[LEON]

I woke up disoriented in the back seat of the Vanguard. The monitors around me were still blacked out. Still shaking off the sleep, I notice that Ash is passed out in the front seat. She was curled up and shaking.

Wish I had a blanket of something for her…

I looked around in the back compartment and under my seat for something to cover her. There was a box similar to the one I had found in the Striker mech strapped to the wall. I ripped it off and placed it in my lap.

I pulled the latch back and opened the lid. There was thin metallic fabric that seemed to make a lot of noise as I touched it. Ash stirred from the sound. I grit my teeth and pulled it from the box.

I really don’t want to wake her up. She had a long day… going through a crash and taking care of an idiot like me…

I carefully lifted the fabric and slowly lowered it over her. She leaned further into her seat and made a satisfied noise and she was enveloped in the material. I sighed.

Thought for sure that I would wake her… Now, lets try to figure out what’s going on.

I leaned over her to look at the front monitors and get a bearing on my surroundings. It looked like a military hanger, but there was no other vehicles present. There was a small window embedded in one of the concrete walls.

Looks like we made it to her base… or wherever we were going…

I leaned back into the seat and looked down at the box containing the back-up AI core. The box that held the metallic fabric lay at my feet. There was nothing else inside other than the blanket, so i had quickly lost interest in it.

She told me not to touch this thing… but I really want to check it out…

Going against her advice, I decided to open the box. A menacing light poured from the seams as I slowly lifted the lid.

Don’t remember this thing being so bright before…

I felt drawn to the orb… I could hear sounds coming from it, like it was calling out to me. I moved my hand toward the orb, and gently placed my palm against it.

A searing pain consumed me. My brain felt like it was on fire. I tried to yell but nothing came out. Suddenly, it all ended. My vision came back in splotches. Looking down, I found a familiar glow on the back on my right hand, and the orb’s pulse faded.

I let go of the orb and brought my hand to my head. There was a dull thud still in my head. A strange warmth came from my hand. I slowly moved my hand away and stared at the glow emanating from my palm.

“Who the fuck are you! And what are you doing in my mech!”

Ash was pointing the gun from the box at me. She must had snagged it while I was in a trance from the pain.

“I’m… I’m Leon… Remember?”

I tried to stay calm regardless of the situation. Ash stared at me, weapon raised. She slammed her fist into a button on the control panel. I instantly went flying out of the cockpit and slammed into the ceiling.

The impact with the concrete knocked the wind out of me and I started to see stars. I felt the wind picking up around me as I fell to the ground. Something inside me told me to stop the fall. Not knowing what else to do, I thrust out my glowing palm toward rapidly approaching ground.

With an earth shattering boom, a massive shockwave erupted from my palm. The wave splintered the ground beneath me and sent the mech flying into the nearby wall.

The force from the blast slung me back toward the ceiling. Before I realized what had just happened, I felt my skull crack from impact with the ceiling and instantaneously dove into unconsciousness.

[ASH]

Ash woke up confused in a Vanguard mech. She had a thermal survival blanket wrapped around her.

How the hell did I get here… I thought I was on a stealth mission in the Hawaiian islands…

She noticed an ominous glow coming from behind her. Turning slowly, she saw an unfamiliar man holding his palms to his face.

What did he do to his hand to make it glow?

She looked at his lap and saw a dormant catalyst in the aptly named Kamikaze box.

Panic surging, Ash attempted to grab the gun out of the box. The man slowly moved his hand from his face, just as she grabbed the gun and retreated back to her seat. The man was staring at his glowing hand, and Ash gathered her nerves.

Pulling the gun up and pointing it toward the man, Ash shouted.

“Who the fuck are you! And what are you doing in my Mech?”

He stared back at her with a confused expression.

“I’m… I’m Leon… Remember?”

Ash racked her brain. The name Leon wasn’t familiar to her in any way.

He seems to know me… but I need to get away from him if he absorbed that catalyst!

She made a quick decision she slammed her fist into the eject button, sending Leon flying skyward. The cockpit swung open as soon as the eject activated. She leaped out and started to sprint.

Headed straight the entrance to the control center, she smashed the release button opening the hatch. Before she made it inside she heard a deafening boom and was launched through the doorway.

The shockwave blew her through several walls before she finally slowed, landing on her back in the armory. She sat up, blood trickled down her face. She shakily got back on her feet.

Making her way back to the control center, the distinct sound of sparking electronics met her. She hobbled into the control center and found the Vanguard mech hanging in the wall. Most of the consoles were completely obliterated and showered the ground with sparks.

“Shit!”

She hissed through clinched teeth.

