanging on his frame off with rough hands. He ended up ripping most of them in half but didn't care and threw them back down the hole.

Good riddance.

—or it would've been, had he not now noticed that his mecha was pretty much stained all over with their blood. How the hell was he going to clean this? Was he supposed to roll around in the snow like some dog?

His lip twitched.

['..really thought I was going to di—'] Aliyan abruptly stopped talking. He squinted his teary eyes at the camera. ['Boss, why does your face look like that?']

Like what? Human?

Khylon barely resisted throwing this guy back down in the hole from sheer annoyance.

He didn't know what the hell Aliyan was talking about, but he could.. hazard a guess.

His eyes narrowed of their own accord.

Khylon knew his features tended to intimidate a lot of people and his natural colouring didn't help in that regard; red hair and even redder eyes weren't exactly an inviting colour palette.

['Ahh! Boss just glinted his eyes at me!!']

… he did?

"Quiet!" Khylon hissed at him, abruptly cutting off the video function. Aliyan's face disappeared from his screen and Khylon finally felt his blood pressure lower.

That was enough idiocy for today.

However the other man mustn't have thought so as not soon later did his dramatic sobs and cries instead echo on the public team's cons.

Feeling his blood pressure spike once again, Khylon kicked Aliyan's mecha away from him. Anyway, they'd left the nest already so it wasn't like he was just abandoning him.

Khylon himself stood with his back facing the hole they'd just scaled. With his Skill came an unnatural, constant awareness of his surroundings, and so, "Skre—"

Khylon had skewered three Zerg in one go, cutting off its cry of aggravation. They lay lifeless on his sword until he swiftly swung it and flicked them off. A classic move of his, apparently. He turned around to properly watch them fall back into the nest. The rest of them, however, didn't let the death of their comrades affect them and they continued to swarm out.

The edge around the entrance to the Zerg nest was constantly being dyed cyan blue with their blood. "Yizmina!" Khylon called out to their resident weapons specialist once he'd had enough of their attempts. "Hit it with a sub-nuke!"

By 'it' he had meant the nest— though anyone with half a brain could've made the connection.

['On it!'] Yizmina voiced her acknowledgement. She stored away her dual-guns in favour of constructing the compact bazooka she always carried. To her back Aliyan moved his clunky mecha to once again stand up. With his playfulness gone to the wind, he dramatically swung around to shield her from the incoming horde of Zerg that hadn't lessened any, despite all of their combined, continuous firepower.

Hopefully this subterranean nuke would cause enough damage for them to successfully retreat. It wouldn't do good for them to spend a chunk of their time clearing this nest when they had yet to come across any sign of their Queen.

There was no way Khylon was going to let their minimal resources be depleted so early on.

['Ready for launch!'] Yizmina was heard warning across the comms. Almost instantly every one of them lept back and away from the pit of Zerg. Their mechas took flight and dipped almost instantly before they adjusted their mechanical models to this planet's gravity where they then stabilized into hovering above the ground.

All except for Yizmina and Khylon.

As the one responsible for launching the sub-nuke, Yizmina couldn't move out of the way. And as the captain of this squadron, Khylon was the first defense at making sure the Zerg stayed within firing range. Or in this case, down in the hole.

Now solely waiting on Yizmina for her 'OK', Khylon calmly spread his senses to chase after that particular—

There.

With a glint in his eyes, Khylon latched onto the spatial wall he'd sensed with his Skill. The wall of hollowed space ran around and high enough of the Zerg nests' entrance that it conveniently let him herd them into submission. Apart from an unobstructed path leading directly towards where he and Yizmina stood, any Zerg that exited the pit, collided with this spatial wall and ended up back where they were — just facing a different direction.

What little Zerg that did manage to squeeze their way through the only hole in this 'fence', were quickly shot to death by Khylon. They were a manageable few, and Yizmina was set to launch any second now.

['BRACE!'] Following her echoing yell, the contents of the bazooka launched and headed straight for the teeming nest. A sharp whistling could be heard as the sub-nuke quickly declined. Wordlessly, the two of them controlled their mechas to move out of the blast radius.

—well. There wasn't much to avoid when all the explosions would be kept beneath them. After Khylon got to a safe enough height, he addressed his subordinates that seemed to be waiting for his next orders.

He tsk'd.

"What are you still doing here?!" Khylon demanded. "Are you all lacking in common sense!? Don't waste this window of opportunity and move out!" After he shouted at their incompetence, he resumed shooting down whatever Zerg escaped through that narrow path. The sub-nuke had yet to hit its main target so the small bang he'd heard earlier must've been it breaking through the flooring him and Aliyan had fallen to.

Sh*t. If it didn't have a secure enough footing then it wouldn't detonate!

Tracking the 'bomb's' descent on his screen, Khylon ordered them to "Hit the ground running!". They still had time to switch fleeing tactics and these types of mechas were faster on their feet than they were in the air.

