The mistake you can't fix 7

John and Clark met again as the latter exited his ship, exhausted but intact. As the others went to meet their friends or families, the two of them simply stood there for a moment, cuddling. Then, they went to a cafe, one that floated above the city thanks to Fefnir tech, and sipped on a coffee each. They discussed about life, what they'd do after, but also meaningless little things. In a tale, that would have been where the story ended.

But if life had ever been a tale, then it was never the kind to let peole have a happy ending. That's why days later, the worst happened: the planet underwent a massive attack from one of the Paradise Council' spatial float.

The simple but clean buildings, the small gardens, the carefully organized infrastructures, they were all part of what made the planet a home for humans. And now, the planet was drown under the attacks.

[Alert! Alert! Enemies ships have successfully damaged the Outercoat! Every fighter is called to get in position and stop them, and every non-fighter is called to take refuge in one of the specially equiped bunkers and, in case of lack of proximity with these, in any structure fully protected by high level Fefnir technology! This is NOT an exercize! Again, this is NOT an exercize!]

Immediatley after the broadcast was made, John's first reflexe was to look for Clark, but the latter was nowhere around. Then, in panic, he tried calling him, but he wasn't answering the call. Understanding that Clark was probably fighting in this exact moment,John could only come to one conclusion: he had to help too.

He didn't go to one of the bunkers, and instead went to one of the few buildings nearby that were fully protected by high level Fefnir technology... and more precisely, a control tower. The moment he was allowed to enter, he rushed toward one of the most performant supercomputers, activated the digital board and started typing:

"Time to get to work" he said, more to cheer himself up than anything else.

First, by managng the communication, he got a global understanding of the situation: somehow, a float of the Paradise Council, composed of a few dozens spatial ships led by a large saceship, more than three times the size of the city John was in, almost two-thousands square kilometer large.

He quickly got an understanding of their attack strategy: At first, they had concentrated their attacks, via anti-matter rays, to create a large breach in the planet's Outercoat. Then, while the float of spatial ships entered through the breach, wreaking havoc across the planet, the large commanding spaceship was staying behind to coordinate the attack from behind.

Or so was what someone would've thought at first sight, but John quickly realized the spaceship had another goal: damaging the Outercoat even more, so the planet's atmosphere would degrade in consequence. That way, the spatial ships wouldn't suffer too much, but everybody that wouldn't manage to take refuge quick enough would die, and every structure that didn't have the necessary protection would be destroyed. In this moment, while everyone was distracted by the spatial ships, the spaceship was undoubtably the biggest threat.

John shared the information as much as possible, but quickly found out that hacking through the spaceship's system would be everything but easy. After several minutes trying in vain, he and every Cifer member trying to hack into the system realized that conventionnal methods wouldn't work, at least not quick enough.

John thus changed his method and transmitted the others a message: now, he'd lead the digital attack and they'd follow. He turned a deaf ear to the protest, and started using exclusive methods from Earth. And to the surprise of everyone else, it actually seemed to work a lot better. John, though, didn't pay it any attention and kept focusing on his work, pushed forward by one thought: every second where the spaceship was still damaging the Outercoat was one more chance that Clark would die.

Focusing and pushing his brain to the point of nosebleed, he progressively took over the armement system of the spaceship. Taking control of it all quick enough was definitely something he couldn't do, so focusing of their weaponary to deactivate it was the best solution. And happily, thanks to everyone backing him up, he managed to do so, effectively making the spaceship threatless for the near future.

And a few minutes later, to add to their luck, they also managed to cut the spaceship's communications with the float, making the spatial ships unable to coordinate together nearly as good as before. They progressively all were destroyed one by one, and it was now obvious that Cifer's forces were gaining the upper hand against the forces of the Council, mainly thanks to John.

And now that it was done, only one thing was left to do...

Getting the hell off the planet as fast as possible!

After quickly excusing himself and making sure that the outside was still liveable, he ran away from the building, toward the terminal where Clark's spatial ship was parked. Just according to the plan.

A few days earlier, he had told Clark about his idea to leave Cifer. He had expected him to argue, but he had immediately accepted. At the moment, in addition to feeling happy that Clark chose him over Cifer so quickly, he had also realized something: even Clark himelf was tired of the organization. He knew he was no hero, and he knew perfectly why he was still doing this job: not for revenge or loyalty, but just to oppose the Council and survive, in short because he had no better option. This had led John to asking himself this question: if presented a better option, even the most immoral one, would one always choose it anyway?

Well, he was now pretty much answering his own question. Earlier, when the attack had begun, he had directly tried calling Clark to inform him it was the perfect occasion to flee, but the latter wasn't avaliable, so he could only leave a message, which consisted in the signal they had prepared for this kind of situation, and pray that nobody would be around to intercept or read it. Happily, earlier, while he was hacking the commanding spaceship, Clark had sent him a confirmation text, indulging him to join him at the nearest terminal.

