Old Score Chronicle

All characters are well over 100 years of age LOL. I wanted them all to be safely in the "legal" age of consent by well... "human" standards of course.

Anyways, I want lots of feedback... pros and cons all the way! Part 2 will be a bit darker and more gritty but tell me if you think it'd be a good idea to add an erotic scene or a more intimate scene or not.

*****

Roka stood there, frustrated, exhausted and at his utmost wits end. The positron converter gave its last pulse, as the trapped Achion's body fell limp. Its subliminal glow ceased as it lay dormant, stuck in the cliff side. He turned to Madjeiac who looked on in grievance.

"We tried." Madjeiac said, his eyes welling with tears.

"We've been running back and between the multitudes of links activating one while the others fail. There must be something we're doing wrong!" Roka continued. Everyone looked at him in shock.

"We can't continue! It's dead, Roka! They are all dead!" Madjeiac said trying to reason.

"No, there is a pattern we're overlooking! When one activate it cancels the other out! We have to find the order to activate all Achions at once!" Roka argued.

"That's counterproductive. We don't have the time to invest into that! This war will have consumed us by then! It's too late, Roka... We're all doomed at this point. Let's just give up." Madjeiac said, sitting on an outcrop, feeling completely defeated. The young male shed tears, knowing that his death would come very soon with the failed mission of activating the ancient Achions.

Roka looked at him angered. Madjeiac was always one for giving up and Roka was by no means one to quit. Roka had already decided that his last breath would be spent fighting for the welfare of their planet. The fact that Madjeiac was not willing to die to save this entire world got Roka so riled.

"You're a fucking Prince of a nation and there are still people out there who believe there is still a fighting chance! I'm one of them! Yes, I believe we still have a fighting chance and since we have leeway I will continue fighting! So if you're going to give up then so be it! Fuck you, fuck you all, I don't need you! I'll do this all by my damn self!" Roka snarled. The tears rolling down his cheeks seemed as if they could've boiled off his red hot face. Madjeiac stood up, completely taken by surprise with Roka's rage filled retort.

"Roka..." He said softly. Roka backed away, unwilling to be reasoned with. He turned, talking off with his pulse wings.

"ROKA!!" Madjeiac screamed as he watched the most diligent, kindred and positive person he knew fly away. Roka was the only person who'd still treat him like a prince since his father died, but now, Madjeiac wondered if his lack of perseverance sacrificed his friendship with Roka. Losing the war for the sake of this world was nowhere near as defeating as the possibility of losing Roka.

"Quick, after him!" Madjeiac commanded. He and several mercenaries took off after him. They flew in the direction Roka disappeared to, but he was not on the horizon. It hit Madjeiac hard to realize he was losing the very person who tied down the tiny rebellious faction. Even more so, it was harder to accept he was losing a friend.

They didn't know that Roka had flown to a nearby Achion ruin trapped in a temple only a kilometer away. The metallic creature had activated but its energy was fading fast. Roka kneeled beside the dying creature, completely distraught. He stroked its metal fur, wishing he could free it from its energy prison.

"I want you to hear me and hear me clearly!" He began, sobbing heavily, "I'm going to save you all! Even if I have to die this night doing so, I will! Someone else will come along to take my place and you'll fight side by side with them...and purge this world of evil! It' aint over until the last soul willing to think freely is gone!! I swear... I'll save you!" He knew his words were utterly useless. As soon as the Achion deactivated, its memory of him would be deleted until a photon pulse would awake them again with a fresh new perception of the world. Despite that, he hugged the groaning creature, dreaming of a day when these anodized bodied, nuclear powered creatures ran freely across the planet in much vaster numbers.

The creature's energy faded as it lost its positronic charge. Every time each creature died, it was like a powerful relic was being destroyed. The dissipation of energy was easy to feel to anyone near and it sent an overwhelming feeling of despair. These powerful deities could warrant condolences with their fading energy.

Roka did not know that the dispersal of radiation had an effect on how he perceived the dormancy of the majestic creatures. To him, it was one of the most crushing things to witness, such powerful creatures seeming to die and be reborn again with every reboot. The fact that these creatures could not remember anything after they go dormant made this all feel surreal and somewhat of a pointless pursuit. It was not even clear if these creatures were going to side with the indigenous over the welfare of the planet. Nonetheless, it was a risk worth taking no matter how frustrating it made him.

"Dammit, what are we doing wrong?" He asked himself.

"For starters, you're all scrambling as a singular mass between each relic when you should be a scattered team..." A familiar voice answered. Roka turned to see no one other than Ortangu, one of the warlords responsible for the war. He was accompanied by several imposing sky troopers.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Roka snarled.

