Bughunting, the Return

[Dr. Dan]

(The Return...)

The television flickers on, and General Forestar sits down in his chair and, for the first time in a while, relaxes. Then, he feels a rumble. A shudder eminates throughout the ship. The lights flicker for a second, and then go out completely. The backup systems should have turned on, but did not...Darkness enveloped the General...

~~Meanwhile~~

Okami walked into the living room of her small home, on the small trading planet of Makir. Her husband walked in came up, gave her a kiss on the head and a jovial “hello!” and walked into the kitchen for a drink. After a few minutes, he came back in and sat down next to Okami with two hot cups of tea. “Here you go, hey lets see whats happening in the universe shall we?” He casually flips the channel to the News...”...and others. Tokays Headlines are many, here’s Janice with the updates, we appear to have lost contact with the Federation Starship F-Deviator Mark VII today in the Alpha Draconis sector...”

~~elsewhere~~

*In the other side of the galaxy, BugHunter is overlooking another bug hunt with this year’s batch of newbies. While they’re planetside with another veteran hunter (there are 10 newbies and the one veteran on the hunting grounds), BugHunter watches over them from the monitors of his starship, The Hunting Star, which has been modified and upgraded since the Bug War. He is also accompanied by four other starships who are also overlooking the hunt. They’re also similar in size to The Hunting Star, which is a medium/large sized corvette. All five ships are in orbit of the planet. And that’s right, they are still keeping up the time honored tradition of using bugs in their hunts, even after the Bug War incident, but they’ve taken even greater measures to ensure nothing goes wrong (as if they weren’t before…), like the release of another Queen in a batch of prey like last time*

BugHunter turns on the intercom: “Ok, you’re about to come across their nest. Be on your guards, you’re deep in the area where we sent the eggs. There are twenty bugs total here, so I should be seeing at least two trophies from all of you”

Newb Hunters: “roger that” “yes sir” “affirmative”

*The environment is very jungle like, so they should be having their hands full. Already the newbs have taken out three bugs without the help of the veteran. Unfortunately one newb got seriously wounded by one and has to now spend the rest of the hunt on their ship. Yep, this is the real thing and they’re gonna have to put their game up a notch. BugHunter himself prefers training in live situations than simulators*

Light-Stepper walks into the room: “Hey Hunter, I think you might want to check this out. Were getting a transmission from the Swatter ((swatter? Did you come up with that by yourself, Dan? Oh well, it’s a good name for a ship anyway, lol)), from Young-Tusk who’s temporarily onboard overseeing some maintenance issues. He wants you to watch something on the news...now.”

BugHunter: “Alright. Here, you take over the monitors would ya”

*BugHunter leaves to his quarters. The door opens with a “swoosh” and he walks in. He continues to stand as he turns on his vid-link*

BugHunter: “Vid-Link, on”

*A screen in the room lights up. Young-Tusk is on the other line*

Young-Tusk: “Oh hey commander, whats up?”

BugHunter: “What you got for me”

Young-Tusk: “What, no small talk? Its kind of boring over here. When can I go back to the Hunting Star?”

BugHunter: “Young-Tusk… You’re trying my patience”

Young-Tusk: “Ok, ok. Here, I’ll boot up the channel for ya”

*Crackle* “... we appear to have lost contact with the Federation Starship F-Deviator Mark VII today in the Alpha Draconis sector, it is thought that General Forestar has been supposedly killed while onboard this ship. The army has blamed the malfunction on this ship due to the large, seemingly living growth that has encompassed most of the ship. Scientists can detect a hyperspace trail leading away from the Deviator supposedly made by....”

~~Not to far away~~

Tassatul slams down an angry fist, “I TOLD you IDIOTS that the poopup accelerator wouldn’t run on the standard energy cells, they have too much CHARGE! You just nearly burnt out ANOTHER ACCELERATOR! If I catch either of you two in this bay again, I’ll TEAR YOU APART! GO!” Tassatul spins around in frustration and stomps away. Again, his scientists are useless...his quest to try and equip popup technology into the Federation starships seems to be coming to a screeching halt...why wont it work?

