Chapter Text
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The Badlands, Night City Greater Area, North America, Earth, 2076
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The sun was starting to set when Saul Bright’s convoy reached the Badlands outside of Night City. The trip through the old smuggling routes had been surprisingly uneventful. No Militech or Raffen Shiv ambushes, no sandstorms dispersing the convoy. And he wasn’t the only one with good fortune.
The rest of his Aldecado pack had legally crossed the NC-SoCal border checkpoint with barely any need for bribes. A few credchips and, strangely enough, fresh baked goods from organic ingredients were enough to let them through. The border guards almost offered the eddies back for more cookies.
And those were damn delicious cookies. He would know. His people had been dining well for the past three months, courtesy of the guest they picked up back in SoCal. A guest they smuggled across the border as her origins, let alone her appearance, would have raised too many questions. A guest his Aldecaldo family already owed much to and who had willingly followed them to help them get back on their feet.
They finally reached the site where the scouts and the ones who crossed the border legally were setting up the new campsite. Campfires and electric lights were illuminating the camp as night fell over the badlands.
Saul parked his truck, with the rest of the smuggled convoy just outside the camp. Some Aldecados were already walking over to help unload their supplies and merchandise. And while they did that, a small figure jumped out of the truck’s passenger seat to look at a distant city.
A city that shone brightly in the dwindling sunlight. Lights and holograms lit up the night like a beacon dedicated to corporate greed. And opportunity.
“Well there it is. Night City,” Saul said, approaching the one who had rode with him across the border. “Like what you see Tubobo?”
The small Lalafell woman turned to him, smiled and gave him a thumbs up.
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Tulliyolal, Tural, Hydaelyn, 7th Umbral Era (3 months earlier)
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Tubobo Tubo woke up to the sound of waves rolling along the beach and morning calls of seabirds. The sun had just risen, bathing her cabin in a warm glow. The small lalafell woman sat up, stretched, rolled off her oversized bed and walked to the window to watch as Tulliyolal, the capital of Tural, woke up to a new day.
It had been a few weeks since Tubobo Tubo had defeated Zoraal Ja and Sphene with the help of a bunch of Warriors of Light, summoned by the power of Azem’s crystal, a powerful artefact containing an incantation used by her past incarnation to… well… summon powerful allies from… wherever they came from. She had no idea if those other Warriors of Light were from her star, another reflection or possibly other timelines but she intended to return the favor if she ever got summoned too.
But for now, she had more pressing matters to attend to. She was hungry and it was time to get some breakfast. And Tubobo Tubo was going to go to Aunt Tii’s Tacos, get some big fat tacos and eat them while relaxing at the beach.
Because she was going to have an actual vacation. A vacation that did not involve fighting the latest warlord with delusions of competence, interdimensional invaders, oversized dangerous wildlife that was probably created by bored past advanced civilizations or desperate gladiators who wanted to steal her soul.
Hopefully, she could also take a nap at the beach without a Primal popping out of the sea or some cabal of idiots with delusions of grandeur disturbing her this time.
As Tubobo Tubo made her way through Tulliyolal’s market, she drank the sounds and smells of Tulliyolal’s marketplace. Even this early in the morning, merchants were already hawking their wares. She had even personally crafted some of the items in the stalls.
Eventually, she reached the taco stand where the Mamool Ja woman known as Aunt Tii was busy frying tortillas.
“Well if it isn’t Vow Wuk Lamat’s companion!” Aunt Tii cheerfully greeted. “What can I get you this fine morning?”
Tubobo Tubo smiled at the cheerful woman and pointed at the “sample menu”, one of each kind of taco. Aunt Tii nodded and prepared Tubobo Tubo’s order.
After paying for the tacos, Tubobo Tubo went to another stand to grab a Mezcal cocktail, one of those served in a pineapple. She then walked to the beach, sat down on the warm sand and started eating.
As she bit into a big fat taco (so big) and took a sip of her cocktail, Tubobo Tubo felt that she could finally take a real vacation.
She really should have known better by now.
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SoCal, NUSA, Earth, 2076 (3 months earlier)
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Saul Bright had expected the Raffen Shiv ambush. What he didn't expect was their large number and how motivated they would be. This wasn’t a few stray Raffen looking for an easy target. This was a planned full scale assault and their objective was painfully clear : to exterminate his Aldecaldo family.
