FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Ah part three. Only one more to go and then everything will become clear. The final mystery will be revealed. Everything that has been building up in the past three stories will reach a crescendo. Achieving a . . . well I don't exactly know. I'm not sure if there's a name for the technique I've been attempting to teach myself by writing this story. Oh well. Violence, mature themes, blah, blah, blah science fiction craziness enjoy. ^-^ (Somekind of formatting issue so the text may look a little strange)

Part three: Mutation.

_Due to the spread of the virus Lunaforte Granz the entire earth has been sealed off from space. Its orbital colonies, the last remaining bastions of the human race exist in an uneasy alliance.

The various survivors of the outbreak however, have renamed themselves Neo-Sapiens and seek only to rebuild their shattered world._

One by one they fell like stars shaken loose from the heavens above. Drops ships carrying a deadly cargo unleashed from those remaining colonies that still sought to reclaim the old world.

It had been six long years since the cataclysm had changed everything. Six long years of rebuilding what had been lost. Six long years of adapting to what was new.

And now they were fighting just to hold onto what little they had left.

Rasler reached out with his mind and began crushing those deadly black seeds before they could take root and flower.

Those that did manage to land began disgorging self-replicating robots armed with flamethrowers and plasma grenades. They were shock troops, suicide soldiers preprogrammed to self destruct after doing as much damage as possible. Their target was anything that was infected, indiscriminately destroying anything in their path in order to achieve their objective. In essence, they attacked everything that moved.

Though they were not without defenses of their own. Koon and others like him could shut down those within range once they had decoded their systems control protocols. But it was a lengthy process and merely served to slow them down instead of stopping them outright. They were much better at salvaging whatever useful parts were left over.

Ever loyal Famran himself had trained a new order of samurai to combat the colonies forces. They were as lethal and efficient in the arts of combat as their ancient predecessors had been.

Moving like waves of liquid steel they flowed past their opponents. Drifting softly on wings of death they struck without warning. Reducing those struck to twitching servos and piles of scrap metal.

The espers however. Their empathic abilities limited them to acting as healers and liaisons between the various groups. For they would feel the deaths of their enemies as their own, and be dragged into darkness along with them.

Of all of them Rasler alone could wield his power to fight and against mere machines he had no need to hold back.

Unleashing storms of hellish fire without fear of reprisal he reduced the colonies robotic forces to heaps of smoking slag, burning through circuitry and sending jets of their own flame back upon them. But he was one man alone, and no matter how powerful he may have become, in the end, he was merely mortal.

"Lord Rasler!" Said a young woman named Tamra as she moved to catch him. A lithe warrior and a cunning strategist she had fallen in love with Koon and was almost always at his side. She was also one of Famran's finest samurai and served as his second in command.

"I'm alright Tamra. Really I am." Her tail twitching from side to side she gave him a look that said she didn't believe him. "I'm just a little tired. Give me a moment to recover and I'll be able to launch another assault." In truth he really was tired. More tired than he would ever admit to being. The constant attacks were a significant drain on their resources. The colonies could simply make more robots. But the casualties suffered by their own side. Their losses were tallied in lives, and lives could never be replaced.

So Rasler had pushed himself to keep fighting. Well beyond the limits of his own body, even when his mind screamed at him to stop. He remained driven by the nameless desire to protect all those he had come to call friend.

Her tone was adamant. "No."

"No?" There was no small amount of surprise in his voice.

Tamra was stubborn to the point of being obstinate. She was also one of those few who wouldn't let their judgment be clouded by the usual hero worship he was forced to endure.

"I've seen what happens to the other espers when they push themselves too far. They fall unconscious for days. If you want to continue to be of any use to us then you need to leave and let us finish cleaning up here." She finished by saying. "That's an order."

Rasler's mouth hung open. He was used to being the one who gave the orders. Not taking them. "You can't be serious."

Tamra's hand drifted towards the hilt of her sword. Her meaning was clear. Either he went willingly, or she would simply knock him unconscious and have him taken back by force.

