Prelude to the End of Season One

From the deck of Goshi's flagship Mothra, a Mechified seaman on break surveyed the bustle in the port. Puffing the stub of a cigar, his eyes followed the progress of a newly emptied freight-train up the steep rails to the tunnels which would lead into the valley of Geneva Prime. The city itself was obscured from view here, but over the edge of the mountain he could see wisps of smoke rising, a sign that the chaos was ongoing. Fuckin' unpreceden'ed, he thought. Never thought I'd see the day when Goshi was out of control in their own city.

A chill rippled down his furnace-heated torso. Instinctually he looked up to the state room balconies and caught sight of a man, all in white, on the highest level. The seaman knew he'd been overheard.

Jump overboard. The command was matter of fact, betraying no emotion, but brooking no disobedience.

The plunge into the filthy harbor water was surprisingly serene. Panic didn't set in until he was two-thirds of the way to the murky bottom and realized how difficult it is to swim when your body is a metric tonne of metal.

***

The thoughts of Katashi Blade, like icy wind, rushed over the telepathic network into the ear piece of the Vice President for Distribution, Rain. Yes, Executor. As you command.

Ever the instrument of precision, Rain, had taken over as acting director of Security, in addition to her other roles. The officers in Goshi's security force had come to hold her in a kind of awe already, in her first day. She was far less capricious than their previous superiors, but also completely immune to bargaining. Failure meant termination, and she demonstrated this immediately by issuing orders to banish the loved ones of every officer up the chain of command who had been involved in the debacle at the mine entrance. Yes, she used the word debacle, and she meant it. Nothing like that would be happening under her watch.

Especially not now. While Katashi Blade journeyed to Marina to hold another demonstration of the White Rock DisLocator for the Biomade Oversight Council, this time without interruptions, she was effectively the most powerful person in Geneva Prime. That meant she was responsible, and while Rain was responsible things were going to function like clockwork.

The Executor's orders might have shocked another person, but Rain, didn't hesitate for a moment. Her mind went straight to work calculating costs and came to the same conclusion, she imagined, as him. It would be cheaper this way, and send a message not likely to be forgotten in the near future. She pressed the button on her intercom, a pink light bloomed.

"Yes, director?"

Rain thought carefully about her exact words, "Order the Heishi to begin deploying heat bombs in sectors 4, 35, 171 & 215. Do not stop until I notify them I have received the unconditional surrender of the Underground Mechified Army."

There was stunned silence from the other end.

"Don't think about it, just do it. It's a long walk for your loved ones to get to Stardown from here." She clicked the intercom off, her mind still rattling out a cost-benefit analysis.

***

Out the windows of the Goshi Tower the streets of central Geneva Prime were a battleground. After the initial onslaught at the mine entrance it had spilled into nearby slums, becoming a guerrilla war of slow attrition, confusion and chaos. Goshi soldiers ran in columns down the streets, firing up at insurgents tossing homemade bombs from tenement windows, or disappearing into alleyways. Countless Mechified, spurred by the heroic display put on by Moses at the memorial, had swelled the ranks of the insurgents till it was impossible even for the UMA to know who was a combatant and who was a bystander. As a result, everyone became a target for Goshi bullets.

Behind a manufacturing plant a Heishi breathed his last gasps as a pneumatic hammer pounded like a piston through his skull. Amos shook the gore from his metal arm and looked defiantly at the ring of blue-armored elite soldiers around him. His face was wild and streaked with oil, which he spit in brown streaks from his chapped lips. Who knows what was broken, but it was leaking into his lungs and it tasted like shit.

"C'mon motherfuckers. I haven't had a conscience since my brother Omar was killed. Get too close to my hammer here and you won't have one anymore either."

The Heishi pounced all together. Amos disappeared under a wave of blue.

***

A muscular hand burst up out of the rubble. Concrete dust settled all around. With superhuman effort someone slowly lifted a massive slab, formerly of the ceiling and, placing their feet under it, heaved it to the side with a crunch. From within the rubble of a destroyed tenement, thin wheezing breaths could be faintly heard.

The slow emergence of this casualty from the fallen structure went completely unnoticed by columns of soldiers jogging past in the street. Neither did they notice a small mechified boy weeping in an alleyway over the corpse of his mother, recently retrieved from the same collapsed building. They jogged by with determination, eyes scanning only for potential threats, missing the signs of anguish around them.

The hand grabbed a piece of rebar and heaved. Statuesque shoulders, dreadlocked hair, and then the whole upper body of Balder the Gogajin rose from the ruins. Concrete dust caked in his wounds, labored breathing betraying a pierced lung, his back a nightmare landscape of bullet wounds, half of his face crusted over with an unsightly scab, Balder dragged himself to his feet, and walked on a broken ankle into the street. Instead of blood, his veins flowed with righteous anger and there were some Goshi soldiers nearby who were good candidates to help him do some anger management.

***

The students at Washi San academy were sombre listening to the announcement. It made no sense. Lord Daitokuji Ichirou, patriarch of the Silver Phoenix Clan and first pilot of the academy turned traitor? They might as well have said that gravity temporarily reversed directions or, contrary to all former knowledge, the sun really does revolve around Karia. Impossible. Ichirou and traitor were words that never belonged in the same sentence together unless the traitor was being struck down by Ichirou.

Whatever the students thought, the Grand Master knew what was necessary to save his academy. However much it grieved him, he must cooperate with Goshi and order his students to pursue and capture Ichirou at any opportunity. With a solemnity bordering on the funeral of a beloved monarch the students struck Ichirou's banner - the purple field with three silver feathers. They removed it from the place of honor and ritually desecrated it. The Silver Phoenix clan would require a long time to overcome this dishonor.

***

A nurse rolled her cart down the corridor checking room numbers - ah 324. She looked at the checklist and noting the patient's name, Malicious, withdrew a serial coded syringe from the appropriate compartment. As a precaution none of the nurses in this hospital ever know what the syringes contain, since many of the patients are telepathic and it increases distress if they realize what treatment they are given. Thus, blissfully ignorant, this prim young nurse went into the room where a teenage girl with ebony hair lay unconscious in traction.

She checked the patient's pulse, steady. Listened to her breathing, even. Then turned her arm so that she could have access to a vein, nice and plump.

The syringe went in silently and the clear fluid was dispensed in moments. The orderly rubbed the spot with a little cotton swab to get the drop of blood, and cheerily departed.

Malicious was dead before the door swung closed.

***

Karia watched all of this with something bordering on obsession. Such an intricate web. So complex, the chains of consequences. So many purposes being fulfilled and denied, discovered and destroyed. Karia knew that, as a planet, she had no pulse, even still she felt her heart pounding. There will be ramifications, she whispered, for all of this. There will be prices to be paid and yet...The thing which continually drew her back to this scene is the amazing depths to which these people reached in themselves to find the price that is asked and meet it. Almost instinctually, they seem to understand that their lives matter.

Not just their lives. All lives. Life itself is the question that the cosmos are asking. It could all so easily not be. A tiny shift of a universal constant here, a miniscule blip in the laws of physics there. The universe sat back like an artist considering the composition, undecided. Paint it back to white? Or let the riot of colors continue...

The marked ones, the ones that Karia had cursed with gifts, they would be the pivotal actors in this drama. How would they answer the question? Karia wondered. No, she practically shrieked and danced about in anticipation. Did they feel it? Did they intuit the answer? Did they know the enormous burden that was being placed on them, or comprehend the vastness of that one word question:

Life?