Nexus Effect

Ch.132

“Well, this could’ve gone better. Why the Hell did you think I was in league with the enemy?” Hunter asked the squad leader of the soldiers, who had almost humorously grumbled about false-alarms and set about checking the house.

“Automatic counter-invasion protocol. Katina has been invaded and scans indicated an unknown energy source that matches one found at the invasion site was at this location. So the assumption was that it was a splinter cell and we were sent to deal with it.” The leader aimed a sort of ‘geiger counter’ device at Hunter and it squealed like a stuck pig. “Would you mind explaining the anomalous and high-potency energy signature you possess, sir?”

“...Oh.” Hunter felt fairly sheepish. He forgot, for a good while, that as a cybertronian, his body operated off of Argent instead of Energon, both exotic and powerful energy sources. Bryan was at the invasion site in the Hinterlands, so of course the Cornerian military would pick up their energy signatures if they had sophisticated enough scanners. “I am an alien, but I’m visiting on vacation. My blood is a very potent form of energized plasma.” Which was True.

“Ah, so you’re associated with the aliens the Star Fox Team is working with?” Hunter nodded at the correct assumption. “Ah, then apologize for intruding on your vacay. However, since Juneau Fairbanks is a Cornerian citizen, I need to have a quick word with her that her continued companionship is by her choice.”

“Oh, sure.” “Hey June, these soldiers need to know if you’re with me by choice.” These soldiers may have little between the ears, but they at least they’re rational to a point.

“Uh, okay. Can you open your waistband a bit so I can poke my head out?” Hunter did so and before the squad leader or anyone else could protest, Juneau poked her head out of the front of his waistband. “Hey, I don’t appreciate you barging into my home like this, but thanks for doing your duties. Is my house on mandatory investigation lockdown?”

“Uh, um. Ahem. Yes, ma’am. Sorry for the inconvenience. Do you have anywhere else to stay in the meantime?” Hunter withheld a snicker at the bemusement of these soldiers and Sitka, who was still here because he was June’s brother and also because this was now a ‘potential’ crime scene. Silly, yes, but Hunter knew it was just SOP to make sure they don’t miss anything.

“She could stay with our parents.” Sitka announced and Juneau winced, but huffed and nodded.

“Alright then, sorry again for this misunderstanding. I’ll report promptly that the anomaly is actually the blood of our current allies. Have a good day otherwise.” Juneau hid back in Hunter’s Inventory before he and Sitka were shooed outside.

“Sorry sis. Would you like a ride up the mountain?” Sitka said down at Hunter’s waist and he inwardly laughed at the silliness of people talking to his pants.

“I can handle that. These aren’t vestigial.” Hunter flapped his wings and Sitka looked unsure. “Don’t worry, your sister is safe with me. You should get back to base. June told me you lived on base and I bet they won’t appreciate you not being there if they need you.”

“Ugh, right. Well, you be good to my sister.” Sitka intoned with instinctive familial protectiveness before he went to a flying car that hovered up above the trees and slowly flew away.

“Your brother was surprisingly protective of you, in case you missed that. So, your parents live at the top of the mountain?” Hunter rhetorically questioned as he began to fly towards the snow-capped peak of the mountain range.

“Hunter...what are you doing?” She asked him warily as his HUD highlighted the distant ski lodge and the lifts going higher into the mountains once he broke the treeline.

“I never got to say goodbye to my parents. I regret it to this day. I’m not letting you have any regrets about this.” Hunter replied, already certain with her own desires and thoughts heavily invested on going with him, wherever that may be.

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

After hearing the laser blasts above, I climbed the ladder to the undamaged exit panel and popped it open in time to yelp and duck before an Arwing skidded on it’s runners and wing to a stop just past this engineering shaft. “What the fuck! Don’t do shit like that without warning someone!” I snarled as I climbed out and shook my fist at Falco, who was indeed our savior.

“Yeesh, next time I’ll let Sunset rescue you. Now then, can you wingride? I know Slippy can’t, he can climb into the Arwing’s cargo hold.” Falco said as I helped Yola and Slippy out of the engineering access.

