[right][sub][i][Starring: Yun and Jo][/i][/sub][/right]
[right][sub][i](Addressing: [@Irredeemable] and [@Sigma])[/i][/sub][/right]

There's a man in a room, but the man is real and the room isn't. In front of him is a box- a golden cube covered in gears and wires- and behind him is a voice speaking: "What's in the box? What's in the box? Open it."

There's something familiar about the voice that sends a chill down the man's spine- he hates it intimately, so much so that it propels him to try opening the golden box if only it means he won't have to turn around (and face the voice's owner.) The little thing opens up obediently at his touch, its gears turning in such a way that the four walls of the cube fall [i]bang![/i] on the floor. The voice asks again: "What's in the box?" Inside it, nuzzled between cogs, is...

...a puzzle. A regular jigsaw. Funny, the man remembers playing these as a kid, but he could never put them together. His brain didn't wanna do it. He'd get mad, smash the pieces, and throw the board across the room when the other kids finished first. They all started to be afraid of him- years spent as the scary one taught him how to [i]be [/i]scary.

He tries solving this one now, this little plastic puzzle, but something is wrong. Reality bends in a way it shouldn't- the gears around it turn on their own, the puzzle is chewed up in their metal teeth, the box changes shape, stands up into-

Oh. That's whose voice it was.

He can only stop screaming when Eta-Theta, made now of perfect golden gears and cogs, crushes his throat like putty.

Protector Yun wakes up in a hot sweat, his sheets drenched through-and-through. His heart is hammering like a drum. Hands are shaking in rhythm on their own, and before he can take a single deep breath, he's fallen to the floor in panic, caught up in the wet sheets like a net.

They call it a Protector's Dream. It's not exactly a holo-program, but those are supposedly why they happen. All day spent in holo-training programs, the ones the Noocracy supplies to "keep the protectors focused", does weird things to your mind. It's like sleeping after too much coffee while you have a fever, and also you haven't slept in three weeks. Your mind fogs over into a kind of insanity that would make Freud giggle in glee.

There's no fix for it. Yun learned that a long, long time ago. Ten years now he's been in the service, and the only cure for a Protector's Dream he's ever found is just to carry on with your day like it didn't happen. And he's pretty sure he's not the only one who does this- not if the haunted looks in some of his fellow protector's eyes are any indication. They all feel it.

Today, his door slides open to find Jo's eyes to be staring right back at him, but she doesn't show any sign of nighttime terrors. She never has. In the time since they've been paired up, Yun doesn't think he's seen a single genuine feeling come from Jo for any reason. When they killed that toaste- Eta-Theta, she walked away from the airlock whistling. 

"What's up, Jo?"

"Walk with me," she smiles, and he does. They head on through the cramped corridors of the [i]Memory,[/i] one of the two ECU cruisers to survive the initial invasion of Zeta. Since that fateful day, they've been hovering over the surface of a terror planet that's killed almost every New Hollywoodite to set foot on it. Weather or ambush, something ends anyone who makes the mistake of going down to Zeta-5.

"You heard the news?" Jo asks him.

"That we're trapped with these cyborgs until the Oligarchs finally decide to bomb the place to dust?" Yun asks. "Yeah, Jo, I figured that one out."

They both slow down as they approach the launch bay. Their transport inside is being checked over by a team of engineers who use glimmering holographic displays.

"No, moron, I mean that they don't think we're good enough."

Yun's heavy eyebrows shoot up, waiting for explanation. Jo sighs like he's thick-headed and goes on:

"They've got some kind of mercenaries coming in. From the URC, if you can believe it." (Yun, who had not heard of the United Republic of Colombia, could.) "Apparently some of them don't like cyborgs either, and some 'volunteers' are coming over to help us. Which means replace us."

Yun wasn't sure about that. One mercenary group couldn't replace all the protectors. But he knows not to argue with Jo- she'd punish him with little verbal barbs and insults for a week. He just nods. "Sounds bad."

"Duh," she answers.

"S-sir and, uh, ma'am," a nervous scientist approaches, clearly afraid to be interrupting two protectors. People have gotten broken jaws for less. "Your transport is ready. To take you down to the Elysium-Alpha sector, that is." The ECU finally found out where it was.

Without any further words, Yun and Jo join the other six protectors, and head off for their scouting mission.

[center][b]~~~~~~~~[/b][/center]
[right][sub][i][Starring: Abadi][/i][/sub][/right]
[right][sub][i](Addressing: [@Irredeemable])[/i][/sub][/right]

The ECU has a brand new policy: be first for everything.

For all their talk about human superiority and destiny and reunification, it remains the opinion of Savant Heralds and a large council of Oligarchs that much of the ECU's success in their war against the Zetans is, really, simply because no strong nation chose to step to the defense of the cyborgs. And why is that? Of course, it is because the ECU got their story out first. Tanaka and Heralds told everyone about Bodi's "kidnapping" from the get-go, so that by the time Sigma-Devi thought to defend their reputation, the concept of Zetans as kidnappers was already sunken deep into the minds of the Galaxy's denizens. Whatever the robots say now, it seems a panicked defense against this accusation. If they fight it, they feed it.

First impression is everything.

It is with this in mind that Oligarch Abadi gets dressed, and rather quickly. There's a new ship on the horizon. Scans show it as something never seen before, something totally new to the Meeting Place. And news from back home says the Gateway Listening Post registers not one, but [i]two [/i]new destinations opened up just recently. Looks like one of them has people headed this way.

She rushes out of her cramped, borrowed office space and into the neon hubbub of the ECU's segment. Three holograms have registered her heightened nerves and appeared to assist her before she finds someone who can really help. "You," she tells a new Diplomatic Adjacent, an older man with more brains than most Oligarchs, "Liason Tanaka is busy, so this is up to us..."

Within a quarter of an hour, a greeting message has been composed and sent to the unknown vessel. Rather hastily, it reads like so:

[i]
Welcome unknown vessel! Should you be unaware, the structure you are currently approaching is known as the Meeting Place, an international, diplomatic space station made from the cooperation of a variety of Earth's colonies. I, Oligarch Abadi, am a representative of the peoples known as the Earth Cultural Union, and would be pleased to invite you to join us for a discussion of the events which have transpired since the reopening of the Gateways.
[/i]

Directions to the ECU station of the Meeting Place follow. Abadi knows she doesn't speak or write as well as Tanaka, but that's less important here. What matters is getting this new nation to see the ECU as a potential friend before anyone else can get their foot in the door. Especially, [i]especially [/i]the Zetans.