NationStates Jolt Archive

"No! No! This is unacceptable! If we have units breaching international boundaries, now, it will get out of hand. We can't risk having this done, not now, later, as we progress, we can move onto other affairs, but not now of all times. Our program has been placed into serious jeopardy, because your unit can't properly discern simple coordinates! What the fuck do you have to say about this!"

Concise. Lank hair and dark eyes. Bright eyes, though, very bright. His clothes were tailored to fit exactly, purchased from only the finest corporations. Damaged, of course, but he bought them that way.

On the other side of that expansive, polished cherry-wood desk cluttered with various papers, sharp gray eyes and a closely cropped haircut, donned in the black uniform of enforcement. Haphazard.

"We were under the impression that the program was to be carried out upon our receiving of international coordinates. We received them with no other word. . . We're supposed to take initiative, Consul."

"We! That's absurd. You! It's you, not your unit, you're the commanding officer. I don't want excuses anymore!"

"Then what do you want, Consul. . ."

"I want you to fix it!"

"We- I can't."

"Why fucking not?"

"They've already been. . ."

And he glanced down to his shoes, the floor powdered in orange dust, searching for anything other than the Consul. And he didn't finish what he was to say, as the Consul turned away, arms crossed, as the Consul knew what wasn't to be said.

"You go back to that country. You go back to Electron. You make sure this isn't traced back to Fod. And just remember, it's your family on the line."

"We-"

"You."

ooc: Myspace?? Nice intro tho, watever its about.

"Do something damnit!" A deep voice booms through an empty hall.

"We're doing everything we can, just remain ca-..."

"You remain calm!" The voice says, interrupting a FireShield security officer decked out in the company’s latest exo-armor. "How much do you get paid? A lot. More than any other security corporation in the entirety of the Conglomerate. So how in the hell did you manage to lose the Director of Marketing? People don't just fucking disappear under lock and key like that... it's incompetence, it has to be incompetence."

The man, shorter in stature than most with graying hair and dulling lilac eyes, paces about, fuming.

"Now you listen here: No one out side has gotten word of this yet, and it is going to stay that way, understand? Our jobs depend on it. In the mean time I want you to figure out what in Oohuaran's name happened and see if you can't fix this debacle." he says, trying his best to keep his voice down while still remaining indignant.

"Yes sir, we'll do everything in our power to resolve this." The officer says, voice crackling mechanically through his masks' speaker.

The house was out in the middle of nowhere; small mountains rolling like hills covered in tall trees, sheltering the ground from the burning blue sun with their wide emerald turquoise leaves sprawling out into the warm summer air. Surrounding the house and the pristine waters of a small pond it was perched over, for miles around.

Walls of teal glass spaced between slabs of titanium tinted enzymebonded marble, supporting an arching roof dominated with the same colors of the encasing forest. The entire structure a sort of rigid rectangle bending into the face of a small cliff that overlooked the entire property.

Here, Director of Marketing Aunlae Soriaena, spent most of his time; whether he was off duty or not. That was what made it so hard when it came to protecting him; he demanded to be undisturbed as much as possible in one of the most remote places on the planet. Far away from any of the e-rail stations or even a simple town with a connection to the networks incase his personal one went down. FireShield could only get so close without raising Aunlae's ire, relying primarily on satellites and a rented drop platform with ready insertion teams just incase.

However, for some reason they slipped up, missed his escape, capture, or assassination. Whatever it was, whatever had happened, they were too slow to catch the ball.

Now one of the greatest marketing directors of all time had disappeared, a multibillionaire in his own right for Intricate Connections Incorporated had fallen off the map, and with only a week to find him before his monthly reports to the shareholders were due. Without him, Intricate Connections would sink to the bottom of a deep ocean, dragging with them FireShield for failing to prevent it. Billions of dollars were on the line, all dependent on finding out what happened, and no one knew where to start looking.

And they were dispatched rather quickly, as most matters of national safety warrant.

"Consul. . . The Consul, damnit. . . I hope Shin is safe. . ."

