Rise of Gamma: Part 1

Rise of Gamma: Part 1 is the fifth episode of Tech 10: Rebooted's second season, and the seventeenth episode overall.

Episode
A dark room.

A meaningless throne.

These had been there since what seemed to be the beginning of time.

Time.

There was always so little of it.

Such were the musings of the large, earthen figure that called this room home.

The creaking of long-rusted metal hinges could be heard opening, as a small, scrawny alien stepped into the room.

“Sir, the operation has gone off without a hitch.” The scrawny alien reported. “We now have all the means necessary to create the Light Drive.”

“Good. The technology of this universe certainly took its time getting to this point.” The earthen figure replied. “I find a certain irony in the fact that the most essential part of our machine is likely the most ancient.”

“What are your next orders, Sir?”

“I highly doubt we’ll enjoy much peace for our project. I need the troops to cut the head off the snake before it strikes.”

“I...don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t, you idiot. I haven’t given you the order proper yet.” The figure leaned forward in his throne. “There are six people I need dead. Use whatever resources you need.”

“Who is it you want dead, Sir?”

“If you would stop interrupting me, perhaps I could tell you.” The earthen figure growled in frustration. “The three synthetic Magisters, for obvious reasons, and the three humans that have proven to be a more significant roadblock than foreseen.”

“Right away, Sir!”

The scrawny alien scurried out of the room and closed the door, leaving the large, earthen figure alone in dark silence.

‘The time of reckoning is upon us.’ He thought to himself. ‘And as always, I shall be the one to bring it.’

Tech flopped down in his office chair, sending it into a slight spin. Aquadilus looked up from the newspaper he was reading.

“You’re here early.” He commented.

“Yeah, I woke up early and couldn’t really get back to sleep.” Tech explained. “Not that I’ve been having a great time sleeping anyways lately, but whatever.”

“You really need to stop worrying so much about the Anti-Life Entity.”

“...Are you serious?”

“All I’m saying is that you’re kind of a tank at the moment, but you don’t know how to use that tankishness effectively.” Aquadilus put down his newspaper. “You’re putting so much effort into trying to find information about the thing, information that might not even exist by the way, that you’re neglecting your personal training.”

“Oh please, I don’t need extra training.” Tech rebutted. “I’ve got enough raw power to take down anything that I can figure out how to take down.”

“You have got to be kidding me. Alvono, pull up the SpecTrix data.”

Alvono, who had been browsing the internet, grumbled a bit before pulling up the requested window.

“Okay, look at this crap.” Aquadilus said, walking over to the console monitor and pointing at the data. “Out of all, what, twenty eight or so of your forms, you’ve only ever evolved six, so any knowledge about extra power or abilities you could get from that goes right out the window.”

“You’re the one who tells me not to overdo the evolving!” Tech pointed out.

“There’s a difference between ‘overdoing’ and ‘using it at all’, moron. Which, by the way, brings up the fact that your power management skills with the SpecTrix are atrocious. During pretty much your most important fight so far, you screwed up so badly that the only thing saving you was a lucky dose of demonic energy!”

“Well, that’s hardly-”

“And furthermore, outside of just evolutions, you don’t use quite a few of your forms as much as you should, period! Not to mention your utter dismissal of the combination function in general, and the fact that-”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Tech snapped. “I suck at this and need to do better! What do you want?!”

“To actually go through with getting better instead of just sitting around all the time!”

Before their conversation could continue, the door to the office was slammed open, with Napoleon bursting through in his usual bombastic manner. And by ‘usual bombastic manner’, I mean entering the room accompanied by an inexplicable guitar solo, explosions that somehow left everything around him unharmed, and several doves flying out from behind him.

“Napoleon, reporting for duty!” He exclaimed, striking an over-the-top pose.

Moranna, who had been behind Napoleon, stepped around him into the room.

“I feel like this needs to be addressed.” She said, gesturing to Napoleon.

“Yeah, Napoleon, could you take it down a notch?” Tech said. “Some of us aren’t exactly morning people. And by some of us, I mean me.”

“Well, excuuuse me, princess!” Napoleon huffed. “How about this, then?”

Napoleon snapped his fingers, transforming his clothes into a somber outfit and summoning a black umbrella, changing the inexplicably present guitar solo to an inexplicably present funeral march.

“Much better.” Tech remarked flatly. “Anyways, our game plan today should be-”

Tech was interrupted by the office phone ringing. Grumbling to himself a bit, he walked over to the phone and picked it up.