Rasler began the process of folding space around itself, linking simultaneous points in time. "Remind me never to argue with a tanuki."

A shimmering portal appeared in the air. It was not unlike looking through a window, a window that looked upon a verdant field of softly sloping hills and days embraced by the warmth of summer, a stark difference, when held in comparison to the callously scarred battlefield that surrounded them. The two places could not have been more opposite.

Rasler stepped through and held it open for a moment longer than necessary.

Tamra declined his unspoken offer by saying. "Tell Koon to have dinner waiting for me when I get back."

* * *

"Again."

The crack of wooden practice swords rang out as Famran drifted around his students, correcting their forms, helping them to master the various aspects of the Shintetsu style.

Schroedinger watched in rapt fascination. Doing his best to mimic their motions he swung around a sword of his own.

"Hah! Haaah! Haah hah!" With each swing he vanquished invisible enemies. Nothing would get past him, he would defend the village and everyone in it. Just like his father.

A butterfly alighting upon a nearby leaf caught his eye.

Watching as it fanned its wings he growled low in his throat and imagined that he was a powerful samurai.

"Woah!" Rasler caught the wooden sword with one hand as it came down. "Watch were you swing that sword of yours. Life is a precious thing, too precious to be taken so casually." He gave his son a smile as the butterfly drifted away.

Schroedinger mumbled a brief. "Sorry father." Under his breath.

Rasler leaned down and ruffled his son's hair. He was the spitting image of his mother with white fur. With Rasler's eyes he would be quite the heart breaker when he grew up. "You're the terror of butterflies everywhere. Where's your mother?"

He pointed with his sword to corner of the garden before running off to practice with the other children.

Famran silently excused himself from his students and took up his familiar place at Rasler's side.

"Has there been any contact from the espers we sent out as scouts?"

"Not yet." Said Famran. "But much of the region still remains uncharted, and teaching ourselves the skills necessary to develop adequate maps is taking longer than we had hoped."

Rasler began considering what could be done in the interim while trying to think of a solution to some of their more pressing problems. Such as overcoming their lack of knowledge. Very few of them knew anything beyond the mere basics of survival, simply providing the village with fresh water had been a challenge in and of itself. But what other choice do we have but to try and rediscover everything on our own?

Genetech was systematically eliminating all manufactured technology on earth, effectively forcing the neo-sapiens to a preindustrial iron age. However, in doing so Genetech had inadvertently forced them to rely on and develop the unique abilities granted to them by the virus. Most of which ran parallel to the various technologies they had lost. The espers themselves were even now serving to relay messages between the scattered survivors and attempt to bring those who were still lost back into the fold of civilization.

"Something about this strikes me as wrong. Our scouts should have maintained contact with their partners. The only way we could have lost contact with them is if we lost both of them simultaneously." Rasler stopped and stared up at the sky.

Famran drew steel in anticipation of facing the nameless threat. "Lord Rasler what is it?"

"We were being watched."

* * *

Steil Hauzer leader of the colonies and chairman of Genetech Industries pounded his fist against the screen as the transmission was abruptly cut off. "He did it again. Damn."

"I keep telling you." Said one of the technicians. "We're going to run out of observation satellites if we continue trying to spy on them like this. He has an uncanny knack for knowing exactly when and where our satellites are going to be. Plus, we're running out of supplies to make repairs with."

"I don't care about that. Just get those satellites back up and running. Our lives depend on it."

* * *

Genetech's leading council was made up of former company executives, petty bureaucrats, and incompetent blow hards. None of which seemed to grasp the immediate problem staring them in the face.

"We're the aggressors here." Said Sheridan. "Rasler is merely trying to protect his people."

"And what about us?" Said Miller, a woman who had worked her way to a position of authority by warming the beds of those who were her direct superior. A trait she seemed inclined to continue. "Those things can teleport. What's to keep them from murdering us all in our sleep? We have to keep them under surveillance, its the only way to ensure our own safety."