"Settling old scores..." Ortangu said with a maleficent smile. He and his troops charged Roka, gearing to cease the boy.

"LEAVE!!" Roka stood, waving a photon lance. Ortangu and his goons stopped, hesitant to approach the angered boy.

"Oh, since when did you get a spine?" Ortangu prodded.

"Do you really want to fuck with me... when I've lost everything? I'll kill us all!" Roka threatened as he pulled a grenade from his pack. Ortangu's eyes lit up with surprise.

"You wouldn't..." Ortangu said, still thinking of Roka as the innocent hand of prince Madjeiac. Roka was the only royal hand who treated any of Ortangu's forces with kindness, even when Ortangu's barbarians would go out there very way to torment Roka. Still Roka would smile, and keep trudging even going as far as to help Ortangu when several goons turned against him in the royal prison. Not long after that, reinforcements came and destroyed Madjeiac's prison strong hold, killing the king and hurting Roka badly in the process. It inverted Roka's world as finally he had seen the true nature of war. The horrors of battle could not be unseen. All Roka could do was glare at Ortangu with unrelenting hate.

"Try me." Roka threatened.

It was now an intense standoff, Roka wielding a staff in one hand and a grenade in the other. Ortangu was not bought, thinking Roka was simply bluffing. He took a step forward, hoping to calm Roka down. To the surprise of Ortangu and he goons, Roka pulled the grenade's tab, completely ready to meet his fate.

"You idiot!" Ortangu yelled out, extending his arm towards both the lance and grenade. The gauntlet covering his hand produced a powerful electromagnetic field ceasing both the live grenade and the lance. He turned towards the gaping cave opening which was the exit of the temple. He reversed the polarity of the electromagnetic field, sending the grenade and lance out into the canyon below. The explosion of the grenade was heard almost instantly.

Ortangu turned towards Roka who was now looking on in fear. Ortangu charged towards Roka who began backing away. He tripped over the head of the Achion, falling to the temple floor. Ortangu grabbed him by his legs and began dragging him towards the exit.

"STOP!!" Roka demanded, trying to kick to free himself. Ortangu's grip was too strong.

"Why are you out here by yourself huh?" Ortangu asked, looking over his shoulder as he dragged Roka towards the exit. A massive airship hovered on the ridge, launching a tiny bridge between itself and the Cliffside. Ortangu continued to drag Roka aboard the ship.

"LET ME GO!" Roka screamed as he managed to activate his pulse wings. With an enormous amount of thrust, he freed himself from Ortangu's grip flying swiftly from the airship. Suddenly he stopped about thirty feet from the airship's boarding bridge. He looked back to see Ortangu reeling him in with his polarity gauntlets. His goons were right by his side, ready to seize him as he came near.

Indeed, they grabbed the wildly struggling boy. They took him onto the ship, unsure what to do with him.

"Let him go..." Ortangu sighed as he took a seat on the floor beside a lounge set. Roka was confused. He stood there unsure what to make of all of this. "You were right you know."

"What?" Roka asked.

"When you said Bhalil would turn on us you were right. These are the last surviving refugees from Bhalil's forces. We barely got away, that night and all I could do was just think about how you told us this day would come when I stood there beside Bhalil as we looked at the aftermath of the prison break." Ortangu explained, clenching his head.

"You made me look like an idiot that day. Everyone was so angry with me for befriending you and then you escaped... I was left looking like the biggest fool to grace this planet. Some even blamed your escape on me because I saved your life that day those prisoners were going to kill you. If I wouldn't have interfered, your escape wouldn't have happened because you would have been dead!" Roka said coldly. Ortangu looked up, peering from the front pane of the airship.

"He said I would eventually grow to stand between him and the destruction of this planet when I could be nothing but loyal to him... Destruction of a planet," Ortangu chuckled not being able to believe the words that uttered from Bhalil's mouth that day, "The destruction...of a Planet!! He always told me he was conquering worlds to introduce civility and modernization to people! He told me Terrapods were full of tools to help the natives become modernized, not turn a planet into a barren metal wasteland, completely void of life! It was the ultimate slap in the face. I was his most loyal of subjects, his most diligent of exemplarmen... Then he told his forces to cease and kill me. I realized just how alone I was...well so I thought. There were people who had sworn allegiance to me and these are them. They swooped in, saved me from the impending henchmen and had my ship in the ready to launch from the main fleet..."

"Well... if you have a following then I don't blame Bhalil." Roka responded. Ortangu looked at him, unsure what he meant.

"What?" Ortangu asked defensively.