He stops...something is wrong...he looks down at his hand, at the growth streaming around his wrist and up his forearm. He clenches his fist and runs towards the bridge of his ship.

“Execuctor!” Yells a pilot when he enters the bridge, “We have a situation! Channel 2000 news is already here! Look at this!”

Tassatul stares out into the void of space, past the speedy news starships and right into what appears to be the ship he was supposed to meet with in four ours. The same ship that General Forestar is on, the F-Deviator Mark VII, one of the most glorious battleships to be produced after the Bug Wars.

Tassatul’s eyes grew wide, “Scan the area for hyperspace trails, now...” jumps Tass. Another pilot spoke up, “already have sir, I believe that there was an old, but hyperdrive capeable starship that went off to northwest from this position.”

Tassatul thought for a second, and then was suddenly...forced?...to say, “plot a course to follow the trail, now, and get all the men to their battle sta...no...just follow the course. Full speed...”

The ship turned and lept into unknown turf–The Draconis Sectors.

~~Somewhere far, far away~~

Sirus flipped a switch and the powercore heated up. In a few seconds the on-board comm system came to life, “Main Power, engaged...Engines, engaged...Targeting system, engaged...checking weapons systems...complete...scout mode–engaged.” Sirus smiled, and jerked the controls to make the robot leap out of the starship into the void of stars. Eversince the Bug Wars, Sirus hasn’t had much actual research to do, so he spent his time perfecting a program to run...well...a kind of childhood dream of his. A giant robot. The men working with him onboard the Time’s Fabric came to call the robot AFC, short for Armored Fusion Core, because that is, in essence, what this robot was. It was loaded with armor that protected the fusion power core inside. Of course, it could be used for combat too, as long as it dosn’t get destroyed near any friendlys. But, since there is only one, Sirus usually just takes it out for rides, complains about what’s wrong when he gets back, and then tells his men to fix it.

Sierra and Jax are still running the ship, after Okami left for home they were left in charge. Its been a pretty...dull...2 years for them, usually livened up when Sirus makes a mistake on an experiment and blows up half, or more, of the shp. The news about the Deviator dosn’t reach them yet, they are all blissfully unaware.

~~Underground on a small moon...~~

Cobra sat and thought about what has happened over the past two years....cobra sat and thought about how nice it would be to chop something in half.

After the final battle, he departed the group in search of someone capable of repairing his sword and, in doing so, found something who could help was right under his nose. His ship, The Chronoshifter. After seeking out the original creators of the ship he unlocked the Chronoshifter's primary purpose- to create a temporary, unstable interdimensional portal. Using the Chronoshifter, Cobra was then, finally able to fix his sword.

After this, Cobra had tracked down a bounty... which in the end turned out to be a set up. The 'bounty' was a representative from "Delta Project"... Cobra has refused to share any more details with anyone, even his closest friends, but after the meeting, Cobra was considerably shaken...

Cobra did however, finally master his Physic powers, that made him happy. Now he could make the TV remote come to him, how convenient.

The TV flickered on, And Cobra became suddenly angry at everything. “...encompassed most of the ship. Scientists can detect a hyperspace trail leading away from the Deviator supposedly made by an old, but hyperdrive capable starship. OH! THE Executor Tassatul is here, in the Tesseract, that is who we got that last transmission from, and as you can see there, the glorious Deviator was taken over by what appears to be living material, and oh...ok it appears that Executor Tassatul is making his way to the other side of the ship and...oh ok he’s gone, jumped into hyperspace warp just a few moments ago ladies and gentilmen, this is truly amazing. Wait...whats that? The Deviator is moving? Yes the Deviator is accelerating after Tassatuls ship and there it goes, just jumped into hyperspace itself, ladies and gentilman this has been one strange turn of events, it also appears that here, at the Alpha Draconis sector, the same sector that is offlimits to civilians and has been since the dreaded Bug Wars, has become the centerpoint of our day. The Federation starship fleet is supposedly on its way to see whats going on but they....”