Sheridan wanted to strangle the woman. Even if it wouldn't solve their problems, it would certainly make her feel better. "Have you ever considered the possibility that as a people with problems of their own, problems we have forced upon them. That maybe, just maybe, they're more interested in simply surviving than launching an attack against us?"

"And what about when they do?" Said Steil. "No. We need to take actions to remove the threat before it becomes an obstacle to our reclaiming the world below. The cleansing will continue."

Cleansing. It was a purely political way of saying Genetech intended to wipe out all infected life on earth. Once the earth had been cleansed of the virus the unaltered genetic samples of plant and animal life kept in the colonies core would be reintroduced into the ecosystem. Earth would effectively be restored to the way it had been before. At the cost of billions of innocent lives.

To Sheridan it felt as if she was desperately trying to hold onto the last thread of sanity in a world gone mad, with her fingers quickly losing their grip. "This is madness. They're people for gods sake. We could talk to them, negotiate an armistice, something!"

Steil waved her words away. "Your overly sentimental attachment to those who've been infected is well known to this council. Put it from your mind Doctor. They can hardly be considered people anymore. They're animals now. Nothing more." He concluded the meeting by saying. "Increase production of the environmental assault suits. I want to see more effective measures being taken to eliminate this, Rasler."

* * *

Sheridan found the conversations on the promenade to be particularly subdued. People were getting tired of drinking urine recyc and being forced to bath in the same water multiple times. The colonies had been designed to be resupplied, not forced to reuse the same materials over and over again until they fell apart on a molecular level.

She picked at her reconstituted manicotti finding she didn't have the heart to eat, or much of an appetite for that matter.

The stress of being confined to space was getting under people's skin. More than one riot on the promenade had already been subdued through the use of excessive force.

"There's talk of raiding the other colonies for supplies." Said someone. "Bloody pointless if you ask me. They're in exactly the same boat we are."

Sheridan's ears perked up as she listened to the reply. "Have we really fallen so far? Fighting amongst ourselves, I would rather escape to earth and become one of those things than go on living like this.

"Who knows" They said wistfully. "Becoming a neo-sapien might not be all that bad. They're still human, even if some of them do have fur and a tail."

Their companion's tone darkened considerably. "I'd keep my mouth shut if I were you. Ideas like that are likely to get you tossed out the nearest airlock. Shot on sight if you were lucky."

"Say whatever you want," Said Sheridan as she stood up, leaving her food untouched. "But people still need choices in order to be able to grow. Take that away from them. And we become little more than the monsters we profess to hate."

* * *

Tamra's tail swayed back and forth as she traced lazy circles across Koon's chest. The nights were warm and with their thick fur they had little need for blankets of any kind. Or clothing for that matter.

"The village feels empty without Lord Rasler." She said.

"I know what you mean." Koon lay on his back, enjoying the feel of Tamra's fingers as they began drifting towards the lower parts of his body. He was as eager as she was for a second go. "But he'll be back as soon as he and Famran find out what happened to the missing espers."

"I hope so." She propped herself up with her arms, looking into his eyes she glimpsed a subtle movement from behind. "Still. I can't shake this uneasy feeling."

Without uttering a word or missing a beat Koon passed Tamra the knife they kept hidden underneath the pillow.

She took it from him and lashing out faster than the eye could follow struck the formless black shadow that they couldn't see but could smell.

The man crumpled in on himself as the strike severed his jugular. A soundless scream passing his lips he twitched once and grew still.

Tamra cleaned the knife while Koon gave the man and the night black suit he was wearing a cursory study. "It's made from woven nanofibers and equipped with strength enhancing servos; there's enough technology built into this thing to turn someone into a one man army.

"With this even a normal human could hold their own against Famran's strength." Tamra shot him a scathing glance. "For about a moment anyway."

"Where there's one there'll be more. When I've gone you can alert the others, but make sure not to sound any alarms. I want them to think their little sneak attack is still working, that way we can catch them off guard."