“We can turn into tiny ships.” Yola reminded him and gestured around. “You didn’t need to land, we just needed you to clear the area so we could transform.”

“...Woops. Right. Sorry about that Mefi.” Falco apologized as he visibly petted the canopy, who let out a huff.

“I’m not some dainty little slip. If I had any protests to being landed that harshly, I would’ve stopped you.” One of Yola’s many daughters, Mefi’Feell replied and I smirked at her being Falco’s partnered Arwing. “Now get me back up there! We’re not doing any good sitting here!”

“I’m goin’, yeesh!” Falco said in annoyance which I knew was from him being in sarcastic ‘Brooklyn’ tsundere mode. He took Mefi into the sky to fight the assembled Aparoid menace.

“So I finally get to ride in one of you? Seeing you from the outside is one thing, I can’t wait to see how your insides look.” Slippy eagerly said and I shared a giggle with my sister. “W-what?”

“The question is; do you think you can handle it, Slippy?” I wagged my eyebrows and he tilted his head in absolute confusion.

“Our entrance hatch is literally an ‘airlock’ vagina. You would have to climb up inside us.” Yola informed him and the engineer paled so bad his green parts matched his white parts.

“A-ah...um...why don’t I just, uh, stay here? Monitor the weather control system?” Slippy nervously said and I smiled deviously.

“Sorry Slippy, looks like you become a man today.” I joked before I shrunk down to begin transforming and he ran away screaming with Yola chasing him. It was hilarious.

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

“He’s still pissed, huh?” Wolf asked Lois as they landed their Wolfens and disembarked.

“Yep.” Lois sighed with a nod. Berserker was seething with anger as he glared up to the sky, where Pigma made his get-away with the Aparoid Core. “He had the perfect shot, too.”

“Yeah, but the Aparoid jumped in front of his shot and took it. Making Pigma’s escape possible.” Wolf huffed in annoyance as he was the one to warn Berserker about the swine and to shoot him down. “You think he’ll still be in the mood to have a chat?”

“If you can get him to think about something else, then yes.” Lois answered with a knowing smirk.

With an annoyed grunt, Wolf approached the enraged man while Lois was busy with collecting pieces of the Aparoids they’d destroyed. “Berserker, I’ll be blunt. We failed to secure the core, but the planet is saved. That’s the important thing right now. Don’t dwell on one failure among a pile of successes.”

“...Right.” Berserker growled in reply and kicked an Aparoid head in frustration. “This isn’t over.” Berserker huffed before Selene approached them. “Yes?”

“I wish to return to our home and begin running scans and tests to counteract the Aparoid’s infestation.” Selene stated and Berserker nodded in agreement.

“Right, our people will get more out of this than the locals. Call if you need help.” Berserker flipped a black coin to Wolf, who snatched it as he watched the hulking armored male go through a portal with the much smaller female.

“Wolf! Corneria is under attack by the Aparoids!” Lois called out to him and Wolf growled with a rub of his snout.

“C’mon, now? Couldn’t have waited at least a day after this op for shit to go sideways?” Wolf grumbled and then sprinted for his Wolfen.

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

How long were they blind to this? How long were the Aparoids just waiting to strike? “This way, Mister President.” One of the Presidential Platoon soldiers guiding him through the Cornerian Capitol Building urged him and he didn’t bother to chide the soldier for letting his nerves show in this crisis. It has been almost a decade since the Lylat Wars and just over a ten years since the wars opened with Andross assaulting Corneria immediately.

Why oh why did he forget that Celestia, so confident in her magic, didn’t feel the need to have an escape teleporter set up in the capitol building? At least the military’s control tower in the military base had one of those if he was the focus of an attack, otherwise he’d be in this very situation there if he was acting head General and not the current wartime President.

That was a what-if situation, what the current situation was, was that the Aparoids had used their warp gate technology to drop what his military intelligence officers had labeled as Hatchers all across the capital. These Hatchers then used self-contained warp gate technology to start funneling troops into the city. The citizens had quickly ‘rocked out’ to the underground cities with minimal casualties, as they were trained to do, so there was that much at least.

