Grapple's Rift

The shopping center's dome came down into a rain of shattered glass shards. The blaster agents came shortly thereafter, magnetizing the glass shards to their arms and then expelling them downwards, dampening the fall.

At the opposite side of the hall, the charge agents came through a similar route, but in a more awkward way. Zigzagging until they reached the ground, they came hitting and bouncing on every corner they could.

"Since when these Vero's thugs became so well trained?"

Ayane had several acquaintances in the northern state, and knew very well that it was made mostly of barren expanses and dotted with some villages. They barely had a police force, so it was inconceivable to her they could have a training center to come hovering that way.

"They aren't well trained." Hanzo looked at the red soldiers, civilians until two weeks ago. "Just as Zared isn't." and turned to their friend, attracting glass shards to his armor and shooting them at the enemy. "I think... these armors, all of them, are self-trained, and have some sort of specialized artificial intelligence."

"But the red ones are way faster with these shards."

"It seems our armors are more resilient, but theirs have a faster attack rate."

"Resilience shouldn't be enough for Zared keep standing there like a static target." and turned to him: "Come here, crazy!"

13 days from present, the day after the meteorite rain.

Ayane and Zared walked together at Fizo's condo.

"That looks like Fizo's house."

If Zared counted right, that should be the thirteenth street, Fizo's address. Ayane already knew very well the house's facade, and didn't count.

"Of course it is. It's the only automatic garage door that faces the street and opens outwards."

"Doesn't it block the other cars? And the neighbours, don't complain?"

"I think they don't know. Few people live here and most of them come just at the weekend. And if they knew, I think he wouldn't care about them." And completed on her thoughts: "Or about anyone else, really."

The two walked away from the main street, to Fizo's house. The house was now a pile of scattered debris and some standing walls.

"His place is one of the most affected."

"Divine providence, I guess."

"Stop hating."

"It's not hate. I just think he is a bad person."

Ayane turned the other way. "I don't want to dwell on that." and tried to find some other subject: "What are we supposed to find in this hodgepodge?"

"I guess we were supposed to arrive... and he'd be waiting for us. He commented something about an old green wallet and some clothe changes."

"Ok. So, I don't want to leave here too late. We can start searching it now and tell him if we find something."

15 days from present, near Earth's moon.

The Xzharians ships usually travel in fleets, but rogue exceptions happen. Bavrot was trying to correct this anomaly, talking rapidly in his native language:

"Any ship in this sector can hear me?"

The pilot consulted again his radar and verified that the screen remained the same: no allied Xzharian ships nearby, just some too far away to establish any meaningful communication other than presence.

What was near him was a menacing Verent fleet. They couldn't detect a Xzharian fleet so far away, but his systems could, pertaining to an exploration model that had better communications than most. And he knew that, if that was an elite Xzharian fleet as he believed, the barrage of fire would sweep him away together with all the other ships in the area.

"This is urgent. Somehow I fell behind a Verent fleet, and I can see there is a Xzharian squad coming. If anyone in the squad can hear, please hold fire while I evade."

Just silence. The evading maneuver started a hour before, and the pilot prayed that the elite squad wouldn't arrive before he was too distant to be a target. A firestorm wouldn't differentiate between a rogue ship or a ship taken by the enemy.

Bavrot suddenly became optimistic when a message arrived from the opposite side he was expecting. A relieving Xzharian voice was heard on the other side:

"We catched your signal from our moon base. Come full throttle to the location that I will transmit now. Don't worry. We'll intercept your ship for refueling."

Some happy thoughts crossed Bavrot's mind. On his nod, the auto pilot accelerated to the received coordinates, as it already had interpreted the operator's message.

He then languidly leaned towards the radar, the previous setting not disturbing him anymore.

Sooner than he expected the radar detected a Xzharian ship coming in his direction. How the one from the moon base could be so fast? However Xzharian navigation systems overestimated too much their pilots, and wasn't programmed to detect friendly fire.

The first missile hit the left propulsor, and others came afterwards. The ship was propelled, spinning relative to Earth and approximating it.

Bavrot tried to return to the evading maneuver, but after some minutes the planet's gravity caught it.

After much effort, Bavrot stabilized the ship. Other propulsors were just partially working, and he still couldn't avoid Earth's pull. He went to his next to best option, other than evading, and tried to find a landing site that'd give him chances to save the ship. He accelerated it until it became geostationary, hovering over a distant spot with a lake.

Fizo's House

Zared held the distorted piece of metal on his hands:

"These things aren't meteorites... More like parts of an engine."

The blue metal moved, and he dropped it on the debris pile.

"It is crawling on the ground?" Ayane looked to where it was moving: "Oh, my... And there are several of them."