And his whispers transgressed into clicking and incoherent guttural noises expressing worry, worry, worry. The dated craft shuddered uneasily, the console's various amber and yellow lights flickering on and off simultaneously, followed by lulls in the engine's drone. Sky was nice, though, nice and clear with all those stars. It was nice out here, wherever here was. Remote. The engine started squealing.

"Damnit. . ."

Pulling a few levers and the squealing ceased. A light exploded from ahead, a glare washing over the windshield. More mumbling, more pulling levers. The glare dissipated. The engine began squealing again.

He clicked and grunted, a shanty orange display blinking to life over the windshield. It started blinking again, and a video stream opened up. People moving.

"Good, still moving. . ."

Then the engine stopped squealing. Then it stopped making noise. Then the console lit up in red.

Bang.

"Found anything?" A FireShield detective asks over the noise of bodies - some mechanical and others appearing to be flesh and bone - rushing through the dusty house.

"Well, there is alot of dust. And... Well that's it." A younger detective responds. He's wearing a ridiculous tropical tee shirt and loose fitting shorts, something entirely inappropriate for an officer during a missing person's investigation.

"Thank you, you're now officially more worthless than a wet match in a dark cave, Gerj."

"Bah. You caught me on my vacation, my one week of free time, with pay I might add, and you haven't even apologized Rick, you asshole." Gerj moans as he fiddles around with some glasses and trinkets scattered about the kitchen counter.

"Sorry, but this is kinda more important than a week down at the beech drinking and partying with women who wont let you touch them, you know." Rick Anisa responds, annoyed.

"Whatever. There's nothing to find Rick, just a bunch of dust and some anxious guys who should all be fired for letting something like this..."

A crash is heard and also felt not far away, followed by a blinding flash of light the filtering glass manages to reduce to a dim glow.

"What the fuck? Rae'oan Nine, what the hell was that?" Rick screams through his wrist mounted communications relay as he runs outside.

"I... I... Don't know, it just appeared out of no where, Sir." A befuddled voice responds clearly through the relay.

"Out of no where, out of no where? You have the most sophisticated scanning equipment this side of the galaxy, and more money to pay for that equipment and upgrade that equipment than most countries GDP, and yet, something crash lands right in the area you're fucking scanning and you say it came out of no where? What the hell kind of answer is that? In all my years working for FireShield I have never seen this amount of gross incompetence in my life! Why..."

"We work for the same company Rick, if they get fired we get fired, you jackass." Gerj says running past Rick, interrupting his indignant tirade as he just stands there, with a flushed face and seething eyes.

With the wide cylindrical barrels of particle rifles and gauss guns, they clamored around the small smoking crater, with tense trigger fingers waiting and nerves fraying. Rick and Gerj waited with ion-pistols drawn and fierce expressions, motioning closer and closer with small steps and shallow breath.

“Whoever the fuck you are, stand the fuck down now! You’re under arrest as allowed by Civil and Corporate Militia Code: Seven Eighty-Nine. Any resistance will be met with what might be lethal force!” Gerj says with a tone that is not entirely convincing, still edging closer.

Dizzy. Console was dead, engines were dead. The Officer pried himself away from the gaggle of electronics crushed against him. Wasted money. The windshield was blown out and a narrow fissure was aligned directly overhead, needless amounts of the brightest white light pouring into the cockpit. The Officer tapped a few things ineffectually while trying to adjust to the light, but everything remained washed out by that horrible artificial blast. Then the Officer paused. People were approaching. He started tearing at the electronics. Wrenched himself out of the windshield easily, amid a flurry of clicking and hissing noises.

The ground was gravelly. The Officer steadied himself on the craft. Then, he heard someone start yelling. So however blinded, he started yelling too. Right into the light. Except, the Officer trailed off, ever so slowly, and for a split second he didn't feel like the Officer he was supposed to be.

The Officer felt like Reji.

Reji felt scared.

Reji's cloaking had malfunctioned.

All Reji could muster was clicking and hissing. So with wide eyes, and a tight throat, Reji stared into the bright lights in front of him trying to churn up any broken fragment of whatever language Reji was supposed to be heard in.

And Reji could only muster one thing, amid a fury of violent clicking.