"The fact that you have people who are loyal to you is threatening in itself. Since Bhalil is on his destructive rampage, he doesn't want any of his subordinates getting powerful enough to either become a threat or to see what they are doing is wrong. All most bow down and obey without a second guess. Sure, you may was loyal, you may was his diehard but at the end of the day, you were a threat." Roka explained.

"A threat? I would never ever have crossed Bhalil!! He is my king!! Why does he think I'd ever betray him?" Ortangu said, finding this hard to believe.

"Because eventually we would have boosted you to his level of fame to rip his tirade apart. He saw your name building and fell right into the ploy." A barbarian from the rear of the lounge responded.

"You set him up?" Roka asked laughing. Ortangu stood up, looking at the goons.

"What do you mean?" Ortangu asked the barbarian.

"It was quite an elaborate plan. We few worked our way through the ranks simply so we can get under your regime and idolize you. We knew Bhalil was going to get paranoid if he saw some of his own following one of his high ranking men. So when he tried to kill Ortangu, we were there, ready to put a divide right in the heart of Bhalil's plans. I'm willing to do anything to slow Bhalil down... He already destroyed my world... I'm not gonna let him destroy another, particularly this one. This planet is a relic..." The Barbarian explained.

"You turned my king against me?" Ortangu asked, growing angrily.

"We surely did...now what are you going to do? Go back to him, begging for acceptance back into his world destroying conquest? Do you not realize exactly what he's doing? He's destroying worlds, with billions and billions of lives being lost as if they are insignificant!! This world won't be one. He can't even get leverage on this planet because the natives are so tough and they sure as hell won't allow him to terraform this planet. We won't either." Another warrior chimed in. She was a fierce looking creature, but very beautiful.

"All of this is a little too rich... Wait... So you made the king want to kill his best man so you can rip apart the conquest, cause it to halt temporarily? What's the next step? Attack them while they are vulnerable? Regroup? Do what? In fact, what do I have to do with this?" Roka asked, still laughing. Ortangu looked at him, simply incapable of comprehending that Roka was not the same sweet boy from years ago.

"You were the last bit of leeway we gave Ortangu before we decided to take over. It's nice to see you're on our side though...but why were you in the temples?" The female warrior asked. Roka sighed, getting ready to explain.

"We've made a band of survivors, some of the finest scientists, warriors, and tacticians on this planet. Every time a terrapod dropped down, we we're there to rip it apart and distribute the few resources within them to the nearby civilizations. This was going well until we got setup and had to fight our way out of an activated terrapod. It was the first time we failed and we had to regroup. Once the terrapod was active, there was nothing we could do and an entire nation is now all metal... So we eventually went to the badlands to activate the relics but we hadn't really gotten anywhere. It had been weeks and weeks of one would activate and the others would shut off..." Roka summarized.

"It's not the brightest idea to activate the Achions. They are raw energy beings and when they fully activate, they burn everything around them." The female warrior explained.

"What?" Roka asked, surprised.

"Yeah, the Achions made Nyros their home eons ago. They protect the planet itself, not the inhabitants. They are very, very, very dangerous beings. Our job is the keep them from activating period. If another terrapod falls, then the Achions will activate, possibly whipping out life on the planet in their effort to save it. Bhalil really doesn't know what he's getting himself into, trying to terraform this planet. He could destroy everything in this galaxy, including himself..." The Barbarian explained.

"So, I've been helping Bhalil destroy worlds... and this world in particular could destroy life as we know it?" Ortangu asked.

"Yes, the Achions are essentially gods." The Barbarian explained.

"I can't believe that greedy bastard. This entire time, I thought we were connecting primitive worlds but instead, we've been terraforming them for his own greed. The fact that he thought I'd turn on him and even tried to kill me over something so subliminal... I can't even." Ortangu said, utterly astonished.

"Wait... I just thought about something. Y'all were stalking us?" Roka asked.

"No, Ortangu was stalking you! You've been the only thing on the boy's damn mind..." The Barbarian said with an eye roll.

"Why'd you drag me into this?" Ortangu asked the two.

"Because, your capacity for being a leader far surpasses Bhalil's. Picture it this way...we we're looking out for you." The warrior responded.

"So...you expect me," Ortangu began to ask, thinking about his relationship with Bhalil, "To lead you against the man that raised me since he... terraformed my planet...killed my parents...took me from my kingdom... force fed me lies... made me believe he was some type of savior when he's in fact a scourge."

"No," The warrior answered, "We wanted you to sit back and watch as we take him down." Ortangu looked at her in confusion, not sure if she was being sarcastic or not. Her face was utterly expressionless.

