Guardians: Chapter Ten
#11 of Guardians: The First Cycle
(*Warning* This is my shortest chapter yet. XD It does little more than explain how the next chapters come about. XD Anyway sorry for the shortness this story is slowly nearing it's close.
-AZR)
Guardians:
Chapter Ten: A New Mission
Alyx sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked around the warehouse of the bunker the GC's built only a year after he'd become the leader of the small group. He'd figured a building where they could meet that the NSP didn't know about would be an asset, as it was he was right. The entire Guardian Corps was assembled in the storeroom, about thirty in all. They were talking among themselves at the moment not heeding much of anything but there was a general air of curiosity about why they'd been summoned in secret.
With a low cough he drew the attention of the group and raised his voice so all could hear him if they kept quiet,
"I've heard the question echoed through this rooms conversations several times, why are we here?" He paused and looked around at the collection of evolutionaries and felt himself swell with something akin to pride in the group he led, "Well, as I'm sure you're all aware, we've had a NSP general as well as his lackeys among us and they are not friendly and ask for far too much Intel from our corps." He cracked his knuckles ominously, "To put it bluntly, I don't trust him."
Most of the congregated furs nodded in agreement,
"We need to be rid of him quickly, but we can't risk injuring him because of the position of power he holds in this military." He looked down briefly before looking back up, "There is one thing I need to know." He held up his hand with his Oroboros tattoo, "All of you who have draconic symbols tattooed on your body we need to speak in private later, and for those of you who don't have these tattoos I'll tell you this, there is something odd about the origins of the tattoos and stranger still General Black's obsession with them."
He glanced around the room again taking in the expressions on his comrades faces,
"Two more things and the rest of you are dismissed. First stay on your guard; keep your weapons close and your wits closer, and second..." He shook his head, "for God's sake, I've heard some of you have been heckling the NSP soldiers... Leave them be they're enough trouble as it is..."
Alyx waved his hand in dismissal most of the group filed out until only eight of the previous thirty were left. Him, Greg Ferguson, who was a shocktrooper, the Westingbrooke siblings, Sain and Rex, Raurian Swanson, Duke, who was still on crutches, Ruze and Vance. He looked at the rest of them and sighed slumping to sit on tops of a crate.
"Has the general shown interest in all of your tattoos?" The group nodded and Alyx closed his eyes, "Well, I have an Oroboros, or the Entity, on my hand what do the rest of you have?" He held his hand out for the group to see.
Greg was the first and he pulled his T-shirt off,
"I don't know if draconic but I have this." He gestured to the bright red flame shaped patch of fur on his left pectoral, he shrugged, "Hell, some say this isn't even a tattoo, but a fur tattoo hurts much more than just a skin tattoo."
Alyx nodded,
"A Destroyer symbol..."
Greg shrugged again and slid his shirt back on, before Rex lifted the sleeve of his shirt to display the odd looking white symbol on his upper left arm,
"I have a Seer." He let the others look at it for a moment before sliding his shirt sleeve back down.
Sain sighed and pulled on side of her pants down to about her knees to show the iridescent tattoo on her leg of the dragon and phoenix mating. She blushed softly,
"I have a Redeemer." After everyone got to see the symbol she pulled her pants back up.
Duke winced and balanced on one crutch as he lifted his left sleeve to reveal a black shield on his arm slightly lower than where Rex's tattoo had been.
"I don't know what it is but I've got it."
"The shield," supplied Raurian before he pulled on the band of his pants and let everyone see the grey caduceus on his hip, "I have a Healer."
Ruze looked away blushing heavily,
"Goddamnit." She hesitated for a moment before pulling her pants and panties off and lifted her shirt exposing a large dark red tattoo of a dragon that started at her bellybutton and continued down between her legs as far as anyone could see. She looked away as they all examined the tattoo briefly before she clothed herself again, "I don't know what it is or why it's there I just have it." A heavy blush still on her face she glanced at Alyx,
"The Regulator..."
Everyone looked at Vance, who paled slightly,
"I actually don't have one..."
Sain started up,
"Then why the hel-"
"Hold your tongue!" The wolf snapped as the rest of them also began to raise objections, "I wrote a thesis as a joke in college. It was based in Drakine mythology." He looked at the dragons, "Yes as a joke; but not as an insult. Every single one of your tattoos are based in each of the myths or epics I got most of my information from."