"It seems they're going towards each other, doesn't it?" Zared moved a wood interloper. "But the debris isn't letting it."

Ayane was amused. It looked so harmless, so slow. She decided to take one of them on her hands and kicked some impeding debris on the others path. Zared silently reproved.

"What harm it can do? It will just turn into a big goo."

Ayane watched them group, morph and agglutinate. On her last kick, a thin stripe of blue metal sticked to her foot, linking it to the larger metal bubble.

The now single metallic mass crawled over her body and adjusted itself to make an armor vest. On the other side of the terrain, a transparent helmet quickly floated towards her and completed a full-body armor.

"Get away from me!"

Action followed words, and the transparent helmet floated back to the ground, the armor quickly receding to her feet, forming a cube by the helmet's side.

The artifact now resembled more a toy than a menace. She studied it, looked at all sides, moved it on the ground, and tapped it lightly. Nothing.

"Come back to me?"

Action followed words, and Ayane laughed. Zared was bewildered.

"Isn't that thing... dangerous?"

"Hmm... Yes, it may be. Better to take it off for now, right?"

Zared walked to the other side of the terrain.

"There is more of it here."

"Oh, jeez... no need to be jealous, I guess."

Iashita's Shopping Center

"I don't know why they're after us."

Ayane was concerned. Hanzo was more focused than having any discernible emotion.

"Our goal isn't to engage them... We just need to find the capsule and get away from here."

"And they're attacking us because of that capsule?"

"I don't know. It seems so. We found one in Vero, and it had the same inscriptions on the shell that this one, when it was falling." Hanzo asserted that Zared was holding them back. "We managed to enter it, but this same group shoot it from the outside. It became inoperable. It must be important, we just came here out of curiousity, and now they're attacking us." "I wish we can find it soon." "Seleca and Zeh already went after it. We can concentrate on just impeding their pass. It isn't such a challenge. We have worse attack but better defense. A zero-sum game... or a zero-zero game."

Fizo's house

"Look, I found it! His wallet! (Or whatever he calls this dirty bag.)"

It would have to fir Zared's backpack. Hers was already stuffed to the top with two blue cubes and two helmets, they almost jumping out of it.

"We can let one here and just carry one... We won't lose it, no one will search it here."

"I don't wanna come here again. You can use it, I can sell it... I can even let Fizo use it."

"I will call him to not come. We already found his wallet."

"And some clothes that no one can use."

Iashita's Shopping Center

"I know that I already asked this question before, but... where's Fizo? He could be helping here."

Ayane was going to say a few more things, or a lot of things, but Hanzo's intercom flashed and Zeh's voice was heard.

"Just received a message from the base. These aggressive aren't your everyday civilians."

"Don't tell me now Vero has a military academy."

"It seems there was a battle between a Verent fleet and a Xzharian one, near Earth... and several of the damaged ships was pulled by its gravity and fell on Vero and nearby here. A couple of large Xzharian frigates fell over a maximum security prison in Vero. It is the kind of prison that isn't for petty thieves. More like... serial killers, rapists, cruel murderers, leaders of criminal organizations... You name it."

Earth's exosphere.

It was worse than Bavrot thought. Not only his ship was falling on Earth's atmosphere, but the missile barrage caused a lot of Verent ships come alongside him.

One of them was too near, so near that there was no doubt that, if both pilots survived, a close combat would follow. Taking one last decision inside his ship, Bavrot set his ship towards the Verent one, and parachuted himself.

As he slowly fell towards the lake, his ship stroke the Verent one, both wedged together and falling towards a village nearby.

As both approximated the village, it was now the Verent's pilot turn to parachute herself. In a last attempt to save her ship, she targeted the only dampening place on sight: an automatic garage door opened, contrasting itself over the street.

Iashita's Shopping Center

A large metal pipe was propelled from the red team side and gyrated until it hit a pillar near the blue armors, taking a chunk out from it.

A voice soon was heard from their apparent leader, about what seemed a good strategy:

"Target the pillars!"

The volley of artifacts now was hitting all the columns at the blue team's front.

"Behind them!"

The pillars behind them started to crack. Or they retreated, or they would be trapped with fallen debris behind them and a falling ceiling in front of them. It didn't take much time for them to instinctively start stepping backwards.

The village at night.

Fizo turned his intercom on, as he walked away from his house's remains. He usually kept it off, unless he would call someone, to spare battery. There were several missed calls from Zared, so he called back.

"Where are... or where was you the whole afternoon? We found your wallet."

"I passed at my mother's house to take some things. It took more time than I planned."

"We also found some metallic things. It's like an armor... that also transforms into a cube."

"Like a trekking knight's backpack, huh? Yes, I also found one."

"Really? I thought we had scanned the whole place."