“EarthCo. Gift Shop, whaddaya want?” He spoke.

“Is ‘Tech’ currently present?” A voice on the other end of the line asked.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Oh, convenient. Anyways, this is Magister Red calling.”

“Magister Red?” Tech repeated. “What the heck are you calling here for?”

“It was hardly my idea, believe me. Look, Blue says that you need to be informed of this, so I’m just going to make it quick; Alpha’s Data Crystal is gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Tech demanded.

“What else would I mean? I mean it’s gone. Not there any more. Removed from its designated location.”

“Yeah, how? Did it just exit stasis on its own and let her reform or what?”

“We don’t really know. We do have a fix on its location, though since it seems to be in the middle of nowhere in outer space, it’s probably on a ship of some kind.”

“Good to know. What are the coordinates?”

“Why would you need to know that?”

“Well, considering the fact that I’m her main target as far as we know, I kinda want to deal with this myself.”

“Fine, I’ll send them to your shop’s ‘e-mail’. Thing is, we’re on official assignment for this, so try not to get in our way.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. See you later.”

With that, Tech hung up the phone.

“What was that about?” Moranna asked.

“You remember Alpha?”

“Well...yes.” Moranna shifted uncomfortably.

“Her Data Crystal’s gone, and she may or may not be plotting vengeance.”

“Who’s Alpha?” Napoleon interjected.

“Ancient synthetic lifeform.” Tech explained. “Wanted to kill me and destroy civilization, you know, Dethrouge-style stuff.”

“To be frank, she might have more combat capability than Dethrouge did, if not his sheer power.” Moranna said.

“Hopefully, we never have to test that theory.” Tech opened up his inventory, pulling out the Pyronaut Blade. “Alvono, hop on. Not doing a repeat of the satellite incident if I can help it.”

“Okay, hold on.” Alvono grumbled, slowly walking over and merging with the sword.

“Looks like we’re headed off-planet again.” Tech grabbed his makeshift sheath from the inventory and put it on, placing the blade inside. “We probably don’t have to deal with the Obsidian Death again, thank God.”

“Aaand you jinxed it.” Napoleon said, transforming back into his normal outfit.

“Oh, please.” Tech waved him off. “Since when do bad things happen just because someone says they won’t?”

“...”

“...It now occurs to me that we are probably screwed.”

“And there it is.”

With a green flash, the three popped into existence inside what appeared to be a small, somewhat dark, round room filled with crates. After surveying their surroundings for a few moments, the three set about searching the room.

“I don’t get it.” Tech said. “Shouldn’t the crystal be in the area?”

“Well, whoever’s responsible for all this could be using a tracking scrambler.” Moranna replied. “If they are, it could be anywhere in a varying radius, depending on how powerful it is.”

“Well, that’s just great.” Tech grumbled. “Considering that this really seems like a stupid place to store something that important, I’m guessing that your theory is probably correct.”

“Well, the door’s right over there.” Napoleon pointed out, gesturing to the other side of the room. “Should we just head out?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Tech walked over to the door. “We’re still in a spaceship, so we might not have much room to navigate, so be careful.”

Tech opened the door, causing a bright light to fill the room. He froze in shock, staring out of the doorway.

“Hey, what’s the deal?” Napoleon asked, pushing Tech aside. “Whatever’s out there can’t be that-”

Napoleon froze as well, eyes widening in shock for a moment. He quickly shook his head, snapping himself out of it, giving what he was seeing another look-over.

“No, no, my eyes were right the first time.” He said.

“What are you two doing?” Moranna asked.

“Well, I don’t think we’re on a spaceship, for one.”

Moranna sighed and walked over to the doorway, looking outside for herself.

“No, I suppose we aren’t.” She remarked. “Of course, that just raises further questions.”

The three found themselves on the balcony of a tower, looking over an area that was pretty much the last thing they expected to see. It wasn’t just some sort of spaceship too small to show up on radar, like they had thought.

No, they found themselves looking over an entire planet.

“So...what now?” Napoleon asked.

“I guess we just...go out and look around.” Tech replied.

“I highly doubt wandering around aimlessly would help our current situation very much.” Moranna said.

“Well, do you have any better ideas?”

“Actually, I do.”

Moranna pulled up the AemuTrix’s holoscreen and navigated to the DNA Tracker screen.

“Uh, you know Alpha’s a synthetic, right? There isn’t really DNA to track.” Tech pointed out.

“Well, not her own DNA, to be sure, but I’m willing to bet...aha!”