Cobra was gone...

[Cobra5]

Gone indeed. He stood up, and with a solem face, knew what he must do. He turned slowly, and took courages strides toward the hanger... but first ran in to Que and bounced of his back.

Que, completly unmoved, turned slowly to see what just happened.
"Watch it there, little man."

Cobra sat up halfway and rubbed his head.
"Did you see the news?"

"Yeah... your going out again, huh?"

"Yup. Tassatul has got his own army and all, but every little bit of help helps, right?"

Cobra stood up and brushed himself off.
"So I'll need my stuff and the doppelgänger, again."
Even though this was his boss, Cobra didn't wait for aproval and went straight to his quarters to get his sword and combat gear.

[Dr. Dan]

*Sirus pushed the controls, and veered the AFC around the starship, Times Fabric. Originally Pallas ship, the Times Fabric had been ripped apart and re-built at least a dosen times, but this was never planned. Sirus had easilly the most well known scientist on the ship...he has been Head of Research and Development for a while now. The Time Fabric itself has changed a lot due to its abuse from Sirus...and many modifications have been made, some tech that Tassatul would kill for, but sirus dosnt know that.*

*Sirus remembers back to the past....*

((This is directly from a previous post, although the date is off on this:))

Dr. said:

*Sirus is working in his lab on Palla's ship. He is a little excited becuase he just got his brand new weapon fully operational. He just makes a few more adustments...

"And.....there! Yes! Now for a test run...um..."

*Sirus looks around for a target, cant see anything, so his raises the rather small pistol and aims at a small coffee cup on the table.

thewwwwwwwwwwthtwhwwwwwwthththhwwwwwwww

The small pistol fires a bright blue concentrated beam at the coffee cup and burns a neat little hole right through it.

"All Right!!" sirus yells in joy!! placing the pistol back on the table and turning to get the forearm attachment that the small pistol was meant for. He clicks in the gun, and then inhales in anticipation.

"Here we go...."

He raises the mechanism that looks like three metalic blades directly above his forarm. Two of them are in a "V" shape flat on his forearm and the other is in an "l" shape a little raised from the "v" metal. It is no more than one foot long.

He activates it.

THEWWWWWWTHWWWWWWWHWWWWWTWWWWWW

The blue beam is emitted once again, but this time it is huge. The beam is about 4 feet long and as thick as a baseball bat. It lasts however for only a second and a half, then it shuts off.

"ALL RIGHT!! PERFECT!! WOO HOO!! Sirus, youve done it again!! Moonlight model-P is complete! It aint no trans-dimensional blade, but it might be better! HAHAAAA!"

Sirus runs out of the room to show the first person he sees his great new invention.

*Sirus flyes around to the underside of the ship, head spinning with nostaligia...that blade bought him so much joy...he even cut off the front landing gear from the Times Fabric with it...hahaha....Then, with a flick of his wrist, he activated the Moonlight-X, and a huge beam of energy was emitted from the left arm of his AFC. The mechanism that created it looked just like his original one, but much larger. His fusion power core allowed him to keep the blade extended for much longer than the original, about 5 minutes, before a complete recharge of the core was needed.

The blade made a great blue trail behind it, and it truly was one of Sirus's favorite toys...*

SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*Sparks flew as the AFC flew into the side of the Times Fabric, and the Moonlight-X tore a giant tear in the armor plating...Sirus snapped out of the memories*

"CRAP!!"

*He pulled the AFC away from the ship and quickly turned off the radio transmitter, so he wouldnt hear Jax or sirerra yell at him...then he sat back and relaxed...*

((Maybe someone could come looking for me?))

