Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Nine
volume two of the second story in The Foundry series
Time Throws Fire | Volume Two
By Ophelia Everfall
Part One - Cosmonaut | ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE
Part Two - Holy Fire Priestess | SIX | SEVEN | EIGHT |
Part Three - Get Guts
Part Four - Demon
Part Five - Synecdoche’s Synapse
Part Six - Viscera Rising
Part Seven - Exile
Part Eight - Semblance
Part Nine - Threnody of Lojack
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
PART TWO | HOLY FIRE PRIESTESS
CHAPTER NINE
Warcry was a sound of sight in space, known again as what it would always be through combat, a champion reborn.
Stirrings of belly spoke to Poe upon her softchair encased inside. Each plethora of rotational whipping, gimbled maneuver thrown, twirling fury of grafted polycarbonate containment, untoward speed protected from body by that hardshell dulling g-force and maintaining independent uprightness of body, all made toward tellings of renewed hope.
Lacking two loudest warriors who’d taken presumptive lead, her softer voice was risen—the hardest voice. Poe Halroth had been a leader of humankind and would see herself to proving it before her fellows in real.
Ulysses Foremark had stolen a lancer.
Smotelark was some demon of mysterious striking power, supposedly muted during the disarming of the family fleet. Its operators were planning on becoming pirates. Their vessel had been chosen by the energy felt in groin by Ulysses at sight. Shards of pain within his knee would tell a deeper tale unheard. Regardless of fear, leading his might into force of makings, that man found some pureness of intent.
“I like you.” He’d almost whispered.
Those first words spoken to system by the demon-man were a guttural thing. Three slithers of throat-hoarseness directed at one and know as such by those in system who would hear—many.
“I like you too, bitch. Just not like that.” Poe bit back.
She laughed towards the demon-man inside some newly remade machine. He’d taken time to retrofit the many parts left in Smotelark’s storage bay, needing to move such weights of heat-bearing device now remade his own, those previously uninstalled toys they’d muted to obfuscate intentions for all but one most intuitive man.
Grafting some carving of route around central lines of Chiron would be a sight to any. Scopes each way through senses of a warcraft, enveloping the more for however closer towards that giant’s gravitational equilibrium torn by thunder into silence it was, only increased sensation of smallness wrought into the pilot.
Sight to scopes of The Foundry would prove a ship at that distance an immutable speck running like a micro-bug across the broadside of some elephantine, mammalian creature made by storm-spirit itself. People aboard the bastion of rebuilding, nigh abandoned upon Sanctuary would see it closer—War Cry’s glorious run on evil.
“I’m coming for you—butt-slut.”
Something inside Poe simply knew people. Sounds, flecks of tone, signified pretense in the man’s voice, betraying an artifice of masculinity she’d prod with curiosity.
“My name is Ulysses.” He’d glowered in an open-signal blared omni-directionally, system wide.
Revelations within The Foundry were to come in time by both that admission and its results. Leopold would discover the man’s past. It would be used wholly against forces-opposing in times to come. Everything would change on that strangest challenge answered with unordained petulance.
“That’s a pretty name. Did your boyfriend give it to you?”
Poe growled it.
Lines open everywhere would lead people to see her showing teeth in their minds.
War Cry chased the dauntingly unreadable lancer which conspicuously led a trail away from everything, out in perpendicularity from Chiron, that line directly between The Foundry and its family of escapement. Ulysses wasn’t answering. Sounds of scuffle hit open microphones and told of challenge. He’d left video streams visible to all, displaying the carnage made from Smotelark’s crew. Its captain was cheek down, nearest a lens, wide eyes staring past the mess hall camera’s feed—seemingly folded up to the neck.
Finally, a voice cut through the wrestling grunts, unexpected, familiar, “I fucking hate you! You have my boy, dude! I hate—hey—fuck off—I hate you! God—goddammit dude—fuck dude—”
There was a moment of silence from Eliot Harper that all would grasp with glee aboard The Foundry, only Poe realizing they ought worry for what had been said right then, still feeling more tempted toward the contrary.
“I’m coming for my boy.” Elliot finally finished with some focused conviction of balance in tone.
Poe debated before opening her signal system-wide.
“Which one, dude?”
There was some silence. That distance of thought so travelled by all turned realization to some.
“What did you say to me?”
War Cry stroked fullest throttle into its slingshotting release towards Smotelark’s own with escape velocity shuttled bearing. Poe asked them both simultaneously, privately, Vikki and Leopold, via text by thought. ‘Should I do it?’
Both, “Yup,” and “You fucking better!” came back in audio, layered overtop the other and near instantaneously. Vikki was getting her spirit back.
Smiles were growing everywhere—everywhere but Exile.
“Ulysses!”
