It had been a glorious night, the night it all changed. Many of those who had been gathered in the death camps remembered the night they had been freed well. Backbreaking labor in sooty mines, painful experiments and surgeries, the lack of proper nourishment, all of the things that contributed to a positively miserable existence slowly broke them down. All they could do was cling to life, to existence.
And then he came.
For some, it was just a few men appearing without a sound and whisking them away like long awaited angels. For others, it was more awesome display of numbers. It was thanks to one man, who freed the first of the internment camps and brought them under his wing. How could they thank him, repay him? He gave them lives, real lives. They could work for themselves and each other, grow food that they could eat. It was a miracle of miracles.
Eventually, he asked them that they fight. How could they say no? They were fighting to topple the forces that put them through misery for the man that saved them. Eventually, rural folk crushed by quotas, excise taxes, and numerous other failings joined. [The Center] allowed them to breathe easily as the Confederate Tamers who normally collected their hard earned produce disappeared. When the League started to worry over their disappearing tamers, Charles and [The Center] swooped in and toppled the capital in one swift blow. The other cities crumpled soon after in the same fashion.
Isla Sol Naranja changed. Over the years, things became better. Food wasn’t so scarce. Commerce was something more people could take part in, especially farmers. It was going well. Even the civil war put people to work, the need to feed the machine a great one. Until... the sudden downfall.
The monsters- presumably some strange ferals- washed over them like a plague. It all happened so fast. [The Center] saved all that they could, but they were not fast enough. Cities burned. The evacuation only saved a fraction of the capitol city populous, and the status of other regions was as of yet unclear. Not to mention, they could be attacked at any minute with vulnerable, panicky civilians huddled together like frightened mice.
Charles found a place to kneel down and sit his large frame on the ground. His body ached terribly, and his feet were getting numb. His acromegaly was catching up with him, and he feared that his agility would begin to degenerate. His strength was still there, but the source of that strength was wearing away at his body. Looking at his hand’s large, exaggerated form, he clenched and unclenched his fist. Open, his hand was as big as a dinner plate, not something well suited for delicate work. It was stiff. His occasional twinges were now aches and pains that followed him everywhere. If he were to fall, would he end up like Goliath, broken and battered, a mere facade of what his imposing form stood for?
His pokégirls save for Yvette and Liz were carrying things to and from various places as their contribution to the group at the moment. Mikhail was next to him. Charles didn’t look at him. Their was much weight on his mind, most of it much more serious than this, but this was something that he could actually fix at the moment.
“She’s been trouble lately,” he said. Their was no need to say who. Mikhail’s Elf Queen had been obstinate and reckless as of late, especially during the evacuation.
Mikhail gave a sigh of ascent. “I know,” he said.
“It has to be curtailed.”
“Yes.”
“Forcefully doing so is undesirable. Try to comfort her most of all,” Charles advised. “It’s clear that she is suffering, even if she is missing the bigger picture. I know she holds a special place in your heart, and I know that losing something that special is an experience that no one should have to go through. Pragmatically, we need her cooperative; she is valuable. However, I hope you understand that she must be reigned in one way or another.”
“I’ll try to fix this immediately.”
“Don’t wait, try to multitask and talk to her while you help manage the logistics. This is not something that can be procrastinated.”
“Right.”
“If... if she does turn on us,” Charles began. He paused when he heard Mikhail suck in a breath. “I want you to respect your own mortality,” Charles finished.
“What do you mean?” Mikhail asked, vaguely confused.
“I want you to understand that she can kill you rather easily.”
“Of course.”
“Even if it would be out of the ordinary for you, she could.”
“Just as any of your ‘girls could kill you.”
“Very true.”
“So what’s your point?” Mikhail was becoming rather irritated. Charles was tiptoeing around whatever it was he wanted to say, trying to get Mikhail to Socratically piece the point together himself. While he couldn’t dispute it as a rather useful teaching method, it tended to get Mikhail’s hackles up when Charles used it in personal matters like this.
“If she turns violent, teleport away,” Charles ordered.
“Of course.”
“Immediately.”
“Why would I not?”
“Reasoning can not be accomplished in the heat of the moment,” Charles detoured, “If you want to try to reason with her, teleport away, regroup, and try it later.”
