NEGA | Ch 1

Age ??

Vicious violence that is intolerable to conceive comes naturally to the desperate; only survival matters when everything else has been taken away. None know this better than he. A lesson which he can appreciate the integral value of, and one he could utilize so all would submit. Even the powerful aliens called the Quantars couldn’t defy their instincts.

A humanoid being, whose skin is like a glowing jellyfish, tore toward the computer as warnings issued across the screen. Planets across the quadrant have gone dark, a wave of darkness swept across the galaxy and began claiming them. But this wasn’t just some random blackout, no. That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t, because the moment he got in the chair it was too late. His planet had gone dark and all lights shrieked and blew. The computer practically shattered, sending shrapnel everywhere and embedding into the wall. If it were not for the Quantars natural abilities and immunities he would have certainly been dead.

Pushing himself off the floor the Quantar brushed off the shards and fragments littering his body, frantically casting his gaze about. Everyone was standing, mumbling, panicking. What had happened. The main lab on the planet on the other side of the galaxy suddenly went dark. That alone was enough to cause concern, but then every planet from here to the main science lab also disappeared leaving them last before the inevitable crisis. A whole galaxy losing power within seconds, and here the emergency power hadn’t kicked on.

He could only see due to their eyesight which could see any light left in the darkness, he could see his companions’ thermal images casting glances around. The doors flew open and the chief general stormed in, “Report!”

The man stumbled back, he didn’t know what to say, this had never happened before, “Blackout, sir. Galactic wide. It started in the sixth sector and rapidly approached us in seconds.”

The woman beside him quickly got on the train, “We don’t know what caused the technical shutdown. Maybe the commander of the science lab pushed out an update that-.”

“What update would cause the damn lights to burst!? That’s not a shutdown!”

She was speechless from that. A third member, who was quickly prying open the terminal to access the hard drive inside, raised his voice, “Something that fast would have to be some sort of software, an update would be the most logical choice considering the speed of the effect. The other option would have to be some sort of computer virus.”

“How’d a virus get in the system!? You assured the council that our security measures were up to date and tested for defects hackers could exploit!” The General rounded on the man, his glowing eyes sharpening into velvet rage.

Hesitating for only a second the man turned toward the towering leader, “I-I don’t know. I don’t even know why someone would shut down all systems. It’s impractical, doing that would hurt all systems across the… everything. No access to satellites means no communication or sensitive data. It just doesn’t make sense to do that.”

The general immediately halted, his expression slowly morphing to a somber realization, “Unless that’s the whole point.” He looked over toward the other man and woman in the room, “We’re being invaded.” The whole room shook, dust scattered in a panic, and the dark tone of an explosion could be heard reverberating through the walls.

Outside the once red sky was blotted out by the ships overhead. Armaments firing down upon the city, cascading the towers, tearing up the asphalt, and scattering the civilians into a blind panic. The sun barely cracked through the numerous warships relentlessly bombarding the surface. The Quantar military was practically overrun within seconds of the appearance of the enemy fleet. With their main weaponry offline the soldier resorted to their powers; they were the strongest race of the galaxy and would not back down for such a cowardly tactic.

Not every Quantar had the same power, but that mattered little when they fought together. The first wave of the counterstrike threw up their shields blocking further ammunition from pelting their world further. Immediately following their comrades’ retaliation the second wave began firing high levels of plasma and laser blasts. Their shots phased right through the shield and began striking the ships above. With the Mirror Sheild in place, the only thing the enemy could do was either retreat or try and blast the shield down before they were blown to smithereens. Many Quantars began cheering in assured victory.

That is until one of their main cannons suddenly came on and slowly turned. Most of the soldiers ignored the sudden change, they assumed whatever viral attack occurred had finally been overcome. It wasn’t until the cannon’s barrels began pointing right at them did they stop firing up. Everything seemed frozen in time as they nervously began backing up. The engineers that were stationed in the cannon were utterly mortified as they quickly attempted to find the cause of this sudden activation. That was impossible though, their screens were fried and the hardware in bad shape. In fact, the cannons shouldn’t even be functioning.

The apprehensive silence ended, their numbers fracturing within seconds as the massive weapons on every planet opened fire, a massacre that made the stars shudder. Soon after every main weapon, they had that was attached to a computer suddenly turned on them. Even their warships that had shut down in space are suddenly activating their onboard security and taking out the crew. The attempt to retaliate with their powers is backfiring on them. Now that they have exposed themselves by running out, the cannons were openly firing on them and since they were within the bounds of the shield there was no protection.

