Suddenly the entire west wing wall exploded, knocking him off his feet and hitting his back against the wall. By the time the smoke cleared, as well as the stars dancing around his eyes, he saw several shadows walking into the room, moving about and disabling the security. Attempting to stand up, he saw one of the shadows turning towards him and raising their hand. Suddenly a burst of ice came from the hand and he was covered in inches of ice.
"Move out," came a voice from behind the attack. A reploid partially stepped out into the view of the camera and pointed up at it. The attacker raised their hand and blew the camera away. "We have about forty seconds before we are trapped. Grab the supplies. We've already succeeded in our mission," came the voice, surprising familiar. Thirty seconds later the group was gone.
"I'm ready, guys," he said, not even noticing the members getting up. Dominator glared at Death Star's carelessness of forgetting the meeting and held a hand up in front of him, stopping him.
"That's a little late, Death Star. I already gave the briefing seeing as you are....thirty minutes late. I need to have a talk to you outside the hall in private in a moment..." Dominator told him. Death Star glared and was about to tell Dominator to bite off when he saw a strange look in the other's eyes telling him he better just do it and not argue. Garland looked between the two, looking concerned, but walked out the door with the others. Wiendigo faded from the shadows, but was probably still lurking about, listening in.
Eyeing the room quietly, Death Star turned to face Dominator. "And what exactly is the meaning of calling your commanding officer to stay behind and making him look like a fool in front of everyone else?" he asked harshly.
"You don't need much help doing that. As for calling you behind, ever since Iceheart died you have either given bad orders that could get teammates killed, been distracted from your work and thus caused an objective, not to mention the lives of your team, to come into danger, you also give the team a hard time and cut everyone close off from around you, and now you don't seem to give a flip about leading anymore, not since the Infinity Inc. station vanished and Dath died," Dominator told him. Death Star crossed his arms, listening silently until Dominator stopped.
"Is that so? And what are you going to do about it, exactly, Dominator? File a complaint to EarthGov? Get out of my face..." Death Star snarled and headed for the door.
"No, I had X1 sign up the forms saying you are unfit for duty, Death Star, and thus you are now stripped of your General rank until X1 says you're fit enough to lead the team. I'll step in as leader of the Hunters until that time," Dominator informed him.
"You did what?" Death Star shouted, turning around to face Dominator again. "You are throwing me off the team and becoming the leader yourself? And do you think you can lead the team now? Just because I break the rules and expect a lot out of my team doesn't mean I can't lead, however, you follow the rules, don't you Dominator? You do what the humans say, you follow their rules, do as they say, and look where it got you in the end. Your creator was murdered before your eyes and when you tried to strike back at the crowd that killed him, you were arrested. When Venerator became leader of the MH, you two followed the rules, doing as they said, and he ended up murdered too, by an unmarked craft piloted by CorSec. And now you think YOU can lead the team?" Death Star taunted him.
Dominator clinched his fists in anger until the point his metallic knuckles began to pop and he then raised his hand, pointing at Death Star. But before he could say anything, the viewscreen appeared before the two, flashing that there was an incoming message for General Death Star and Commander Dominator. The two glared at each other, but stopped the argument and entered the Control Room. Death Star leaned against the wall, allowing Dominator to access the message himself.
The message appeared on the screen, revolving around as the speaker spoke. "Yesterday night a weapons division of CorSec was attacked by a group of reploids. They were able to take out all the security through some hacker of theirs and enter the base unnoticed, until they reached their destination, the west wing. Blowing the wall down, they assaulted a guard and destroyed some of the video cameras. In this message is the footage. However, they missed a newly installed camera so we have slight identity on them. Nothing important was stolen so it seems the group was just out to make a message. Playing footage now..." the voice said and suddenly the HoloVid screen widened and the two found themselves looking into the west wing of the building attacked. Five reploids silently walked around the blazing inferno of what was left of the west wing. A fat guard, Dominator noted, was pulling himself up when the leader of the band raised their hand and fired an ice attack, freezing the man in his spot. Turning his head slightly, Dominator noted that Death Star seemed to get ridged all of a sudden.
A taller reploid to the side of the attacker, faded out in the smoke from the damage, pointed at the camera and the attacker raised their hand, slightly coming into view. It was definitely a female, Dominator could tell. And suddenly he knew why Death Star was freezing up on him, just like the camera as the female reploid fired, destroying it. Iceheart...Iceheart.... The word kept echoing through his mind, but then again, how many female reploids were made that could fire ice? Probably a dozen. "...Death..." Dominator was about to start when suddenly the next roll of footage, from the hidden camera that the group missed, began to play. It showed the back of the reploids as the female attacker finished destroying the camera and the other reploid ordering the three with them to go and grab the stuff. The reploid, stepping into the line of sight of the camera, turned out to be a male reploid...and surprising familiar. Before Dominator could echo the words of the reploid's name, Death Star beat him to it.