Mikhail opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. He had no words. He knew Charles was right and that the older man was gently steering Mikhail in the most logical direction with as little offense as he can manage. “I will,” Mikhail resolved. He stood and popped a few vertebrae in his back. “Thank you,” he muttered as he strode off purposefully to his next goal.
Ideas and half-thoughts flashed behind Charles’s eyes. The woods they were gathered outside of were thick and it would be troublesome to traverse. They could slash them as they encountered them to make way for the caravans, but that would upset the Elves. The Elves could “ask” the trees to move but that was too time consuming. Charles was suddenly on his feet, ignoring the protest of his joints, and off to contact one of the heads of the guerrilla units.
Trusting the fate of [The Center] to the information from a precog, information from a source he did not understand? He was pushing it, but he was also out of ideas for the time being. She had ‘predicted’ the cock-up with the cargo [The Center] had ‘liberated’ from the remaining states of the Tropical Confederacy. If this information turned out to be useful, why Charles would need his own precog pokégirl by his side. Or, perhaps Liz could learn it? He’d have to explore this more thoroughly at a more convenient time, preferably when all he had built didn’t hang in the balance.
Not to much later, Charles was in front of a particular guerrilla and one of his ‘girls. The woman was lithe and had metallic feathers on her body. He vaguely recalled reading some footnotes about her breed. Skarmoresses had been notorious for outclassing the legendary lost tech known as the fighter jet. She was more than capable of breaking the sound barrier. The only chink in the plan was the rather queasy looking Kaftara. Apparently, she already knew what Charles had in mind and didn’t like it.
“It’s rather simple,” Charles said, quite a bit more pleased with the idea than the psychic was. “You,” he pointed to the Skarmoress, “simply follow her instructions and fly her out to the destination, and she’ll teleport the two of you back.” He glanced at upset psychic. “Oh, and you don’t need to fly too fast. Keep her in one piece.”
After that was all over, the Kaftara would bring more teleporters with her back to the area and they would slowly transport enough people there to clear a place to set up an emergency safe-zone. Trees would be felled, and tents would be erected in the cleared area. There were so many people... and even more pokégirls. Hopefully, they would all be able to stay in one group.
He was not being vindictive towards the precog; he really wasn’t. Her discomfort was mere serendipity. Something about her ruffled his feathers, so to speak. That aside, she was the most convenient teleport-capable dark/psychic type at hand and also had the ability to tell what the best drop point would be. However, he was dubious. There were to many stories whispered in the night about the cordoned off area for Charles to know what was fact or fiction. The Skarmoress was probably the most capable aerial unit because of her sheer speed, but was still only an individual. Hopefully she could stay out of trouble long enough to get to the drop point designated by the Kaftara.
“Be sure to touch down every now and then. If you run into trouble and have to return to base, you can use your touchdown points to teleport back to... with backup if needed.” Charles’s attention shifted to the psychic. “If you think you’re in trouble- for any reason whatsoever- teleport both of yourselves back. You can always just ‘port right back to where you were or an appropriate point if things go amok- again... with backup.”
He paused to see if it was sinking in. The Skarmoress seemed a bit haughty. She probably didn’t like being ordered around by someone other than her owner. It was natural for the pokégirl species to dislike that, it seemed. He would have to pull her owner aside to let him make doubly sure that she was set straight. Now that he thought of it, it was probably best to do the same with whomever owned the Kaftara. His name eluded him at the moment.
“You will both leave at 0700 hours,” he finished. The first step had been taken.
Charles didn’t sleep well. He had always been a bit of a light sleeper, but he was absolutely restless. It had all fallen apart. When he had first left his “family,” he had nothing, lost everything. Then he took advantage of a number of dim villagers to get himself his first pokégirl, made contact with the first of his ranks, Mikhail, a loyal friend, and then his reach only grew from there. The traited were so enthralled to be free of the death camps that they threw their lot in with their Messiah.Others soon followed. He grew into a force that couldn’t be stopped. One fell-swoop and Isla Sol Naranja’s government was his.
He had festered there for so long, built himself up. When the war came, he was ready. He fought with tactics his foes had never thought of. The enemy had to adapt to a force that could be anywhere at anytime like some sort of fable. Of course, he had been outsmarted in the end. The enemy sent something his way that he couldn’t pass up. Technology reverse engineered from Sukebe’s alien resources. It was too good to be true yet too good to pass up. It wasn’t as if Charles could just let those sorts of resources land in the hands of his enemy. Having made what had seemed the most logical choice at the time, he had unwittingly unleashed a plague upon his own lands.