"Fuck-k-k you!"

They kept edging closer, even after the strange being from a strange place stumbled out of its strange craft, weapons raised and nervous as ever. Craft came down from over head; small fighters and drop ships laden with more exo-armored troops, and FireShield battlecruisers with their weapons transfixed on the smouldering crash site.

Rick and Gerj had looks of confused disgust broken out upon their faces, their own weapons still raised but fingers off the triggers.

"Rick, what in the name of the all Holy Oorhaunan is that?" Gerj asks, trying to keep his balance on a crumbling crag of rock on which he stood.

"Oh gee Gerj, I guess it's an alien." Rick replies sarcastically.

"Way to point out the stupidly obvious, Rick you jackass."

"Sorry, but I'm not a fucking expert in strange shit that falls from the sky." Rick responds, irrate now, seemingly not noticing the alien continue to stumble around before them, making strange noises that were obviously an attempt at speech.

"Rick, I will respond to that after I ask you why in the hell you're whispering."

"Well I... ok just shut up."

Gerj was about to respond, when the alien from that strange place said something; mumbled Narranon, a language many understood but rarely used.

"Oh, really?" Gerj and Rick said in unison, unleashing a torrent of fire from their ion-pistols, set to stun. While everyone else seemed out of it, seperate from this reality, just staring at the trio behind the verdant light of optical sensors.

Stunned!

The ion bolt impacted the alien creature, knocking it to the ground next to the ship. Only after the shots stop did the others show life, showing that they were aware of the happenings around them. The exo-armored soldiers rushed towards the craft, communicating silently with one another through implanted relays as the drop ships started to land.

"Fuck yeah, woohoo! I got his ass." Rick says triumphantly, waving his hands in the air.

"Oh can it Rick, you didn't hit shit." Gerj says as he moves quickly but cautiously to the alien.

"What the fuck do you mean I didn't hit it?"

"The Alien was hit by one ion-bolt, and that was mine. Yours were set to kill and hit those crags of rocks over there." Gerj motions to two now firery rocks, ablaze in blue-white energy from fresh ion blasts.

"But how?" Rick responds with frustration and an aggitated look upon his face.

"Your aim sucks, that's how." Gerj was over the unconscious alien now, placing the electro-restraints on its wrists, binding them.

"Whatever." Rick mumbles as he goes to inspect the craft.

"Get a detainment craft down here right away; we're going to take this guy to the local Ministry of Crime. We've got some interrogating to do." Gerj says through the implanted relay as he looks over the alien, still stunned.

Everyone else just swarmed around the craft, feigning importance in their task, which was to stand around with their weapons pointed at things, anything.

"Consul? I have news."

"Mm?"

"Reji's relay stopped transmitting."

"Mm?"

"The last vitals we received are evidence of a panic, but we're positive Reji survived."

"Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars."

"Sir?"

"Delete his records from the archives."

"Reji was well known, and well liked, sir. We can't activate a standard erasure."

"Fires are always nice."

"Right away, sir."

It was dark and moist in that room, that room with four uneven walls running into the dark, endless ceiling expanse. The small room where the walls seemed to close in over the rusting metal table, illuminated by the pale white light shining from an overhead lamp hanging overhead, in the center of the floor, the floor that dipped down slightly to one side.

The alien sat, restrained in a cold, metal chair under this light. Sounds emanate from the walls, whispers of whispers seemingly saying something just beyond perception.

It was made to do this; the room was made to get under the skin, and into the mind of any confined there. To make them talk before questions were asked.

Gerj made the alien wait in that room, that horrible cave like room, for fifteen minutes before walking in.

"Alright, so are you going to tell us what the hell you did to Aunlae and his family, and how to fix it, or what?" He asks with a grin meant to be intimidating.

They had sad nothing to the alien in the detainment craft, no one did. Hoping to unnerve the beast more with silence and empty stares.

Reji was calm, though. This wasn't anything unusual really. Just a tiny, cavernous room. Cramped, mildly chilly, with a ceiling which kissed the Almighty's cheek. Calm, though. Due to some sort of concussion. Someone was moving around, and they started speaking. The words were kind of jumbled around. Reji distinctly detected some bad cop routine, though.

