Wreck a Mountain

"Was that really it?" Maya asked dubiously, her eyes roaming around the area in search of a hidden challenge that would come out of nowhere, only nothing seemed to be coming.

Everything seemed to be going just as expected today, you know with the whole power boost and the draining of her power pool afterwards to get used to it. It was all what she had been used to.

Things were going quite well, especially when they ignored everyone and went straight to opening the Vault, not worrying about whether or not what they were doing might destroy the planet.

When they inserted the Vault Key on the pedestal, it sank into the ground like the one on Promethea had, only instead of a pocket of space opening up and releasing a giant rampaging monster, they fought two somewhat powerful Eridian Guardians that shot out of the rift in space.

Not exactly what you'd call a Vault Monster. Even Tannis voiced her complaints on the matter. "It makes no sense! There is supposed to be an enormous monster inside a Vault!" Tannis voiced irritably as she tried to make sense of the markings around the area.

While Tannis did that, Kane was busy admiring some weird glowing red energy that came out of the Guardian's bodies when they killed them. It was weird how he held the energy in his palms, but that might be because not even he knew what the hell said energy was.

"Can you absorb it?" Angel asked curiously, her eyes only inches away from the dancing red energy in Kane's palms, almost as if she was hoping to learn something by staring at it.

"I don't know, maybe. I'd be able to tell you if I wasn't already overflowing with power right now. As it is, I'd do more harm than good to myself if I tried." Kane answered calmly, despite having an idea of what the energy was, and or did.

In the game, upon beating the two Guardians, Grave and Ward, red energy left their bodies and went into the hulking statue monster that would become The GRAVEWARD!

Once the monster was beaten, Tannis would do something or use some sort of tech to pull the energy out of the monster. Honestly Kane didn't think Tannis used any form of tech in the game, as she was secretly a Siren at that point, specifically a Siren with Angel's powers.

Kane had gone over in his mind about everything he could remember from the game about the Vault monster, and it did bring up a few theories for him, but they were just that, theories.

He also couldn't even voice them before hand as he had zero clue how to explain such questions. The only thing he had been able to do without looking suspicious was grabbing the weird energy, which felt somewhat familiar, yet foreign at the same time.

One of his theories, which seemed the most likely, was that the red energy was the Eridians version of electricity, and the Guardians were simply passing it on to their puppet, so to speak.

Guardians themselves were simply bio-mechanical defenders made in the image of Eridians with their technology, which was one of the reasons Kane thought Tannis had used her powers in the game rather than tech.

Kane theorized that the Guardians passed on the energy simply because their bodies were destroyed, as he had seen just now when they destroyed the bodies of these guardians.

He couldn't explain how the energy moved in ways that the constructs wanted it to, but then again, he couldn't explain a fraction of the shit Radar did with her million and one bodies, nor did he understand how she could jump from vessel to vessel, or control hundreds of them all at once, it just wasn't something he learned or bothered to learn before.

In his old world, people had created Bluetooth phone charges, which is what he used as a reference for this sort of thing, not that it came even close to being the same.

Anyway, back on topic, the Guardians were simply puppets, as was the big giant monster body thing hanging off the edge of the cliff.

No one but Kane had noticed it yet, mostly because there wasn't any reason for it to look suspicious. Parts from ships could be seen on the Graveward's body with its right arm having a jet thruster, the left arm having a power core, and a laser cannon in its chest.

Or at least it would if Kane let go of the energy and allowed it to come alive, something he was almost tempted to let happen if not so he could simply let lose a bit.

Thinking like that, it made sense how Tannis was able to use Angel's power to remove said energy, or at least transfer it somewhere else.

Angel's power allows her to almost instantly and effortlessly interact with any technology in a network she is connected to, for various effects depending on the technology she's connected to, and Kane didn't doubt for a second the Eridian technology was removed from her field.

I mean really, Sirens evolved and advanced forward constantly, even during the time of the Eridians, and with Tannis being the greatest expert of Eridian technology next to Typhon Deleon, it was understandable how she was able to rewrite the code. At least in Kane's mind.

