Chapter Text

This story is about inevitable fate.

Chapter 1 - Tossed To The Wind

1.1 - The First Transcendent

Twenty-three years ago, the world was forever changed.

That was when Earth first encountered the Plague. They came from the stars without warning; vile, indescribable beasts with no sign of intelligence or empathy, only a visceral hunger that could be heard from their gut wrenching cries. Each one was different from the last, every one unique and horrifying. Some sprouted meaty tendrils that appeared like shredded muscle tendons, some were bloated with nauseating spores and others were just abominations of pulsating, tooth-ridden flesh. Their very biology could be seen twisting and morphing in real time, they had already adapted to our planet’s atmosphere seconds after crashing through it.

We never stood a chance.

My name is Sakura Suzuki, and when it began, I was just a college student. I had friends, a part time job, I even ran the gardening club at our school…

The exact moment still forms such a clear memory in my head. I don't remember anything before it, but that day in Zone A, seeing those things fall from the sky, hearing their voices tremor through the air, it’s as if it happened yesterday.

I was on my way to class when a crowd came running past me, it was complete pandemonium. It didn’t take long before I saw what they were running from. A rotten blanket of clouds had formed in the sky in the distance, something putrid and decomposing was spilling forth from it. Boney, fleshy masses dropped and crashed into the ground, they created craters in the pavement akin to meteorites, then simply came crawling forth from them undeterred. Their jaws snapped into whoever was closest, tearing person after person apart, slaughtering and devouring without mercy, draining the very Lifeforce from them.

I can still feel their screams resonating through my bones.

By the time I had broken out of my initial daze, I realized everyone around me was now running too, running for their very lives as quickly and as far as they could from the monstrosities trying to hunt them down. Me, being the idiot I am, I ran too… In the opposite direction to everyone else. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to save those that I saw being hurt, being brutally killed right before my eyes. I had to do SOMETHING.

I ran at the closest beast as it tore a person in two and its bloodied maw became distracted by chewing on their body. I leapt at it with rage in my heart, I hacked at it with my bare hands. I tried to tear its head off, I fucking swear, I really did try.

Its mouth was full, I’m sure if it wasn’t it wouldn’t have hesitated to eat me too. Instead it kicked me off with one of its dozens of legs and sent me flying through the wall of a nearby building. I felt my ribs shatter.

I would have died right there amongst that rubble if… If it wasn’t for that thing.

That… Creature.

Even now I don’t know what it was. I don’t think anybody knows what they are, or what they want.

It offered me a deal. It told me it could help me harness the power inside myself, make me strong… That it could give me the ability to save everyone from those monsters, give me the ability to use my Hope as a weapon.

I wasn’t in much of a position to turn it down.

That’s where that memory ends. The rest is a blur of green mist and toxic blood clogging my mouth and nose, cutting through sinew and exoskeleton with a blade that felt like an extension of my very being. I don't remember much more about that time… And I don’t remember any of my life before then… That isn’t just a blur. It’s a void. It’s gone.

I’ll never know what I gave up in that Creature’s deal, but I had too. I didn’t have a choice.

As far as I know, I was the first Transcendent, and I saved many lives that day. Because that’s just what Transcendents do.

Or, maybe that’s just what I want to believe.

Then the barriers came up.

They came up fast, within the span of hours. Most people were shocked at just how prepared the military seemed to be for such a large scale, planetwide attack. Within the day, every single Zone across the planet was waking up to the glow of a bright blue buzzing sky. Protective energy domes kept everyone within them safe as the rest of the world was swallowed up by the invading onslaught.

It was a relief to many to have something protecting them from the Plague, of course it was. I shouldn’t be surprised it made billions of people accept the help offered to them without question. I never would have thought a global military dictatorship would take complete control over the planet, let alone without having to spill a single drop of blood themselves… And they did it overnight.

It took a little while before I learned how they were so prepared for such a specific threat, and who they really were.

The Intersect.

People didn’t encounter alien life for the first time twenty-three years ago. We had encountered alien life long… Long before that day. We just didn’t know it at the time.

Nobody knows exactly how long the Intersect had been on our planet, or how they managed to gain control over every major government across the world, but they did, and they spent that time preparing for this.

They knew it was coming, and they never told us.

Now, they no longer had a reason to hide themselves. Faceless soldiers appeared to patrol the streets bearing weapons and driving vehicles far more advanced than was possible with any native earth technology. They had metallic suits that covered their whole bodies covered in lenses and lights. Large, round, autonomous drones flew and monitored us with their prying eyes which beamed out lasers. Their guns were bio-coded and locked to the specific soldiers who carried them, preventing any people from being able to use them even if they somehow got their hands on one.

All this technology of theirs ran on some new form of energy which quickly became known as ‘Potential’. Something only they knew how to create and put to use… And goodness, did they put it to use.

They told us many of that themselves. They didn’t have a reason to hide it anymore, after all.

Since then, life on Earth has been a war without an end. Every day people do what they can to live on, stuck between the constant threat of devourment by a horde of monsters and suffering under the boot of a cruel alien dictatorship.

And me?

I fight.

I fight to save the innocent. I fight to free us from this cursed fate. I fight against the Plague, I fight against the Intersect, and I fight against the inevitable. And I’m not the only one.

Why do we do it?

Because somebody has to, otherwise our fate will never be our own.

And we won’t stop as long as we still hold Hope in our hearts for a better world. Even if it means we must sacrifice our lives, we will do what must be done to save the lives of others. Even if it means throwing away everything else about ourselves, we will become the roots that hold this world together. Even if we have to give up all that we have, we will even give up that which makes us who we are, until we are no longer recognizable as who we once were…

Like wherever roses go, when their petals are tossed to the wind.