"You're a great leader, tactician, and a loyal acolyte, but were fighting on the wrong side. In all honesty, we need you as a figure head, simply for getting under Bhalil's skin... We don't want you to partake in this war." The barbarian added.

"You two put some considerable thought into this. This definitely was not a spur of the moment idea. This was quite a serious plan, I'm starting to see." Roka said, still surprised.

"It was one, years in the making... Have you ever been so desperate as to turn your back on those who you love simply to save something you love more?" The barbarian asked.

"Yeah... I was so adamant about activating the relics to save this planet simply because it seemed like the brightest idea at the time but we had no luck. All my allies gave up and I...said some words, turned my back on them and was about to do everything I can to activate all the Achions." Roka explained, clearly upset by the ordeal.

"Oh, that was when Ortangu ordered us to pounce on you... He never specified why but we did so. We simply thought you must be a great warrior or something. I guess not." The warrior said, looking at Ortangu who looked completely flustered.

"Yeah, my question got dodged completely. Why the fuck did you take me?" Roka asked, arms folded, unsure he was prepared for the answer.

"If I told you why I took you, you'd probably leave... In fact, you're free to go..." Ortangu sighed miserably, sitting back down in the lounge sectional. It all left Roka confused, and slightly curious. The warrior went over to Ortangu who was boiling internally. He looked at her.

"So are you all going to throw me off the ship and go in with your plans? My work here is done, right? You all really don't need me... Using me as a figure head? What's the significance?" Ortangu asked.

"One day, you'll learn who we are... why we used you... We have no reason to throw you off your ship. We just need your cooperation," The warrior explained, "Call me Talla."

"I'm already aware of your name. I know all the names of the members of my battalion." Ortangu said, almost pouting.

"That's good! You have the makings of a leader... I'm curious as to why you demanded Roka. What's the story with you two? You can trust me." Talla said.

"No I can't trust you. You used me for your own gain, and still want to use me!" Ortangu responded.

"It's not as simple as that. When all of this is over, you'll be the hero... not us... Hell, if we could simply put Bhalil and his forces on the run, that'd be a big accomplishment. I apologize for your role in this, but you have to understand... This planet means everything!" Talla rectified.

Ortangu took a deep breath and sighed. "Roka," Ortangu began, "Was a prison warden at a strong hold a few years ago. When a few of my band mates and I were taken into custody, his prison was the one we were sent to. It was brutal in there, and I wasn't prepared. All the other officers and wardens treated me like I was less than mortal, but not Roka. He would make sure, each and every one of his prisoners were fed, clothed, and just taken care of. It was kindness from a very unexpected place. I wasn't bought until I found myself being jumped by a dozen prisoners. They were of various builds and strength and I couldn't do much. Then Roka came in and beat the living shit out of all of them, saving me. It was then I realized just how kindred a spirit he was and, vowed that I'd never forget that day. The kindness didn't cease there. He'd say good evening, I'd finally respond back happy to see him. The warden on shift before him could always ruin my day with his unnecessary brutality. When Roka's night shift came, it was like I could finally breathe. He'd sit outside my cell and we'd talk for hours at a time until an altercation erupted somewhere in the jail and he was off with his pulse lance to beat some ass. Then one night, a night I accepted my fate, that' I'd never be free again, Bhalil broke me out of the prison, killing any and everything in his way, including the King of the small nation which imprisoned me. I had no idea the king and Roka were close and the years after that, Roka and I always had chance encounters... I always, being reluctant to kill him, would see him and change the entire scope of the mission simply to avoid him. He'd freeze at the site of me, until one day not long ago, he and I had our first battle. I couldn't come to hitting him, simply dodging him and his attacks until I was able to get away. It all felt so... Like I was torn between something I couldn't understand and what I always fought for. Then, all of this mess with Bhalil went down and I didn't know where to turn. The only thing I ever came to understand, something so pivotal to my life, made me a target to kill! So for months, I tracked Roka down eventually finding him in the canyons. I watched from afar, unsure what I wanted from him. Then came today, when he went out on his own... I couldn't help myself. I had to see him again, to tell him he was right but when I stood there face to face with him... I wanted him! After I got him...we were going to leave the planet together and go...somewhere far where I wouldn't have to deal with my past. Thing was... I was still expecting the kindness, the warmth from before but no... he's an entirely different person, now. He's cold; his appreciation for his own life seemed to have gone. In the temple, he pulled a grenade and tried to kill us all. It was such a shock to see that he had such a desire for me to be dead, he was willing to kill himself in the process. All of what I felt for him, the years of pent up regret and longing for him just slowly left me the more animosity he gave me... the more I simply listened to him."