Alyx closed his eyes and listened as Vance explained the myths him and the other dragons knew quite well as they were part of their Drakine heritage. Out of the evolutionaries the only ones that had not been created by human experiments were the dragons. Where they came from no one knew save the dragons, and they'd be damned if they were to let the humans and their ilk know where their home was whether it was on earth or elsewhere. The myths that the humans and evolutionaries knew were some of the few things they knew about dragons, partly because the dragons kept to themselves and partly because the dragons had learned not to trust any other race over time. By Alyx's age he should have known where they came from. He knew he did in fact know, but every time he tried the memories escaped him like everything else before the Guardians Corps did. What Alyx did know about the dragons were hereditary memories that were embedded in his genes. Such as how before the evolutionaries came about the dragons hid themselves from humans by disguising themselves as humans and altering the minds of the ones who did glance upon their Drakine forms. And then farther back even before the thrice accursed satellite systems, the dragons roamed the world in their true forms as the beasts of legend they rightly were. But over time they had to adapt themselves with... magic, for there is no other word in any language but the dragons to describe what they did to themselves to be able to shift into a more human form than their original four-legged form. In this, all dragons could shape-shift, but only between a feral dragon, as the humans called them, and an anthromorphic dragon so as to better hide among the inhabitants of this world peacefully.
The Drakine symbols each of the people in this room bore were also parts of the Drakine magic but it was not something anything the group of dragons on earth knew enough about to influence anything with it. Thus all they had were their legends of being able to control others, destroy and move objects with their minds, bring back the dead, among other things, this was lost to the Earth-dragon colony. For it was a colony, they all knew this, even as it pained them to live among the warring factions of this small planet they knew theirs was out there somewhere. They just didn't know how to get back.
Vance finished iterating the legends of the different tattoos and looked down,
"It was nothing more than a lost bet, silliness..."
Rex looked up at him,
"You think that things as powerful as the Drakine legends are silly!?"
"No! Just the fact I wrote about them."
Raurian joined in,
"The fact that much information is known about our race is disturbing, but more disturbing still is the fact the NSPs are obviously trying to obtain the old-Drakine magic for themselves to use." He looked over at Alyx, "How much should we tell them?" He gestured to the evolutionaries.
Alyx shook his head,
"I don't know. I trust them." He looked down, "But I only wonder how much the NSP got out of me when they broke me. I can't remember anything but what's embedded in me."
Swanson nodded,
"You'll remember. Just give it time."
Sain pressed against Alyx's side softly and hugged him,
"Yeah, what he said."
Swanson grinned,
"I actually remember meeting you once before becoming a GC." He paused, "You were, and still are I guess, ancient. Even by Drakine standards." He looked at Sain and laughed, "Thus, you are mated to a cradle robber."
"Hey! Tha-" Sain started to yell but Alyx silenced her with a hand over the mouth.
"Hush dear." He looked down at her, "It doesn't matter."
Swanson shrugged,
"Not to dragons anyway." The blue dragon paused and looked around at the motley assembly, "So... We all need to get rid of Black, we all have tattoos, and we all probably have splinters in our asses from these crates, ...so what else is new?"
Alyx shrugged,
"Anyone have any ideas about our general problem?"
No one answered.
. . .
Alyx glared at the general who was currently demolishing a meticulously sorted stack of intelligence reports,
"Is it truly necessary to ruin the data organization for our operations general?"
"Hmm!?" Black looked up at Alyx seeming distracted for a moment before his gaze hardened, "Yes of course! And if you don't stop complaining I'll run it all through a shredder."
Alyx shook his head and walked away from the jack-ass to clean up some of the other filings the general had gotten to.
"Oh! Ranas." The general looked up again, his eyes sparkling with... ...merriment? ...What the hell?
"Sir?"
"You have an assignment for tonight. I suggest you review it and figure out what you're working with."
Alyx staggered a bit,
"What!?" He whirled around to face the general, "Under who's orders? And why so soon!?"
Black grinned spitefully,
"My orders." He watched as Alyx took a deep breath and steadied himself, "As for the reason..." He paused for a moment, "If it only involved you freaks of nature I'd just leave it be and let it wipe the lot of you out. But unfortunately, the fate of the world resides in this mission. And thus resides on the capabilities of evolutionaries." He seemed to chew on the last words, spitting them out vehemently.
Alyx waited for a moment and when it seemed the General was done he asked quietly,
"What is the mission? And what information do you have for me?"
"The Adamos." Black sighed and laid down the papers he'd been rifling through, "Somebody has built it... And we think it's fully operational." The general looked down, "When we found Craight and Zighz they were dead." Alyx started to say something but the general silenced him, "Nothing we could have done about it!" He paused, "Not that I really cared, but that bird did have some very volatile information. There's no telling what the Arcadians got out of her."
Alyx stopped for a moment,
"The... Arcadians?" He looked at the General oddly, "We_are_ the Arcadians"
"No, no." Black waved a hand, "The Arcadian Mafia. Besides you are the Arcadians, we are NSP. I wouldn't send you on a raid to yourselves; if I wanted that I'd do it myself." He laughed, "Just might too. Anyway, this is the file; any additional Intel you can acquire on your own is yours to do with as you please." Black handed Alyx the file with a grin at the dragon's expression, "Well, off with you. Shoo! Go do whatever it is you do."
Alyx let the general shoo him out of the room and stood outside in the hallway with the file in hand. He looked down at it bemusedly, what was the world coming to?