The Paragon of Eden
Chapter 8

The ripped and scared facility had warped into an open arena, and the Warbacks on standby sprung into action. They flew like bees from a nest, the jets protruding from their armor sending them forward. Each of them was armed to the shoulders with the newest mass-produced weaponry. Each of them sought out the enemy that had killed their high command.

Hau dodged all the heavy projectiles coming at him from a long range. Once the Warbacks got closer, he would need to resort to aggression.

But this power had given him something…

No, he needed to save it. For now, he used a little bit to blast to the side. His maneuver seemed to leave a ripple of energy where he had been, going faster than any other Warback had ever known.

Missiles trailed him, but he was free. He flew like a kite, teasing the seeking explosives with gentle movements before throwing them off just before they reached him. He jolted so fast that he seemingly teleported, and the shockwaves of his very movement blew a few Warbacks apart.

The arms of the Paragon split and sent their own little missiles. Those white daggers followed a band of Warbacks in their pursuit before ripping into them and killing their pilots. They trailed on and found more victims, slashing and exploding while Hau flew elegantly without flaw.

He had them all now. He had been moving for long enough, passing recently created debris towards the exterior of the base, and all that while, these primitive Warbacks were chasing him until they formed a line flying machinery.

Hau brought the flying shards of the Paragon back, and with a slight configuration of the vessel’s shape, he charged the system with the Crystal’s energy. The Paragon turned into a cannon itself, a white flower with a spike in the center, and a green beam of energy lit the space around him. All of the enemy Warbacks were destroyed.

The liquid that coated this strange facility was permeating the mass of destroyed architecture by now. It flowed with fever, bringing things back into shape and moving the facility’s parts to accommodate for the destruction. The turrets that Hau had ignored, as well as the turrets from the opposite side of the construct, all locked into position and aimed at the Paragon.

It didn’t matter. Hau redirected the laser beam and started carving into the turrets, evaporating them as they flowed in. They never got the chance to shoot, blowing up as soon as they arrived. The Paragon was slow to turn at first, but the beam was becoming easier and easier to handle. The Warback was adapting.

Soon, fire reigned where the turrets should have been. The liquid, on the other hand, still flowed. It grew into some sort of curtain, blocking the laser for a short moment. Hau released the beam, aware of how much energy he was using.

The curtain unveiled, revealing a Warback of strange design. It was bulky, but its plating was not metal. It boasted a coating of shining, dark purple carapace. A cape of mysterious purple cloth, woven from the gel that controlled the facility. Spikes grew out of the machine with symmetry, bending like horns. Some of them extended and waved in the DA air, tendrils for whipping.

The Paragon rested for a moment. Hau knew where Tazyn was, and he knew she would stand in his way on his journey here. He had prepared to kill her.

“Hau!” a feminine voice shouted from the purple Warback. The machine took a step back, widening its stance, and then it brought a slashing tendril down on the Paragon.

Hau dodged, altering the state of his Warback. The shapes of the Paragon’s shell shifted, bent and folded in half until it had taken a new form. Now, it was something more akin to a warrior, revealing a pair of folded arms near the center, spiked shoulder pads rising where the two top points of the star had been. It’s legs ended in needles, but they could bend at their joints. The head grew a menacing mask, shooting upwards in the topmost point.

He boosted forward toward Tazyn, but she evaded using her Enigma’s gel coating. She propelled into the air above Hau with her void energy and brought down a flurry of slashing whips.

The Paragon contorted to dodge, catching the last lashing in a sharp gauntlet. With strength rivaled by none, Hau dragged the Enigma towards a powerful punch. The Enigma broke, but the gel from the facility healed it. Tazyn was known for being one of the more resilient members of the Angels of Dusk.

Hau flew away, knowing that he was at a disadvantage standing in the purple liquid. He gained distance, assuming a defensive position.

The Engima didn’t chase him. Instead, it stood and gathered up the liquid into its mass. That purple substance compressed and hardened, extending the tendrils of the monstrous machine. It had been building up quite the weapon, spreading that stuff here and waiting to gather it up again. The Enigma could rival the Paragon when the Paragon didn’t have the Crystal.