[Tassatul]

*The Tesseract manuvers around, the jumps into hyperspace. A few seconds later, the ship reappears in the Draconis Sectors*

"Begin scanning the area. If there are any ships, planets, bugs, ANTHING, I want to know about it!" orders Tassatul.

"Yessir!"
*The soldier spins around in his chair and beings typing furiously on the panel. After a minute, he reports*

"We are in D-438.4 a dwarf star system with 4 planets. One has a small moon, the others have no satelites. No ships are in the area. We are alone"

Tassatul: "Very good. Bring us in to the moon. I want to check it out"

*Tassatul's skin twitches a little. Ignoreing it, he concentrates on the viewscreen showing the moon. It appears to be habitable, but something is very wrong about it. A darkness that has been advancing upon Tassatul is also within this place*

*Tass is pulled from his musings by a shout from the bridge*

"Executor! Its the Deviator! Its must have followed us. It here!"

[Dr. Dan]

The massive engines of the Deviator push the gigaintic state of the art warship towards Tassatuls Ship.

"Executor! The Deviators weapon systems are powering up, the bioscanners are going crazy! The entire ship is alive!"

The Deviator approaches the rear of Tassatuls ship, and a single blast from one of the many cannons comes forth and strikes Tassatuls ship.

The shields take the solitary blast easily, but Tassatul knows that this is not an attack, but a message...The Deviator approaches...

"Sir! Should we engage??"

[Tassatul]

"Are you a fool? The Tesseract has no chance against it. The Deviator would blow us out of the sky!"

"What then, Executor? We cant merely allo-"

Tassatul interjects: "REMOVE this man from my sight. NOW!"

*A couple of guards approach and take the confused Kaiou-Tur away. Tassatul turns to another officer and gives his orders*

"Lower the shields"

*Confused but unwilling to question, the Tesseract's crew lowers main shields. Almost immediatly, the Deviator moves in closer, then shoots out hundreds of small bio-probes into the Tesseract's hull and docking bays*

"Sir! We appear to be under attack! No damage sustained, though. The probes don't seem to be effecting us" says one officer.

"Take us in to that moon. We are landing"

*It is almost as if a complete change has surrounded Tassatul. He is no longer the confidant leader of the Kaiou-Tur, but something different. A haze of darkness seems to surround him, yet there is no change in the lighting. Tassatul's entire attitude has shifted. Close friends might have recognized the difference, but underlings have emotionless interactions with him, not nearly enough to distinguish the metamorphose. Nothing physical has changed within the short time period, nothing save a slight reddish discoloration in his eyes. This is normal for him, and most take no immediate notice in it. But later, after, they will realize. This is when the change enveloped the Executor completely. The Tassatul they knew was no more*

[BugHunter]

*BugHunter saw the whole news program from the screen. All the way up to when Tassatul's ship, the Tesseract, left the scene with the infested ship, the Deviator, following right behind it. When it was over, Bughunter shut off the news and Young-Tusk's face was once again on the vid-link*

Young-Tusk: "Interesting stuff huh? And did you see Tassatul's ship?! Does it look bigger to you? Though i dont think the color suites him. And what abou--"

BugHunter: (Thinking to himself about more important matters) "Hmm, what could be going on out there on the other side of the galaxy? That infested ship didn't look right at all..." (ponders a bit then speaks out loud) "hermm... nothing good can come of this"

*Suddenly a sub-screen pops up over Young-Tusk's face on the vid-link, cutting his speech about the hot news lady. Its Light-Stepper, who's over at the bridge looking over the monitors*

Young-Tusk: "--hey, i wasn't finished talking!"

