Chapter 43: Boarding Party

Soon after Zel disappeared into thin air once again, the shuttle once again settled into a stable orbit and stayed within visible distance of the Absolute Being base without getting too close. What Rydel and Valerie have to do is to first wait for the entourage of Cellica's to arrive, which she made sure to emphasis that the mobilization of forces should be very easy on Olympus should happen before anything is going to happen to Elmyra, judging from Zel's previous intelligence about them waiting for something, perhaps for the final preparation.

Rydel knew that Zel is going towards the room where Elmyra is being put in at the fastest speeds that he could manage, though he hasn't revealed the limit of his movements when the Pocket is not locked onto any moving objects in the real world, Rydel can only believe in Zel right now, and after the months of training plus all that they have been through together, there is no better person to do it. Plus, from the looks of things, it appeared that there is a bit more to Zel's feelings than what he has been letting on.

Perhaps something did happen during the Galactic Celebrations, perhaps some good really come out of this.

'Are you okay?' Suddenly, Valerie appeared in front of him and placed a hand on top of his glove.

'Yeah, why?' Instinctively, Rydel answered what he has always answered.

'First Dolon, now Elmyra...' Valerie said, squeezing Rydel hand as the circuits on the artifact gently pulsed the lightest shades of purple.

'But hey, I got you back from them,' Rydel said, avoiding Valerie's eyes and muffling his words, 'it goes around, I suppose.'

'It won't.' Valerie said, 'we have the control and power here, we will get her back.;

'Yeah...' Rydel said looking at the hologram placed in the middle of the shuttle's main room which is linked to Rydel's personal interface. A alert popped up from Cellica.

'Looks like the boarding party is ready and waiting for Zel's signals.' Valerie said.

And then, just like that, an alert from Zel came through.

'Lady Lily has started the operation on Elmyra to return her to basic functions. But there is more that they are doing, and I don't'

And that's where the messages were cut off.

That's all that he wrote.....that's a phrase right? That's all that he can wrote here in this case anyway.

As Zel emerged from the Pocket and reached out to warp Elmyra into the Pocket immediately after Lady Lily pointed her Pen of Rearrangement at the wounded area of Elmyra's throat and simultaneous began the reconstruction of the area's local tissue from the moment it has been released. As someone apt in human physiology, the patch work was quick and bloody. From the moment Lock Down is released, the state of Elmyra's wounded body continued as it would if Lock Down had not been in place as the puncture through the lungs cut off the air supply to her brain as blood seeped through the gaps between her flesh and the metal of the music box.

However, before all of that could happen, Lady Lily has already returned her to normal. From Elmyra's perspective, she felt the cold tip touching the back of her throat, and then the next thing she perceived is the operation room in the base as Lady Lily pulled the pen away from her.

Elmyra blinked a few times and tried to get the bears right, but she is yet to fully process what is happening. However, a moment ago she felt like there is a ball stuck in her throat preventing her from breathing, and now she can do it just fine. In fact, she felt great. Lady Lily is quite close to her as she just pulled back her artifact. What did she do?

Elmyra tried to move her arms freely, but it was cuffed to the surface right next to her. It is now that she finally realized that she had been captured by Lady Lily, and is most likely in the base of Absolute Being now.

'Begin sequence.' Lady Lily said, and Zero acknowledged her update. Then, the base shook as dusts dropped from the ceiling.

'Don't worry, Sir Deva is on it.' Zero said, 'everything has a zero degree of freedom, so when we start, we will have to keep going.'

'Do it.' Lady Lily said.

Then, as Lady Lily turned to signal Zero that the reconstruction process of Elmyra is complete, the space right in front of Elmyra's face became twisted and opaque as a spherical pocket is made in the middle of the air. A hand reaches out from the pocket, and it was a prosthetic arm extended to its furthest point without using the grappling hooks. From behind the arms, Zel's teary face peeped through.

In order to warp someone from the outside into the Pocket, Zel will have to establish some semblance of physical contact, and it just turns out that even his prosthetic limbs will do the trick after the two months of training. Or, he could just keep the opening from the pocket big enough and yank Elmyra in. However, from the hand cuff situation, it appeared he will have to go through the artifact activation route.

Elmyra is right there! Zel thought, concentrating with all his might and activating the Pocket, controlling the space around Elmyra and give her a loving embrace.

'Lock Down!' With the snap of a finger, the three of the soldiers in the room pointed the pseudo-artifact they have been holding onto since the beginning of the procedure and fired them simultaneously at Zel. Zel knew their tricks, but he cannot dodge out of the way. There will not be any other chances, and he will not allow Elmyra to suffer any more in the hands of Lady Lily!

