Things Done in the Dark IC; Chapter one: Signs and Symbols

Myre clapped a heavy hand on Exo, and brought his head down to ear level.

"Stop arguing or they'll have you executed!" Myre whispered. He then walked to the other end of the table and sat down. With that, the meeting began. In front of each person appeared a fancy-looking report in a blue cover, on the front of which was a white halo that said LAF in the middle. The consul himself arose from his chair, and grabbed a metal pointed from one of his aids.

"All rise for the Consul!" an official-looking general at he table said, standing up.

Myre stood at attention and saluted as the Consul walked over to the front of the room. He felt Claymoor's hand, and had to resist the urge to laugh. Myre was a spy, not your commonplace person, and spies had ways to keep things from being stolen. The card the Claymorr had grabbed was a decoy credit card in a decoy wallet in his back left pants pocket. Upon Claymoor stealing it, the card began to glow slightly, and made a very quiet sizzling sound as it dissolved into acid, covering Claymoor's hand. Nobody steals things from Myre. He had a decoy of every device on him, except for his vacuum ray; nobody stole a hair dryer. Myre looked over at Sal with a violent expression on his face, and one of the soldiers raised his gun over his head to strike the salamander.

"Don't disrespect the Consul, slime!" the man yelled. The Consul raised a hand, and the man dropped his gun.

"At ease, soldier." the Consul said in a firm tone "We're all on the same team here, and he is not Lumien. he doesn't technically need to respect me at all!" he smiled, and turned to the screen in the back. Everyone in the room sat down. At this point, Myre noticed someone else int he room; someone foreign. Sitting two chairs to the right of the Consul's throne was a Chimerian; an interesting, reptilian creature with a crocodile-like snout and and catlike ears. The creature nodded to him, and Myre nodded back.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen." the Consul said. "We are read to begin!" A 3D model of the Lumien Department of Agriculture appeared on the table, and the screen in the back showed all four locations before being destroyed. "As many of you may know, last night four Lumien governmental buildings; the Department of Agriculture, the Chimeran Embassy, the Aeronautics and Space Command, and the Department of Education, were all attacked by Human drone planes." The hologram on the table began to switch to images of each building, before and after destruction.

"Now the Humans," the Consul continued "claim that they have not mounted any sort of attack. They suspect terrorists, which I would normally agree with, however one of the buildings destroyed was a Chimerian embassy. If a terrorist were to attack the Lumien Consulate, that would not be a prime target due to the enormity of the Chimerian military. With us today is Commander Niroc Ferricks, a Chimerian intelligence agent sent by the Chimerian council to provide their feedback on the attack." Ferricks rose from his seat, and bowed to the Consul slightly.

"That's the guy who commanded the Armarox Bombing back in the Drae'kon Civil War." Sakayrus whispered "He's a God among men in the Chimerian Empire, but a devil to the Drae'kons." Niroc looked around the room rather haughtily, and then sat back down.

Claymoor noticed the card melting and tasted a slight tang around his hand, he rendered his hand nearly invisible by using the optical receptors on his skin to tell the pigment cells to mimic what the receptors were seeing, and reached over to Myre dripped and the acid on his mucus coated hand onto Myres left boot, no,no,no, not in my house! Claymoor thought. He snickered quietly at Myres impending reaction.

Niroc nodded, and motioned to the man in the back to hit a button on a console. The picture on the screen switched to show a map of the Milky Way Galaxy with all the empires in blue.

"That's the thing," Niroc said "Most enemies of the Galactic Federal Alliance (includes the Lumiens, Humans, and Chimerians) have the proper military power to destroy the Humans without us doing it. The humans and the Chimerians have been at peace for three centuries. We fought side-by-side in the Galactic War thirty years ago. And none of our known enemies are smart enough to do this; the Seytanbalik don't have two neurons to rub together, the Raiet are extinct, and so are the Droniaks". Myre looked up from his folder, and began to speak.

