The child's marveling towards the newly unveiled saviors, was suddenly broken as the barking of iron, and the whizzing of steel, preceded a hail of projectiles ripping through flesh and bone, organ and mind. The sound of screams howled, denizens of the terrace cut down, invaders cut down, holes bursting through the heads and chests of the rag and clothed alike. Chained bodies started falling, as the invaders' suppression began. A switch flipped in the child’s head, she suddenly sat up on her elbows, dragging her emaciated body along the cold ground. 

The centipede of darkness, also her savior, slowly slithered ever closer, as the child crawled, dragging legs and spine along the floor of the battlefield. Projectiles cried, concussions boomed, and the heat grew ever hotter. Making her way across the blood of fallen allies, the child took what seemed like hours to trek the 100 feet past the invaders' sanctum to her proposed saviors. But she made it, to the shadow of flame, shadow of fog, and the shadow of the Konnie herself. Rearing up with the last of her strength the little one stood shakily to greet her savior, her master, her owner, her life. 

Crack! Sharp stinging pain seared through the child's face, blood spewed from her forced open mouth, body twisting away as it collapsed in on itself, tumbling and sliding along the smooth earth. The master stood, hand still open after the back-palmed assault she had just burned onto the child's face, eyes spinning Konnie stopped, searing fire into the barely conscious child, eyes meeting, fear in one set and hate in the other. 

The child scrabbled, to right herself, bulging eye and sated mouth bleeding as she rolled her body to face her master. The silhouette of the great white-haired machine-warrior rose as she made her way closer and closer. A figure of giant proportions in the light, Konnie balled her fist, tendons taught, veins bulging. But then, she was gone, in an instant, in a blink, taken out by a flash of mystery and darkness, barely visible to the dying child.

          The body of the master catapulted backwards, tumbling through the rubble as the figure with one red eye emerged from the aftermath slowly. Just as fast as they arrived, the figure was set upon by the master’s armada, Echelon scrambling to find an avenging blow. Like a dance of steel flowers, the red eyed figure swirled, silhouetted in the flame, blades swinging and flashing, a dance so powerful, one could hear the blades sing as they sliced effortlessly through the red eye’s foes. Echelon, cleaved and mortally wounded, all fell to the ground, as the figure stood alone again on the flaming battlefield. 

The respite of war was brief, as the red eyed was set upon again, an endless tide of midnight warriors, the eyed-figure’s sabers cleaving and whirling. Dropping one precious blade, they produced a blundered fli-gun, slamming a peppering round into the crowd of Echelon, blood and gristle tearing into the air. Just as the gun’s explosion faded, another far greater explosion replaced it as a bombardment shell struck the earth behind the warring parties, sending bodies flying across the terrace as the world was filled with a blinding light. 

          For a second the child thought she had died, there was no sound, and all she could see was white. Said light of the heavens faded rapidly as she found her crumpled body lying in a cushioned pile of sharp rocks and metal. A noise came in from the nothingness as she painfully cocked her head slowly to look at the source, the visage of her captor laying a mere few feet from her current position. The red eyed figure slowly got to its knees and then to its feet, turning to face the girl as a rain of gray dust and soot cascaded off its form, the child was not met with the grimace of a war mask, but instead the scarred face of an older coffee skinned man, who looked at her with one eye red, streaming wisps of ethereal flame, the other on its right a beautiful golden orange, filled with concern and worry. 

She didn’t even realize that he had scooped her up gingerly, until she laid in his arms; he started moving, slow, steady, and labored. The injured duo gradually made their way to the invaders' horse-headed ship, looming closer as they moved. Just as the child's invader was about to set foot on the large landing pad, everyone froze as their eyes strayed towards the heavens. The sound of sky thrusters and afterburners roared through the storming cloudlayer, like a lightning storm flowing through the sea of air, a massive ship speared its way through the clouds. A mighty sharp-edged fortress of a battle cruiser, rivaling that of the invaders. This ship unbeknownst to many who witnessed it, belonged to the largest pure human alliance in all the skies, the Terren Regime, that very title plastered along the side, as it started to circle slowly in its behemoth entirety. 

Flames barked as shells rained from the cannons that lined the Terren ship’s hull, cascading rumbling fire along the terrace mountain. Right at that moment, while all were frozen, the invaders ship rocked in its docking chains, its deck pummeled by hot shrapnel and anti-sky ammunition. Seizing the distraction, the child hatched a simple plan, she started to roll and writhe from the protective arms of her captor. Landing upon the broken ground again, the girl made another attempt to return to her previous life. Scrambling, the child’s captor attempted to scoop her fleeing body, with as much genuine care as they could muster. But the child herself tried all she could to resist at everyone’s expense, until a searing pain cut through her lower half, enough to knock her out instantly. The midnight whip of the child’s master wrapped its snake-like body around her small leg, blades biting into muscle and bone, as its scales coiled ever tighter.