“What’s ‘aha’?”

Moranna selected a sample and pressed the ‘Confirm’ button, switching to the tracking map.

“So, remember the strange fusion alien you used to defeat Alpha?” She asked.

“What, Blyte? I couldn’t forget him even if I wanted to! Believe me, I’ve tried!”

“Well, when I was still in the assassin’s guild, a standard piece of equipment was a ‘DNA Scanner’, which automatically pinged the area for unrecorded DNA strings every few minutes or so.”

“Why would you need that?”

“Well, I didn’t, but the guild itself made some good money selling unique DNA codes to the underground cloning market. Anyways, point is, I got the DNA of ‘Blyte’, and once I got the AemuTrix, I was able to upload the DNA samples from the latest scanner batch, which I failed to turn in for obvious reasons.”

“I get it.” Napoleon interjected. “Since a fusion alien wouldn’t really exist anywhere outside of Tech’s usage of it, the only other place to find its DNA would be on something it touched, especially if said object was placed in stasis.”

“AKA Alpha’s Data Crystal.” Tech finished. “Nice thinking, Moranna.”

“Thanks, but you should probably hold off on thanking me just yet.” Moranna replied, pointing off in the distance. “You might want to see this.”

Tech squinted his eyes, looking off towards the direction Moranna was pointing. In the distance, he could make out a massive stronghold, painted on which was-

“The Obsidian Death’s symbol?!” Tech exclaimed. “You have got to be kidding me!”

“Told you so.” Napoleon said.

“Oh, whatever. I have a bad feeling that’s where Alpha’s Data Crystal is.”

“Actually, no.” Moranna said. “The universe seems to be hating us slightly less than that at the moment. Her Data Crystal is over to the right.”

“Oh, thank God. For a moment there, I thought we were screwed!”

Napoleon performed a rather impressive facepalm.

“Tech...” He grumbled. “Why would you say that?”

At that moment, hundreds of little red dots fell on the trio, lighting them up like some sort of christmas tree invisible to the color blind. Tech looked over the balcony to see a large mass of Obsidian Death members aiming all sorts of rifles, pistols, carbines, rocket launchers, kitchen sinks, and the odd cat or so directly at them

“It occurs to me that this may have been a bad idea.”

Tech swiftly transformed into Viris, then activated the evolution sequence. His body grew and twisted violently, being covered in some sort of metallic substance. At the end of the evolution, he was left with a tall, greenish-gray form with two arms, four drill hands, and transparent panes on his torso, arms, and legs that showed what appeared to be dull veins and an organ strangely similar to a human heart.

“Holy crap, does this feel weird.” He said, stumbling forward a bit.

“FIRE!” A voice yelled from the crowd down below.

With that command, an unbelievably large assault of firepower launched directly towards Tech, who regained his balance in time to see what was happening. He quickly threw up his arms and created a wall in front of them made from a rather unpleasant-looking flesh-like material. The scent of charred flesh carried through the air as the assault hit the wall, but aside from the occasional dent, the defense held.

“Uh, Tech?” Napoleon asked. “What exactly...is that?”

“Not sure, to be honest.” Tech replied curtly, keeping his focus on holding the wall. “Might be cancer...yeah, yeah, I think it’s cancer. It’s growing faster than they can chip away at it.”

“...That is both the best and worst thing I have ever seen, please do not do it again.”

“Noted.”

After a few seconds, Tech heard the assault die down slightly, as a large chunk of the attacking force was reloading.

“Now!”

With that, Tech dispersed the wall shielding them and jumped off the tower into a hail of projectiles and energy beams. Despite his massive size, he was able to disperse parts of his body in order to evade each attack and hit the ground safely, creating a massive shockwave.

Wasting no time, Tech slammed his drills into the ground, which was quickly followed by said ground exploding into a cloud of microorganisms. The clouds dispersed, latching on to several nearby enemies and slamming them into the ground. Tech swiftly stood up and charged, barreling through the crowd at a speed illogically fast for his size.

Napoleon and Moranna, still at the top of the tower, transformed into Iron Wrecker and Briiz, respectively, then jumped to the ground. Napoleon rolled into his ball form and summoned the spike armor, revving up and launching like an overly caffeinated pinball. Moranna transformed into Storm Briiz and summoned a tornado, sucking up and flinging enemies as she went.