Light-Stepper: "BugHunter, you better get over here. We're having a few problems down at the hunting grounds"

BugHunter: "I'll be right over. Young-Tusk, we'll talk more about this later"

Young-Tusk: "But hey, you never told me when I could come bac--"

*BugHunter turns off the vid-link in his quarters and begins to head back to the control room*

[Dr. Dan]

The retro-thrust engines of the Tesseract engage as the ground creeps neerer. The planet is a red plante, much like that of Mars. The envrionmental scanners reveal the climate to be in the upper heat ranges, but there is still a huge ammount of biological life forms comming up.

The Deviator, after the Tesseract begins its landing sequences, pulles back and stays in orbit above the small moon. There is a murmer and a constant rumble eminating throughout the Exeuctors ship, and Tassatul get a very uneasy feeling. The thrusters kick up a power level as the surface gets closer, making the murmer seem more like the moan of steel now.

The ship touches down, and the Pilots are barking away status reports to Tass, but he is currently more worried about...other things...to worry about status reports. There is one scanner infront of Tass that only he can see, one scanner that shows the entire blueprint of the interal components of the ship linked to the electral power supply. This terminal, originally installed to allow only the Captain to allocate powerflow to certain parts of the ship, like from engine to shields and so fourth, as a way to prevent sabotage. Now however, the power lines and grids were...turning off. Well not completely, they were fluxuating, something was very wrong. The fluxuations started from the outer power sections of the ship, and moved slowly through every line possible....what the hell is going on?

BAM! The lights flickered. The pilots all stopped their yammering and glanced nerviously around. As Tassatul watched the termial, a fluxuation reached a main power artery, one of the biggest power lines on the ship, and spread like wildfire. Every termial on the bridge flickered, every light wavered, every comm system turned to static for a split second, and then was back to normal...But that...NEVER...happened. It was nearly unheard of.

Tassatul watched as the fluxuation moved closer and closer to the main power core. Closer...Closer...Closer...

BAM! The lights went completely out. The complete system shutdown made the humming computers loose frequency and pitch very quickly ((just the noise all the computers shutting down at once made))

A pilot yammered, "The backup systems, they arent comming online! Whats going on!" Tassatul stood, in the darkness, and watched the last light his terminal die...along with the rest of his ship.

[Tassatul]

"HEY! Send somebody down to Engineering! Find out whats going on!" yells a technition on the bridge.

*The bridge of the Tesseract is completely dark, but Tassatul can see better than most in the dark. Officers and techs and soldiers are feeling their way around, trying to fin out whats going on with the ship. Tassatul had an idea what*

*He stands up and walks off the bridge. Luckily, his quarters are right close to the bridge, because the lifetubes are non-functional without power. Others will have to climb on the emergency ladders between levels in the ship*

*Upon arriving at his quarters, Tass forces open the door, then pushes it closed behind him*

"ARGH!"

*A shot of pain streams through Tassatul's head. Kneeling on the floor, he holds his head in agony. Suddenly, it stops, and a thought makes itself prominent in Tass's head*

Remain.

[Dr. Dan]

Kal stood up. Thousands of tiny bugs ran for cover all over the room as he started to move. The chamber was very large, decorated only by his throne and a map inscribed on the wall.

Kal took three steps, and his huge 9ft tall body was standing dead center of the room. He bent over foward slightly, clenched his fists and bought them together crossing them infront of himself, and then jolted upright and spread his wings to their fullest, and snapped his hands to his sides. His muscels rippled with power, power that was only enhanced by the infestation that had completely taken over his body. His wings were no longer the angelic wings of Celestial stories, but were now green horrors of raw power.

His mind then focoused in on the map. The map was drawn with circles represending sectors of influence. So far, the only circle that was drawn was around the Draconis sector A, and partially in Draconis sector B. He knew what was happening in DraconisB, he knew that Tassatul was there, and he knew exactly what Tassatul was doing on his ship. He knew that the Deviator was orbiting the moon above, and that there were Federation ships due to arrive very soon now...He also knew that the Bug Wars were about to start again...

He raised his hand, and a dotted circle appeared around the two existing. This circle encompassed All 7 of the Draconis Sectors....It has only just begun...