"Well, it was my house. I know how to search stuff on it."

"Anyway, Ayane brought two of these blue things on her backpack."

"Blue? I found a red one."

Iashita's Shopping Center

"The ceiling is crumbling all over the place." Ayane spinned her head following all the falling blocks and small bits, until she saw the corridor behind. A blaster was coming in their direction.

"Hey, hey, hey, whoa! It's me, don't shoot!" Fizo yelled in a breathless, broken pattern.

A large ceiling part fell behind him, and he jumped forward.

"Now that we're trapped you arrive."

"Don't worry, Fizo is here and will destroy them all. Just let me take some air... Ok, now I go."

He blasted one of the pillars near the opposing group and a flurry of bricks came flying in his direction. Being near, Hanzo pushed him to the side, absorbing the shock. "Don't advance this way! Your armor is like metal foil for this!"

The former hero fell backwards, unhappy by not being so decisive in the battle.

Zared looked at his friend's misery:

"What if we covered him?"

Hanzo considered the idea for a moment.

"It would combine attack and defense."

"Never thought I would say that, but... Let's protect him. Igloo formation!"

"Thank you."

"Just don't mess, and don't miss."

Iashita's Shopping Center, second floor, food plaza.

"Hey, Zeh! It is there, in the restaurant!"

Seleca thought the meaning of capsule was of something she could hold in her hands, but the large metal structure covered half of the restaurant's main room, the sunlight entering through the destroyed ceiling and bathing it all.

"Yes... Thanks goodness... Let's call the others."

Without further ado, Zeh ran towards the right corridor, Seleca following closely.

She turned the corner to the right corridor and found it blocked, full of fallen debris.

"These cracks and noise... it seems the fight intensified a lot."

"We can reach them through the other side."

Iashita's Shopping Center, entrance hall.

The longer path was quickly traversed, and as soon as they reached the corner of the battling room, they stopped to see the remaining members of the enemy team fleeing, several already fallen.

After them, Seleca saw what seemed to her like a... human tank. A blue metal shell moving slowly, with red arms appearing now and then shooting and disappearing again.

As the last red enemy escaped, and the next to him fell, Zeh yelled:

"Up here! We found it!"

Iashita's Shopping Center, Tulie's restaurant.

Hanzo and Zeh scanned each plate and etch of the dirty capsule's exterior. Occasionally they would sweep with their hands some dust or small stone away.

Zeh stroke a small embossed handle and pulled it, revealing a panel under it.

The others neared it, and Hanzo asked a question he already knew the answer: "These strange symbols, does anyone know how to read it?"

They looked at each other, expecting some answer from the others. Fizo opened his mouth and closed it again, Zeh muttered some question to herself and Zared shrugged. Ayane threw her hands up:

"Ok, no one knows how to read it..."

"There are buttons.", Fizo smiled. "What harm it can do? It is not like a weapon or anything."

"Maybe it can do." Hanzo worried from past mistakes. Ayane was more impatient: "So, we'll stay here forever?"

"Let's press some buttons."

The others silently approved or remained silent. Zeh looked at the symbols again, trying to link it to any proto-language she knew. She resorted finally to a more trivial method:

"Most of the buttons are yellow... Few of them have unique colors. Maybe if we just press the different ones, no default setting will be changed."

Hanzo was not certain on what to do. "You can try that."

She started pressing the ones with starkly different colors. On the second one, a previously invisible door made its boundaries clear. It lifted, until it was almost flipped upwards, and made the dark interior visible, as much as the light entering permitted.

At the first steps from Ayane and Hanzo inside it, blue lights turned on at the base of a central column. It was also possible to see a semi-circle of chairs, disposed around the capsule, opposing the door.

They all entered, and Fizo sat in one of the chairs.

"Huh... Not bad."

Hanzo eyes became wide open: "Look at your side..." Fizo jumped forward, seeing the chair's base illuminated. "Not only that, another light turned on at the chair's direction, above the column."

A few minutes later for some, a lot of minutes for others.

"There is some lights coming from inside the pillar too." Ayane looked around her, looking for someone to test it using two chairs. "Seleca, let's test it!" and pulled the friend forward, to the front of the same chair Fizo sit before. Seleca obviously was the best person to test it together, and she didn't mean it lightly.

"Alright... Let's test it."

As the two sat, the others attention was caught by an increasing glow inside the column.

"Whoa! It is working!" Fizo sat next to Seleca, and all followed afterwards.

The pillar became more and more luminous, until all became white.

A suspended passageway was extended in front of Fizo. It surely was a dream, as the imagery was surreal. The passageway was in the middle of a starred space, with no planets nearby, and Fizo wasn't wearing any space vests or breathing apparel.