Koon knew better than to argue with the woman he loved, she would only win anyway. "We don't know how many there are and their assault suits are as black as pitch, even with out being equipped with noise cancelers they'll still be difficult to spot."

Tamra began peeling the skintight suit off the dead man. "Maybe, but that just means they won't see me coming either."

* * *

Six tore the throat out of a soldier who dared to get to close to her and her son. Despite being shot with enough tranquilizers to take down a horse she fought on like a wild hellcat.

The world was spinning as she staggered about drunkenly, it was taking all her concentration just to remain standing.

"We should just kill her." Said one of the faceless soldiers. "She's too dangerous to leave alive, she's already managed to wound three of us already."

"Our orders were to take them alive." Said another. "Keep shooting."

Rasler. Thought Six. Where are you? The last thing she heard was Schroedinger crying out in pain as the world and everything in it drifted away into darkness.

* * *

Rasler jolted upright, the remnants of his dream drifting away like leaves tossed into the wind. His sleep had already been troubled by the faces of the missing espers he and Famran had been searching for.

They had spent the past three days searching with little success, and though they had managed to pick up some signs of a trail, he was beginning to think they had pulled off more than a simple vanishing act.

"Lord Rasler." Said Famran. "What is it?"

"A cry in the night. For a moment I thought I heard one of the missing espers." Rasler clutched his forehead as the world exploded into a blur of pain. Though not an esper himself Schroedinger had enough latent potential to broadcast his mental state to anyone in range. As Rasler's own flesh and blood his broadcasts were particularly strong.

The pain vanished as abruptly as it had started.

Rasler was already folding space. "Keep searching for the missing espers. Chances are they felt it as well."

* * *

Surrounded by a single wall the village was a rough collection of hastily built houses. It hadn't been built with the intention of keeping out determined invaders, merely to provide protection from the beasts mutated by the virus that roamed the plains.

Still. The thought of seeing everything they had struggled to build being trampled upon filled him with an all consuming rage.

Though he preferred to fight with his mind Rasler was no stranger to the feel of steel in his hands. Falling from the sky with sword in hand he picked out the movements of a silhouette that didn't belong and struck like a hawk.

A sword came up to defend it wielder. To late to block his strike Tamra cried out. "Lord Rasler its me!"

She opened one eye. His sword had stopped much closer than she was comfortable with.

"Report."

"Genetech decided to launch a direct assault on us. We managed to capture one of them. He's being held under guard while the rest of the samurai search for any stragglers who might be left behind. We don't know what they there after yet but." Before she had finished an antiseptic tang had begun filling the air. It stung her nose and made her eyes water.

"What is that smell?" Even as she said it she knew it was already getting harder to concentrate. The world lurched uncomfortably to the left when she tried to clear her senses by shaking her head.

In the moonlight Rasler's smile was a chilling glimpse into the mind of a man who contemplated casual vengeance. "They've begun dispersing a neural inhibitor into the air. Clever."

* * *

Stripped of his assault suit and forced to kneel was a grizzled looking man. No doubt a veteran of the many wars private Genetech had conducted under the guise of corporate espionage.

Rasler signaled for the samurai holding him to let go. "This one is mine."

He glared at Rasler, his eyes filled with hate. "We know all about your ability to rip information from the minds of others. You won't learn anything from me. Uhh." His eyes drifted downwards as he grasped the sword that had suddenly jutted from his chest. Slick with blood his fingers grasped feebly at the steel, his mind trying to reconcile its sudden appearance. "How?"

Rasler summoned more swords to his side. "Basic metaphysics." He said, letting them join the others. Until drifting around him was a deadly halo born of swords and psychokinetic power. "The neural inhibitor turns those who take it into a psychic nulls. The energy field produced around a psychic null cancels out both alpha and beta brainwaves, thus preventing me from igniting the very air around you; but when given a simple telekinetic push," The soldier screamed as the sword inside his stomach began slowly twisting its way through him. "Inertia does the rest."