The Enigma exploded toward Hau, and he didn’t dodge. He knew what was coming, so he waited until Tazyn slowed and unleashed a flurry of long-reaching lashes. They scoured the air, leaving shockwaves where each tendril cracked. The Paragon was too large to outmaneuver the attack, but its newly formed joints allowed it to bend and twist. It even deflected some of the tendrils with its clawlike hands, leaving sparks of shredded white surface.

Tazyn suddenly changed her pattern, and so she caught Hau in a few strikes. Hau flew away, out of reach. Tazyn chased him, but he kited the whips and flew along the destroyed base with such grace that the chase lasted a while. Tazyn only had so much power to last her in this fight. So did Hau, though he did have a trump card if he needed it.

The Enigma shifted, reversing its path and catching the Paragon in its attempted kite. Hau dodged the tendrils, but he didn’t fly out of reach again. He braved the storm, getting closer and closer to his enemy.

“Did the Angels finally cast you out, Hau?” Tazyn shouted over the cracking shockwaves.

“Not yet,” answered Hau.

“So you admit you have turned on us. You have no idea what you are doing with the Genesis Shard.”

“And who cracked the orb and cast the two shards out?”

“Don’t even joke that it wasn’t you!”

Just before the Paragon reached the Enigma, Tazyn lashed him with her most powerful strikes. As the attack commenced, however, the Paragon skillfully split into shards upon the impact, leaving no damage. The main body drifted away, leaving the smaller projectiles to chase Tazyn and dodge the whips.

Tazyn flew her own way, defending against the two attackers. What could she do against them? Destroying them wouldn’t even kill Hau, and ignoring them would result in her death.

Hau charged up another beam using the Crystal. It wasn’t anything extravagant, so the Paragon only transformed a single arm into the cannon. He had expectedly outsmarted Tazyn, and now he was going to outplay her. It had been a sweet memory of knowing the woman, her tall stature and dark complexion, the way she commanded every room she entered and led the way with confidence.

He fired, but Tazyn dodged. How? The Paragon had just adapted to her movement, the maneuvering she had to keep up to fight against the shards. Doing something unexpected should have resulted in her death.

With the same move Tazyn used to dodge the beam, she deflected the two shards with such force that she sent them darting away. Then, she sucked in all the tendrils and shot them outward with tremendous force. They caught the Paragon and wrapped around it, damaging the machine and locking it in place. The Enigma came closer, retracted the tendrils, or rather, compressed them. They were becoming stronger, denser, crushing the Paragon slowly under their force.

“What I wouldn’t give to see you in the Paragon’s place right now, Hau,” Tazyn said.

“Why, Tazyn? No remorse at all? No semblance of understanding? No sign of ever trying to?”

“We did try, Hau. That’s why we have contingency plans. It’s why I was able to dodge you just then, and it’s why you will die here and now.”

Hau laughed. “You were wrong about the Crystals.”

“Oh? What pitiful last words. Just another power-hungry usurper, lost to history.”

“No, Tazyn. You don’t understand. The power in these Crystals goes beyond turning the minds of the UPOA away from void power. It’s like nothing you ever imagined.” The Paragon bore cracks in its shell from being crushed, and its joints could not bend under the pressure of the tentacles.

Then, green energy began to flow throughout the Paragon, and the Crystal inside of it began to hum with power. The crushing stopped, and the Paragon resisted with ease. The triangles that shaped the body of the strange machine folded, bent in half, again and again until they became invisibly small. The new shape the thing assumed was perfect and without flaw. It wasn’t just an imitation of a man like the other Warbacks. It wasn’t just a huge suit of armor, hiding the complex machinery beneath. It was an exact replica of the real thing, a naked man made of white stone, as big as a skyscraper.

It was Hau, and the lines all around his body where the triangles fluctuated glowed green with overwhelming energy. “This is what you missed, Tazyn,” Hau said as he reached out toward the Enigma with one hand. He grabbed the machine by its neck, holding it up above him, ignoring the tentacles that slapped him helplessly. “This is the power of the Crystals. You could never understand the role this plays in the universe. That was your fatal flaw.”