A wall of the heavily armored Obsidian Death troops formed in front of Tech, managing to stop his charge and land some good shots. Tech retaliated by slamming his drills into the ground again, turning the earth beneath the troops into a swarm, sending them off-balance. Meanwhile, a large circle of troops had surrounded Tech, charging their weapons.

Tech noticed this, and grabbed one of the heavily-armored enemies that had been shooting at him by their leg. As soon as the troops surrounding him started shooting, he started swinging the person he was holding around in a circle, using their armor to block the shots, then began to move forward again, still spinning.

The spinning person acted as a bludgeoning weapon, mowing down what ever was in his path. After making his way through to a bit of a clearing, he let go of the enemy, sending them flying into another set of troops.

“Okay, gonna level with myself here.” He said. “Digging the raw power, not digging the ‘holding back to keep everything around me from dying horribly’ thing. Let’s try something different!”

Tech pressed the SpecTrix dial, devolving back into regular Viris, then twisted and pressed the dial again, transforming into Magmator. The troops that had previously been charging him stopped in their tracks, some taking a quick step back.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Tech said. “Question: how much heat can your armor deal with?”

“Well, standard issue uniforms can resist temperatures of two-thousand degrees.” Someone spoke up from the back.

“Fahrenheit or Celsius?”

“Fahrenheit.”

“Damn straight.”

Tech smashed his leg into the ground, creating a pool of lava around him.

“In that case, we’ll keep this stuff a bit on the cooler side.”

He threw up his arms, manipulating the lava into a stream that rose into the air. He quickly began spinning, summoning several other streams of lava the began rotating around each other, constantly changing heights. After determining that he had gathered enough lava, he threw his arms out towards the troops around him, forcing the lava to explode out in a massive ring.

The ring of lava slammed into the crowd, throwing them backwards into each other, creating sparks from their metal armor colliding. Before they could recover, Tech threw his arms down and clenched his fists, using the lava to slam the troops into the ground and then cool, trapping them in a scalding layer of solid rock.

“Tech, Moranna, over here!” Napoleon called. “We have an opening!”

Tech turned to see Napoleon in a different part of the area, waving them over. He quickly transformed into Terminano and rushed over, quickly followed by Moranna. The three grouped together and started running, Napoleon using his ball form to bowl over the occasional enemy that got in their way.

“Where are we going?” Tech asked.

“Moranna said the crystal was over this way, right?” Napoleon explained, his voice slightly muffled. “We just need to get the crystal and get out, easy as that!”

“I sincerely doubt it’s going to be that easy, but it’s better than nothing.”

Moranna pressed on the side of the AemuTrix dial, bringing up the DNA Tracker screen.

“We’re going to take a left in about six hundred yards!” She said. “Don’t miss it!”

“Not planning on it!”

The three rounded the corner, coming face-to-face with a large, factory-esque building...and said building’s massive fleet of guards, which included no less than thirty tanks, seven planes, and four giant mecha, along with a set of ground troops wielding heavy artillery.

“Oh, come on!” Tech snapped. “We have to fight all of these guys now?!”

Suddenly, several explosions burst into existence on a few of the ground troop’s chestplates, sending them flying. Before they could react, two thin cables shot down from the air, latching on to a couple of the tanks and each letting loose a bolt of electricity, deactivating them. The cables were quickly followed by three figures jumping down from a cloaked ship onto the ground below.

“Looks like we got here a bit late.” Magister Blue remarked. “What’d we miss?”

“Well, another entire horde of enemies, but that’s neither here nor there.” Tech said.

The guards, initially caught off-guard by the arrival of the three synthetic Magisters, quickly recovered and aimed their weapons. Magister Yellow, noticing this, swiftly whipped her arms around, smashing the tanks her cables had attached to into most of the planes and all of the mecha.

“We can handle these guys.” Magister Blue said. “It looks like you three have a destination in mind.”

“Yeah, that building right behind you.” Tech pointed. “That’s where Alpha’s Data Crystal is.”

“No idea how you figured that out, but there’s not much time for chit-chat at the moment. Head on inside!”

Tech nodded and gestured for Napoleon and Moranna to follow him, upon which they made a dash for the entrance of the building. The remaining troops attempted to stop them, but were blown out of the way by Magister Red’s POS Missiles. Upon reaching the door, Napoleon smashed it down, allowing the three to enter. Once he confirmed that they were inside, Magister Blue gave the signal to regroup.

The sound of hundreds of armor-clad troops making their way towards the Magisters could be heard, signifying the group from earlier rushing to the building.

“Man, it has been years since we’ve done crowd control like this!” Magister Yellow exclaimed, smashing a tank into another plane.