"It's me!" Death Star exclaimed.
"...North Star...?" asked Dominator warily.
"No. North Star and I didn't look exactly alike, unlike him. ...This isn't North Star..." Death Star said, his voice trailing off as he watched the female reploid on the screen footage. He reached down and clicked the screen to freeze and saved it to a disk. "I'm going to investigate this little matter..." Death Star told him, turning around and heading for the door.
"I'm afraid not. You're no longer the leader of the Hunters, so you don't have the proper authority to go off tracking clones and possible dead people..." Dominator intervened, standing up to stop Death Star from leaving when suddenly Garland stepped into the room.
"I listened to everything, Dom, and I'll go with him. Besides, nothing else is going on," Garland said, trying to sound cheerful so the two wouldn't go at each other's throats.
"...Well...." Dominator started but then stopped. He knew that Death Star would leave no matter what and having Garland watching him would be the safest thing probably. "Alright...but I want you to keep in contact with me back here...
"Of course," Garland told him, turning around to see Death Star had already left the room to get ready. Waving goodbye to Dominator, Garland walked out the door to find him.
Dominator sighed and leaned back against the computer, turning off the message, lost in thought. If Death Star was already about to go over the edge in his conduct, having Iceheart back around, and causing trouble as this showed, could be very bad for his mental health. Infact..it could probably push him over the edge. Grabbing the comm. he contacted MedBay. "Yes, X1? I have something I need you to do..."
"Sir?"
Spade turned around to the young lieutenant. "What is it, Johnson?" he asked irritated.
"Divers have begun to go into the site of Hell's location. Reports say that there is a lot of debree everywhere, but they are sure they will get the files buried down there...plus the Warden's machinery. Once we have this, we can round up all the old criminals here and transfer them to Hell's new site. As for the weapons you asked for, they will be used to track down reploids and make sure they stay in line. Just like you wanted," Johnson told him.
"Good. Has the President authorized this yet or are we going to have to do this behind his back...with the people's support, of course," asked Spade, turning back to face the crews down in the water, moving about and extracting the submerged prison.
"The President needs more time to think on it, but we're pretty sure he'll give you the permission you need anyway. As of now, he doesn't know we're doing this, and it'll stay that way," Johnson told him.
"Keep up the work, Johnson. You're in charge of this operation. Make sure nothing goes wrong. CorSec is a respectable military operation now and we don't need to have us declared evil like the old CorSec was under Cran. Got that?" Spade hissed.
"Yes, sir." Spade nodded, satisfied, and stepped into the helicopter, lifting off into he air, leaving Johnson behind to take care of removing all the important parts of the prison from the water and transferring them to the new site. Nearby, a reploid crouched low, recording the entire scene, and getting some of the conversation, but not all of it. Standing up, satisfied with his work, he sent the file to the location he knew it would cause the most...trouble.
As he grinned at his handy work, it suddenly dropped from his face when he came across a highly secured file, originating from CorSec. Using some of his hacker tricks, he cracked the code system and opened it. His eyes narrowed at what he read.
The text and HoloVid appeared, taken from the mysterious reploid out by the Cliffside, and began to play before Wiendigo. Slamming his fist through the screen, Wiendigo shouted as loud as he possibly could. Heading off to the hanger, he left the screen smoking and snapping. Remnants of the file stayed on the screen, revealing plans to rebuild the most horrifying place on Earth: Hell.
"Just fine. Is everything ready to go?" he asked Garland as he powered the shuttle up.
"....Yes." Death Star nodded, satisfied, as he finished the check off. Suddenly there was the slightest of shifts in the back of the shuttle, something that took Death Star months to master hearing. Without even turning around, he knew it was Wiendigo.
"He lied." Death Star turned around, raising his eyebrow at Wiendigo. 'He lied'? What was that suppose to mean to him.
"Say what?" asked Death Star, confused, his mind being dragged back to the matter at hand with Iceheart and his look alike.
"He LIED." Death Star shook his head and suddenly found himself amused with Wiendigo's speech problem. Everyone every day lied, it was unavoidable, and here Wiendigo was having a hang up about it.
"What....X1? He was always good at that. Damn poker face..." Death Star joked with him. Garland chuckled in the corner.
Snarling, Wiendigo grabbed Death Star by the shoulders and slammed him up against the shuttle. "This isn't a GAME! That damn President LIED to us! CorSec's rebuilding HELL!" Death Star immediately let his temper fly and snatched Wiendigo's hands, doing a twist that took him years to master and broke the grip, landing back on the floor. He debated on gutting Wiendigo right there and then, but suddenly his words sunk in.
