[center]| In Collaboration with [@Tortoise] |[/center]

There’s a single, bright line shining overhead. The chairs are steel, and the Zetan’s hands are tied behind it. Across from him are two ECU protectors, one sitting at the metal table and shuffling through files, and the other glaring menacingly from beside the door.

And it’s all clearly a scene taken from an Old Earth, 1950's detective show.

“Look,” the sitting protector said. “I want to help you here, okay? We don’t want this fight. You guys took Bodi from us. We just need some information, and then we’ll let you go home, alright?”

“Forget it, Jo,” her partner cut in. “This tin can probably can’t even talk.”

Eta-Theta was having a bad day. It could have been a lot worse of a day if there had been a problem with their transcendence protocols, but as it was, it was just a bad day. The resistance fighter had been carrying out a subterranean operation when their group had run straight into an ECU patrol nobody else had picked up on- the resulting firefight had left the resistance group wiped almost to a man, and the patrol only barely faring better. Unfortunately, ‘better’ was still good enough to take them captive.

“Alpha-Bodi is a willing refugee. You just wanted an excuse.” They spat onto the floor.

“Where is Alpha-Bodi today, then?”

“Alpha-Elysium, probably.” They frowned.

The protector by the door, whose name is Yun, seems to take a note on his infopad. “I like that you’re willing to cooperate,” he says. “Where is Alpha-Elysium? And how does one enter?”

“It’s the Alpha subsector of the Elysium sector,” Eta-Theta deadpanned. “You get down there by going down the big shuttle, we’ll welcome you the right way.”

Yun rolls his eyes, while Jo slides her infopad across the table. It’s displaying an active map of the Zeta-5, compiled together from orbital data and whatever satellites the ECU has managed to hijack since the blockade started. “Show us on this map where Elysium-Alpha is. If we can get Bodi now, you know, maybe the Oligarchs will be satisfied- and then we can all go home, and your people can be free again. Isn’t that what we all want?”

“You’re destroying our cities, killing our people, ruining our stations and lying about the whole thing, and you think you’ll get me to just give you the location of our first settlement? Burn in Tartarus like your scout teams.”

This time, Jo rolled her eyes while Yun did something. He smiled. The beautiful, big New Hollywood smile that was all teeth and shining.

"Listen, kid," he addressed the Zetan, not because he thought it was a kid, but because that's how protectors talk when they're about to do something intimidating, "we've got some theories about your kind. About how some of you know too much. And the big boys at top are starting to come up with ideas on how to prove it. You wanna be our first test subject? That can be arranged."

There was a long moment of silence. Eta-Theta sat there, eyes staring ahead of them for a few seconds, and then a twitch ran through the side of their face. They slumped down into the chair slightly, then they smirked. “Alright. Test away.”

At that moment, Eta-Theta's head hit the steel floor. Protector Yun had kicked their chair over backwards, and soon was dragging the Zetan out into the hallway by the legs of it. "Alright, you glorified freak, come on then."

They brought them to the only airlock onboard this mid-sized ship. Through the window, you could see Zeta-5 far below. 

“Never seen space in person.” The Zetan said, looking out at their planet down below. “She’s… Well, I wouldn’t call her beautiful, but she’s killed more of you than we have, so I suppose she’s due a few compliments.” The cyborg laughed a little. 

"Hey, you're about to see her real up-close and personal," Yun growled. This close to killing someone, his act was starting to slip a little. It always did.


The airlock doors wheezed open with a slow hiss. Eta-Theta was briskly tossed in, the chair clanging unceremoniously against the floors.

"Wait!" Jo, who had been following a few steps behind, interrupted. "Are you sure about this?" She paused dramatically. "Those chairs are expensive."

Yun laughed while the doors wheezed back closed.

Eta-Theta was, curiously, equipped quite well for spacing. Not for [i]surviving[/i] spacing, no, but with the neural nanobots having fried any and all sensation to their left leg and their arm replacement having taken critical damage, they were never going to simply walk out. Therefore, the best method for going through with this was to transcend as rapidly as possible.

Deep breaths. Eta-Theta had to force out all of the old air as quickly as possible, then fill their lungs. The change in pressure when the airlock doors opened would blow their lungs out rapidly enough. The shock’d knock them unconscious- the lack of oxygen in their blood would begin the transcendence process afterwards. All in all, it would be quick.

They hoped.

Yun's face peered in through the airlock interior door's window, visible from where Eta had landed. "Here's how it's going to go down…"

The ECU had long been theorizing that Zetan individuals were speaking to each other in some covert way. They just too often seemed to know what they shouldn't, or fought in perfect unison without needing to talk at all. Just yesterday, an ECU patrol was spotted by one lone Zetan, and then ambushed by a separate team of warforms only a few minutes later. It was starting to make them suspicious.

"In one-hundred-and-twenty seconds," Yun continued, "this airlock is gonna open up to empty space, and you're gonna be in it or you're not. If you don't wanna be, tell your buddies on the surface to send us a message right now. We know you freaks are talking to each other somehow."

“Open the fucking airlock quicker.” Eta-Theta had never raised their middle finger at someone in Zetan society, but apparently, according to the consciousness, Hollywoodites viewed it as offensive. So, that’s what they did. One middle finger raised directly to the two protectors. “When we rebuild, I’m going to personally crush one of your tracheas.”

Yun only mimed tapping on a watch. Ten seconds passed, thirty, a minute...

The airlock door hissed open, and Eta-Theta had a full lungful of air. There was a muffled popping noise, and from within their chest came the most excruciating pain imaginable. They didn’t believe that this sort of pain was even [i]imaginable[/i] let alone something real that your body could experience. 

Luckily, their calculations hadn’t been wrong. Their body shut down less than three seconds after the airlock had opened up again. Thirty seconds later, Eta-Theta had re-entered a warform down on the surface of Zeta-5, looking up at where their original form had perished. The two protectors- Yun and Jo, burned into their mind.

As they examined their individually articulated fingers, strong enough to crush cartilage, they wished they still had the ability to smile. 

[hr]

The Zetan response came not from the surface of the planet, but from an old satellite, still hanging in orbit. Summoned to life through old codes and signals, it sent a weak response towards where the Xandalian Republic had made their broadcast.

The message held the coordinates to an unassuming patch of desert, where a single warform had been left. The message assured them it would be activated by the time that talks were meant to begin.

[hr]

Sigma-Devi was roused from her observation of the war by the recognition that someone aboard the station above Earth was attempting to contact her. Christensen, an envoy from the Xandalian Republic. She set herself down in front of her main desks, signalled for the automated door to open, then watched as the man entered. Their displeasure was obvious from their body language, but her smile and neutral eyes made it clear that her frustration was not with the man currently entering the room.

"Firstly, I must say it's very refreshing to see the Xandalians attempt to uncover the truth of what is happening. The ECU are rabid, they're spacing prisoners, attacking civilian centres, blatantly lying about the entire situation..." She hissed, frustrated. "But enough about my ramblings. I'm sure you have a reason to be here, and we should act properly, regardless." There was a long pause. "What can I do for you?"

[center]| [@Crusader Lord] |[/center]