“Over ten thousand, to be precise.” Magister Red remarked.

“This could take a while.” Magister Blue said. “Well, for us.”

“Yeah, I think I know someone who could get the job done a lot faster!” Yellow replied.

“Look, if you want to form Omega, just say you want to form Omega!” Red snapped. “Stop playing the pronoun game!”

“No way! How else are we supposed to get that kind of dramatic buildup?!”

“We don’t need dramatic buildup!”

“No, but it’s fun!”

“Come on guys, let’s just do this!” Blue interjected.

With that, the three Magisters turned to face each other, each one pressing a fist to their Data Crystals. Their crystals started glowing a bright white, followed swiftly by their whole bodies. The white glows suddenly rushed at each other, merging into one massive, glowing light. The light swiftly started taking a humanoid form, with a detailed surface forming from the energy. Light rippled over the finished form one last time, exploding out from it to a reveal a massive, jet-black robotic humanoid.

“Oh man, an encore performance so soon?” Omega remarked. “I feel positively flattered!”

Omega was interrupted by hundreds of artillery blasts hitting it, sending it stumbling forward a bit.

“Okay, first of all, rude!”

Omega straightened back up and clenched its fists. This was followed by a large number of missile ports opening on its arms, legs, and torso.

“So, who wants to go first?”

Upon bursting into the room, Tech, Moranna, and Napoleon were greeted by yet another wave of guards, this time protecting a large machine that stretched to the ceiling and was covered in strange, translucent tubes. The tubes appeared to be pumping some sort of energy, said energy being drained from a large, blue crystal held in place by two claw apparatuses.

“Napoleon, if you would.” Tech said.

“My pleasure.”

Napoleon bowled forward, smashing into the guards and knocking them to the ground, dazed. He quickly unrolled and detransformed, summoning his arm cannon construct and aiming it at the downed guards. One of the guards began chuckling.

“As much I can respect your ability to find humor in any situation, I have to question how smart it is at the moment.” Napoleon remarked.

“Oh, please.” The guard sneered. “It doesn’t matter what happens to us anymore. You’re too late!”

As soon as the guard finished speaking, the machine powered down, stopping the energy flow. The upper claw apparatus retracted, taking the Data Crystal with it into the machine, which it exited to the side, moving along a track. The claw stopped above a large metal box, the top of which slid open, upon which the claw dropped the crystal into it.

“I’m guessing that’s not good.” Napoleon said.

“Well, considering that getting the dang crystal was the whole reason we came here in the first place, you’d be right.” Tech said.

“We need to go after it.” Moranna stated.

“What are you three idiots going to do, jump down the trash chute?” One of the guards laughed.

“That’s about the gist of it.” Tech replied. “Come on you two, let us be with my people.”

“You realize you just called yourself trash, right?” Moranna asked.

“I find that making jokes about myself before other people can make them severely damages their capability for witty remarks.”

The three walked over to the inordinately large opening to the chute, and stared down into the darkness.

“So, who’s going first?” Napoleon asked.

“I guess I will.” Tech shrugged, climbing into the chute. “Not like this is my first time down a trash chute, at any rate.”

“I feel like that deserves an explanation!” Napoleon called after Tech, who had already started falling.

“Explanation later, trash chute now.” Moranna snapped, grabbing Napoleon and tossing him in.

She quickly detransformed to fit in the trash chute, then jumped down it herself.

This was going to be a long day.

The guards slowly picked themselves up off of the ground, brushing off their armor.

“So, how likely do you think it is they know about the incinerator firing off every five minutes?” One of them asked.

“Oh please, Dave.” Another guard replied. “Everyone and their grandmother has an incinerator-based trash system these days.”

“My grandmother doesn’t.” Another one spoke up. “She’s dead.”

“Knock it off, people!” The apparent leader snapped, checking a monitor on the machine. “We need to report to the Chief Commander immediately!”

“Why?”

The leader turned.

“The Light Drive is complete.”

Protagonists

 * Tech (Tech 10: Rebooted)
 * Moranna Ceres
 * Napoleon Eldridge
 * Magister Blue
 * Magister Red
 * Magister Yellow

Antagonists

 * The Obsidian Death

SpecTrix Aliens

 * Viris (Tech 10: Rebooted) (Evolved)
 * Ultimate Viris
 * Magmator
 * Terminano

AemuTrix Aliens

 * Briiz

Swarm 1 Aliens

 * Iron Wrecker