Chapter LXXVI: Morbid Inclinations - Havering

The silence was aggrivating to Ratch. Action, planning, setting the strategy so that you gained a quick upper hand and deftly smashed the target were the thoughts that raced through the wiring of his mind. But the two had just been standing there for the past four hours. Finally not even his patience of steel could take it any longer. "Boss…why the hell are we just standing around while that agent is down there figuring things out?! Now I’m working for you, sure, but if you’ve read my profile you’d realize that is meant in the looset of senses. Now either make with the updates or I may just have to do some creative interpretation of my job under you."
Havoc was very thankful for his quick reflexes as half of his neck was nearly penetrated by a blurred form. The blur was a dark, greyish hue of blue; long and snakelike. However even though it’s speed was great, havoc could easily make out the glinting of light off of a very nasty curved blade of sorts on it’s end. Instead of his neck, the blade took out the remenants of an aged and long dead tree, splintering it into small wooden shards which clattered to the sparse, wilted grass. Havering’s eyes slowly opened as the blade tipped coils slowly slid back past Ratch and finally came to rest a foot off the ground in an odd arch behind the time bender. "I do hope you’re finished, because there are some matters which must now be attended to." Havoc was silent for a good time before finally speaking again. "Such as?.." The demon’s eyes once again shifted from their white, unending depths to the glasslike appearance as he turned his head to glance at an odd distortion forming to the left of him. "Just watch the show. Seems a certain gloater’s about to get a nasty little shock I’d say."
Lord Ulrezaj sat behind one of the numerous consoles which comprised Havering’s massive lair machinery, pushing numerous buttons. On screen, the Protoss city of the Markior sprung up in full wire frame schematics, numerous notes appearing on a side bar in a language the dark Archon was sure that Havering had devised as a sort of code. "Very good... Markior has warped in a Templar Archives... The time to take the Uraj and the Khalis grows near." Ulrezaj sneered, tapping a hand on the monitor and bringing up more detailed pictures. At least, he did until a low humming and movement of metal behind him interrupted his thought patterns. Turning, the dark alien being watched as a low-set, rounded ridge in the wall slowly grinded to life, sliding back to reveal a long blackened passage, which had been cleverly concealed. A slight green glow radiated from a bit near the back of the newly opened chamber. Ulrezaj straightened his back, his eyes glowing. ... Intruders... He grumbled. As he watched, a low, metallic, rumbling echoed and reverbirated from the passage. The green glow brightened and defined as two narrowed slits, about seven feet or so off the ground. All remained silence for a good while, and for a brief moment the protoss even felt a bit less uneasy; that is, until the chamber, or rather what lie within decided to make it’s existance known. "The Boss doesn't want cretins messing around with his plans. Suggest you leave while you can…" Lord Ulrezaj’s eyes glowed brightly as he observed what was starting to unfold as a most uncomforting situation indeed. "What treachery is this? One of Haverings toys? Who are you..?" he demanded of the voice, now irritated. His question received a very unexpected answer as the owner of the voice decided to show itself. What steped out of the passage and into the light was something that could set even the most brave souls on edge. The figure stood a good inch or so above where Ratch's radial fin would end, and he seemed to be just as solidly built. Graveyard hues seemed to make up his armor colors. From upon a stout, reinforced neck sat what appeared to be a cattle skull, somehow more twisted in appearance to look even more menacing. If bones could show expression, this skull appeared to be sneering. "Name's Necronimus. Call the Coroner- this would be your only chance."
What followed was an all out battle between the two, who were soon joined by a third; the purple, blue haired sorceress of a lizard. While the Dark protoss tried his tricks of mind controlling and illusions, he wasn’t dealing with a foe who they were quite effective against. In fact, the mind control efforts did little more than give Nercominus a good laugh as he brought out his own little tricks. Within seconds of the robot’s eerie grin and wave of a hand, green fog was seeping up through every crack in the floor, and was soon followed by a morbid army of the skeletal remains of persons and animals long gone centuries before these events unfolding. Spells and psionic blasts filled the air, as well as the bones of the unceasing undead, who, though some were now even lacking numerous limbs, still made their way forward to claw and bite at the two who opposed their reviver. At near the close of the match, the dark protoss archon finally had to combine the powers of both himself and the sorceress to form a single being, who eminated of a slight gold hue from it’s cape. In this form, the undead masses soon fell, leaving only their leader standing. But before Ulrezaj could gain any advantage over the robot, a final abomination ripped through the floor in the form of a massive skeletal canine. The beast provided enough nessicary distraction by attempting to attack the motionless form of the sorceress before it was destroyed to allow Necronimus to vanish down one of the fog filled corridors, leaving no trace of which he took and leaving only morbid silence in his wake.

