The ship carrying Jason and the last of the Free Nation soldiers back to their island nation. They gathered around the body of Jason, the healers continuously casting heals to maintain his life. It was minor, but Jason’s skin and bones slowly regenerated. The healing was only the most basic. It was only ever meant to help fix scrapes and bruises that were annoying and could cause accidents to occur if ignored, but nothing more serious than that. They had no choice but to keep casting heal on him for the entire that it took for the ship to cross over, each healer taking turns so that their ARMS had time to recharge. If there was a single slip up they didn’t know whether he would make it or not.

Back at the harbor city, the Krizian soldiers broke through the barrier and spread out over the city, searching the rubble for any survivors and valuables. As they scoured the streets they found their disabled captain crawling towards the docks that were still burning, dragging his labrys behind him. Despite his injuries he still had one goal; kill Jason. If he could just make it to the piers he could locate the ship and attack it. He would never get the chance to carry out these goals however. Black myst formed behind Caloway, seeming to creep out of cracks in the very fabric of reality. When the myst spread about the size of a full grown man Gannon stepped out of it as though it were a doorway from a parallel dimension. Gannon followed behind the giant captain who could no longer stand. The dark wizard had the ability to restore his fallen comrade. He’d never forget to have the best regeneration skill that he could find as part of his equipment, but the question was whether to use it on the brute. But that just wasn’t in the cards. Gannon held out his staff. The primary jewel glowed. Then, as if from a flame thrower, streams of fire shot forth from it at Caloway, covering him in flames. Normally, he’d not be so cruel, but Caloway loved pain and a token gesture Gannon had decided let the man go out in the most painful of ways he could inflict.

The behemoth of a man let out a scream full of suffering which soon turned to bliss. His clothes turned to ash, leaving the once proud captain naked within the flames. His skin bubbled and melted. His muscles stiffened in an orgasmic crescendo before all his nerve fibers had been seared away. The sinewy muscles that held the man together shriveled and snapped, drying out in the heat. Caloway was still alive, but now he felt a deep longing agony. It felt as if the world had gone away and he existed in a void. His sense had all been destroyed, but he still went on. The immense pleasure that he had received moments before was removed in the next instant now his final moments were not the paradise of flame, but the hell of nullification. Although it lasted mere seconds, to him, it lasted an eternity before he was gone. The torch finished its job turning the man to nothing but ashes to be blown away in the wind with his failure.

The other captains caught up with Gannon just in time to see the last of Caloway’s ashes disappear. They looked to each other and then to the Labrys left on the ground started to come apart and be absorbed by the only thing left of the monster of a man, his ARMS units, before looking to Gannon for answers.

“Was that the masochist?” one of them asked.

“I did not think that he would be that brutal,” Ank’Orra replied.

Gannon’s lips spread into a broad psychotic smile, “Ha! That weakling wouldn’t ever do something like that.” He laughed maniacally to himself. “He’s a good guy afterall.”

Mittens rolled her eyes ignoring the crazy Human instead turning her attention to the valuable ARMS that Caloway had left behind. She reached for them, but was stopped when a shard of ice shot across her path, cutting her cheek, making her pause. A single drop of blood dripped out onto her fur cover face, absorbing it before it dropped to the ground. “I do hope you don’t think you’ll be taking those. Bring them here, kitty,” Gannon spoke with all the command of a superior even though he was of no higher rank within the hierarchy.

She nervously chuckled, “Of course not! I was just getting them for you,” gathering up the ARMS units quickly and obediently taking them to the Human that had clearly lost his mind. Mittens was scared of Humans. She wasn’t at first. Just like everyone else she had thought they were filthy, disgusting creatures who were insulting imitations of their gods, but then came Kriz and his warped way of gaining and maintaining power. She’d have never let anyone get away with that man had gotten away with. It would have been easy to disembowel him and be done with him when he’d first came into power. She would have done it herself, but didn’t, like everyone else. They’d all just let it happen and that’s what scared her most, not the overwhelmingly powerful new inventions that he’d brought with him, but that when he crossed the line, in every situation, instead of rising up and being done with this madman, they all just took it. Not a single person moved. All that went through her head was that it would be so easy, but no one moved. They had to know something she didn’t. They had to. Why else would they just allow that to happen. Why would they cheer and support him? Why would they let him treat them as his property to do with as he pleased. She was doing the same thing, but that’s because everyone else was, and if she crossed him what would they do? She fell in line. Got herself in the best situation she could. Then she was noticed. That’s what she wanted she thought, but not like this. Chris treated her like his pet and gave her a new name. She didn’t like it but she pretended. What else could she do? She hated this Human. All Humans. But they were just so powerful and smart. They understood the world better than those whose ancestors had built it and they could exploit it unlike they could ever do. They were now the master and she had no choice but to be their pet like her ancestors had been to the ones that she had called her gods before that they looked ever so much like.