It was his burden to bear now. He was responsible for the damage, but it would not end here. Even if the only means of shepherding the surviving populous to safety was to take them from one death trap to another, Charles had to do it. And so he would.
Despite the swiftness of action and decisiveness a totalitarian organization can bring- and all the benefits that entail- it also can make grave errors because of one man’s lapse in judgement. This, however, would not be the end. He had come too far. As they said, this was by no means the end of the War. He would soldier on and drag [The Center] behind him.
The night dragged on. Charles couldn’t help but feel impatient. Everyone did. It was in the air itself. Humans were an animal oriented around group mentality at their very core. The unrest was infectious. Even the pokégirls were getting agitated. Of course, their relations to the masters they were designed to served probably ensured that they would pick up on the discomfort.
No, it wasn’t mere unrest. Something was wrong, but what? Exhausted yet fueled with nervous energy, Charles’s anxiety finally got to him. He stood awake. Yvette had been his bedmate that night. While her company was certainly ‘relaxing,’ his heart was still heavy with worry over their current predicament. His heavy for standing in the middle of the night startled her awake. He wasn’t sure how she could be so at ease, comforted by mere closeness when there was so much more going on out there.
“You can sleep,” he whispered, “I’ll go get Liz and she can guard me.”
Yvette shook her head as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “No, I’m awake,” she said with an obvious slur of tiredness. Silly ‘girl.
“Suit yourself,” Charles replied. Although he could force her to remain in bed, it wasn’t as if he could force her to go back to sleep. Well, he could probably get Liz to do that for him with her psychic abilities, but abusing the Espea’s powers on his own ‘girls was not exactly healthy for trust building.
Daniel was asleep much more soundly. Ever since she had evolved into an Atelesia- or at least, that’s what she said she was now- she had exhausted herself every day until she slept like a rock. It was amusing, but not beneficial to their current situation. It would probably be best that he reigned in the simian ‘girl’s enthusiasm until they had properly regrouped and rebuilt. No one could afford to be caught tired and dragging their knuckles when a show of force mattered most.
Charles lit a candle and navigated around the table in his tent. It was overflowing with papers. He had been turned into an accursed bureaucrat after he had taken over Isla Sol Naranja. It was a pain in the ass but worth the payoff, a functioning society. The more control a government had, the more work had to be put into keeping all the gears and cogs in their proper places. He still wasn’t sure if it was properly efficient, but little could be done about that in such circumstances.
Liz already knew that he was awake and that he wanted her, so she was already there at the entrance of the tent, a benefit of having a psychic servant. She greeted him by ‘prodding’ his psyche in a manner that Charles had gotten used to over the years. They exchanged their thoughts silently. Although intelligent by pokégirl standards, Charles knew she didn’t quite have the mind for plotting a course of action, yet her intimate familiarity with his stresses, routine, habits, and thought processes made her an excellent sounding board, even if they rarely spoke an actual word to each other. She had long played a managerial roll of sorts for him, her psychic powers having allowed her to communicate with ferals, relay commands across vast distances, and her teleportation having given him the ability to be anywhere in his little domain whenever he may choose. Surprise inspection had held a whole new meaning.
Around him, the few guerrillas patrolling the tents that held some of the more important people stiffened as they saw him. They knew to look sharp and keep their thoughts clean around Charles and his pet psychic. On a whim, Charles made his way over to one of the men keeping watch. The massive man’s huge frame forced him to walk a powerful gate that doubtlessly intimidated the man he was heading towards. An imposing image served Charles well over the years. An imposing image topped with the respect of his followers triggered baser impulses that helped him be recognized as a suitable leader. At least, that’s what Liz told him when she skimmed their thoughts. She could just be flattering him, but Charles was fairly certain she was conveying her understanding of their thoughts with most sincerity.
“No problems, I hope?” Charles prompted the guerrilla. He had some huge, two and a half meter tall woman next to him, an Ama-something. Charles rarely had to look up at anyone. This was most disconcerting. Perhaps he had a similar effect on others? Interesting.