"Truly amazing, wouldn’t you say, Havoc?"
Ratch simply stood, jaw lowered, staring at the now fading images, the memory of what he had just seen still lingering like a knife in his mind. "Holy…hell.." Ratch murmured, his eyes slowly turning to Havering with a still incredulous look. "He’s…just…" "So similar? He should be; he’d be your new brother." Havering grinned. Ratch had seen the demon grin before, but this time it was a full, teeth exposing grin. A side portion of the robot’s brain noted that Havering looked almost exactly like a jackal who had a potential to simply bite an arm off if it was his will. Rabid wolves tended to have less intimidating canines than those. "My what?.." Ratch tried to say in a manor that might soften that grin even in the least, mixed with his own disbelief. Pseudo crossed his arms and made a slight gesture with a hand. "Of course it’s pretty accurate in a sense. He’s of the same series as you are; only he was lacking a bit of what you have in certain departments." Something suddenly snapped with an echoing click in the recesses of Ratch’s mind. "The..same series? I was made by Alpha Tech...i am the only one of my series.They say I literally cracked the mold. Only two people knew about my creation- My designer, and the Alpha Tech president. Only they! So how could you have made one of my series??" Staring at Havering, a sudden, even more jolting block fell into the mental puzzle. Ratch knew he had seen that smile. That grin with the odd manor of how those teeth perfectly seemed to lock together. Havering’s grin suddenly took and odd, knowing grin on to it. "Your radial fin. They tried to incorperate it into the original mold." Ratch didn’t even blink. He just raised a claw to the red, streamlined piece of metal that was attached to his helmet. One of his clawed digits fell into the slight indentation on the right side of it’s point. "Luther forgot to disable it’s cutting function on the internal wiring. Half way through, the heat somehow got to the wires and the system activated, sending it a half inch higher- right through the top of your head mold." Havering, now looking at Ratch up and down as an artist would a portrait. The robot simply looked at the demon, slightly less confident than his usual appearance. "You…really have a set up goin here…mister pres." The demon chuckled and tapped the side of his helmet with a gloved hand. "Precisely. Now I believe we should be returning to the old headquarters again. Necronimus should be headed that way from what directives I built in as his primaries."
Ratch nodded before a question struck him. "Say…knowing you…you’ve brought the old building to that world..didn’t you?" "But of course. Quite humorous how the authroities are trying to figure that one out." The demon grinned. "I thought so…but how are you keeping this a secret when we’ve got that alien on our land?" The time bender’s grin slowly changed into a sneer as he raised his left hand and motioned it in a circle, creating a slowly opening rip hole. With a search through his belt, Havering produced a small, black steel orb; only slightly smaller than a baseball with an oddly unreflective surface. "Ever been in an earth quake, Havoc? I mean a real, natural, demolishes the city and kills hundreds, leaving the populous in terror kind of quake?" Ratch raised a metallic brow. "I was in that rip quake on the spire assault. Registered about a nine point seven on the scale." Havering sneered and tossed the ball in his hand and nodded in the direction of it. "Just watch your "scales" get blown to hell." With those words, the Time Bender wound up like a pro baseball player and sent the orb screaming through the void and on to it’s destination.
To the lone observer on the bluff, the small void against the seemingly frozen, eerily orange-pre-thunderstorm-evening sky was quite obvious. And as the person watched, a small round object hurdling towards the barren ground above the canyon entrance to well furnished hallways, now shredded with odd mechanics covering the walls. Until approximately a minute and twenty eight seconds later. At that precise moment, the black orb impacted with the ground, and though physics said the small orb should have simply bounced then settled to the ground, physics knew the name Pseudo Havering very well. As the orb hit, the very rock itself pulsed and a shock wave of earth ripped across the ground in sheer walls of earthen tidal waves. Following the shock waves, the entire island seemed to slightly vibrate, then erupt into an all out violent, continent-rocking quake. The intensity was such that numerous trees of the dead and living forests of the island collapsed, and numerous bluffs overlooking the sea soon crumbled and toppled into the very waters they once stood over. And, after what seemed like an inevitable delay, the very canyon that once served as entrance to Havering’s lair collapsed in upon itself.