The Raffen had herded his convoy towards a cliff where they were now trapped, cornered by enemies taking pot shots at any Aldecaldo they could see. Saul knew that his group wasn’t the only one being attacked. He cursed when urgent radio calls from the Aldecaldo camp confirmed that the Raffen were also heading there.
It was definitely a well planned assault. Possibly corpo backed. And he couldn’t do anything about it. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Even if they fought to the last and took as many Raffen Shiv with them as possible, it wouldn’t be enough to save the camp. Was this how it would end? By failing his family as a leader? Saul was a fighter. And he would fight to his last breath. But it would take a miracle to save his family now.
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Tulliyolal, Tural, Hydaelyn
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Tubobo Tubo stuffed the last bit of her last taco in her mouth, savouring the slow cooked marinated meat inside. She then chased it down with another sip of her cocktail. Content, she laid down in the sand, letting the sun warm her smiling face. She felt like nothing could ruin her day.
So when she felt a pulse of aether coming from a certain dimensional key she recently acquired, she did not stop smiling.
When, through the Echo, she had a vision of people in a distant world in dire need of aid, aid that only she could provide, she did not stop smiling.
Tubobo Tubo merely sat up, dusted the sand off herself and took out the dimensional key.
The dimensional key was an artefact that had been used to cross and merge dimensions. It had been used by her distant Lalafell ancestors to flee the freezing cold of the Fifth Umbral Calamity. It was then used by the Alexandrians for a poorly planned invasion of the Source.
The key had Azem’s symbol glowing on it. The symbol had appeared when she fought Sphene, when she had used Azem’s crystal to summon her allies, as if it reacted to the presence of her soul. Which was the most likely explanation as she was the largest shard of Azem’s soul.
She inspected the artifact that her past life probably cobbled out of scrap in a cave somewhere after Etheirys got sundered, courtesy of her own mentor Venat. Suddenly, knowledge she was certain she did not possess until now flowed into her mind, instructing her on how to open a rift to another world.
“I guess we should have expected our past self to include instructions with the devices they made,” said a chuckling voice only Tubobo Tubo could hear.
Tubobo Tubo looked up to see Ardbert, another sundered shard of Azem’s soul who had merged with while she was on the First.
“It has been a while Ardbert,” Tubobo Tubo replied with a smile.
“Well I don’t have much reason to appear by myself these days. We are the same person after all,” Ardbert replied. “So once more into the breach?”
Tubobo Tubo just nodded and punched her palm. But before she jumped into the fray, she had one last thing to do. Putting a finger to her linkshell, she called the Scions… EX-Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
G’Raha Tia was the first one to pick up. “Tubobo? Is something wrong my friend?”
“Hi G’Raha. Can you please tell the others I’m about to use the dimensional key to jump to another world?” Tubobo Tubo replied. “Some people over there are in urgent need of aid and I don’t think I can carry more than one person with the dimensional key.”
“How did you get the key to work?!”, exclaimed G’raha. “Nevermind that, what can I do to assist?”.
“Try to calm Alisaie so she doesn’t rip my head off for being reckless again?” Tubobo asked dryly. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to get back without having aged thirty years. Ooops, the key is opening a portal, I have to go now,” Tubobo Tubo finished before ending the call as a rift opened next to her.
Ardbert glanced at the rift and then looked at Tubobo. “For those we have lost?”
“For those we can yet save.” Tubobo replied quietly before unsheathing her axe and jumping into the dimensional portal.
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SoCal, NUSA, Earth
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Saul Bright was clutching his wounded leg. A Raffen Shiv got lucky and managed to put a bullet through his thigh. Said Raffen Shiv was now dead after Saul returned the favor via lead to the forehead.
By some miracle, all the Aldecaldos in his troop were still alive. Not that it helped much as most of them were wounded, some severely. Bullets were flying over his cover. It was only a matter of time before the fucking Raffen Shiv overran them. The best Saul and his troop could do now was to hold out as long as possible. To take as many Raffens with them as possible to give a fighting chance to the Aldecados back at camp.
Saul was about to peek over the side of his truck to lay down some suppressive fire when incoming enemy gunfire suddenly stopped. The sound of automatic weapons and bullets pinging against armor plates ceased, replaced by a rising crackling noise. The Aldecado leader risked a look around his cover and was baffled by what he saw. Both the Aldecados and the Raffen Shiv were staring at what looked like a tear in the fabric of reality itself.