In mere seconds the Quantar were overrun by their own weapons and the shield immediately dropped. The moment the energy dispersed a cloud erupted from every ship, descending onto the unsuspecting crowd. When they finally did notice the cloud separated in and smashed into the ground displaying and an army of four-legged droids. Their bodies gleaming, superiority expressed with well-polished armor, their upper body just a mere torso and arms. Their legs quickly marching in sync toward the stunning race, and their arms raised with rapid-fire showering everyone. The only survivors either raised their arms in surrender, fell to their knees, or were lying on the ground out of fear or injury.

Needless to say, the whole planet quickly fell apart; their fortifications compromised, weapons turned against them, and their retaliation quickly rendered useless by the second phase of the attack. With all communications shut down, intranet shut off, and a planet completely surrounded their options were drastically reduced.

The only saving grace was the Quantar Council were amid a meeting when the attack began and they quickly locked down the building. Their shelter was manually pulled into the ground by some of the telekinetic guards giving them more time to consider their options. With these dense walls, it would take nothing short of a nuclear bombardment to crack the foundations.

“What the hell is happening?!” One of the council shouted. “Just five minutes ago nothing was happening?! How did an enemy sneak past our outer perimeter forces, into the center of our empire, and straight into the capital world without anyone noticing!? That should have taken years to accomplish even without our security checks!”

A communications specialist lowered his hands from his head, his telepathy allowing him to commune with the rest of his telepathic peers, “Sir, the rest of the empire is in the same state. It’s all over the place, the whole galaxy is under siege.”

Another council member paled into a lighter color, panic seeding his thoughts, “How can a massive army like that be coordinated? That should be impossible.”

Before anyone could say anything further a female councilor shot up from her seat, “Right now I don’t care! We need to initiate the fallback plan! Now!”

All heads nodded in congruent agreement, how this happened would have to wait, they need to get ahead of this, literately. The female councilor spun toward their coordinator, “Go to last week, warn us about this attack. Security code black, password Hellstorm.”

The coordinator was a rather special Quantar. He could cast his consciousness back into the past. The only reasons this method was beneficial were these codes and passwords. They were constantly changed monthly, the code illustrated the severity while the password legitimized the threat. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know who was telling the truth and who was trying to confuse them.

The coordinator nodded and brought his arms up to his head, placing the edge of his fingertips to his temple. With a flash of light, his image distorted and pulsated, quickly it stopped and the man brought a fist to his mouth to block the sudden spree of coughing.

“What are you doing?! Just get going already!” One of them shouted.

The coordinator only looked up, fear piercing his eyes, “I-I can’t. Something’s stopping me.”

“What do you mean, ‘something’s stopping you?’ That’s not how it works!”

“Council!” The telepath lowered his arms again, visibly sweating as he continued, “The other planets are panicking, none of the coordinators can go into the past.”

“How?!”

Every specialist in the room scrambled, they needed to solve what the issue was. That proves to be unfeasible though, with most of the equipment gone and their network down they were practically crippled. The few devices they had only functioned because they had no connection to their internet. The top physicist turned on her own handheld to scan the surroundings. A strange reading came up, “I found something!” All eyes turned to her as she played with some knobs on her small computer, “There’s a strange pulse emanating throughout… everywhere. It’s coming from outside.” She visibly deflated at the sight of the screen, “It seems… to come from the invaders. They must have known about our coordinators and found something to-.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, how would outsiders figure out such classified material? It’s impossible to figure out they can time travel in less than a year. It took us centuries just to acknowledge the possibility.”

“I’m telling you, there’s a strange pulse coming from the enemy. It’s never been seen before and simultaneously it’s the first time the coordinators couldn’t use their powers. That can’t be just a coincidence.”

Just as the council member was about to rebuttal the female councilor stepped in, “Enough, we’ll figure that out later. Right now we need another plan.”

The councilor who disputed with the physicist shook his head in rage, “Let everyone loose, use their powers indiscriminately.”

“Are you insane? Think of the collateral!” The coordinator shot out of his seat.

The councilor slammed a fist into the table, rattling it. “The way I see it, it’s either that or surrender!”

“You will surrender.” A deep thunderous voice sounded behind the group.

The whole room spun on their heels to turn toward the wall. Arms, legs, heads, guns, bodies all together were passing right through it. The robots were coming right through the wall as if it were just fog. Robot after robot, part after part, gleaming eyes after gleaming eyes. Their progress was not being halted.

