GuNNhead

My craft comes crashing down onto a small far-circling moon. As I tumble out of the hatch in my common attire, I hear a voice calling out a note of warning.
“You will pay for trying to steal from me! The case is mine, and nobody else’s, same with this moon! I know you want them, everyone wants them!”
“What are you talking about? I was just passing by, I have more important things to do than—“
“No! You’re trying to confuse me, lie to me, like all the others, the case is mine, and I’ll kill you, kill anyone else who tries to take it from me!”

His luminous body emits a bright flash, and all light escapes me. He lashes out at me. He’s fast; his speed is astounding. He slams me away from the entrance to my ship, and leaps into the air. I prepare to block a straight-forward attack, but he alters his position, and stabs his talons into the sides of my head. A row takes place inside my head; I can hear only this boisterous great noise, nothing else. I hold my ears in pain. He takes this opportunity to slash into my abdomen, and my innards begin to ooze out.

I refuse to give in. The blood is pouring fourth from my open wound even as I hold it tight. I’ve been playing it too easy, he’s weak.
I’ve had enough of this idiot. A bolt of energy courses through my spine. A flash, an outline of light covers my body; it outlines my suit of armor. The Gravity Surge. Everything is vibrating in my blind eyes. I’m armored once more. Electricity bristles around me. I stand. I still cannot hear, but my vision has returned, enhanced by full spectral viewing lenses. Perfect, I will not hear him plead his case when I’m breaking every bone in his body. I am disappointed that I’ll not be able hear his screams of pain, but take solace in the fact that I’ll be able to see the pain on his porcine face. To my luck, my new form does not deter him, and he attacks once more. I grab his arm, and he brings the other. Grabbing that as well, I hold them together, crushing them into one.
“Let’s find that case now, shall we?”
“No! You’ll never take it, it’s everything to me!”
“Oh, I’m not going to take it.” Soon, inside his house, I see it; it’s gleaming, platinum. I break it open. Its contents: unimportant. I begin to shove him into it mercilessly. I can feel each of his bones breaking as I force him into this small box. Most of his orange blood pours forth from his body and box so that he can fit. Once fully inside, I close it, and seal it.

I return to my craft to find it has repaired itself, and lift off once more to continue my quest.

Noise. Noise, noise mindless, meaningless noise! I’m berated from hypersleep by this impossible noise. Hammering, pounding, grinding, drilling. Nothing is worth this noise, it is it pointless, meaningless. I must end it, and all possibilities of it, at all costs. It breaks laws, not only of my own peace, but of physics, of plausibility. This noise is so intrusive, so bad, that it transverses the impossibility that is its own sonic travel, through the vacuum of space, of my craft, of my tranquility. I triangulate on its source, dead set on its end.

I arrive at the cacophonous planet, and scan for the hub of life, only to find none. At all. At this proximity, my craft is shaking, coming apart due to the force of this intense noise. I exit, and enter the atmosphere fully armored, but find I can go not lower than that, the sound waves pushing me away. I hover for a moment in thought.

[Override::]
[Divert Power from Weapons]
[Reroute::]
[Generate Counter Feedback Loop]

Immediately, as sound pours forth from my weapon systems and luminescent details, I begin to fall. Landing, I see nothing but mechanical parts moving. Turning, grinding; gears, sprockets; hammers, pounding; pistons, pumping; drilling. Machines simply being. Machines. There is no artificial intelligence, no grand schema, they simply are. Like clockwork in time with the metallic clanging, I see an army driving towards my location. The army of drones marches towards me, unthinking. All I can hear is their emotionless machinations at work; all I can see is their collars as a luminescent white light, pouring forth into the black air. They approach at an alarming rate, there’s nowhere for me to go; I cannot fly on this planet while being protected from the sound, but I leap backwards, and repeatedly fire weakened gravity spheres into the crowd. I am forced to continue leaping back and into the air, firing again and again. Soon, however, I cannot keep up, and am merely firing to create a place for me to leap into again without being run over. They are not attacking, not concerned with my presence at all, they simply move, are simply moving forward, endlessly.

Tired, I cannot move fast enough, and one eventually catches my leg, and sends me slamming into the ones behind it. Through quick thinking and acting, I am able to steady myself, and roll, clinging onto one of these automatons. They take me along their set path, deep into the recesses of this artificial planet; down to the near-core.

There is not one scrap of organic material, only machine created by machine. Detaching from the cavalcade, I begin to make my way towards the absolute centre, where the pressure and heat is greatest. I traverse through enormous gears grinding; ropes binding; coils winding; pistons panging; clamps clanging; springs spranging. I avoid being crushed into a pulp with every step. Never stop, every leap and bound counts.