As the chaos continued, from the far edge of the highest plateau on the island broke forth a mass of rock, soon creating a new mountain of sorts, elevating a few of the forests up along with it on it’s massive ledges. When the massive, earth-rending tremors had finally ceased, the very island’s appearance was now different. Instead of it’s high terrain gradually sloping downward to beaches, now the circumferance of the island was now comprised of the rocky bluffs, making it a straight drop of a certain death on all sides. While many of the forests had been destroyed or knocked off the island when the edges and beaches had crumbled, some still remained, and a good number surrounded the large, newly formed mountain. And through it all, the figure remained silent, simply watching as the events unfolded, and slowly came to a conclusion. And upon that grand finish, in less than a moment, the lone observer was also gone.

Havering surveyed the trees which still remained standing in one of the secluded mountain forests which lay on the far back edge of the mountain side on a massive plateau etched into the mountain itself which dropped back to the sheer plummeting angles at the far most edge. Ratch shook his head, still adjusting to how his current employer could simply move you, and himself to anywhere of his choice in the blink of an eye. No special effects; just there one minute, blink, and somewhere else when you opened your eyes. "I’ve taken the liberty of moving the Tech Head quarters to a private cavern in the depths of this mountain’s base. It’s nicely located, I must say; far below sea level and no direct tunnels lead there." Ratch nodded, then folded his arms and frowned in thought. "Well, you can take us there whenever you want, I know, but how about a way in for when we’re out on the job? For me and the others of my kind who can’t simply pop up where ever they wish?" "For once", Havering replied, putting a gloved hand on his chin, "You seem correct. I can’t be bothered bringing you in and out at all times, so I believe I should fix a means of entrance now. Oh, do help your brother up; he should be joining us any moment now." Ratch raised a brow, but within seconds, a metallic hand burst from the earth behind the robot, and he turned to see a second split the terra firma as well, followed by the curved horns of a cattle skull. Assisting to pull the figure from the earth, Ratch now viewed his new brother for the first time in person. "Ah, so kind of you to help, big brother. Now, where’s the mast-Ah! Never mind, I see we’re all here now, and greetings to you, Sir Pseudo." The dry, deep voice said in greeting as it bowed in respect to the Time Bender. Pseudo half-grinned before turning his glance to the area visable behind the two. "I do welcome you to the group, Necronimus, and I believe the precise spot would be…there." Havering pointed between the two and with sudden accuracy, a bolt of lightening struck the earth at the far end of a clearing densely circled by trees. When the bolt had dissipated, a small, raised marble dias sat between the far two trees of the edge of the clearing, a single marble column ending in what resembled a series of claws clutching a smooth, grey orb sitting on the far back of it, dead centered. With a sly smile, Sir Pseudo havering crossed the clearing, followed closely behind by the two robots, and proceeded onto the dias, placing both hands upon the orb and closing his eyes. "Well, with the little added security I have installed, I do believe this new location shall remain a secret. And I practically dare someone to try their mind games to locate it. I’m still rather cross about my last dwelling being so rudely taken from my dispersed essence and I’d enjoy watching the next home wrecker to be getting their minds blown by the nice little precautions I’ve taken. Been working myself too hard I suppose." Havering sighed, shaking his head as the sphere slowly glowed a green shade. "Ah well…guess I may stop and have a bit of fun once we settle in for tonight."
Both Ratch and Necronimus swore they caught view of that eerie, predatory sneer Havering called his own on occasion right before the three simply vanished from the spot, and as far as anyone else could see, from existance. The orb’s glow slowly dulled until once again, it retained it’s stony grey color; all falling quiet once again, save the howling of the wind, and the settling of land after a less than natural reconstruction. It was a truly morbid silence, that only the dead could most accurately speak of. And soon enough, the dead would be able to speak of such again.