It also made sense on why Kane couldn't feel any sort of energy in the giant puppet beforehand when they checked it over like he could with the Rampager.

Still, there were flaws in his theory. For one, how in the hell would Tannis know it was a construct beforehand, or did she have some alternative strategy to remove the power from a Vault Monster if her other plan failed.

Where did the energy go?

Did she absorb it?

Was it possible for other Siren's to absorb such a power?

Those were questions Kane couldn't quite answer at the moment. Another reason it made a bit of sense to him, was the energy felt familiar, yet foreign.

It felt vaguely similar to Angel when she used her power, but then again, it wasn't anywhere close to as potent or pure. Those weren't exactly the right words, but they were best he could think of.

Deciding to try and test it out a little bit, Kane pulled a sliver of the energy away from the bunch he had contained in his left palm, then tried to pull it into his body like he did with Eridium. It didn't work.

"Luna, come try and absorb this." Kane said, getting a frown from the little girl in question, though she didn't hesitate to extend her hand to try and pull the energy into her. Again it was a failure.

Maya was out of the running to try, as Kane was the one who had to help her with the absorbing part of her power. Finally he looked at Angel, who was still focused on the larger ball of energy in his left palm.

"Try absorbing it." He said plainly, to which said woman shrugged her shoulders before holding out her hand. He at least was expecting something to happen, but again nothing did.

Humming to himself, Kane thought over what he might be missing when a purple orb appeared around a boulder a few feet from him, which was followed by the boulder launching off into space. Seeing that, a thought stuck Kane which made him almost hit himself.

"Angel, can you use your power on this stuff?" He asked curiously, drawing all eyes to him.

Tannis and Radar strolled over with barely contained glee, though obviously for different reasons.

Tannis had studied all of their powers in such depth, she probably knew more about their powers than they did. She was fascinated by all things Siren and Eridian, though that was because the both usually crossed paths in more situations than some would believe.

A lot of Eridian technology had been based off the Sirens and their powers, which made a lot more sense with how they were literally the keys to everything in the Eridian civilization.

If Kane thought Angel could use her power on a mysterious Eridian Energy, Tannis was hoping it might unlock another hidden secret about the Eridians.

Radar on the other hand, connected with Angel more than anyone. It helped that Angel could literally see Radar for everything she was, down to the last one and zero in her coding, and could truly appreciate her for what she was.

That's not to say Kane didn't appreciate her, and she knew that, but it was still different. Comparing the two, it was as if someone described a rainbow to a blind person for Kane, and restoring their sight and giving them a rainbow for Angel. She could truly see everything about her.

Anyway, Angel's power was more connected with Radar than anyone could ever truly know. If she could use her power on this weird energy, there could very well be a chance she could someone be able to use it in the future too, something Kane didn't miss, given the half smile he was giving her.

By the looks of things, she more or less knew Kane was taking a shot in the dark on this, but what he didn't seem to realize was, he hit his target more often than he missed.

Luna and Maya had no idea what was going on, but that wouldn't stop them from observing what was going to happen.

Everyone watched as Angel frowned at the weird energy, then put both hands over the sliver like she was trying to cover it up.

Her hands barely had the chance to glow before the light disappeared and she jumped away and landed on her ass, her eyes wide in shock as they stared gaping at the red energy.

Everyone seemed to panic and get on alert, save for Kane who hadn't moved an inch. He was expecting all sorts of different reactions, and this was actually one of them, though he mostly expected nothing to happen if he was being honest.

"You okay?" Kane asked calmly, expecting she had jumped away out of surprise more than fear or pain.

"Y-Yeah. Just- just wasn't expecting that." Angel answered, sounding a little jittery, which was a rare thing for the woman. Maya helped her to her feet, then she stepped back over towards Kane.

"So what happened?" Luna asked expectantly, looking between the red energy and Angel.

"It was weird. Almost like I was interacting with someone, but different." Angel whispered, looking just more confused than the others. "Mind if I try that again?" She asked, finally looking away from the weird stuff and towards Kane.