[Cobra5]

*Cobra, traveling to Tassatul's last location in the Cobra's Fang, shudders. He shrugs it off...*


((Don't expect to hear from me too much. My character is gonna lay low for a while, but he'll be back in later))

[Tassatul]

*Tassatul sits in his room, pondering*

Remain? For what? For-

*Just then, another surge of thought shoots through Tassatul's mind, this one less painful. Bugs. Streaming toward the ship. Soldiers. Kaiou-Tur men, being captured by them. It all made sence now. . .*

*Elsewhere on the ship, Lt Cmdr Kolarn was joggin to engineering. Perhaps the problem with the ship's power could be addressed there. Not so. Upon arriving, Kolarn witnessed a scene soon to be spreading across the galaxy. *

*A huge fleshy coating covered most of the computer and engine covered room. Odd strands of it were everywhere, a mixture of green, tan, and even reds in places. Something was growing on the ship!*

*But this was not the worst. Bulges appeared here and there among the coating. Person sized bulges. Looking closely, Kolarn can make out features of his mates, covered in the growth*

"I'm getting out of here!" he yells, turning and running straight into a tall figure.

"Welcome, Kolarn." says the newly infested Main Engineer.

[palla]

*Okami sips her tea, her brow wrinkled in silent contemplation of the news. Tristan stood and switched the television off.*

"This is not a good sign," he said, running his hand through his hair. "That ship was the General's wasn't it? If contact has been lost, what can it mean for those on board?"

*Okami stood, heading for the kitchen with the cups.*

"I don't know, Tristan. We've been out of contact with the universe at large for so long I'm not sure what's going on anymore."

"Maybe we should contact the Time's Fabric. Surely they would know what's going on."

*Okami sits down, weary all of a sudden. Just thinking of the life she had led when she was aboard her ship brought back a tiredness that she hadn't felt in a long time. Two years ago, she had been vastly adventrous and had lacked the knowledge most people needed to survive when dealing with other people. And, she had also been very sick.

Fortunately she was better now, but it also meant that she was rejecting her heritage. What frightened her was that, should she return to the Time's Fabric, she would become that inexperienced child she had once been.*

"I don't know if it's such a good idea."

"You know we have to. I mean, can you honestly just sit there, not knowing what's going on in the universe?"

*shakes her head.* "No, I guess not. All right, let's get in touch with Sierra and the others. We can ask if they'll come and pick us up."

*Tristan smiled.* "Guess this means we should start packing."

[BugHunter]

*The Bug Hunt with the new newbs goes on as scheduled. There was a problem in that two hunters were complaining that the other stole the other's kill and got into a brief fight. But BugHunter with his great wisdom in such situations quickly remedied the problem. With the hunt going well, BugHunter returns his attentions to the events on the other side of the galaxy*

BugHunter: (Thinking to himself) "Hmm, I wonder what going on with that ship (referring to the ship that just got infested) and why would Tassatul be doing over there?"

*BugHunter continues to ponder this and whether he should get involved or not. Until the time when he chooses upon his course of action, he just continues to moniter the newbie hunt*

[Tassatul]

*The main engineer was truely a formidable sight. His body actually glistened with odd juices. Tendrils spread across his body, enhancing strength and speed. Long claws now adorned his fingers. A pair of tattered looking wings sprouted from his back, usless for flying. Huge spikes jutted from his back and shoulders. He was no longer a normal Kaiou-Tur*

*Kolarn stepped back, stunned*

"Wha, what are you"

"Come now Kolarn, you already know the answer. Join us, become one with the Swarm!"

Kolarn choked out and answer: "Never!"

*Without a warning, the Main Engineer stiffened his fingers and struck Kolarn in the throat, collapsing his windpipe. He fell to the floor, holding his neck, and quickley died*

I had not meant to kill him. . . these bugs truely make one powerful. . .