Ayane stared at a curve far away, trying to discern if there was something supporting or holding the structure, but there was nothing for that purpose. As she called for her friends and there was no answer, she assumed she was the only one there, and started to walk.

Zared was still feeling the corridor was falling and would hit something at any moment when he raised his view, to see a myst growing ahead.

Zeh slowed down as a myst involved her, and continued walking. The myst became more rarefied, and she could see a crossroads facing her.

There were only two paths, with a gate on each one. Two planar openings that seemed to Seleca something like a misconfigured virtual reality game.

On the passage at right, like a full circle return, Hanzo saw the interior of the capsule he just left, with his chair empty, the others still sitting, eyes closed.

On the left, the view was very different, and more interesting. He could still see his five allies, but they were very distant from the previous battling scenario, at a gathering around a pool.

The nearest group to the gate was what made Hanzo feel a mix of relief and accomplishment. There was several fellow soldiers, that was also his colleages, all killed in an ambush by alien Tyors in a mission he led in the moon.

He was near enough to hear them asking why he was late, it wasn't everyday they could frequent a party like that, the illuminated cityscape sprawling around the apartment.

Fizo wondered how his allies made it there.

He noticed a familiar face, already oldened by the years, but that he still could recognize.

It was his father's, but that was more impossible than a connection between the capsule and that place. His father left his mother and him when he was seven years old, to never come back again or even send a message.

Ayane arrived afterwards, and commented he was helping their boy to finish his homework and would soon arrive. At this moment he noticed she was wearing a wedding ring.

He gave a slow step backwards, wondering how all that could be happening.

Fizo arrived with a boy that looked just like him. Ayane felt the impulse to enter the gate, but stood still and watched as he neared his father and sent the kid to look for her.

Zared saw the other five friends around the pool, and near to him, through the gate, was Alyssa, a childhood friend he didn't see since high school.

There was a friend by her side that he didn't know, but he's more interested on what Alyssa was showing through her unrolled intercom.

The intercom's enlarged screen showed several photos of a large farm while Alyssa swept it, one just like Zared wanted to buy someday. As she swept again, he saw the interior of a large living room. In one of the walls was a photo of him hugging Alyssa and three kids. She was indeed a long lost love he had. She swept the screen again, and more photos of the farm appeared, with robots plowing the land on the distance, and several tall posts with cameras and searchlights through the land.

Looking at the faces of all the people from her hometown, Zeh felt some of them she still liked, and most ranged from anger to bittersweetness.

In this category she put several people she admired, and it was painful to see them gradually ostracize her, after she moved to the small city's main streets with her girlfriend. This bothered her more than the veiled mockery other people did sometimes.

So it was odd that now they were all smiling, talking with Dri, greeting or hugging her sometimes. There was a banner with her name and Dri's, around a cake.

The two gates were very similar, as Seleca looked through them. The second capsule, on the left, had however its door opened and facing a tall building. Atop of it, she could see some of her friends and a table full with snacks and drinks. She still wasn't that hungry, but a lunch now wouldn't go amiss.

Fizo seriously considered entering the gate. So much so, that he went to the last possible place before crossing the border, and leaned towards it, but went back not accepting it as real.

A thunder resonated behind him and his attention was caught by it. He walked away from the gate, and runned away as several lightnings crossed the space.

The thunderstorm didn't distract Ayane. She stayed there, until her view started to blur and fade to black.

The six friends awoke together. Surprisingly, one of the red enemies was back inside the capsule, hitting the central column again and again.

He noticed they awaked and raised his arm, targeting one by one, until dwelling upon Fizo.

Ayane crossed the distance between then and jumped over the red enemy, all coming afterwards. Not much was necessary to subdue him, his head already covered in blood, from the previous battle. With a concentrated blast from Fizo and Hanzo, he became unconscious.

As Fizo recovered from the jumpscare menace, he turned to Ayane and almost said something, but paused, wondering what he could say: "I had a strange dream with two gates, and... my father was in one of them."

"I also had a strange dream with gates... but cannot remember details."

"All of us had a 'dream' about 'gates' like that?", Hanzo asked, and everyone replied nodding.

"It was quite good." Zared muttered, the others agreeing more discreetly.

There was silence for some time, until Hanzo returned to his next task:

"Alright! Let's see if we can remove this armor from him." He leaned towards the enemy, and noticed a small compartment attached to his waist. He opened it and there there was an intercom, still the last message displaying.

The message had an image with several locations and markings, and a text under it:

"We hit the jackpot this time. Take all of the capsules and make rental prices spike. Kill anyone that stays on the way."

Hanzo frowned. "I wonder what he saw in that gate."

Fizo laughed: "Fake stuff to profit from idiots, of course. If we had doubts whether it was real, they had none."