"Sir," he began "I do not believe that anyone n the galaxy currently has the technology to hack human robotics. Though the Human water sacks aren't very adept at other things such as survival" This brought a chuckled from Sakayrus and a scowl from Zero "their robotics are extremely advanced. You should see what Saybre-tech has done with prosthetic technology. The culprits are most likely human, and if the Chimerians go to war with the humans, by Chimerian law, they must kill every human in existence, so these terrorists would have written their own death sentence. Plus, if they can get on Desbin and bomb Lumien buildings, then they could just get to Papyria and attack the Chimerians in the same way. I think this is a power game; these terrorists are after the Lumiens and want to show us that they don't fear any member of the alliance". Then a man wearing a silver military uniform adorned with badges raised his hand. Niroc nodded in consideration who what Myre had said, and pointed to the next person.

"Yes, general?" Niroc asked.

"Sir, it's my opinion that-" he stopped, the Lumien general had a strange look on his face, as if he had gotten indigestion and had forgotten what he was saying at the same time. He looked down at his hands, and then back up the expression gone.

"Yes, general?" Niroc asked.

"I think you...should die!"



A loud mechanical whirr came from the general as his right arm extended and his hand broke into pieces, all perfect geometric shapes The fist soon restructured itself into what resembled the end of a cannon barrel, and it fired a blast of energy at the Consul. One of the bodyguards ran in the way of the explosions and took it directly in the chest, dying almost instantly. The man's entire body began to separate, his clothes and skin melting away to reveal sleek white metal. His head broke into thirds, creating a y shape of absence which had a blue orb at the exact center where all the limbs of the y went. The torso broke into pieces as well; all perfectly geometric, and a very large ball of blue energy appeared between two pieces that were the same shape as one half of the human ribcage. Soon, the entire robot was a series of geometric shapes, and every shape glowed blue.

"It's a mmic drone!" Someone called out. The drone turned its head to one side, and spun around to face Exo. It fired a magnetically charged blast of blue plasma at it. Even with its regeneration, that would put it out of the fight for a while.

Claymoor who had been previously occupied snatched his + - ion blaster from his waist with lightning fast reflexes and fired a concentrated burst of positive ions, through the dank air, which would corrode metal like aluminum foil in concentrated hydrofluoric acid, just as a ball of plasma screamed by him, as it boiled the air, towards Exo. The only thought in Claymoor's mind was, destroy all Cybugs, for some reason.

The ion blaster's charge hit the Mimic Drone square in the right rib cage section, but nothing happened. The metal didn't react, and no damage was sustained to the Mimic Drone. It turned around to get blasted in the head by Sakayrus' laser and Myre's pistol both at the same time. No damage. Zero fired an arrow straight through the machine's heart, but the arrow did no damage and continued flying through the air past the Mimic. Reparosa rose from his chair, and whacked the creature with the backside of his claw, causing it to fly into the far wall, yet the drone just got back up, not phased in the slightest. It scanned the area, casting a blue co-ordinate plane over the entire area. Exo lit up red in its sights, and the others only yellow. They were minor threats. It scanned him for weapons that could possibly damage the drone, and and looked at the table. There was a clicking noise, and the hovering table that Exo stood on came crashing to the floor. Unsure of the creative Acirian's plans, it decided not to engage. Just then, Reparosa extended his claw, and a massive sonicboom shook the room as a cavitation bubble hit the drone at the speed of a bullet. The air lit up white hot, and for a fraction of a second, the area around the drone became hotter than the surface of the sun, yet when the spots faded out of everyone's eyes, a steaming Mimic drone still stood, not visibly damaged in the slightest. It fired a plasma blast at Reparosa, hitting him square in the shoulder. His thick armor took most of the hit, but he cried out and hit the far wall, his shoulder still damaged.

"Exo!" Myre yelled "What is this thing and how do we kill it?"

Exo hurriedly scrambled to its feet after the table crashed to the ground, still wielding the chair both with the confidence and stance of it being some kind of superweapon. It looked over at Myre while edging closer and closer to the bot with a completely insane grin on its face. "I haven't the slightest idea how to defeat a mimic drone. Maybe Hexen has an idea, because I'm fresh out."