"Of course." He answered, already pushing the little sliver of energy towards her once more.

Again she wrapped he hands around it, followed by the glow from her using her powers, only this time they stayed active unlike before.

Everyone remained quiet as they watched Angel for well over 5 minutes before she finally stopped using her powers. Things must have gone well if the giddy look in her eyes was anything to go by, and considering the fact she was almost jumping in excitement.

"It's incredible!! This power is a command given by the Eridians!" Angel said, not explaining very well as she looked at the larger portion of red energy.

"Care to elaborate?" Maya asked, beating everyone else to the question.

Looking at each of them with a beaming smile, Angel explained, "The Eridians created a protocol to defend the Vault, only it's more like a dead A.I. than anything! It was given the command to protect the Vault, and it does so by using the energy supplied to it!! It's like coding given form, only it can't react with organic matter!"

The explanation seemed to be enough for everyone, though Kane wouldn't say he completely understood everything about it, only that he was right in his theory.

Now that he had somewhat of an idea of what it was, he had to decide on what to do with it. Angel could interact with it, even go so far as to manipulate the coding, but she couldn't store or get rid of it.

On that front, Kane walked over to the bodies of the Eridian Guardians on the ground, then began to cut away pieces from them with his molecular blades.

It was only when he got to what could only be described as a metallic brain that stopped what he was doing. Picking up the weird thing, Kane walked back over to the group.

"Radar, do you think you and Angel could get into this thing and make it a container of sorts? It already housed the energy once, so it should be able to do it again, and with Angel's help, she can rewrite the code to obey whatever command you want, say for instance, powering a body." Kane asked, not even being subtle on what his end goal was on the subject.

Radar seemed to grasp what he was getting at first, if the comically widened eyes that almost popped out of their sockets were anything to go by.

Before Kane even knew what was happening, Radar had her legs wrapped around his waist and her mouth was locked onto his. That lasted barely a few seconds before he managed to pry her off of himself.

"GROSS! God damn it!" Kane cursed as he spat on the ground, even going the extra mile of being over dramatic by making dry heaving sounds.

"What's your problem?" Luna asked, not understanding Kane's little freak out.

"I don't care how hot the body is, I don't do necrophilia!! That body might look as though it's alive due to the parts inside of it, but it's completely dead. Do you know how gross aged corpses taste?!" Kane cried out in disgust, then pulled out a bottle of Listerine before he began to rinse his mouth out.

"So the fact that she's not human, and an A.I. doesn't turn you off?" Maya asked curiously, getting more interested in this topic than she had in the who red energy deal.

Spitting out a mouthful of Listerine, Kane raised an eye at her before asking, "Why would it?" Maya seemed to be caught off guard by the answer, or at least looked as though she didn't understand, so Kane decided to elaborate.

"There are pleasure bots all throughout the galaxy, which people have been using for decades. From what I've been told, they can be many times better than women in some regards. Anyway, I know Radar has absorbed a few of those, with the addition of having more of an understanding of the human body than any of us here could ever hope for. My body specifically considering she does all of my scans. I get all tingly just thinking about what she could do!!" Kane said, getting weird looks from everyone else.

"Now you want to add Radar to your harem?!! Is no one safe?!" Luna cried, being way too over dramatic for Kane's liking.

""He's not wrong."" Tannis and Angel muttered at the same time, both having first-hand experience with Radar.

"I didn't know you thought of stuff like that. I could have used that pleasure-bot we took from the resort if you wanted." Radar said, not bothered at all about the stuff Kane was into.

Hell, she had been the one to initiate things fist between them, though that was mostly because that was how Angel and Maya reacted when he did things for them, and it usually seemed to make him happy given the stupid grin on his face afterwards, though that could be from whatever sexual thing they had just finished doing.

"Alright, alright! Enough of this stuff! Can you two restore the container for this stuff? If you can, we can just keep it for later when Radar learns how to use the energy." Kane said, not doubting for a minute that Radar would in fact learn how to use said energy.

