The vast wrecked cityscape of the DA settlement was ruined and wrecked, pillars of smoke reached tall into the sky, the scars of battle wore thick across the entire area, it had all but been picked clean of every available resource useful to the Rewritten, upon the towns central hall stood the perpetrators of the attack, who were looking over the area with a sense of glee and accomplishment, how they'd brought this place down to its knees and scoured it for resources of every kind. And it had been rich pickings indeed, a vast wealth of technology and money, a huge influx of new slaves, Nodes, Controllers and Marks, battle experience... Leech stood over the burning, crumbling city, surveying over its haunted skyline with her toxic glare. The wounded but still living Ink commanded a group of new Nodes up to the rooftop and looked to the sky, where a massive ship was slowly descending down. Amongst the nodes stood a couple a new mark, who was standing close to Ink, along with Gin, the soft haired cat/human hybrid, who was wrapping up one of Ink's wounded tentacles with a bandage. The new mark was a cat like creature too, she was already very corrupted looking... an athletic purple clad body, with tribal white markings were the most normal part of her, red hooves replaced what should have been cats feet, a long, slender tail ended in a set of claws rather than just fur, and a small set of tentacles protruded from her back... despite being a mark, she looked just like another of the Rewrittens forces. The strange looking cat lady demon was currently standing at Ink's side, admiring the view.

“So. I'd say a battle was hard fought and well won here.” Ink laughed, seemingly ignoring the pain from the several gaping bullet wounds in her.

“Indeed it was. We've gained far more from this than I initially thought...” Leech turned to face Ink, facing her directly and demanding her attention. “You've seen the new Controllers, any that stand out to you?”

“Yes. A lot of them are submissive to us... seeing us as leaders and are happy for the guidance. But there are a few I would expect to become key players such as ourselves.” Ink gestured for Leech to follow and walked over to the part of the roof that had caved in, allowing them to see into the guts of the building, where a few more Corrupted Czarites stood in a group.

“Vhaylen, would you come up here please?” Ink called out, that hideous grin never leaving her face as she spoke. Ink watched intently, as a stream of very thick, dark liquid rose up of the walls and made its way over to the roof top, taking a good few minutes to pour itself fully from the lower section of the building. It continued to flow until it became to form a shape, Leech has witnessed an awful lot of very strange things since her short life in the Rewritten, but this one was one of the more interesting... the shape grow and expanded, beginning to tower in height and width until it was shoulder to shoulder with Ink herself and went nearly a full foot higher than the massive Controller, the shape began to fill itself out, pushing its hips out, shaping its thighs, forming its chest and shoulder, filling its boobs out, until it finally resembled a Controller, its swirling mix of midnight blues, deep purples and darkest black coloured the main section of its body, along with the occasional slither of fiery orange, that would fade in and out of existence like brilliant flames within her. Finally, her hair and face formed, brilliant golden eyes that twisted in colour to a blood red gave her look a stunning vocal point and the last of the liquid drained into her, fully completely her. At this point, you'd never know she was a puddle just a few minutes ago.

Leech stared, open mawed in amazement.

“This, is Vhaylen.” Ink introduced the creature to Leech with a grin. “By the looks of it, you quite like her?”

“Like her? I'm stunned... how the fuck does she work?! And more importantly... how good does she fuck?”

“Calm yourself Leech, i'm sure Vhaylen will be more than happy to fill you up later, but for the time being, I want you to inform Vhaylen about... the lizard... and set her up to deal with him.”

“You want to send her after him?”

“Not on her own... but in the event we encounter him, I want Vhaylen to be the one to deal with him. She hasn't had a lot of experience in our ways yet, her time of rebirth was near the end of this little crusade, so she didn't get to participate much... But. What I have seen of her... I have little doubt in my mind that she could deal with him and his pesky psyonics.”

“Sounds reasonable. He shouldn't be very dangerous anymore anyway.” Leech took a few seconds to go fetch a large and powerful warblade that was being kept safe by a few Nodes. It was the same blade Diego used to wield, its huge, crescent shaped head was closer to an axe than a sword. “It seems like the knight has lost his blade. Without it, its just a case of waiting for his psyonics to run out.”

“Even so... Vhaylen shall stay with you. I'm sure she'd love to learn of his ways.”

“Yes. From what i've heard about him, he sounds like a very interesting Mark.” Vhaylen spoke with a highly seductive tone, Leech looked like she was about to start undressing right there and then.