Both sides were still watching the strange phenomena grow when the rift suddenly disappeared with a pop and a small rotund figure dropped out of it, landing between the Aldecados and the Raffrn Shiv. The newcomer looked like some sort of dwarf exotic, dressed like she was at a vacation resort and carrying an axe almost as big as her. Before any side could react, she charged straight into the Raffen Shiv line, letting out an animalistic, high-pitched roar.
“WAAAAAAAH!” the little warrior screamed as she let out a storm of slashes and literal earth shaking blows, mowing down any unlucky enough to be anywhere near her. The Raffen Shiv attempted to return fire but she shrugged off most of their gunfire. Only the HMG one of the bandits was carrying seemed to scratch her and the heavy weapon was silenced soon enough when the tiny killer cleaved it in two, along with its wielder.
Corpses and even vehicles got tossed around by what could only be some sort of combat fullborg created by some megacorp with a twisted sense of humor. Before long, all that was left of the Raffen Shivs were corpses, burning vehicles, burning corpses and burning vehicles with corpses in them. Saul and the Aldecados could only stare, dumbfounded, at all the destruction that befell their enemies at the hands of a creature a fourth their size.
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Tubobo sheathed her axe with the satisfaction of a job well done. She preferred not to shed blood whenever possible but, sometimes, shite needed killing. She still wasn’t a bloodthirsty killer though. Well she was mostly not one. The Warrior’s Inner Beast still bayed for blood though but she learned long ago to bop it on the snoot.
Once the beast was subdued, she turned her attention to the people she defended and was alarmed at the large number of injuries they had. She immediately swapped to her White Mage equipment and ran forward to treat their wounds. Wings of light burst from her back as she chained spells after spells, bathing the wounded in healing magic.
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Saul wasn't a religious man. Faith was in short supply for someone who had led a Nomad family in a journey for survival through the wastelands of North America. So when, in desperation, he had prayed for a miracle, he hadn’t expected his prayers to actually be answered. And he definitely did not expect that the actual answer to his prayers would be a tiny bundle of wrath popping into existence and slaughtering all the Raffen Shiv cornering them.
And now, their tiny saviour grew literal wings of light like some sort of angel and, through what he could only describe as a miracle, healed his comrades with glances, waves of her hands and a staff. Wounds were healed, bullets got expelled from bodies, holes closed in less than a minute. Even the dying somehow rose to their feet, seemingly none the worse.
He was wary of the tiny person who just rescued them but reason reasserted itself. If the small killer wanted them dead, she wouldn’t have provided medical care. Medical care he couldn’t even comprehend or imagine.
He was about to thank their saviour when he got another urgent call on the radio. He rushed to the edge of the cliff where he could see the rest of the Raffen Shiv in the distance. They were about to reach Aldecaldos’ camp and his group was too far to be of any help.
“Is something wrong?” A strange high-pitched voice coming from below asked him.
Saul looked down to see their new little friend looking up at him.
“I… look, I don’t know who you are and why you saved us,” Saul said after a moment of hesitation. “And we’re extremely grateful you did. But the rest of our family is about to get attacked by the same group you just killed. Can… can you help?”
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Tubobo Tubo looked up at the panicking Hyur, or what might be the equivalent of a Hyur on this star. He had pleaded for her to go rescue the rest of his tribe from the rest of the bandits whose comrades she just massacred.
From the cliff, she could see the dust cloud raised by the horde of vehicles about to attack what she assumed was the camp the Hyur was talking about. A camp that was too far for them to reach in time with the ground vehicles they had, if their speed was similar to the speed of the bandit vehicles in the distance. She couldn’t teleport there either as there wasn’t any aetheryte she was attuned to on this star.
So that left her with only one solution. She took out her dimensional key before turning to address the crowd around her. “Everyone! Grab your weapons and get ready to follow me!”
“Saul? What do we do?” One of the tribesmen asked what she assumed was their chieftain.
The Hyur named Saul only hesitated for a moment. “Do as she says!” He ordered. “Grab your guns and get ready to move!”
As the troop mustered close to Saul, Tubobo Tubo focused on the dimensional key. Once again, knowledge she was certain she did not possess, and suspected her past life left on the artefact, flooded her mind. She raised the key and opened a rift leading to the camp.
“FOLLOW ME!” Tubobo Tubo yelled before jumping through the portal, followed by Saul and his kinsfolk.