Eventually, I arrive. There is only a core of liquid metal, pumping, beating into every pore and vessel of the planet. It’s quiet down here.

[Activate: Quantum Destroyer]

I blast directly through the core, and, utilizing its own heat, through that very core and through the entire planet itself. The alteration in pressure launches the molten steel out over the surface and into space. I hear one loud crunch; the planet is about to implode in on itself. I make my way out of the hole as fast as I can. Huge amounts of steel crashing down around behind me. As I reach the lip of the opening, I leap, and soar towards my summoned craft. I make it to a safe distance in the surrounding space.

I watch the planetoid collapse into a miniature mangled mass of metal. Silence.

I enter back into hypersleep, and continue my path.

In my craft, I stare at the reflection in the mirror. I stare at my reflection. I remove my helmet. I reflect back on what I have done so far, who I am. The first drop of desire that I have ever felt, and in the end it was mere manipulation, trickery, not of me. Transgress. It was never real or true. It was nothing I felt. It was hollow, merely going along with another’s wishes of my free will. Desire is impossibility for me.

There is no satiate to be had. The more I kill, the more I kill. That is all. I am driven to death. It was never a desire for revenge, I see it all too clearly now. This reprieve has shown me that more than ever. It is a directed drive for the termination of life. It overwhelms me without end. The connection between us. Me. It, I, am only myself now. It is all I can do to take pleasure in it.

However, is there a lack? A lack of death for me, I am missing death?

No. My death has been fulfilled in life. With this suit, from the 6th dimension, I am complete. I lack nothing. Does my former humanity encroach in my currency? No. I must keep going, spreading death wherever I am. Remorse has been removed. Mindless violence attached to an ever thinking mind. Constant energy, constant movement.

I reject spirit not by choice, but by force. It has no place in my form at any time. There is no lack; there is not a missing of soul, but a replacement with a fuller self. Those with a soul are incomplete, seeking other souls. To validate their own, or to complete what no being has in full, I do not know, and do not care. It is not my place to postulate on these matters, because it is something I can never have. I am full of myself.

I am of two minds that are of one, and of the same.

The realm, the dimension of the unknown is what has sustained me beyond life. It is the realm in which I died, and first ever truly lived. It is where my armor originated, and from where my power is drawn.

I’ve been side-tracked from my pursuit far too long. There’s no telling how far Kænus has escaped from my reaches due to my time on Müün. I search The Database, and I find him. The fool, he’s returned from the unknown reaches. This is too easy. He has discovered whatever it was that he was searching for. No doubt why he destroyed my planet. He’ll be making the announcement at a large summit in the next cycle. Plenty of time. I’ll intercept his luxury expedition craft before then, and eviscerate him, organ by organ. I will prostrate him, reveal to him alone that I know what he truly is, let him know he is not worthy of the veneration he receives. I will shatter his body beyond all recognition. I will crush all that he is. I will ruin all that he has built, and finally, I will leave him to bleed out.

I complete my armor once more. The eyes of my helmet glow a bright red. I walk to the controls, and set my course.

[Activate: Gravity Sphere]

Explosions and craters line the earth at my feet and beyond. It greatly reduces their numbers. Four sprout wings, and attack from the air with their weapons. Strategy. I’ll wait until I’m finished with the infantry before I attend to them, they must be the faction leaders.

[Activate: Gravity Blade]

I slice through the remaining forces with ease, their blood pooling around me in the onslaught, creating a thick mud with the dirt. I slosh around in it, and cut drone after drone down. I send their pieces splashing into the liquid bog I’ve created. I’m sprayed with the ooze by the fire from the leaders. Soon, though, I am done with the ground units, and can attend to the flyers; they’re traveling in formation; I’ve been watching them, avoiding their fire while carving up their underlings. I concentrate on the blade, and send out two lunar razors spinning towards them, taking two out with each crescent projectile. They fall sputtering in pieces into the pools with their inferiors, still twitching with the final spasms of life. Immediately I’m blindsided by an as yet unseen force, taking me beyond the carnage of bodies, back to dry dirt.

“You’ve taken my only chance at revenge, and now you’ve taken my army!”
“I’m about to take a lot more than that,” I say, standing up in the clouds of dust that surround, brushing myself off.
“No, you’ve destroyed Celrdrrun! He was to be mine, my army’s; it was all we had left after he destroyed our planet!” Predictable.
“You’re talking to me as if I care.” I rush him, and break into his chest with my elbow, sending him tumbling into the ground. He coughs up blood, and struggles to breathe.
“No,” he spews more blood and begins to claw at the ground to crawl away from me, “it can’t end like this, please.” I step on his shin and twist, crushing it, and kick him in the abdomen, rolling him meters away. He manages to raise himself to his knees.