Needless. Reji keeps no secrets. None of them do.

Reji opened his eyes, wide and glassy, and a frightening black, and locked right onto that bad cop. He started clicking, hissing, and gurgling, forcing through a coherent syllable every now and then. And after a seemingly forced hacking, jostling his restraints, Reji produced something understandable.

"FFFFFod-d-d. MMMMMod-d-d. MMMMMad-d-d. T-T-T-T-Tol. C-C-Consul offfff T-T-Truth. Now-rrrrr FUCK-K-K OFF."

Gerj was leaning by his arm on the table, aghast by the sudden outburst from the gaunt alien. He was waiting to begin the a-typical bad cop routine, intimidating words and gestures all lined up in his mind and ready to be used; now just staring at the alien with an empty and confused smirk on his face.

"Ooookay..." He said, turning to leave as Rick walks in.

"Good God man, calm down; this is not a way to treat a suspect!" Rick says with indignance trying to be serious but failing.

"Rick, two things. One, he confessed to... something already. Two, your good cop routine sucks, alot."

Rick is somewhat dumbfounded, glancing back and forth between his partner and the obviously weary alien. "Ok, well, what did he say?"

"Something about the Ministry of Truth in a country, that I think is called Fodmodmadtol."

"Do we have any information on that country?" Rick asks surprised.

"I duno, we'll have to ask Foreign Observation Directorate."

And with that, they both left the room, walking through wide halls with white-glass walls sheltering small rooms holding the taint crime within. Out the wide forcefield doors that lay under a facade of twisting pillars supporting curving ribbons of metal, glinting with a strange blue hue from the bright blue afternoon sun staring at all through light scattering shielding from its seat overhead.

The alien was not left in the room, chained to that uneven chair surrounded by those uneven walls; lead instead down into the hospital wing flanked by the towering forms of One Man War Machines shaking the ground as their cruel metal feet plod heavily along, with cold machine stares from cold machine eyes red and green as rubies and emeralds scan their path.

Meanwhile the two detectives now soar through busy air along straining currents of electromagnetism and the invisible forces of gravity, around and around cylinder buildings twisting upwards and contorting like old trees; squat quadrilateral buildings sloping unevenly at their tops, and other buildings of geometries and shapes the mind should not normally understand; landing softly on the roof of one of these strange buildings in the sleek silver form of their Aerocar, chattering away about the case and whether or not the F.O.D. had any information on the country of Fodmodmadtol that the alien confessed.

Piercing, chilling, screaming, willing, almost there that gruesome villain, eunuch dagger trailing over that only lonely pale widow's nape.

"With weary words and weary winds, doth that apocalypse begin. As on the wings of cherub's song, of flightless minds and groundless souls, cusped by ringing dusk's last light and drenched in raven's wretched call. Make it look and sound alive."

Gurgle, click click click.

A prayer unheard.

----

That miserable Consul continued to sign away. Feather's mundane scratch bounced from barren walls, wrapping around that lone, cold man before him.

"I hypothesize, since within a day of that officer's departure someone has entered my office to discuss the matter the officer was to take care of, that officer is dead and our mission has become exponentially complicated." The Consul didn't look up, just continued to sign away the papers before him. "If this silence is an affirmation of my hypothesis, I'll give you four hours to leave Fod."

Rick and Gerj walked up to secretaries desk of shimmering silver metal and deep azure glass.

"Please provide identification and your current access levels if you wish to enter the Foreign Observation Directorate." The woman from behind the desk said with a cheery monotone and a wide smile. As she did several gauss guns and ion turrets activated quietly, and targeted the two men; general procedure in the highly-unlikely event someone was attempting to storm F.O.D. headquarters.

"Now don't give me any of your bureaucratic bullshi-..." Rick tries to say before Gerj goes upside his head, and slams his nose into the pretty black-haired woman's desk.

The woman seems oblivious to Rick's hostility, and the turrets never budge, even as Rick begins to flail about complaining about the blood dripping from his shattered nose.