There was a moment of silence as Radar pulled out a few small devices, then proceeded to scan the corpse of the Eridian that Kane hadn't mutilated.

It took a few minutes, but eventually the lightshow died down and Radar was staring at a holographic screen with an image of all the parts and components that made-up the vessel for the Guardian.

"Fixing the container shouldn't be too hard, but we'll need to analyze it a bit more before we could replicate the Eridian technology. They didn't just use parts, they grew organic components for the inner workings. It's like they created people." Radar explained the little bit she gleaned from the scans, and just from that, everyone knew quite a bit would need to be done.

Still, that didn't stop Radar, Angel, and Tannis from fixing up a make-shift storage device, and in less than an hour Kane was pushing the red energy inside of it.

"Honestly, for how many robot bodies you've collected, I'm surprised you haven't collected an Eridian yet. I mean, they clearly can last millennia if they're still around, so wouldn't they be the best options?" Luna asked, seeming to bring up something that should have been obvious on Promethea.

"Zip it, princess! Like the rest of us, you just thought of this now, so don't try to sound like a bitch. It's not cute!" Kane butted in, silencing Luna before she could really get into it.

Kane loved Luna, and everything that she brought to the table, but she was letting that brain of hers make her sound like a cunt sometimes. At first it was cute, but when it was a more common than not occurrence, it was just annoying.

With that taken care of, Kane teleported so he was on top of what should have been the giant monster, then stored it away inside his inventory.

It might be powerless now, but it was essentially a robot body that Radar might be able to use in battle, only she would need to learn to use whatever energy it was that powered it first.

When he got back on the ground, everyone wondered why he took a piece out of the mountain, at least until he explained what it was, which did seem to make Tannis feel a bit better.

Apparently not having a giant monster irked her somewhat, so knowing there would have been one if Kane hadn't stolen it's power seemed to take a weight off her shoulders, not that he understood why.

Anyway, with all that over and done with, they all decided to finally enter the rift in space that was the Vault. Upon entering, they immediately noticed the similarities to the Vault on Promethea.

The background was all dark and dreary, with a bridge leading from the Vault opening to a floating platform with large statues on it. Even the dark red glow from the main statue was the same.

Walking across the bridge, they were all met with another weird relic floating on a pedestal, which did bring up a few questions.

"Eridian Synchronizer... does that mean what I think it means?" Maya asked dubiously, hoping the Eridians didn't build something to turn other races into them.

"Eridians modified themselves, similar to how humans do in this day and age, only they were far more advanced. The text here says the Synchronizer can attune one's mind to the power of Eridian Artifacts. My guess is the artifacts in question aren't compatible with other species, but with the Synchronizer, that might not be a problem." Tannis helpfully explained, though she was still a little unsure what the artifacts in question were.

As far as she knew, there had never been a reference to said artifacts, which honestly wasn't all that hard to believe. Even after millennia of them being extinct, humans were barely able to grasp a fraction of what the Eridians had accomplished. They must have been something to behold.

"Does it say how to use it?" Maya asked curiously, not having a clue on that front, especially considering how the object in question was designed.

It looked like a cube with a chess board on five sides, while the 6th side had opening, only you couldn't see inside of it, regardless of how open it was. Almost as if one was looking off into a pit of darkness.

Not even Kane had a clue as to how it worked, and he usually had a good understanding of this sort of thing.

"Let me see..." Tannis mumbled as she knelt down to read the texts on the lower portion of the pedestal. "I see... Simply put your hand through the opening, then grab hold of the handle on the inside." Tannis added once she finished deciphering the text.

That seemed easy enough. Kane wasn't too keen on being the one to test out this item, so he let Angel go first, seeing as how she was closest, and had been the first to call dibs.

Without hesitation, she put her right hand inside, which was followed by a loud clicking sound. What happened next was both cool and terrifying at the same time.