“Mhmm... you have... no idea...” Leech giggled, thinking about all the fuss he'd caused. “Anyway, whats with the ship?” Leech glanced up briefly and had to take a second look, not quite taking in how big the ship was the first time. “That thing is fucking huge! Where the hell did we get that?!”

“Was a pirate battleship. Whilst we've been doing this, i've had agents of ours assaulting some space stations around here... and this beast... just happened to be docked.”

“You sure this wasn't the space station?! What the hell are we going to do with it?”

“Well. Considering how many of us there are now... the dungeon simply isn't big enough for us, we need more space... So... my suggestion is, we use this battleship as a mobile HQ for us. We can keep the dungeon of course, but this will be our home.”

“That sounds... pretty damn fucking cool actually. Think of the firepower we could bring on it... and the man power.”

“We've managed to secure two cruisers here as well, bringing our fleet even stronger.” Vhaylen added, watching Leech's form intently. “Those, along with the battleship, will form a very powerful and capable assault fleet. Providing we don't run into any DA battlefleets, we should be good to travel where ever we want.”

Leech's eyes ran over the form of the Battleship, its heavy metal framing and armour, the slight glimmer of a powerful energy field surrounding its externals, several massive gun batteries ran across every side of it along with banks of missile launchers and smaller anti fighter turrets littered on every flank. It was practically a mobile fortress. Despite its power though, Vhaylen was right, this still wasn't the time to begin assaulting the DA properly. The Draconic Alliance was a seriously powerful empire, one battleship would not suffice. It would take hundreds of ships just like this to even think about breaking their defensive lines. Still though, for raiding smaller, isolated settlements that were in the outer regions, it was perfect. It was just a matter of... converting it... for the Rewrittens needs.

It had been a good few hours since the incident, Diego had been found by Cherry and hauled back to their apartment, looking rather fat and heavy with slime. Wex had managed to take a peak at his brother as Cherry was pulling him into the shower and found himself to be rather upset by Diego's appearance. It wasn't nice seeing someone you thought so highly of in such a bad state.

Wex was sitting in the apartments living room by himself, waiting to see if his brother was going to be ok. Sure, Diego had endured far worse than this from these creatures, but this was the first time Wex had ever seen him afterwards... and it was weighing heavily on his mind. Seeth, who was desperate to see her lover, had been asked to leave by him. Apparently, Diego wanted to be alone right now... upon seeing his brother though, Seeth decided she'd go see if he was doing ok. She wandered over and took a seat opposite him. The apartments living room was heavily decorated with comfy armchairs, rich tapestries, soft rugs and heavy wooden furniture.

“Hey, how you feeling Wex?”

“Hey Seeth... I'm... alright... just worried about my brother... does he usually look so... bad after you've... you know...?”

“Not that bad no... Me and the girls... we've toned ourselves down a bit and keep him a lot tidier... its only fair... whoever did this to him though, just went crazy... I-its not the worst he's had though, he's been through much worse...” Seeth's mind was cast back to the first few nights, when she let Leech have a go with him... that wasn't a moment she was very proud of, in-fact it was one she deeply regretted. “And that was when he was weaker than he is now... look, I know he looked pretty bad, but honestly, after a clean-up and a good nights sleep, he'll be fresher than ever. Trust me.”

Seeth was trying to comfort Wex, but its not every day you see your brother caked in slime and out cold on the floor. Despite Seeth knowing physically, he would be fine, she was worried about how Diego was doing emotionally. He was usually very grateful for help and loved Seeth's company, but the fact he'd asked to be left alone, was never a good thing for her.

Wex sighed and ruffled his hair. “I know... I know... he's always been tough...” A small smile broke across the males face. “Hah, I remember this one time, it was before the civil war, when were still a proper family, all of us were gathered around the dinner table, dinner times were absolute havoc, I don't know how our parents coped! But anyway, I came in late because a couple of kids were picking on me after school, Diego and Elise...” He paused for a couple of seconds, reminiscing over a lost loved one. “Elise... was the eldest sister... uhm.... anyway, her and Diego saw me looking a bit roughed up, got the story out of me, grabbed me by the hand and took me back to where the boys were... Diego took the punches for me, Elise dished them back out... never saw those kids again... he was always the shield of the family... Bah, sorry, I told that really badly, it was just a really long time ago...”

Seeth smiled warmly. “Sounds exactly like the Diego I know... always puts everyone ahead of himself...”

“Yeah... thats my brother. I was never like that when I was younger... I was angry, bitter, full of angst. The only thing I wanted was for my family to stop doing the fighting for me... I look back now and i've never been more grateful. Anyway! Enough with the emotional backstory...” As he finished talking, Diego emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, looking squeaky clean although somewhat grumpy.