However, his men were dying. They were being captured, enslaved and turned against their brothers and sisters-in-arms. Reinforcements were on the way, but by the time they arrive-. “*Scree!*” Pepper charged his blaster into the red while his soldiers peppered the assaulting Aparoid Crawler that had burst into the hallway, he then unleashed his blast, annihilating the robotic insect in a bolt of overcharged red plasma.

“Keep moving! We need to reach the safe room so that Celestia can teleport us to safety!” These Aparoids had advanced jamming technology capable of even interfering with magical energy wavelengths. Thankfully, Celestia had pre-prepared a countermeasure in the form of an array carved into specific rooms. The safe room was one obvious location for it since unlike the majority of the building, few people would be able to access and analyze the array in there with it sealed most of the time.

“Don’t worry, we’re almost there.” Celestia soothed to one of the soldiers, who was practically jumping at shadows. “The safe room wasn’t far, it just needed to be centralized in the building so everyone could reach it fairly quickly.” Celestia reminded the group before they reached the blank wall where the door to the room was hidden and thus a secret to everyone who didn’t practically live in this building half of the time. “Press here, here and here…”

The wall slid open and they poured into the solid metal box that already had several senior staff and even a janitor hiding within. “Get us out of here, Celestia!” Pepper ordered his secretary and the mare nodded before her horn shined-.

“*Scree!*” An Aparoid Dragoon, the larger and heavier variant of the Crawler, burst through the wall as the door to the room was closing and jammed it open with one of it’s thick front legs.

“Well, this isn’t good.” The janitor, a zebra named Ahti, huffed and vanished just before Celestia managed to finish charging the spell and they were now inside of a dusty and almost abandoned-feeling metal room with no windows. “Ew! So much dust! Ugh, I need to find the nearest supply closet, I feel like I’m gonna choke on this filth.”

“We’ve never had to completely abandon the government offices on the surface before, so it’s not surprising the space set aside for us in Undertown was neglected.” Pepper huffed as he calmed down from the adrenaline high. The crash almost made him take a seat immediately. He was too old for this...

“Uh, how did Ahti get here before us?” A senior staff member asked.

“Don’t question the otherworldly janitor, dear.” Another staff member commented.

“Okay everyone, find your places. Pardon the dust, but we have work to do.” Celestia intoned while Pepper calmed his heart. “I’ll get things in order, sir.”

“Thank you, Tia.” Pepper took a small case from his pocket and dry swallowed the tablet that would help him calm down and prevent his old heart from straining itself. “Now then, I have much to do while the military acts with us being cut off from them. People, please settle into the space and ensure the passages to the surface are sealed and secure.”

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

“I am so glad I still had the Gorgon Cannon installed on the Great Ape.” Oikonny muttered to himself after his anemic defense fleet had successfully destroyed an invasion force of Aparoids that had appeared without warning. He’d lost two more frigates and several gunships, but the remainder of the drone fighters had been lost, rapidly corrupted to aid the enemy.

“Ah, this will work.” A zebra said as he took cleaning supplies from the janitor's closet attached to the bridge and then vanished.

“Who was that?” Aliata questioned curiously, having spent the past hours on Oikonny’s shoulder, unwilling to flee or leave her boyfriend’s side.

“That’s just Ahti. My uncle based the dimensional distortion technology of the original Gorgon off of his ability to leave and reenter our reality at will.” Oikonny casually replied as he considered how to secure his people’s safety against this threat when automated defenses are so easily made a liability against them.

“So, he’s a Void Dweller?” Aliata asked in confusion and fear.

“Nobody knows and nobody really cares. He is an ageless and eccentric stallion who just wants to be left alone to work a humble job and go home at the end of the day to relax. That said, him being employed by Celestia, an ageless mare, isn’t coincidence.” Oikonny replied with a shrug and hummed in consideration. “Perhaps we should dust off the technology we swore off of from Titania.”

“And what is that?” Aliata questioned as she kicked her legs, her heels bouncing off of his collarbone.