“This is for sure going to get me demoted.”

She peered through the hole the vanguard created in the wall. Leon was lying in the center of a crater in the hanger. She climbed over the rubble and stumbled her way toward him, gun raised.

The crater was massive. She guessed it had a fifty meter radius and went at least seven meters deep in the reinforced concrete. She holstered the gun as she saw the broken body in the center.

Leon’s right arm was completely battered. The rest of his limbs were broken in several directions. His face was unrecognizable through the red curtain of blood.

With a sigh she bent over to check his pulse. Slightly surprised to find him still alive, she lifted him up on her shoulder. Blood ran from Leon’s body onto her and dripped from her elbow.

“Maybe we can make use of you… if you live.”

Moving as quickly as she could, given her injuries, she hobbled over the rubble out of the crater. She had to drag him through the hole into the control room. She stopped to catch her breath and checked her communicator to call for help. It seemed that no-one else was at headquarters.

At least I think this is HQ… The layout appears to be identical… strange that no one came to check out the noise though…

The network seemed unresponsive, so she send out an SOS and crossed her fingers. She put the communicator back on her hip and lifted Leon back to her shoulder.

She looked back as she made a turn into the hallway. There was a rich red trail following her. She picked up her pace as her anxiety rose.

He’s almost out of time! I need to hurry!

The medical was around the next corner. She strained her shaking legs into a jog. She turned the corned and slammed into the door for the medical room. The door slid up causing her to fall to the ground.

Leon slumped to her side. She jumped up and moved over to the terminal and tapped the ‘Full Recovery’ button on the recovery pod. The door swung open and flashing green lights appeared like a runway.

She turned back to Leon and stumbled to him. She slid both her arms under him and lifted him. Her face scrunched up and turned red from the strain. Her legs had had enough stress for one day.

She lay him down as gently inside the pod and moved back to tap the ‘Start’ button on the terminal. Feeling satisfied and out of breath, She looked around and found a chair.

She limped over to the chair, stopping only to pick up a first aid kit from the main desk. She sat heavily in the chair and opened the kit. There was one adrenaline needle and one pain killer. With shrug she stabbed both of them into her thigh, not caring about removing the suit.

“I’m going to have to apologize to him when… if he wakes up…”

She panted for breath and let her mind wonder as the painkillers took hold.

If he lives… he could be one of our greatest assets. I didn’t see it… but it appeared like he absorbed the power of a catalyst. I can’t think of anything else that could release that much power without leaving any radiation…

She pondered that thought as she looked over at Leon in the pod. There was so much blood. It was leaking from the seams in the pod and pooling on the floor below. Adrenaline kicking in, she walked over and noticed that the pod didn’t seem to be healing his right arm.

“Could… Could the energy in his hand stopping the repair? I wonder…”

She had seen a crate in the armory containing more catalysts. She left the medical bay and made her way back down the hall.

Could he use the energy from the catalysts to repair himself?…

She turned into the armory and found the crate. The bright yellow label blared at her.

‘DANGER FISSION CATALYST BOMBS HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE’

Crossing her fingers she popped the lid. A cold haze bellowed from the pressurized container. Lights flickered from the inside exposing the twelve large pulsating orbs surrounded by foam.

She closed the lid with care and pulled the tool gun from her hip. She turned the knob to the tractor beam setting and shot the crate. It lifted into the air and she gently guided it through the halls until she made it into the medical bay.

She tip toed around the pool of blood reaching halfway into the hall. The pod had been trying to repair Leon’s arm, but his skin kept tearing and exploding from the energy coursing through him.

It’s a good thing that this pod pumps blood as it repairs… there is no way he would live through tis otherwise…

Trying not to slip on the gore at her feet, she let the box rest on the floor. She opened the box and shot one of the catalyst bombs with her tractor beam.

This is something she had done many times before. Most of the people she had fought beside in the past took the cowards way out. Activating the catalyst in their cockpit killing themselves along with the enemy. Ash decided using her tractor beam to throw the bomb at the threat instead was a better idea.

She tapped the ‘Pause’ button on the pod and the hatch slid open. She lowered the catalyst to rest on Leon’s arm. It was instantly absorbed and a section of his flesh stitched itself back together.

She continued until all twelve of the bombs were absorbed into Leon’s arm. Leon’s arm was radiating with energy and appeared healed now. Feeling content, she drug the chair across the room and sat down staring at Leon.

She was in awe. Leon looked like a walking bomb, but all charts read green on the pod’s display. She decided to wait, instead of waking him up.