"But . . . the neural inhibitor. It should be affecting you as well."

Rasler lifted his face, forcing him stare into eyes devoid of even pity. "I was force fed a diet of that stuff from the moment they created me. You think I survived this long without developing a countermeasure!" It took considerable effort just to force his way through the haze of drugs and touch the mind beneath. Answer my questions and you won't die screaming. "Now. Where have they taken my son?"

* * *

Rasler stood on top of the drop ship the soldiers had used to make planet fall. He had already crippled its systems, the only thing left was a simple matter of cleaning up the remnants of Genetech's assault force.

Silhouetted against a crescent moon he held a sword in hand, the rest of his swords hovered around him, patiently awaiting their masters orders. "Tell me." He said to the soldiers cresting the hill. "Do you know why Genetech called me their ultimate soldier?"

Without answering they opened fire on where he had been but was no more.

Rasler reappeared in their midst, close enough that they could see the silver of his eyes. "No? Then allow me to enlighten you."

He was a whirlwind of scything motions and silver destruction beneath pale moonlight. Drifting through space and time he took up a different sword for each strike, abandoning them as quickly as it took to silence a single scream, in order to grasp another and strike a new target.

It was over in a matter of heartbeats. His grim task finished he stared up at the stars and said. "Because nothing human can stand against me."

* * *

The console overloaded as every single satellite in orbit exploded simultaneously. According to the radar there wasn't even enough left of them to salvage as scrap metal.

Steil was left staring at the final image they had managed to capture.

Rasler's scowling face.

"Well." Said one of the technicians. "He certainly looks pissed."

* * *

Using the neural uplink in her lab Sheridan had managed to hack into the satellite imaging systems. She had watched the failed kidnapping with growing disgust.

The nameless fear, the overwhelming paranoia. Steil had merely served to fan the flames. Pushing Rasler to defend his family, what other options did he have but to retaliate? Rasler was not a man to let an enemy try the same thing twice.

There was still a way to prevent the coming bloodshed, but it meant making the ultimate choice.

Summoning her resolve she began broadcasting a message using the colonies emergency channel. Every screen, every terminal showed her face and spoke with her voice.

"I hold in my hands a sample of the virus." Sheridan held the sample up to the security cameras. It was the fern that Rasler had given her so long ago. "Once I open this container it will only be a few hours before we're all infected. To continue fighting after that would only mean we would be killing ourselves.

"But some of you may not wish to become something more than humans. So I'm offering you the choice. Those that wish to go to earth should do so. The rest of you who wish to remain in space, may heaven forgive you all. For he will not." Sheridan, praying that it would truly end the fighting once and for all, opened the sealed container.

* * *

"Shutdown that broadcast! Kill the alarms!" Steil was furious. Already reports were coming in that the promenade had devolved into mass hysteria. "Purge that entire section of the virus, it doesn't matter how you do it, seal it off and vent all the air into space if you have too. Just contain that virus!"

* * *

Sheridan watched unable to move as soldiers wearing assault suits swept through the promenade. They were shooting anyone and everyone, whether they were infected or not.

She herself had been shot while trying to make it to an escape pod.

Looking around at the chaos she asked her self. Did I make the right choice?

It was a familiar voice who answered. "Sometimes we have to fight. Using only the weapons we have at hand. Even if they are our own lives."

"You're really here aren't you?"

Rasler touched her injuries, assessing the damage.

She was wounded beyond even his ability to heal. The most he could do was to block her pain. "I think I am. So I must be."

Sheridan gave a weak laugh. "I'm sure Descartes would agree with you." She sighed in relief as the pain began to slip away. "How is Schroedinger?"

"He is the most precocious child you will ever meet. The way he keeps turning up in the strangest places, its a wonder we can keep track of him at all."