The squares on the outside of the cube began to spin around while slowly moving up Angel's arm, giving off a greyish glow as they did. It was only when Angel let out a shout of alarm that everyone got worried, though she later said it was out of surprise than pain.

The little squares had worked their way all over her arms and torso, looking as though she was wearing a weird shirt that covered everything above the waist and stopped just below her jawline.

However their was a small trail of little squares that trailed up the back of her neck and went to both sides of her head, wrapping around her ears and continuing on until they both met back up on her forehead, leaving a diamond sigil that stood out, looking like she was wearing some sort of crown.

"Incredible!" Tannis cried out, being the first to speak after the weird thing that just happened.

"Do you feel any different?" Kane asked curiously, not seeing anything special about the weird shirt thing, other than the fact that it apparently put itself on her.

"Not really." Angel answered, looking as though she too was curious about what happened.

"What's that for?" Luna asked, pointing out a weird makeshift pouch on the left side of the shirt above Angel's hip. It looked just like a pocket, only not.

Like the cube shape before, it seemed like the black space had moved to Angel's hip, and they still had no idea what it was.

The weird part about it, it felt like a solid object, but it clearly wasn't, because when Kane dropped a rock in it, the rock disappeared, at least for a minute before it seemed to fall out the bottom, as if there was a hole in it.

"Maybe it's for one of these!" Maya shouted from a few feet away, holding up a weird orb thing.

It looked like a small object was floating in clear liquid inside the orb. Whatever it was, none of them had ever seen it before.

Deciding to go ahead and give it a go, Angel placed the orb inside the pouch, getting an instant reaction from the shirt/Synchronizer.

The squares on her body lit up with a faint silver glow, and the diamond sigil on her head was a bright blue. Angel seemed to stiffen at whatever was happening, but other than that she seemed relatively fine.

"Wow... okay, this is weird. It's like I can feel where everything is with my mind!" Angel voiced what she was feeling at the moment. She walked around the room, grabbing random objects that she claimed were full of power.

After a simple observation, it was clear it was just condensed Eridium. Hell, even one of the statues was made of pure Eridium, it was just caked in a weird gunk. Angel said she could also feel everyone in the room with her eyes closed, even Radar, though she did say Radar felt weird.

Tannis apparently gave off the faintest feeling. She also pointed out that Kane felt like a beacon compared to the others, which did give them somewhat of an idea of what the Artifact did.

"It's the Artifact known as Clarity. It allows the user to sense all forms of energy around them, leaving nothing hidden from sight." Tannis informed them as she read over the script next to the chest that Maya had pulled the object from.

Like it, there were three other Artifacts in separate chests, each of them with their own unique abilities. As for the Synchronizer, it did in fact give off the aura of an Eridian, which were the only beings capable of using said Artifacts.

As for the other three items, they were Blitz, Arc, and Fate.

Like it sounded, Blitz seemed to help boost the speed in which someone moved, only it did it by creating a small shield around the user, then shielded them temporarily from the effects of gravity.

Arc pretty much made the Angel's hands into tasers, but the effect only lasted a minute before it shut-off. Tannis said it had a cooldown of 10 minutes before it could recharge to do it again, which was still cool.

Another cool thing of note about Arc, it didn't use the standard electricity that they all used, but the weird energy that had powered the guardians. Thinking about the weird energy, it brought up so many questions for Kane, but for now he would put them aside until a later date.

For the final artifact, Fate seemed to be more of an overpowered shield than anything. It basically created a shield around you, and if someone was stupid enough to shoot you, the shield would literally stop and reflect the projectile back to wherever it came from just as fast as it was struck, changing not only your fate, but possible the fate of an attacker.

Another cool thing about it was that it didn't affect the regular shield, which was a cause of concern.

Normal shields didn't stack well together, and would more often than not, they would short-circuit each other out, rendering them useless, which was why no one ever wore more than one shield.

The only downside to the Artifact was that it would only stop one shot every minute, which was still really good, and better than most shields out there.

For the Synchronizer itself, all Angel had to do was touch the diamond sigil on her forehead for everything to crawl back off of her and turn back into it's cube like form.