The only section none have entered through was the middle, but that was intentional. Every Quantar witnessed as a figure soon stepped out from the wall cloaked in dark attire. It wasn’t one of metal, it was a man of flesh. He had to be at least eight feet tall, his arms and legs long and thin his sickly appearance all the more threatening. His coat, gloves, pants, all the way to his boots were completely black. The coat waved around as he strode over to the council, his face cold and expressionless. His head was the only thing that revealed skin the same color as any paper they’ve written on. His shades that adorned his face wouldn’t let them gaze into his eyes depriving him of any semblance of life beyond the mechanisms he walked in with. The disheveled hair matting his forehead even gave the impression that he was insane.

The man continued to march directly toward them, not daring to show any sign of pause, “You have nothing left. But I suppose you’re limited minds cannot accept that. So try as you will, it will still be disappointing.”

The female councilor snatched the arm of one of her fellow peers, “Shoot him.” She hissed.

“What? That’s like setting off several nuclear blasts.” He whispered back.

“What other options do we have? Just do it!”

He growled, though he wanted to argue further he relented. There were no other options anyway. It was now or never. He charged forward with a roar, earning a curious cocked brow from their intruder. The Quantar tossed a fist at him, a blast of energy exploding out of his fist and directly at the man in front of them. The bright green energy soared right through many robots, melting them where they stood and shaking the ground as it flew.

The invader casually pulled out something from his pocket and thrust it out in front of him. The beam hit it directly. Everyone thought it was over, the beam continuing to mow the invader down. The tension, however, returned as the man slowly drew the device away from his front to expose his underwhelmed guise. The beam visibly bending right in front of them just to flow directly into the small container the man held. Soon his arm was completely out straight and the light beam was bending at a near one-hundred-thirty-five degree angle. Fear gripped the Quantar and he stopped his onslaught to stagger back.

The man grunted in disappointment, his lips shifting to the side in thought, “Drama queen.” He pointed the device right at the man and pressed a button.

Immediately A blast of green energy, the same directed him, shot back toward its original sender. Before the Quantar could do anything the light struck him, his body erupted into a fleshy explosion and the beam continued onward and blasted right through the wall. It crumpled and shattered throwing air and rock everywhere. The Quantars were thrown to the ground as it shattered and cracked. The whole roof even caved only to be stopped by an invisible forcefield that the robots had been giving off. The only ones left standing were the man and his army of robots.

The man pocketed his strange weapon and strolled forward, “Next.” For some reason, he believed they would continue trying to fight after witnessing that. He wasn’t wrong though.

Two Quantars stepped forward. One suddenly grew ten times their original size while the other propelled forward at unreasonable speeds. The huge one leaped forward thrust a fist down at him. The invader only lifts his arm and caught the fist, a loud rang from the contact rattled everyone’s ears. The attacking Quantar could feel the texture of the man’s glove, it felt like metal. His clothes weren’t fabric at all, and based on the whirring it made, the suite was doing all the heavy lifting and fighting back. Where was the speedster?

Little did the massive man know, the speedster was already out for the count. She had sped right at the attacker ready to pounce on him, but suddenly he moved just as fast, he grabbed her arm, rammed his palm into her face, spun around, and threw her toward his robots. Some of them even moved even faster, they already grabbed and pulled her from the area to begin pounding her into the ground. The last thing she remembers is seeing the invader turn around to face the giant Quantar flying right at him.

The attacker tossed the massive man’s arm away and lifted his left arm. Strange white ball buckshot out and smashed into him. The concussion blast sent the Quantar flying back reverting back to his small form dead to the world.

The last one left to attack raised her arms and threw them forward. Large boulders, rebar, and small debris went flying like bullets at her target. The invader gaped at this briefly but quickly lifted his own arms. The whole arsenal stopped several yards away from hitting him. Slowly they began to glow and melt right before them. The boiling metal and rock fell to the ground as the female Quantar stopped her attempt.

The invader lowered his arms, a smile adorned his face, “Natural telekinesis. An interesting research subject.”

She paled at the mention and fell back in terror. The attacker stepped forward gazing all around him, “Any more surprises?” He actually sounded hopeful. When no one stepped forward, let alone move, he deflated. The smile quickly vanishing. With a deep and heavy sigh, he didn’t even bother voicing his disappointment. He only sharply waved his arm at the whole group and the robots began marching forward again.