Hexen looked at Exo as if it were on crack and yelled back; "What in the hell are you-" he paused for a moment, looking Exo over, reading its body language and reverse engineering what it was most likely thinking. However he covered that momentary pause up by continuing "thinking! You cant defeat the bot by jamming the chair through its head and killing its central processing unit! That's stupidity in its purest form!"

Exo looked at Hexen sarcastically, rolling its eyes. "Well, i'd absolutely LOVE to hear your idea which is so much better than mine!"

Hexen made a disapproving scoffing sound then took flight and started flying rapid cercles around the room, throwing a series of long metal knifes at the bot that closely resembled long metal flight feathers.

Exo at the same time charged the bot at full speed holding the chair out infront of it like a 4 pronged battering ram.

The drone saw Exo flying at it, and fired a plasma blast aimed directly at its head. The knives bounced off of the drone and clattered to the floor, not even putting a dent in it. The soldiers all began firing, and the Mimic Drone was pelted by bullets, but to no avail. Its armor seemed to be completely impenetrable. Myre attempted to use his vacuum ray to suck the creature's heart out, but it didn't work. Nothing worked. Zero fired an arrow through the pulsating ball of plasma in the middle of the drone's head, but it simply had no effect. The drone seemed to be completely invincible. As the plasma ball flew at Exo, the Mimic Drone activated the table once more, and caused it to haphazardly fly about the room, running over whatever got in its way.

Now, this drone was killing everything in it's sight, everyone with a weapon of some sorts was trying to destroy it, and Exo was holding up a chair “like 'e just don't care”. But just when they came across some action, where, you may ask, was Τρελός? The thing was, just as everyone stopped thinking things through, Τρελός was crouched behind a chair, planing out his first move. He looked over the chair, studied the drone, then ducked back down again. His brain worked harder than it had this whole day. Finally, he came to a conclusion. Tomorrow, Τρελός would buy a pizza for lunch, and in the elevator he would push as many buttons as he could before Hexen slapped him across the face. Okay, you know what? Scratch those ideas. He wanted a burger tomorrow, and the elevator ride should be as quick as possible. That was enough pointless thinking anyway, it was time to get in on the action.

Jumping up from behind the chair, he yelled out to Exo, "Nah Exo, it's okay! I've got my own plan!" The only problem was that when Τρελός had a plan, he didn't really have a plan. Instead of doing something good, he grabbed the chair with both hands and swung it around in circles a few times. Then he flung it at another chair, falling over in the process. He pumped his fist into the air, while letting out a small "yea!" He wasn't finished yet though, and his arm that was still waving in the air started changing into metal, until his whole arm had shaped into his own new weapon, the Achrom Blaster. He got up onto his feet and started running towards the chair that he had just thrown. "For Παράφρων!" he practically screamed out. Leaping straight at the chair lying on the ground, he pointed his gun at it and fired while in midair. The plasma he had already stored up was about the size of the chair itself, and when it hit there was a small explosion. When Τρελός looked at the ground, the spot that the chair used to be was now gone. There was a hole in it's place, but he didn't investigate. Instead, he turned back to Exo. "I think my phone's in my coat pocket, I'll check." He walked back over to one of the still remaining chairs and crouched down behind it, reaching his hand down one of the large pockets in his coat to find his phone.

Still, the drone remained, completely unharmed. Its opposite arm now became a gun as well, and the drone fired several plasma blasts in the direction of Exo and Τρελός. Upon hearing about a message from Exo, its head began to twitch once more, and it looked at Exo's suit. Interesting, a computer suit. the drone thought. it hacked the suit and began to search it, looking for the text to see if it could defeat Exo. Several computer viruses, the drone's form of an immune system, was introduced to Exo's suit, and began to spread to every device in the room, hiding themselves deep in the devices' hard drives, invisible to all.

Claymoor edged carefully around the room, changing color to help keep a low visual profile, to the holo display which was now behind the robot, and started fiddling with the controls. Grinning impishly he pulled up a screechingly loud sound track and played the music, amplifying the sound with his M.T.O.P.M.F.G