Without realizing it Mittens had subserviently did as Gannon told her and waiting for him to take the ARMS from her, which he did ever so gingerly before patting her on the head like she was nothing more than a pet for him to praise or punish. She responded to his petting by pushing her hand into his hand. Whenever Chris had done this to her she made sure to act favorably to not be punished and now she had been trained to do it automatically. She hadn’t realized it until this moment. No one else had dared to do this to her. Before she could react and pull away, Gannon swept himself around her, his free hand finding its way to her well toned behind and pulled her into him. The hand that was previously pleasurable running through her hair now grasped the tuft of fur and skin at the back of the nape of her neck, forcing her to lock up and lift her head. As she did, her lips were met with Gannon’s. He took no care for whether she wished this or not. He simply violated her mouth with his tongue as he so desired.

A day later, the Free Nation ship with Jason on it rolled into the harbor of the island nation’s only port city. He was still just barely holding on. His skin had regenerated over the course of the day, but for the nanites that the ARMS units used to repair the damage that was done to a person that was a cakewalk. Skin grew back by itself if left alone. Sure there might be scarring that way and it might take months to do, but if you left an organism alive with minimal amounts of flesh and kept the muscle mass underneath clean from all the possible ways that it could be infected or damaged then the skin would, with adequate time and resources, regrow all on its own. The same could be said of all his broken bones as well. They needed to be set in place, but after that they could do their thing without the aid of the nanites. The problem was his lungs, eyes, and heart had all been damaged and the level of sophistication in the ARMS unit’s healing skill ability was only just enough to really do shallow superficial fixes. The little machines tried their hardest, but in the end they just weren’t equipped to do much. It took all their effort to just keep Jason alive, each generation of synthetic cells taking over from the last as their time wound down. It was hard to tell whether they were helping after so many of their kind had been called forth to help. Jason’s body had begun to fill up with the ARMS material clogging up his blood stream. Normally, they’d pose no danger but this situation wasn’t normal. He’d been hit with hundreds of castings of heals, if not thousands, all of which carried millions of nanites which were made of metals and if they body had to process enough, it would end up being metal poisoned and start to shut down on top of the injuries he had previously sustained and they were trying to handle.

Fortunately, they made landfall in the port city where there were much more powerful healers that were waiting for their arrival. They had expected the returning troops to be in much worse condition than they were. On the other hand, they never expected to see Jason in the state he was in as they rushed to aid of the injured on board. He was immediately transported to a carrier that at first was going to take him to the medical facilities, however, the woman that had saved the troops that rescued Jason stopped them. She insisted that a healer come with them and they go immediately to the capital. When he recovered he would definitely have much to think about, report, and plan for. It was best that he be in the hub of all the communication networks so that when he was ready there would be as little delay as possible. In these times, when every moment counted, a day wasted to lay in a bed while he recovered rather than traveling could mean the demise of all that he had worked to forge these past few years and she was not about to let that be the case, not when it meant falling under the sway of that evil bastard, Chris, again. The woman had once been a subject of the Krizian empire, a scout, but now, she was one of the most loyal of Jason’s followers, believing that he was perhaps the only person that could lead a force against Chris to stop him and succeed. That, and the two of them had become close over the years since her defection. She wanted Chris’ madness to end, but she would be just as happy living her life in some other part of Debris if that is all that she wanted. The fact was, she’d fallen for Jason and he wasn’t going to run away with her, so she had to stay by his side and fight with him against the lunatic would-be god.