Probably better to let the pod finish instead of forcing him awake… No idea what will happen wither way…

Ash hadn’t known it at the time, but she hadn’t been putting the ‘Kamikaze’ level bombs into Leon. She, in fact, had been putting the ‘Extinction’ level bombs into him. These bombs were a prototype and exponentially more powerful than their smaller counterparts. One of these bombs had the power to crack a tectonic plate and sink a continent into the mantle of the planet. This would cause mass extinction world wide, hence the name.

[RED]

Red woke with a long yawn. She didn’t want to leave the warmth of the blankets piled over her. She was surprised that the alarm hadn’t gone off yet. She rolled over to look at the clock.

Vision still blurry she blinked several times. Surely she was seeing things. It appeared to be the same time that she had gone to sleep. Feeling confused she sat up and stared at the clock for several minutes until it hit her.

“Fuck!”

She threw the blanket off and rushed to the monitors. She saw Leon lying in a repair pod in the medical bay of her base. Ash sat in a chair staring at him. Half of Leon’s body was masked in a bright light.

“I was asleep so long Ash became a fucking NPC! And Leon is glowing or some shit?! This is why I should have tested him more before letting him join the live server!”

Red slammed a fist into her desk.

“Mother fucker!”

She slumped down to the ground and held her hand. She had made a dent in the desk and fractured a couple bones in her hand with the outburst.

With angry tears in her eyes, she glared back up to the screen. Ignoring the pain she pulled her chair over and fell into it. She quickly opened the the file containing the avatars in her base. Only one was listed [Ash].

“What?…”

She stared at the screen for several seconds until opening the command prompt for the server. She aggressively typed ‘Show hidden entities’ into the prompt. One unintelligible file showed up. She hovered her mouse over the option and clicked on it.

The stat sheet for Leon popped up but there were artifacts coving most of the information. She clicked on the appearance tab and Leon’s avatar popped up on the top right of the screen. The avatar covering most of the settings on the tab with its right hand. She tried to click on one of the uncovered sliders near the bottom of the screen, but the hand moved to prevent any changes.

Felling frustrated, She went back to the stats page and clicked on the attributes tab. The strength value, which had been set to seven out of twenty originally, ran off the screen with countless numbers.

Mouth agape, She stared at the entry. The value was high enough to collapse several planets with a misguided slap. Coming back to her senses, She tried to edit the value, but every time she tried to click on the entry the number increased by another decimal.

Leon’s avatar popped up in the corner and moved its hand to grab the cursor. She stared at the avatar and it winked back at her. Her eye started to twitch. She looked over the rest of the page to see similar changes to all of the other stats.

The avatar waved its arms as if to get her attention and spoke in a childish voice.

“Hey watcha doin?”

“W… Wha…. What are you?”

Red’s eye was still twitching in anger. She was fighting to not punch the screen.

“Awe das not fair. I ast you fwrst.”

The avatar stuck out its tongue and blew a raspberry at her.

Fuming, Red replied as nicely as she could manage.

“There is something wrong with Leon and I am trying to figure it out. Now… What are you?”

“ *Tehe* YOU KNOW WHAT I AM!”

The avatar replied with a demented laugh.

“I AM THE ONE WHO WANTS TO SEE THE WORLD BURN!”

Red swallowed and goosebumps started popping up all over her body.

“What have you done to Leon?”

Noticing that the cursor was visible next to the avatar, she slowly moved her hand to click the delete button on the bottom of the screen.

The avatar ignored her question.

“HAHAHAHA THATS NOT PLAYING NICE!”

The mouse exploded in Red’s hand, cracking one of her screens and mutilated her hand.Red screamed in pain and held up the stump of her hand.

“Ahh! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Blood flowed down to her elbow and dripped to the carpet. She ran over to one of the terminals on the wall and smashed her head into the ‘Emergency’ icon. A mechanical arm dropped from the ceiling and lifted her. It held out her arm and start printing her hand back on.

“How the hell did you do that!”

Red hissed through the pain of lasers grafting her flesh back together.

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT HOW! YOU PISSED ME OFF SO I FUCKED YOU UP! EASY AS THAT! HAHAHAHA!”

The avatar was lying on one of the the windows on the screen, swinging its legs and laughing hysterically.

Red tested her new hand as the arm gently lowered her back to the ground.

”So you are telling me not to touch Leon’s program or you’re going to kill me?”

“Yaa das it.”

The avatar went back to its childish persona.

“Oh, yous cyn kal me CORO! HAHAHA! NICE TO MEETCHA! MUAHAAAHAAHAA!”

The last part came out with a demonic wail.

Red shuttered hearing the entities name.

What have I done…