The glowing hand of the Hau-shaped Paragon brightened, glowing with more and more intensity until it blinded the area around them. When the glow subsided, there was no sign of Tazyn and her Enigma.

However, the fight was not over. From three separate points around Hau, from the three farthest corners of the facility, on anchors of machinery large enough to mount huge weaponry, three massive cannons charged up with excited yellow sparks and lightning. Those barrels were big enough to launch projectiles large enough to cleave the base into nothing but bits, and they all aimed directly at Hau.

The energy flashed, and a huge yellow beam escaped each of the three Accelerator Cannons.

The first trail of energy hammered down onto Hau’s position, but he dodged just in time, transforming the Paragon into a spaceship and gliding along the edge of the giant tube of energy. Another beam struck down on him, but he curled away just in time. When the third one came, Hau launched the Paragon out of the way, leaving the green ripples of energy where he had been. Those ripples were consumed by the yellow pillars of energy, and then they were gone.

Electricity clouded the area, striking all the debris that survived and evaporating what was left. The Paragon swiftly dodged each strike, moving too fast for the slow energy to catch him.

Hau breathed deeply once the destruction was over. He had never been in such a battle before, but he was overwhelmed with power. The Paragon could do anything, now. He could do anything. Still, he had to wait. The time was not quite right.

And the battle was not quite over. A few Warbacks zoomed within Hau’s sight. Of course, he hadn’t killed all of them. Some of them had taken the defensive, not just from Hau but also from Tazyn. And now, after their final trump card had been depleted, the only threat was what was left. Still, that meant that Hau was too powerful for them to kill. Why were they getting cocky now?

From the edges of the DA, a small army of ships entered the fight. Reinforcements, and they were here to protect top secret material. They were state-of-the-art, newer, and more powerful than anything the UPOA had up till this point. It might just be enough to kill Hau if they play their cards correctly. He had no idea what they had in store for him, especially if the Angels had moved to send Tazyn to aid them.

Some of the smaller jets transformed, becoming warriors of machinery with mounted rail cannons, shields, guns, and even some energy blades. They flew towards the Paragon, ready to kill him.

Hau needed to leave. He zoomed away from his enemy, flying towards the center of the destroyed facility. The DA generator was still functional, or else he would have left long ago. Destroying it would be hard without enough momentum and preparation from the Paragon to escape total destruction. Instead, the Paragon transformed and became a flower again, shooting green energy from its center.

This time, however, the beams did not result in annihilation. Instead, an orb of volatile energy formed around near the center of the base. It pulsed and grew, and the enemy Warbacks backed away with caution.

Then, Hau transformed the Paragon into a spaceship. He flew out of the enclosed space, leaving through the hole he had created when he had arrived. The enemy Warbacks followed, and then the green orb exploded.

The Paragon shot away, and the other machines around it transformed into back into jets, speeding with the same intent: to escape the growing bubble of death. The jets gained a lead on the Paragon, and the bubble itself grew faster and faster until it slowly outpaced them all.

Just before the Paragon succumbed to the explosion, it transformed again, becoming a sharp needle of linear speed. Using what was left of the Crystal, Hau exploded with force away from the explosion and the other Warbacks. Behind him, he saw his enemy state-of-the-art creations die just as they had arrived, in an instant. Ahead of him, he saw the larger ships and other Warbacks flash by, nowhere near fast enough to survive the blast.

The Paragon reached the edge of the DA, exploding through the bubble’s surface without much trouble. The Paragon relaxed, drifting faster in the vacuum of space than it could have flown inside of the DA. Everything that was left of the battle no longer existed, or at least it had been atomized beyond recognition. All there was now was the memories of what had once been.

Space was silent. The battle was over. Hau relaxed in the Paragon, catching his breath. He was tired, and he had just massacred all those people. He laughed, and so he left, his hard-earned Genisis Crystal in tow.

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