“The civilians are restless...” the geurrilla said uncertainly.
“But that is to be expected,” Charles replied in an understanding tone, “Have you gotten word of any feral sightings?” By feral sightings, they both knew he was worried about the unusual beasties that poured out of hell and toppled the capitol.
“Mostly harmless common ones coming to see what all the commotion was,” the guerrilla began, “but there were a couple of those walking corpses too. They were put down. Fairly inconsequential on their own.”
“Watch those fumes...”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”
“Is that all the news?”
“That I know of.”
“Right then. Carry on.”
“Thank you, sir.”
As Charles moved on, he waded through tents and men and their pokégirls darting about. A high ranking officer of [The Center]’s guerrilla force spotted him and made his way over. “Chancellor!” he called out.
Charles knew he was the one being called to. It was the title he had picked up when he inserted himself as head of Isla Sol Naranja. Strangely, chains of command found it difficult to cohese without referring to an official title in many instances, so one had to be adopted. “What is it?” Charles replied pleasantly.
“Sir, we’ve observed a strange feral in combat,” the officer stated.
“And?” Charles prompted.
“Well... we don’t think it was entirely feral. It was a large, black cat type that seemed to be mostly lucid.”
“So we were attacked by a non-feral pokégirl?” Charles frowned deeply, “Have you scoured for enemy forces?”
“Yes, sir. No signs. The black cat-type was found carrying a mutilated male corpse- she was doing something graphic with its severed... genitals- and she dropped it and charged a tamer unit when she spotted them, spouting slurs like some kind of man-hating dyke the entire time.”
“Was she neutralized?”
“Yes, the tamer unit teleported away and went back with reinforcements. She was too strong to subdue and clearly had no strong love for men, so we had to terminate her.”
Charles made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. He had heard rumors of ‘untameable’ pokégirls who could not be controlled. It was possible that this was one of them, or it could be that this was an isolated case. After some thought, he asked: “Was there any defining features that would differentiate this feral from just an ordinary black cat-type?”
“Huge, muscle-bound like one of them Amachokes, and tits as big as yer head.”
At that, Charles coudn’t help but snort. “I suppose that is unlike many of the standard cat-types. Liz, relay an order to kill targets of that description on sight.”
The Espea sent the orders out to other psychics who were apart of a relay system to communicate orders across vast distances. Telepathy combined with teleportation allowed for a crude relay system that couldn’t be eavesdropped on easily. Radios were not exactly plentiful, and the more common psychic-types such as Psy-cats and those Charlie Angel varieties were versatile and required a different sort of maintenance.
“Good work,” Charles said, “Be sure to send any other reports of anomalous activity my way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once again, Charles moved on. His attention was commandeered here and there by important and semi-important matters, but he eventually made his way to the approximate center of the camp. The surviving civilian forces that had been evacuated to this site by [The Center] were being kept. Feeding this many people was going to be a Herculean task. Even now, scouts were going through old farm sites, compromised towns, cities, and so on to look for food stuffs.
Charles honestly and seriously doubted they could feed these people without resorting to eating ferals. Although, stewing up a few disposable, common ferals was by far preferable to starvation and the mass hysteria that would follow. If they were lucky, would the mutated zone have nonpoisonous edibles available to them? Perhaps. Although, even with that, it was highly unlikely that there would be enough to sustain this many people. A dilemma indeed.
After speaking to a few people, a makeshift podium was erected in plain view in a small clearing amongst the civilian tents. The sun was rising, and the civilians that weren’t already awake were soon being jostled into reality by their compatriots. Whispers spread for thirty or so minutes and a sizable crowd gathered, thousands of human eyes on him.
Charles then broke the silence: “We seek shelter in a defensible area where we will all regroup and recoup,” he began, his deep voice booming across the camp, “Soon we will be able to rebuild and the feral threat shall be exterminated. Able bodied men are encouraged to enlist in a newly formed militia unit to help safeguard their families and the families of their brethren. United we form a force able to wade through the threat of ferals and that of the tyrannical Confederacy which attempt to blot us out. Their flawed ways of chaos and oppression deny us our unity and strength. No matter the outcome, we are strong and our strength will lead us to victory and the unification and liberation of the oppressed peoples of Tropic.”
Soon, they would move. This temporary setback would not stop him