At first Kane was concerned how useful it would be if someone could just deactivate it like that, but it after trying to take it off of Tannis, it didn't react at all. As it turned out, the user has to be the one to touch the sigil, otherwise it would stay there, which was pretty handy.

Kane wasn't sure how the Eridians had created such a device, or why, but he thought it was pretty cool. Why the Eridians would have built a device like this to allow others to use their technology, Kane's only answer was that they wanted to share their creations.

Radar said they couldn't sell stuff if no one else could use it, and this way it would ensure people had to buy Synchronizers if they wanted to use their tech, which might have been why they built their tech that way to begin with.

However if that was the case, then why had there not been any mention of Synchronizer's before. If they were widely used, even millennia ago, Kane figured their would have been mention of them before.

Anyway, with the Relic in question, everyone looted what Eridium they could find, a few objects and pieces of sculptures, before they were finally ready to leave.

"This Vault is indeed connected to the Vault on Promethea, as well as... Pandora, and a fourth Vault symbol I do not recognize. It could be Nekrotafeyo!! How exciting!!" Tannis shouted, a little too happy about the thought of the Eridian home world.

Ever since they had discussed Kane's whole theory about Typhon Deleon opening the Vault there, she had been all too thrilled at the idea of going there. She seemed more like a little girl going nuts about a celebrity than the cold genius persona she usually gave off.

"I'm not in any particular hurry to go there, so just calm down. We'll deal with all the problems we have for now, then we'll go. I want to get rid of Hyperion and Maliwan before we get ourselves anymore enemies. Plus it wouldn't hurt to build up a few bases on some other planets just so we have places to fall back to if we get caught in a sticky situation." Kane said, silencing all discussion about heading straight to the next Vault.

Really it was largely due in part to wanting Tyreen and Troy to leave and go start their cult. The more shit they started, the more chaos he got to unleash on the universe. Not that he actually needed a reason to kill everyone, but it was nice.

Done with the Vault, they all left before making their way back to the Jakobs Estate where a thoroughly pissed off Monty was waiting for them. It took a busted lip, but eventually he calmed down.

Angel told him everything was okay, and that they had in fact dealt with the monster inside the Vault, explaining that there wouldn't be a problem anymore.

She didn't know that two psychotic twins would try to come here in the future, but that was trivial at the moment.

Besides, if they really reinforced Eden-6 with all the tech they were planning to bring, there wouldn't be much concern from some invading force, unless it was another Corporation.

However seeing as how the Maliwan fleet was decimated in hours, it was safe to assume they were going to be just fine.

"Didn't I tell you this would all work out just fine? Nothing bad happened!" Kane stated, sounding a little too cocky, not that he cared.

"Hooray." Monty said dryly, not the least bit enthusiastic about their accomplishment.

"What are your plans now? You all are going to be staying awhile, right?" Wainwright asked, sounding rather hopeful about them staying here for the time being instead of just bolting off planet now that they were done with what they came to do.

"If old Pappy here'll have us, we'll stay for a bit longer." Kane said, gesturing a thumb towards Montgomery, though he did get a nudge from Angel on how he addressed her grandfather.

"If I could keep her and get rid of you I would, but seeing as you're a pair, I guess you can stick around." Monty answered, though it looked like he had to bite back a few cuss words that he wanted to direct towards Kane.

"Now that that's settled, we're gonna go wreck a mountain. See ya at dinner." Kane said plainly, then left the room with the others in tow.

It would only be Kane and Radar wrecking the mountain for the first few days, but the others all had other stuff on the go, including Angel. She was working on something for Wainwright, and it was almost done now.

As for Tannis, she was going to busy for quite awhile going over all the new stuff they had discovered in the Vault.

Maya actually was taking Luna on a little hunting trip out in the woods, mostly to spend some time with the little girl, but also because she didn't feel like they got to shoot enough stuff in the Vault.

Meanwhile Kane and Radar went to go do exactly what he said he was going to. Wreck a mountain.