“No more good-cop bad-cop, Rick, there’s no need for it now.” Gerj says without really paying attention to his partner’s plight. “Alright, Gerj, and Rick Anisa, no relation. Here are our identification badges from FireShield, and we have clearance level Alpha-3.” He hands the woman their badges, which she takes eagerly, and finally turns to his injured partner.

“Gerj, what the hell man; you broke my nose in like a hundred places, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Rick said with a tear or two streaming down his cheek, he was not sobbing or crying, but the tears still came, and who could blame him.

“Rick, for the sake of all things pure and holy, you have enough augmentations to have that flesh would heal in five minutes, why the hell are you complaining?” Gerj says with an annoyed tone as he is handed back his identification, and the defensive turrets return back to their wall-bound homes.

Rick starred back with agitated ferocity and did his best to compose himself before speaking. “You broke my nose Gerj. Forget about the augmentations that were never up to the task of healing an injury like this, you broke your friend and partners nose for no reason!” Rick exclaims to Gerj’s amusement and befuddlement.

“Rick. Stop whining. We’re almost done.” Gerj says without any hesitation or thought, ignoring the truth in Rick’s words and worrying more about the old office assistant that was bearing down on them with a large file in hand.

“This is all the information we have on the nation of Fodmodmadtol.” The man says before walking off with as quick a pace as he had entered.

Rick and Gerj both look over the file with a fair degree of confusion; it was empty save for a one-page synopsis of the culture as a whole, with no mention of location anywhere. The rest was paper explaining the legal obligation that the two were now under with the file in hand.

“How typical.” They say in unison, before heading back to the station, where the gaunt alien was being watched by the lazy eyes of several drones more concerned with a game of pong they were playing between themselves than the state of their prisoner.

"Engage target."

"Done."

And the busy city skyline was interrupted with an pulse of red light. A mechanic groaning and a sleek vessel emerged from, seemingly, behind the sky, a gleaming white sheath of metal. And within a moment of its appearance it descended lethally into the maze of the city below, slowing only as it neared the pavement, remaining inches above the ground. And that sheath of metallic grace released a pulse of red light, washing the surrounding area in an eerie haze, electronics crackling and ceasing. And it was sliced open underneath, first only a rivulet of crimson then instantly a beckoning wound. And pushed from inside dropped a sleek, silver sphere, impacting the pavement. The wound healed and that metallic grace rose slowly, then faded back into where it came from. And all it left was that sleek, silver sphere, embossed with queer markings. "Dona mihi fortitudinem matuare res quae possum. . ." In an eruption of steam and, oddly, ash, the sphere cleaved cleanly into four. And an ashen wind broke free and rushed into those hallowed halls.

"Arr, what the fuck was that noise?" An overweight guard said through spewed coffee.

"Unknown." The voice of his CSnet AI said flatly; they were never known for their personality.

"Well should I check it out or what? I've got better things to do than have a heart attack running around, climbing stairs, and all that other shit for what may amount to fuck all." He doomed, activating his personal forcefields, enveloping him in a green-blue haze of nigh-entirely transparent energy.

"Probability of situation becoming critical is minimal based on available information." The AI responded, as flat as ever.

"What the fuck kind of answer is that?" The hard-eyed man said as he cocked his scatter gun. He proceeded to walk towards the emanation of the noise, breathing heavily through a well kept mustache the same dirty blonde color as his flat-top styled hair.

The AI remained silent, preffering to to calculate probabilities from within its cell-sized home in Markaese Oriana's square-jawed head.

--

Elsewhere, Rick and Gerj contemplate their next moves, well, GErj does; Rick is too busy treating a nose that is still bleeding profusely. "Well, as I see it, we can head to the local pub and see if any of the foreign space-rats know where the fuck Fod is." Gerj said.

"Yeah, let's try that, but a hospital first: everything is getting fuzzy and the world is spinning." Rick said with a look of sickness upon his face.

"... Rick, stop spinning around and you'd have that dizziness problem solved you dumb asshole." Gerj said with a look of disgust on his face. Rick always spun about when thinking, and when you've lost a tenth of your blood out your nose, that's never a good idea.