"Hell? How can someone build hell?" Garland asked. Death Star was about to jump on him, without thinking, when he thought about how Garland probably didn't know the difference between the eternal damnation hell and the prison Hell. Though there was probably little difference.
"So, CorSec's rebuilding Hell? Well, there's not a damn thing I can do about it, Wiendigo. And neither can you," Death Star snapped, deciding not to address Garland's ignorance in this situation. Let him stay in the dark until after Wiendigo was dealt with.
Wiendigo stepped right up into Death Star's face with defiance. "You witless little shit, you do not realize the severity of the situation. CorSec doesn't just incarcerate criminals, they incarcerate Reploids as well. It makes the Wastelands seem like a fantasy.
"They will do everything in their power to gain revenge on the shame we thrust upon them. They will start the culling again, and they will do everything they possibly can to put us in there. The original Hell was bad enough, imagine an improved one, you jackass."
"My God..... even the worst reploids should not undergo that sort of torture," Garland spoke up. They both ignored him.
"CorSec is DEAD, Wiendigo...When Cran died, the old CorSec reign ended. Spade now runs it and he is NOT stupid enough to defy the President. He will try to worm his way past it in every which way possible, granted, to gain his own way, but he will not imprison every reploid on this planet like Cran did. The public would have a field day. Only some stupid reploid gang group killing hundreds of people would get the people to even AGREE with it," Death Star told him coldly, feeling his muscles tense with the readiness of a cat to jump Wiendigo if this argument continued. He didn't have time to be worrying about CorSec's petty little dark secrets...even if those secrets were that of Hell.
"YOU LITTLE SHIT! You as well as I know that there's always the chance for disgruntled officials to use underground resources to get what they want! Lying, desciet, and cover ups are nothing NEW, especially when dealing with CorSec! WE sure as hell pissed off a lot of people when he handed CorSec their asses, I'm sure they'd love a chance for payback!" Garland nodded in agreement with Wiendigo and Death Star knew he was defeated in this matter.
"Okay...okay...we'll do something about it. Want me to give you some kind of assault team to tackle Hell then? Materials, weapons, a shuttle, etc. I'll have Captain Garland here sign it up for you so you can go and stop this little operation. You're right, we can't have another Hell built...or whatever damned secrets of the old one being dug up," Death Star agreed.
Spitting at Death Star's feet, Wiendigo turned and stormed off, waving his left hand in the air while cursing. Death Star raised his eyebrow, slightly amused that Wiendigo was gone, and turned back to the computer. "Do you think he's going to get armed up like you gave him permission to?" asked Garland. Death Star shrugged, finishing the check up list on the systems and began to power it up completely. Suddenly the shuttle rocked as someone else jumped in. Sighing, Death Star turned around to see X1 standing there in a Hawaiian shirt and setting down luggage. "What the hell are you doing here?!" shouted Death Star.
"Going to go visit some dead relatives. What does it look like?! I'm going on vacation with you, chief. By Dominator's orders, I might add, just incase you decide to try the limbo on me..." he told him. Death Star cursed and slammed his fist down on the control board.
"Fine. Everyone, buckle in. We're heading out..." Death Star said.
"To go where no man has gone before....the woman's locker room during shower time," X1 finished his sentence. Somewhere, way in the back of the shuttle, unseen or heard by the others, a slight giggle came from Sharlena.
"I'm sure he has some of his business with Infinity Inc. hidden somewhere...maybe in one of his private offices," Darien suggested.
"Yeah, you're right. I'll send Dakota, Arono, and Slasher to find it for me. Those three could use some on the field work," Dominator said and stood up. Heading for the door, he stopped at a smashed computer screen in the computer area. The file flickered 'Hell'. "What's this?" he asked, confused. He knew what Hell was, but what was it doing on one of their screens. Glancing at one of the video cameras on the wall, he contacted one of the officers and told them to play back the tape. Wiendigo materialized as the HoloVid was activated. "Damn, this isn't good..." muttered Dominator as Darien walked up behind him.
"What is it?"
"Something big, probably. Scan for Wiendigo onboard the station...." he told them. A few minutes later the answer came back: Wiendigo was gone.
"Are you going to look into this 'Hell' thing," asked Darien.
"...No. We don't know anything about it and the computer here is screwed up thanks to Wiendigo. No, whatever this is, he'll be tackling alone...but I need to head out and contact those three and get them ready to track the Senator around and get the information we need to get hooked up with Infinity Inc. Ever since their station vanished they have been playing hide-and-seek with us," muttered Dominator. "And now it's time to do the seeking."