Now was the perfect time to leave: everybody else was occupied, and the only danger awaiting once they crossed the Outergate was the commanding spaceship, which had its weaponary disabled. Plus, now that John had given their side an undeniable advantage, he could leave in peace with the assurance that Cifer would win anyway, thanks to him.

He quickly stole a floating car, aiming straight for the terminal. He flew at high speed, weaving his way between the floating structures without even slowing down, until the terminal finally entered his sight.

However, at this moment, a building close to him simply exploded in an maelstrom of metal and ice.

... Ice? Where did this ice even come from? John couldn't think about it for much, because a shard of ice reached his floating car, making it lose its balance. The car started to lose altitude at alarming speed. John, trying his best to soften the crash, managed to reoriente the fall toward a floating public garden nearby and, when he saw that his car would miss it by a few feets, he promptly jump off it and managed to grip the edge of the plateform the garden was on, and to pull himself there in-extremis.

"Stars, talk about a bad way to start the week, that's almost worse than monday blues..."

Not even laughing to his own joke, John painfully got up, and saw the same kid as the one from before.

"Hey kid, it's dangerous out there" he said. "You shouldn't-"

He stopped himself as he got a full view of the scene in front of him: the kid was on his knees near two bodies, that John immediately recognized these ashe had seen them calling the kid once. They were his parents. Seeing that, John came to a stop. He extended his hand in front of him to help the kid, only to realize that he didn't know what to do in this situation. Such a thing, it... painfully remembered of the tragedy on his birth planet, that...

He shook his head and, to avoid thinking about that, focused on the two corpses. They both were covered in frost. Tt definitely had a link with the ice that made the building. But more than that...

John felt frightened by the sight of these two frozen bodies. Cold, cold... again, this same coldness of death... What abomination could've done such a thing? The grim reaper themselves.

Suddenly, John heard a slight noise, that seemed to approach more and more. At the edge of his vision, he perceived something reflecting the light of the sun. That...

"Damn it! Kid, move off the way!" he screamed.

The kid finally snapped out of his transe and looked at John, confused, as tears were flowing off his eyes. He was finally becoming aware of the situation, but it was too late for him to move. John ran to him at full speed, grabbed him by the collar and jumped of to the side, holding the kid for him to not be injured. A split of second later, spikes of ice raised at the spot where they were right before.

John didn't even have the time to recover from this near death experience that he heard the sound of footsteps getting closer.

"Well, look who we have there... a child? what does a child still does outside in such a situation? That's unfortunate"

John turned his eyes to see the person that had just said that, and saw an elegant man with straw-blond hair walking toward him:

"Who the fuck are you?" John asked. "And what the fuck is that damn ice?"

Instead of replying, the man simply looked at the kid and furrowed his eyebrows a bit. Then he looked back at the kid's parents' corpses, now trapped in the ice.

"Oh" he said with a sparkle of guilt in his eyes and voice. "Just citizens taken in the crossfire, what a tragedy"

Without taking any more time to think, John pulled out his gun and fired repeatedly at the man, who didn't even look at him as a wall of ice materialised before him.

'What in the hell...' John thought, shocked, as he took a step back.

Was that a new kind of technology that could materialize ice? No, it didn't seem like this, such a weapon would be visible, at least when used, but the ice wall had simply appeared from nowhere.

But then, what was it? What the fuck was happening?

The man chose this moment to report his attention on him:

"Please, I'll only ask you one time, step away from the kid" he said. "I'll do it anyway, but I'd much rather not harm the child"

John looked at him, thinking as hard as he could about what he should do. Slowly, he stepped away from the kid and dropped his firearm. As he did that, he discretly sent a distress signal with his digital watch, hoping Clark, who he knew was nearby, would arrive fast enough, and put his hands in the air:

"We can negociate" he said, trying to gain some time. "I'm sure we can come to an agreement, I also wanted to leave Cifer and-"

"An agreement? Sorry, but the Lord allows no deal with terrorists like you" the man said.

He highered his hand and seemed to be about to end it, but stopped abruptly. Confused, he looked at a ring on his hand, his brows furrowed.

"What in the world..." he started before looking at John. "Who exactly are you?"

John took another step back, as that was a question he would've also liked to ask the other. It was now obvious that the other was not only using some sort of supernatural power, but also was some sort of religious person... what exactly was even happening? John had always been a partisant of science, considering everything could be explained with science. But now, what was even happening.

The man, seeing his lack of reaction, was about to repeat himself, but couldn't do so as a small figure started running toward him:

"You killed mom and dad!"the kid shouted as he ran toward the man. "I'LL KILL YOU!"