All three pseudo-artifacts are turned on and locked down in his location, however, this time it doesn't feel the same. Zel felt his prosthetic arm stuck in mid-air, and yet the rest of his body from within the Pocket domain unimpacted!

So it is exactly as Lady Lily has said, you cannot overcome an artifact, but you can work around it! Even though the pseudo-artifacts of Lock Down enables the users to lock down regions of space and maintain the current state of existence within those space, it only influences the real world, and not the Pocket dimension that Zel can create with his own artifact.

This is the interaction of artifacts that once happened in between Rydel and Zel, and now, he can turn this to his favor.

'Is everything okay there?' Zero's voice came from the control room, 'I can still stop if it's urgent.'

'Everything is under control.' Lady Lily said, as the unfinished message from Zel is hastily sent out before he can even finish typing. The entirety of the machine roars to life as Elmyra is immediately knocked out by the wires connecting to her brain before she even has any bearing on what has happened. Her mental and physical state is being closely monitored by Zero and Hong Fu, and Hong Fu will use probable to tell Zero which combination of variables that he will have to adjust as he began to prompt Elmyra to search through the millions of possible events and trajectories throughout the galaxy.

Knowing that he will be too slow, and too stupid to waste the second chance the use of Pocket has given him, he subtly disconnected his prosthetic arm from his shoulder socket and left in the middle of the air. Those from the side could only see a portion of an arm that came out of nowhere reaching towards Elmyra, and Elmyra is the only that could see the twist and turn in space.

Zel bit down hard on his lips as the lightness is felt on his shoulder. He will seek another way to touch her, but he is careful not to get too close as he can't precisely control the warping process. It felt like he is trying to draw a circle while using a control stick, and everything will have to be far enough to allow for any errors. Now that he has some time to digest and reflect his decisions, he realized how stupid that was. The want to save Elmyra as quickly as possible after she is healed overrode every ounce of logical thinking in his mind, as every inch of his being wanted to reach out to her, and hold her in his arms.

However, Lady Lily knew that is going to happen, and she prepared for it.

Thankfully, Zel haven't lost it all, only the arm that Elmyra bought it with him. Oh well, perhaps he will grab it when all of this is over.

Now, his next move will have to figure out exactly how this giant machine is connected to Elmyra's brain. He had no idea if warping her mid way through the process is going to adversely affect her being, like a much worse version of waking someone up from their sleep.

It is too risky to just act now. Zel determined, he is lucky enough to have a second chance, and he isn't going to waste it like it did teh first time.

'Zel is secured!' One of the soldier said as he looked down at the control panel of the pseudo-Lock Down and reported.

'Good.' Lady Lily said with a firm voice, 'hold it until the end of the procedure! Once this starts, we can't afford to slow it down!'

'Establishing connection with Elmyra...now!' Zero voice came through the secure channel with Lady Lily alone, and then a bright flash of light came from the control room as his own artifact is activated.

Unlike a neural deep dive performed on computers or information systems, what Zero is doing now is slightly different. His artifact allowed him to read anything and gain whatever information he needs, however, he cannot interact with said information. That is why he can never succeed alone. He will need help of the others who believed his information and his vision. Others like Sir Deva and Lady Lily.

Reaching deep into Elmyra's psyche through the connections from the circuits placed around Elmyra's brain, Zero dove through the flashes of memories, layers of emotion and consciousness and sought out the part that he is looking for. He is looking for the area of the brain that mutated and developed as a result of artifact activation, the only thing that seperates artifact users and normal beings. The part of the brain that controlled the artifacts.

Travelling through the neural highways of Elmyra's brain, terrabytes and terrabytes of information swallowed Zero whole like a wave in the raging waters, but Zero is used to this. If there is anything he is good at, it will be reading the flow of information. For each individual, the artifact will trigger a slightly different response in their body, but all of them has some sort of development in their brain.

And finally, he has found it.

It was located and visualized as a mansion floating on strands of light. This is the part of Elmyra's subconsciousness that houses the artifact. Zero conjured himself into being and entered the house.

Meanwhile, out in the fields, the ships that crashed into the area is greeted with firing from the soldiers that are already on the ground, and even more appeared from behind the various covers in the building.

'This is GBI forces on a search warrant, please cease...' As rows of riot control droids are activated and sent out of the ship like bees leaving their hive, their robotic warning were overlooked and silenced by barrage of covering fire. The second row of the droids immediately flipped on their shield generators and began making slow progress towards the building.

'Cellica, what the hell is this!' Within the communication channel with the landing party, the officer in charge of this search warrant was taken aback by the amount of resistance he is facing. Firing shots at official riot control droids is akin to firing shots at GBI ground team officials. When Cellica is bothering him with yet another one of those 'mysterious organization who called themselves Absolute Being' and asked for him dispatch, he wasn't expecting guns and blazing from the one of the planet's orbital ring!