Poe shouted through a toothy grin, eyes gripping tightly beneath that mask which allowed her for seeing beyond in uniquely customizable ways, when eyes were open, spectrums of choice allowing expansion into lesser or deeper senses of wholeness with not only War Cry, but the energy of all it perceived and drew back.
“Elliot!”
Poe called it while resisting earned defocusing due to an itch beneath her skull webbing, and the attention it forced onto all the unnatural trappings of that station within a warship. Smallest plugs were set into all across Elaria, for simulation, some near painless endeavor which allowed access to simulation. They came in different forms of make. Foundry pilots wore the worst. They’d be socketed in pits of arms. It wasn’t small or painless. Their insertions most would blare to consciousness in those strangest moments embodied, along with their containment of legs by force by a hardshell’s inner pressure pads, claustrophobia of confinement inside a ship most thin of wall, knowing that near-nothing protected from death of vacuum, could make a person mad too unprepared.
That’s why Foundry pilots were best.
“What?” Elliot harper spat like a child.
Remaking was wholistic for Poe and War Cry alike. It worked very differently now. She’d been most able to call her shot and draw some wrath by knowing of rights toward victory to come.
“Who buttfucks who?”
Elliot’s voice would sing of squalid abhorrence in estimations of what would now been revealed to all, and by himself alone. Its tones to hang long in the ear. The boy bereft of any notion towards brevity’s gift had made it clear.
“No!”
Pleasing it was to hear. Most pleasing to Poe.
Until that was, she saw the truth—the lie. Smotelark was a specter of fakeness. It was a ghost-blip and a spectrogram, even caught to inner-eye by long range scope of material vision. The proving was in its blinking out entirely.
Smotelark was behind her all along. Slower—trailing—revealing now its position, only from launchings many. Fourteen actions were counted quickly, in repetition, by Theodore within its creative space.
Poe called her shot towards Leopold for all; she knew him to watch close.
“Best one yet.”
Synchronistic becoming of metallic-ion fuelant hit fire. Four of six newfangled drive-core engines, each a strangest sun, especially placed at outmost ends of wingtips, crunched furious mote-dust into freespace before blanking. Drift was godly, less than a hair of one breath, before the twirl began and took her barreling on a left-borne rotation by thrusters feeding out the right-flank of War Cry’s hull-fin. It folded back after the burst to go flush. Spin was taking hold as the hardshell kept Poe even, locking into a backward facing position nigh immediately, orienting with scopes onto the approaching armada of villainy-birthed devilry, marking each for Theodore’s quantifications of their devastational capabilities now forthcoming, returning focus to the human controlled maneuvering began before by microseconds still. Right-side artillery cannons fired homing missiles on Theodore’s behest as the lower right-jutting wingtip collapsed to join its concurrently top-oriented other, from Poe’s perspective, feeling their clank of connection in body throughout, knowing each drivecore’s contact at tip transfigured the other by design. Her inner-call to whip the craft by force of omnidirectional force-holding was made, while the perceived left wings collapsed ‘under and over’ the now-flush central chamber from opposite sides, in shortest order, to clash their peers and complete transformation into a quadrified, singular blade-wing. The Foundry saw a ball on a string which would whip around some brilliant point of brightest light, all four wing-core’s combined power enflaming to whiteness of grip, read to rest where War Cry’s topside would have proven by the time the wing was stuck by its fury. Still was Poe’s focus, returned to the witnessable destruction of projectiles fired. Theodore’s aim was calculating preemptively true, except for one mark, unquantifiable of making in the darkness, yet tracked by heading alone. Understanding of place while War Cry’s spherical hull-chamber was one quarter turn around the clock of that birthed omni direction quad-core, itself flaming, molding around the gimbled arm by fits and spurts, generating a gentlest warbling, had Poe engaging the dual, separate, rotatable drive cores stationed upon her central orb-hull positioned to fire towards Smotelark and Chiron. She’d blasted a thruster puck diagonally as well, then four, taking her stationed chamber into a rotational slingshot of diagonal divinity to throw the woman inside around its space-locked wingtip’s furious grip in velocities remaining beatable by the dampening and rotational abilities of her hardshell’s bespoke craftwomanship. Poe flung War Cry’s heart, Theodore clamoring of hope to understand that final, evading, tracing shot which proved undestined for them at all. On release her speeds would prove near maximum, wings using full force of power wrought by each separating drivecore to scatter and latch back, remaking the star shaped, four-arm demon of form she knew to love by visage. Everything took her towards Ulysses, and those speeds she’d beat in her turnabout would matter not.
Poe Halroth’s form was proven.
How that man’s ship would fall in shortest order—the way he’d squeal about it—his final words—they’d spoken something true to all which would by heard through echoes of time—proving some savior of justice in predisposition towards the horror he’d wreak—Ulysses Foremark was to land the single and first devastating shot upon The Foundry at longest last.
“I love you Elliot Harper.” He’d said.
“I’ll be with you in Heaven.”
