Pilgrimage to Ruin--Thanatos and Kain

[Thanatos]

Thanatos' strange vehicle moved itself silently over the smooth ground at a blistering speed, never once slowing as it executed breakneck turn after breakneck turn. The assassin himself could be seen almost fully reclined, his visor pointed straight ahead even as his environment flashed past him in a pattern of undistinguishable blurs.

The background changed; subtly at first, but soon changes grew more and more evident until the landscape was completely alien when compared with a previously visited locale. The sun was blocked completely by smoky cloud-covering, creating only the faintest touches of grey illumination. The ground, however, produced illumination of its own; first in small patches, but soon in an uninterrupted field of eerie light. The stone emitting this peculiar light was some sort of refracting substance--it did not seem to possess a definite color of its own, instead, its light simply changed coloration based on from what angle it was viewed. Upon closer inspection, that slick, hard surface was revealed to be pure Aegisite.

Thanatos sped on, flying for kilometer after kilometer over that plain of Aegisite, never glancing away from the goal ahead only he could see. Eventually, a great gleam of darker grey could be seen on the bleak horizon. As more kilometers were traversed, individual buildings could be spotted, buildings which rose eight or nine times higher into the air than those of any other known city. Yet with this revealed grandeur came the perception of their condition. Mammoth two-hundred story towers were broken in half, fifty-story complexes leaned over like abandoned toys of a child. Thanatos continued his blazing course, the ruined city engulfing him, those truly dwarfing structures zipping by him as he moved forward to the heart of the place. The light of Aegisite grew more and more powerful, now covering the walls of buildings as well as every available centimeter of ground.

After another one or two kilometers had been covered within the covering the city provided, Thanatos suddenly stopped, his unique motorcycle becoming stationary within seconds. He disembarked, having apparently reoriented his senses enough to regain some of his balance and coordination.

He spent but a few seconds' time adjusting the minute wavelengths and signals that flowed from his mechanical mind, adjust them to the point of electronic invisibility. He was well-aware of that fact that he could not hope to hold his own against the combined forces of the Remnant here--the 'tribe' of lesser Marks that made this crypt their home. Although, even they made sure to avoid the destination he was intending...

Thanatos strode swiftly through the completely abandoned streets, an ant in a world intended for giants. He was in the heart of this destroyed relic--buildings were approaching the two-hundred-fifty story mark, and the vaguest remains of a complex transportation network were still visible. He stepped on, evidently heading for the massive collapsed frame that would at one time have been a sphere of incredible proportions.

To his left, he spied two sets of twisted girders stabbed into the Aegisite covering, arranged in such a way that they would almost have had to be placed there by artificial means, and certainly nothing that would have resulted from the cataclysm that had affected this city...

He stopped.



Thanatos turned, inching his way towards the two sets of girders, his face beginning to twist into a frown, but with something more to it. There was grief in this frown, an unexplainable surge of emotion which stabbed through his logical mind as he spied that monument of metal.

He moved to stand before the two creations, lowering himself slowly down to one knee as he bowed his head. One black-gloved hand moved to lightly grasp each of the girders, his frown wavering as he felt things stirring in him...

He stayed like that a long, long time.

...but then...things returned...

Feelings he had no recollection of experiencing jumped into him: Pride, Belonging, Love, Power...decidedly human things swept through him. Senses of Betrayal, Jealousy, Sadness, and Remorse flooded him. He staggered; almost falling. There was pain, then. Not a simple physical pain, but rather a pain of emotion, a wound which was for the first time in over one hundred years being uncovered again...

Then suddenly, memories existed. There was no sensation of these memories entering him for the first time, rather, it was if they had always been there, he had just never before found them. They were the crystalline memories of a mechanical mind, leaving nothing to the imagination. They spoke of names he could suddenly remember as if they had existed yesterday; Father, Janus and Kain, three players in an elaborate story from the past he could view as easily as the moment he was existing in right now.

He spent several hours locked on one knee, head bent as he assimilated all that suddenly struck him.

...and, his task done, he rose, setting off deeper into the crypt that was the Ruined City. And he had truly become Thanatos once more.

[Kain]

Kain stares blanky at the ceiling above him, reposed on the surface of what resembles an operation table. He is in a state not unlike that of a coma; his face is devoid of expression but his vitals are still operational, his thoughts still racing. The faint glow of monitors engulfs the room, a cacophony of light as endless lines of figures scroll down their displays. Wires project outwards from him, his body now one with the machines. His eyes slowly make their way across the room, leveling on the barracided door nestled away in the furthest corner.

"I wonder how long I will have to wait before I am free of this place..."

As Kain slowly drifted deeper into his sleep, he thought of the path that now laid before him.


"Analysis and restoration of subject number 13-2A complete. Now initiating reboot procedure."

As the monotone voice of the system speaks these words, Kain slowly opens his eyes, the light emanating from the monitors now constant after their work was done. He feels rejuvenated, his systems now functioning at optimum capacity. This sensation is almost overbearing, and he can't help but test the extent of his re-established abilities. After carefully detaching all of the connections between him and the mainframe, Kain rises to his feet and makes his way over to a locker on the wall to his right.