'You have found their base, and caught them right in the act.' Cellica explained calmly, though overjoyed that there is finally some thread of evidence that Absolute Being is leaving behind, if they are careful, they could even catch them in the acts, 'they are manufacturing something, and you know when they fire without listening to you, that it's something probably less than legal.'

Despite the acknowledgement from the GBI's ground team officer as he called for backup from nearby orbiting squads, which are at least thirty minutes away, Cellica knew that he won't be enough to fight them. Despite the amount of soldiers he had, artifact users are certainly a next level of fire power.

'Officer, please stay safe, as there are certain individuals that possess unexplained strength and may perform acts of...immense power.' Cellica, after some hesitation on her end, finally spoke into her communications device, 'When those people appeared, you will know. However, I have someone on our side that will fight them.'

'You know, this goes against the protocols, having outsider meddling in GBI affair.' The officer said, 'so don't get in my way and let me do my job.'

'But you don't...' Cellica was about to protest, but she also realized the situation that both of them are in. Despite the resistances, the officer that controls the squads of riot control droids are also surrounded by a squad of elite GBI officers in his ship that is orbiting above the area. So they are still safe for now, 'Fine. I will say this, let me know if you need special help.'

However, Sir Deva can just as easily pull their ship down from the sky, and it will be too late for them to believe in the existence of artifact users then. Flicking off her microphone with the GBI officers and changing the channel over to Rydel and Valerie who's in another shuttling floating in the area as they watched the firefight begin.

'Rydel, Valerie, I am sure you have already seen the distraction you wanted.' Cellica said, 'there are squads of officers on board, but they do not know what the artifact users can do, so please keep an eye on them, just in case...'

Valerie looked towards Rydel, and he thought for a little while.

'Can you point me towards the shuttle they are on?' Rydel asked, and Cellica sent them the ship and make of the shuttle, which expertly blends in with all of the generic shuttles floating on this orbit, and no one would know that the two landing shuttles are being controlled from this one. The shuttle is three kilometers away, and Rydel tried to extend his hands out to feel for the shape of the shuttle, and the people inside it.

However, the shuttle is way out of the range of his powers at this moment in time. In fact, he has never practiced catching people from this far.

'I may be able to warp them out in a case of emergency, if we get close enough.' Rydel said, looking towards Valerie, who nodded towards him and saved that shuttle as a target to rapidly approach should it be needed, 'will that be enough?'

'It will be enough to save them.' Cellica said, 'but that also means our existence will not be a secret anymore.'

'Well, it's not like someone is going to say it to the galaxy on the news, right?' Rydel said with a chuckle before becoming serious for a moment, 'it will happen eventually, especially if we are borrowing GBI's strength. Plus, I don't want innocent people to die under my watch.'

'Then we are clear.' Cellica said, 'Any further updates from Zel?'

'No, but he said he won't send out anything until after the rescue.' Rydel said, 'let's focus on our job.'

The entirety of the rescue/capture attempt on the base L2 of Absolute Being is carried out on two levels from the point of views of the bearers. There is Zel, who has the single best stealth based artifact that can enable him to be anywhere without being detected as long as he doesn't activate his artifact for warping that is monitoring the situation in the operating room and reporting back to the other bearers about the status of Elmyra, who has been fixed up by Lady Lily.

In order to draw as much attention away from the operating room as possible, Cellica has called in backup from GBI, dangling the possibility of them capturing yet another mysterious organization that has been operating underneath their noses. And the skirmish between the Absolute Being's soldiers and the riot control droids proved her point exactly. The soldiers can all fight way better individually due to their training and enhancements, but the riot control droids has a reflex and numbers advantage, meaning eventually some artifact users will have to be forced to come out to face against the droids. It would be expected for them to easily take care of some chunks of metal, and that would be when the two enhanced artifact users on their side will show up to balance the playing field.

With all of this in motion, it should create enough of an opening for Zel to save Elmyra, but that decision is entirely in his hands.

Meanwhile, as more and more riot control droids are being activated and sent out of the two crash landed shuttles, the soldiers that are firing back from various angles are gradually being overwhelmed. Their armor protects them from any fatal damage, and the energy of the bolts for the riot control droids are not meant to be lethal, just simulate a bad burn, but still, they are getting pushed back still.

Then, a door opened, and a giant muscular man dressed in full military battle armor and weaponry accompanied by a much shorter and skinnier man walked out.

It is now time for Sir Deva and Sadie Allen to enter the stage!