“Wahhey, look who it is!” Wex's face lit up upon seeing his brother looking alright again. Diego was looking good, better than usual actually, despite not being as perky as usual. He was looking full and strong, with the way his hair was currently, he looked like he could have doing a shampoo advert. “You're looking much better bro, didn't think you'd be up tonight!”

“Yeah... well. I'm used to it. Did we find who did this? Is Plum alright?”

“We didn't manage to catch the Controllers responsible unfortunately, and Plum's fine, she's just sleeping. Bit of a headache but otherwise fine. I...” Wex wanted to bring up something he'd been wanting to talk to Diego about for a while, but felt that perhaps this wasn't the right time.

“Whats up Wex? Go on.”

“Eh, I... I need your help with something, I don't wanna overburden you though man, you've had a tough night.”

“Cherry fucks me harder than they did, i'm fine. I'm not happy, but i'm fine. What do you need help with?”

Wex stood from his chair and began to make his way over to Diego “Its Jeweled Fang business, private. I'll need to speak to you somewhere confidential.”

Seeth smirked in the background. “Go on boys, i'll check on the Trio, go have your man talk.”

Diego and Wex quickly made their way to Wex's office, navigating the maze like corridors of the space station they'd come to call home for the past few weeks in just a few minutes. Upon arriving, Wex quickly shut the door and offered his brother a stiff drink in a crystal clear glass. The older brother took the drink and sat on one of the chairs in his brothers office.

“So, whats this about then Wex?”

“First off, you looked like you were sick of those girls, thought i'd get you out of there...”

“Yeah... thanks...”

“You feeling alright man? You don't seem yourself...”

“... I'm just... i'm just feeling a bit god damn sick of being nothing but a fuck toy. You know? I feel like i'm a walking fucking cum dumpster for these fucking things right now... no matter how far away I get from them or how much I try to change them, they just keep spreading and spreading... I feel like... I feel like... I feel like I should have just killed them all back at the camp site! Just ended this whole damn mess there and then, stopped them spreading... I could have torn through the lot of them if i'd kept hold of my blade... and I don't even know if I actually mean that... maybe i'm just feeling bitter because a couple of them got the jump on me when I thought I was safe... I just don't feel like this is ever going to end... they cost me my blade, they got my captured by the DA and sold to slavery, they've caused immense amounts of suffering, killing thousands, maybe millions... all because I wanted to save my friends lives back at that campsite.” Diego held his head in his palms. “Now... now i'm caught up in this... I have the DA after me, these fucking alien rapist bastards... christ knows who else...”

Wex took a sip of his own drink and sighed. “You know... I always used to dream of being the one to comfort you and not the other way around when we were kids... now i've got the chance, it doesn't feel anywhere near as good as I thought it would... Look, Diego... you made a judgement call, it wasn't a bad one, this isn't your fault. THEY are the ones going out and doing all this shit, you are not personally responsible for their actions. Get that thought out of your head right now. You're doing a good thing... Seeth actually seems like a nice person... as for the Trio... I don't know... don't trust em... but you're giving these creatures a chance that no one else would. I've done all sorts of crazy things, but even as a fuckin' space pirate, I still pale in comparison to your achievements. You're a survivor, always have been, you'll survive these things, I know you will. Would the universe be a better place without em? Maybe! But I know Seeth means a hell of a lot to you and you mean the world to her. She brings me hope that there is a future for em. And she needs your help. She needs you...

BUT... you need some time away from them. Maybe just a couple days. Which brings me to what I wanted to speak to you about before all this kicked off... I need your help... Fancy coming on a mission with your bro?”

“What you have in mind?” Diego smiled warmly, his brother wasn't the best at motivational speeches, but he was good enough. And the thought of getting away from this place for a day or two was a nice one.

“Well... theres another pirate faction who are... interested in joining forces with us. But they're playing hard-ball. They want to do some negotiations. You wanna come with me to their hideout and sort out an alliance. Most likely not gonna be that interesting, but I figured it would get you out of here for a bit and away from the nympo's.”

“Sure, that sounds good, count me in.”

“Great, we can head off tonight if you want.”

“Yeah, that would be good, get me off this damn place for a few hours at least. Maybe I can not get my ass pounded for one night.” Diego was feeling somewhat better after talking to his brother, but he realised he'd would have to go to his girls that they wouldn't be getting any sex for a couple of days. “I'd better go tell the girls...”

“Actually Diego, i'll have Sen do that. Lets get you outta here. I can tell you just want some air. Cmon man.”