"It seems that Father had this planned out well enough."

Upon opening the steel door, he makes quick haste to arm himself with the weaponry and ammunition contained within. Among the items were two blades, smaller than the Cyphers he now carried on his back. They were engraved with cryptic symbols that Kain was unable to interpret, but he knew that they were inextricably linked to the type of material from which they were made. It bore only the slightest of resemblance to Aegisite, an entirely hybrid composite that was unlike anything he has seen before. The weapons resonated with power, yet instilled an unerring sense of calm within the wielder.

Kain also culled from this locker a grappling hook, allowing him to scale the environment. The versatility of this weapon would prove most useful in the events that were about to transpire...

The sound of footsteps echoed from outside the door.

A small squad of Remnants, three in all, storm the chamber. It was only a matter of time before they locked onto his energy signature, which had inevitably peaked near the end of the operation before his systems could cloak its wavelength once more. Kain makes quick work of them all, falling his advesaries with one fell swoop of his sword as soon as the door swung open. Each of their vessels were cleanly cut in half, steam now rising off of their corpses as water vapor touched their red-hot metal workings.

Kain made his way outside of the decayed building, only to be greeted by another squad of Remnants. He had an easy time of it coming into the city when his systems were still in disorder, but the entire population was now aware of his prescence. The trail out of this decrepit city would indeed be an ardous one.

Familiar processes slowly start to consume Kain's thoughts, preparing for the battle ahead. In a single instant, thousands of calculations are made: he analyzes the surrounding terrain, associates each one of his advesaries with the preprogrammed attack pattern for the given Mark model, the error range of projectiles caused by the localized atmosphere, along with countless others.

Once all battle subprocesses were complete, Kain activated his stealth, becoming one with the fog...

[Thanatos]

Thanatos made his way surely through the city-sized masoleum, thoughts still considering and properly organizing those memories he had so very recently attained once more. His condition had improved since that eventful last battle he fought alongside Syrant; nevertheless, the artifical tissue of his face was still half-blackened and burnt, and the slash down his torso is still brutally apparent. Much of his energies were devoted to constant manipulation of his wavelength to avoid discovery through any of the many detection devices the Remnant possessed, thus he progressed across the impossibly vast ruins at little more than a crawl. Yet what is time to the ageless? And thus his thoughts wandered.

Glancing up at the impossibly high structures that had once symbolized the pinnacle of Man, Thanatos finds it blissfully easy to remember how the city had at one time existed.

Every building was alight, every citizen possessing luxuries of such caliber that they could not in this harsh era even begin to be imagined. Vehicles whose secrets are long-lost used to speed by the million about this maze of technology, the city's hundred-million-odd citizens each pursuing their own career, their own goals. It was a place awash in humanity of every kind, an urban center surpassing any legend set before it. And ultimately, it was a place in which human sin had festered, growing until it had encompassed this hive in all its vastness...

...in the end, the very sin that humanity had wrought had destroyed this monument, blasting both the city interconnected sister to sweet oblivion. This omega had come in the form of a creation born from the epitome of human greed and evil, and although while at first this creation had strived to practice all that was right and good, eventually it had succumbed to the dark designs of its decidedly human masters.

This creation, something pure borne from its impure human designers, was the first Mark XIII. Her name had been Janus, and even now Thanatos experienced pain beyond compare as he pictured the features of the one whom he had experienced emotion for above all else. His final parting with her had occurred as she had stood in the gateway between these two overwhelming cities of Man, her once-carefree attitude replaced with one of bitterness and hate even as her physical form grossly altered by Combat Enhancement Protein #4. And so he had witnessed her willing destruction of both her mortal vessel and untold millions of lives.

And so in the ensuing flood of emotion he had exiled his very memory, retreated from all the things that had transpired. Yet now he had truly returned, embraced again occurences he had once barred from his thoughts forever. Some emotion still pulled at him, some events still struck even that most dispassionate and aloof individual imaginable with untold grief. But perhaps one day his logical and methodical mind would completely accept and understanding all that had happened, so long ago. At least, that was his hope.

There is so very much to the tragedy that took place over one hundred years ago...

And so Thanatos returned now fully to the world of harsh reality. He had spent several hours in this deep state of rememberance; even when fully removed from the material world, his computer-like accuracy in analyzing his surroundings never faltered. And that was not always a blessing.

Now ahead of him Thanatos was able to see his final destination: a gargantuan, blackened sphere, the great cataclysm of so very long ago having split it open as if it were the birthing-place of a giant. And there was something else visible, something readily apparent even from the great distance that Thanatos scanned the horizon.

Destroyed vessels of the Remnant, cut clean in half.

The Remnant only ventured from their hideaways in village ruins if they detected intruders, and they only crept near the destroyed Hub if there was something particularly noteworthy about.

Could it be him...?