['Aye, sir!'] ['Understood, captain!'] ['Roger that, boss!'] ['.. Ok.']

As the leader and a man of duty, Khylon had a responsibility to see this thing through. He couldn't, in good conscience, let a single Zerg survive to chase any of his retreating officers down.

Luckily — "space" trumped everything.

...…

In the end, he didn't need to do anything. The network of tunnels had been the Zergs' downfall. The floor had caved with the bombing, drowning whatever tried to escape with heavy snow and skewered with sharp shards of ice.

After spending a handful of minutes surveying the damage, Khylon was satisfied enough to be on his way.

Sometime during his retreat he ended up tuning back into the team channel just in time to catch the tailend of a sentence.

['—ut the hell up, Ali!']

He snorted in amusement to himself. Aliyan never failed to make an enemy out of the entire team. If Khylon didn't know any better, he would've thought that it was all a product of his(Ali) EVOS.

Khylon amped up the speed of his mecha and quickly caught up with the rest of his fleeing subordinates before they could descend into another stupid argument.

Before he could even get a word in, a rather bulky mecha hopped over next to him, ['Captain! You're alive!'] They bumped into him. The movement jolted his own mecha before he corrected it. It was only thanks to his ironclad will that Khylon refrained from tripping the bulky mecha flat on its ass.

Rolling his eyes instead, Khylon linked all of them to a video call and shot back, "the only one who would be idiotic enough to die from something like that, is you, Freiyar."

Despite the harsh words, the man in question just laughed. His shoulders shook and rustled the loose strands of his blonde hair. Seeing him well enough to continue being his boisterous self, Khylon let some tension bleed out from his back.

Just to be sure, he scanned the faces of the rest of his team. Nothing escaped his sight; his sharp eyes picking up every last detail.

Nodding his head upon realising they were all fine, Khylon switched the video off which got many boo's. In reply he chose to set a killer pace. Spite wasn't the only factor, he also wanted to leave all of the Zerg behind. Their mechas were unlikely to be traced and the time they'd all spent running through the inches deep snow had washed off any kind of scent left by the blood of the Zerg.

Well. He was the only one still with blood everywhere!

However that didn't seem to matter much, as going by the strong wind — a blizzard was due any moment now.

Actually, before that…

"Aliyan," he suddenly called. "Why did you let yourself become captured?" And risk compromising the entire team, went unsaid.

Aliyan heard it regardless.

['Sir!'] His mecha groaned as he tried to snap it into a salute. They were still speeding along and these mechas weren't made for that kind of movement. Especially not when Aliyan's needed servicing 5 years ago, the miser.

['It.. it wasn't like I wanted to purposely get caught!'] Ali rushed to explain, ['But their webbing had gotten into my joints and I didn't notice any of the Zerg that did that because of—']

"Camouflage," Khylon interrupted. He'd sensed a few of them that had evaded his eyesight but their bodies shimmered into view every now and again. Some of these "camouflaged" Zerg had still gotten caught on the end of his blade, fully appearing before him once they took their last breath. It must've been a newly evolved skill of this strain of Zerg if their amateurish execution was anything to go by.

He frowned. This was not information they had known beforehand. "I understand, but your lack of awareness would have cost us everything."

Perhaps he was being too harsh. Except Khylon knew that Ali was more than capable of avoiding that particular situation. Each of his team members had their specializations, sure. But they were all still highly capable fighters—they had to be, for Khylon to have, and regard them as, close confidants.

Not many could be on his level, that was fact and not derivative of anyone's skill. They were enough to play in the same leagues as him though, so perhaps that's why he held them in such high regard. And why, it seems, that he'd be so hard on them—or Ali, at least—for making a borderline amateur mistake.

['I'm sorry.'] Aliyan apologises once he realises that nothing he could say would excuse him. ['It won't happen again.']

"Good!" Khylon nods to himself. Even though Ali was one of the younger members of his team, he was more than capable of being as mature as his seniors. Still. "You're out of rotation. When we next stop you're to set up camp and remain there until we return." For someone who needed to be constantly active, it was the perfect punishment.

['Captain—!']

['Haha! Just accept it, Ali!'] Another member shouted — Sergeant Freiyar, probably. That wild brawler was always the first to have a say.

['I think I'll stay with him, captain,'] Sir Lueyun unexpectedly offered. ['He can't be trusted alone and I need to sort out the rest of our gear.']

['Sir Lueyun..! I'm not a child!'] Aliyan spluttered, but no one seemed to hear him as laughter rang throughout the channel.

Amongst his team's bickering, Khylon raised a suspicious brow. What gear? Their current operation made it so that they could only bring what their mechas could afford to carry — as a means of keeping covert; even as the logistician, Sir Lueyun should have no extra gear of any kind.

However he realised that this was Sir Lueyun's way of showing concern. And regardless of how much confidence Khylon had in their technology and his own Skill that could easily stay in contact from yards away; none of them should really be left alone on an unexplored planet.

In the end his silence is taken as an agreement.