Sheridan forced herself to smile. Even after six years Rasler was still Rasler, he had a unique way of sidestepping an issue all his own. "Even after all Genetech has done. You still don't hate us do you?"

He brushed aside a lock of hair from her face. "I never did. We may look different on the surface, but deep inside we're still humans. With all the failings thereof."

"That's good." Her eyes were wet with unshed tears. "I'm glad that this world of ours won't disappear. Not as long as it has a guardian angel who will watch over it." There had been so much she had still wanted to do. To see and feel. But death was undeniable, it stood looming over her like an old friend come to call.

"Would you show it to me." She said. "The way it was before? I'd like to see it one last time . . . before I say goodbye."

Rasler took her by the hand. "Of course." And as he had done for so many others, he wove for her a world all her own, and stayed with her until the end.

* * *

It was a dream of a world as pure and blue as it ever was. A vision of eden underneath a cerulean sky. All around her verdant fields stretched beyond the horizon, as the wind carrying gentle laughter in its embrace, sent ripples through the grass like waves across the ocean. Here was a place untouched by time. A way point on that great journey which led towards eternity.

Sheridan basked in the peace of that place, engraving it forever in her heart. "It's beautiful." She said.

Rasler stood beside her and shared with her the dream he kept deep within his own heart. "It will be again someday. I promise."

She wiped away his tears. And letting go of his hand. Took the first step.

* * *

Opening his eyes Rasler closed hers for the final time. "Goodbye Sheridan. My old friend."

Deep inside him it was if a dam broke, and all the power he held in check slipped its bonds.

Fire loosed itself into the world around him, searing the walls and burning its way through the metal bulkheads. Ice followed after it. An ice so cold that it froze even the flames that still hung in the air. He gathered the power into his hands, letting it twine itself around his arms like a lover's embrace. Before he recalled it, sealing it deep within himself once more.

As he held the intertwining forces of creation and destruction in his mind. A silent fury began surging throughout his body. He let his wrath and anger fill him with a quiet purpose.

With power enough to lay waste to the world he started heading towards the control core of the colony. As he went he left a trail of telekinetic destruction in his wake, exposing various sections of the colony to the vacuum of space.

He didn't care. For not even death itself could keep him from achieving his goal.

* * *

Steil stumbled backwards. He was desperate to escape to another colony, to reach an escape pod. Anything to get away from the angel of death that was even know tearing through the colony like it was made of paper. "Shoot him! Shoot him!"

Rasler stretched out his hand and began warping the very space around him with psychokinetic power. The bullets disappeared into a nameless void, only to reappear on opposite sides of him in order to follow through with their original trajectory.

The hail of fire stopped short when the soldiers realized they were literally shooting themselves.

Ralser slashed the air like a swordsman saluting an opponent. The barrel of every gun in the room suddenly bent backwards. "A good friend of mine wanted to give you the freedom to choose your own future. Instead you have allowed yourselves to be dragged to the very edge of the abyss by petty tyrants with delusions of grandeur. Was it worth it?"

Someone spoke. "We're soldiers. We just follow orders."

Rasler silenced the speaker with a look. "She was not a soldier, but even she understood that the price of making the choice she did would mean giving up everything she had ever known. She even made that choice knowing that it could cost her her very life. I on the other hand. Will offer you no choice at all." Every mind on the station he touched he marked with his power. And one by one, began teleporting them to the surface.

"You think people will stop fighting just because you make them all the same?" Steil was screaming at him. "Your nothing but a monster. A freak of nature that doesn't deserve to call itself human!"

Rasler shrugged. "You're right you know. Though I never claimed to be human to begin with." When only he and Steil remained he stepped forward and said. "But one way or another I will bring this foolish fight to an end. Whether we embrace the future together, and walk forwards hand in hand remains to be seen." Rasler turned away from the man who had tried to grasp the whole of the world in his hands. "But you won't be one of those who witnesses it."

Rasler teleported himself to the surface. Leaving Steil to drift through the endless vacuum of space on a crippled colony. Alone.