“Wait!” The man turned to see another female Quantar rushing toward him. She dropped to her knees right before him. It was the physicist and she was clutching at her handheld computer. “I-I’m their top scientist. I-I can see you’re a man of science, you used electro-magnetism to stop the telekinetic attack right?” The invader slowly turned to face her, his respect for her observations rising.

The female before him quivered at his full attention being given her way. “A-as their top scientist, I can help you with new discoveries.” She’s never been good with the physical realm anyway; her mind is what she always had to use, how she could overcome a challenge. This time it may even save her life now. “J-just please let me live.”

The hope she once had quickly vaporized as the man’s expression morphed from expressionless to pure unfiltered disappointment and this time it clearly annoyed him. He snatched her computer from her hands and growled, “I hacked all your databases. I have all your knowledge and none of it was useful.” He then smashed the computer to the ground, her eyes just gazing down in horror at her once beautiful machine. He couldn’t blame her for that attempt though, it just doesn’t work since she can’t even match his quotient.

Suddenly a shadow appeared over her stealing her attention. It was a robot aiming a cannon right at her head. “NO! PLEASE!” She screamed, covering her head and dropping to the floor and into a ball in the vain hope of survival.

A loud smash shattered her panicked spree, but she didn’t dare get up. It wasn’t until the ground shook with a crash did she look before her to see the remains of the robot completely in ruins. Raising her head she watched as the man sneered at the ruins, “I didn’t say kill her.” He stepped forward and kicked the remains toward the rest of his army, “Take this back to the ship! I’ll look at it later.” Many machines came forward and grabbed the ruins, towing it away immediately.

The physicist was gobsmacked, but that was short-lived as he turned to glower down at her, “Get over there already.” He didn’t even bother pointing.

She speculated though, and scrambled over to her fellow Quantars all of whom are stepping back into a wall with their arms up, she followed suit. Their attacker strolled over to them, his arms crossed as a sphere flew next to him, a lens revealed that it was some sort of camera. If they looked up they would see the ships above casting a three-dimensional image right above them, it displaying exactly what was happening to them. What they couldn’t see was the hundreds, thousands of images being displayed across the whole galaxy.

The man spoke with an air of command, “I’ve destroyed your network, taken all your knowledge, turned your security against you, and have rendered all your powers useless.” The way he spoke, his behavior,  it left many of them to conclude this wasn’t the first time he’s done this.

He faced the group, cold and expressionless just as he first entered. “I know this group of ‘councilors’ is this empire’s main government so I’ll be making the demands directly to you.” He uncrossed his arms and got in the face of the female councilor, “Surrender. You won’t win.”

She could only swallow, she watched as this man made all their powers look pathetic and useless. She watched as all their defenses were rendered to ruin. Watched as he dismissed all their attacks as if a child had only swatted at him. In face of all this, her pride wouldn’t let her surrender, but her fear was countermanding that side of her. Right now she was completely conflicted but knew she had to make a choice.

“I said surrender.” He stepped even closer, his face an inch away from hers.

She flinched as this, her head was stopped by the robot behind her. It wouldn’t let her get away from him. The fear got to her as she watched his infuriated face about to speak again, “Alright!” She shouted, her arms shaking as they tried to stay up, “We surrender. All our troops, people. They won’t oppose you. Send the message.” She said looking over at their communication specialist.

“Don’t bother.” The man spun around, “They already know.”

All throughout the galaxy the men and women of the Quantian Empire watched as their council gave in to the demands of this stranger. They were speechless, tired, and hurting. They couldn’t believe their great and vast government had fallen so quickly. Less than an hour ago their lives were perfectly normal: eating outdoors, going to work, or even taking a stroll, but now this undeniable force had overpowered them, crushing them till they caved. Many wanted to rebel and fight; some did but such insurrections never lasted. The others remained silent, giving in to the new command. They could not blame their leaders for their decision, they were just no match for this threat.

Before their newly instated tyrant could leave the former councilor stopped him, “And what are we to call our new lord?” She tried to hide her contempt and derision.

He either ignored it or just didn’t care, but regardless he turned around just as emotionless as it had been when he walked in. “I am Negative.”

The whole galaxy froze at the name, the name they’ve all heard. A name they had been warned of by a race from another galaxy. A race they have never heard from again.

Negative’s whole body suddenly glitched, distorted, and fully disappeared in a mere second. His robots the only thing that remained on the planet, and the infamous galactic tyrant was gone.