“The cloning devices and other resurrection technology were made under the order of Captain Shears to revive my Uncle. It was all very unethical, cruel even. However, so long as we’re not trying to bring back the dead, I believe that flash-cloning willing volunteers who will get paid royalties for their clone’s service is an acceptable use of the technology given our circumstances.” Oikonny grumbled as he looked at the floating hulks of the latest casualties to his people.

“Hm, why not make AI’s by flash cloning and scanning the organic brains? It would make them think like an LI?” Aliata suggested as she nuzzled his head.

“They would be just as susceptible to the Aparoids as drones. There is no point to doing that. It would be even worse than drones because we’d be feeding them thinking entities.” Oikonny shook his head and let out a gusty sigh as the weight of his responsibilities fell on his shoulders once again. That ‘Star Fort’ from Mrs. Feell’s schematics couldn't be finished by the construction drones soon enough, even with Sargasso Station on it’s way from the Meteo belt.

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

“Well, at least you came to visit.” Juneau’s dad, Kenai Fairbanks, dismissively commented he went back to reading the news. The older graying husky had a bit of a beer belly, but aside from that was rather fit for a retired middle-aged soldier with nothing to do but manage a ski lodge...which might be part of that actually.

“It is good to see you again dear.” Juneau’s mom, a rather ditzy golden-furred lab named April Fairbanks, cheerfully chirped as she pinched her taller, bustier and buffer daughter’s cheeks, making Hunter’s beautiful new mate blush and her tail to wag while her ears pulled back.

“Mom~...” Mewled the casually dressed shirt-and-shorts-wearing husky who had also found a Navel Pearl that Hunter had forgotten he had on hand as per the orders of his wives for this very instance. At least she didn’t look hyper-pregnant in front of her parents, it would’ve made this whole conversation ten times more awkward.

“Just so long as Mister Marine here takes responsibility and puts you up, we won’t try to take the incident out of his hide since it was beyond both of your control.” Kenai stated sternly with absolute certainty that he wasn’t about to be saddled with one of his children in his home again. Hunter knew he’d put forward the impression of someone very competent, but regularly besieged by conflict. It seems Mr. Fairbanks instinctively liked him. That was good.

“What do you mean by that?” Hunter asked with a raised brow. “Hasn’t she been doing that; making a life of her own?”

“Yes, but since she decided not to go into the military, she wasn’t going to make much money starting out, so we let her live in the old home and moved up here.” April stated pleasantly, as if not making money in a military police occupation was expected. “At least now that she’s had a good few years on the force, she’s making more than enough to find a place to her liking.”

“Your economics are weird.” While it is true that in the military you make a lot of money because the job it entails has a lot of danger in it, that shouldn’t mean regular jobs offer up less.

“Spoken like a Saurian hippie. We’re all entitled to our opinions, but take good care of my daughter and we’ll have no conflict with you. Before you go though, take your pick of the guest rooms for the night. The fire in the Hinterlands is big enough it’s choking the air up here and I don’t want anyone, let alone family, going out in this haze until it dies down.” Kenai declared with a stern look at his daughter, who puffed up her cheeks.

“One time daddy! I only set fire to the camp one time! Hmph!” Juneau huffed and grabbed Hunter’s hand, pulling him away from the private family room of the lodge and into the public area, where some people of varied species were milling about worriedly at the pillar of smoke. “I know it’s only midday, Hunter, but I would like it if we just spent it chilling. Can you enter that storage space too?”

“No, I don’t think so. I might end up turning myself inside-out.” Hunter replied with a smirk. All attempts for anyone not Pinkie failed to use their Inventory for unconventional means.

Someone else being in someone’s storage was pretty standard and there was even a hilariously confounding event that someone called Space-Ception where people pooled into one woman’s storage. Then when inside, people piled into one other person’s storage, repeated hundreds of times and then passed a camera recording through all of their storages to one another. That video was still fun to go back to now and then and it wasn’t just for all the cleavage and crotch-shots it had.

“Aw, well, let’s get your video game station set up in the room.” Hunter perked up, she wanted to game with him? He hasn’t been able to game with someone for a while! His tail batted about happily as she pulled him into an unoccupied room.