Craters surround us on this barren red landscape, some old, some natural, some new, still smoldering; only stars and blackness up above. Defeated, this challenger begs for his life, and begins to grovel, plead for his life. I walk up to him, and place my left hand on his shoulder. My right, I place upon the top of his head. I pause for a moment, and then begin to press down; hard. He attempts to struggle, resist, grabbing my arms, but it is no use. Internally I revel at the sounds of his head being pushed into his body. Externally, I am cold and emotionless. As I continue to push down, blood begins squirting up towards nothingness. A volcano erupts in the distant mountainscape behind me; I cannot hear it or see it though I can feel it. As his blood hits the red earth, the sound of heavy rain fills the air as his gurgling and sounds of struggle fade away and come to and end. Once his head is fully beneath his shoulders, I let go, and his lifeless body slumps onto the now wet dirt, blood still gushing.

A challenger… with an army at his disposal…

I call upon my ship, and meet it halfway in the air, catching it, clinging to it, and crawl in as it soars away from the planet. Death always feels good, in its ways, but this was a disappointment; too easy. Does my power know no bounds? It was the least I could do to end him in the manner that I did. I must now continue ever further towards my goal.

As I continue my course in search of Kænus, I begin to think of the meaning of revenge. I’ve gotten a taste of it. I’m left to ask if it is really my driving force, or merely a feeling that disappeared as soon as it began, with bloodlust taking over. I know that I never cared for my planet, which is why I left. I have no connection to it, save for the obvious. Revenge is so petty. However, a hunt, or the removing of the life from another; that is what drives me. It fuels my own life. To give that death a path, even one with no ties, it is all I can do to keep myself. If only I could kill Celrdrrun again, a powerful death, so palpable…

Kænus. There is the path in which to direct this paroxysm of death that flows from every fibre of my being. The Network’s databases have very little on him. Whatever other atrocities he has committed must have been done in secret. Why my planet? No matter, death is death. I’ll simply scour the cosmos for eternity until I find him, and he will suffer my ire.

Until then, however, I’ll destroy whatever may cross my path. His last known whereabouts are across to practically the other side of the cosmos. As I set the course to the general location of his last philanthropic exploits, before he set a course for the unknown depths, I receive a transmission. It’s laughable: the luck; a challenge. Already there is a fool who has heard of my search and subsequent destruction of Celrdrrun. Perhaps they have their own rage-fuelled vendetta against him, and I have stolen their one opportunity for revenge, and so they have placed it upon me. I name a barren world that’s on the way to my destination, and it is accepted.

I arrive days later at the proposed meeting time. There’s an army waiting for me. Most likely the last remnants of a civilization dedicated to taking down Celrdrrun. The sun is setting upon the planet, the skies are a deep almost black-orange, a burnt hue. The earthen ground is a dry red. I smile inside my helmet as I leap from my craft into the upper stratosphere. I descend in flames with my arms crossed in front of my head and chest. I cross over canyons and cavernous volcanic mountain range. Their terrestrial air squadron is the first I burst through, burning scraps of metal, twisted, shower the ground. Once I’m within viewing distance, the ground troops begin to fire on me. The force is in the center of a large plane of craters beyond the barren valleys and mountains of burnt trees. The armies themselves are complex creatures, bug like; four legs with multiple bends, two arms created to rip and tear, holding gun-like weapons. Their lizard-heads are topped by a single large horn, and filled with rows of razor sharp teeth. Only coming within range now, their blasts still mostly fly past me, with only the rare one connecting, without enough force to do more than singe my armor.

[Activate: Surge Bullets]

My hand spins with the whirring of the surge bullets, and mows their numbers down. As I get closer, their screeches of war and pain are ear-shattering. My helmet adjusts, filtering it. I land, and send eye beams out into the crowd; the red lasers blast the ones closest to me away. Creatures of instinct, they drop their weapons that may have given them some advantage at this range (if they care not for their own) and lash out at me, screaming and flailing their talons. I enjoy the challenge of hand to hand combat as they claw and scratch my armor. Very few of them bite, which I find odd. They must have been marginally trained in combat, so there’s a commander amongst the cacophony somewhere. Later. I begin assaulting them with a barrage of fists, bursting through their black bug-like carapace with sprays of their green innards flying out. As their numbers begin to pile upon me, I begin my defense, blocking their attacks with my arms, and kicking their limbs off. Soon, however, their numbers begin to overwhelm my patience.